The Philosophers' Cocoon

Teaching Smarter Not Harder

By Samuel Duncan

I was originally going to post this as a comment to Trevor’s post on teaching competently, but I decided that it merits its own post. Trevor makes some excellent points about teaching and what it’s reasonable to expect from yourself as a graduate student. The workaholism and perfectionism that academia drills into our heads is not a good way to approach teaching or indeed most tasks. In this post I’d like to discuss another way that the workaholism that inspires so many of our unreasonable expectations also gets in the way of not just competent teaching but good or even exceptional teaching. I am convinced that many philosophers wrongly assume that when it comes to teaching, more work always equals better teaching. This means that we see teaching strategies that would save us work as compromises between excellence and giving ourselves a reasonable workload. And so we often weirdly resist novel teaching strategies because the fact they save us work makes them seem like a cop out. I know I certainly did for a long time and for precisely this reason. However, this is a mistake on so many levels. One thing I’ve found in the last few years is that teaching strategies that save you time and effort can often be much better for students’ learning than more labor intensive options such as traditional lecturing. Let me give a couple of examples.

In my ethics classes I’ve replaced exams with an ethics bowl competition at the end of the semester. (I should admit here that I completely stole this idea from my friend Ryan Windeknecht, who’s one of the best philosophy teachers I’ve ever known).  If you don’t know what the ethics bowl is you can find more information here. Briefly, it’s a formal debate where two groups each consider an ethical dilemma, comment on the other group’s presentation and field questions from the audience (in this case their classmates). Now this saves me a lot of work. It takes up about six class meetings– five for the ethics bowls and one for an in class prep session for the groups– which means I don’t have to prep for those five meetings or put in the emotional labor of being “on” in front of a classroom. Like many of us in philosophy, I’m not naturally an extrovert and teaching is more than a bit of a performance for me. I generally enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s also emotional labor in the truest sense of that often misused term. I also don’t have to grade exams since I score the teams in class as do their classmates and come up with an average between my scores and the scores of their classmates. And we all know what a miserable chore exam grading is. Most grading isn’t fun but exam grading is really just the worst in my experience. In my book, if most grading is a chore like cleaning your bathroom at home, then exam grading is cleaning the bathroom at a truck stop or a stadium.

So the ethics bowl saves me quite a bit of work, but I’ve also found that students tend to like it. Pretty much every semester at least one student and often multiple students will say that it was their favorite thing about the class in the evaluations. It’s also very good for student learning. Applying the moral theories we’ve learned to real life cases and answering questions and challenges to their approach both helps the students to understand the moral theories on a deeper level and to better appreciate both their merits and faults as methods of moral reasoning. I’ve found that the ethics bowl is probably the single most effective strategy I know of for getting students– both those in the groups and the audience– to engage in real ethical discussion and debate.

Or take logic where I’ve almost entirely adopted the “flipped classroom” model. For most class sessions, I put fairly brief recorded lectures online where I go over the reading in more detail and discuss what I think are tricky points (the lectures are usually about 30 minutes). We then devote the entire class period to working through problems that cover the material from the readings and lectures. I put students in informal groups (usually just based on where they happen to be sitting) to work through the problems and periodically break to go over a set as a class. During the time they’re working on them I’ll make the rounds in class and see if they need help or want feedback on their proposed solutions. In the short term this approach did involve a fair amount of preparation for me since I had to record lectures and come up with exercises to supplement those in the book. However, in the long term it saves me quite a bit of work. Relying on recorded lectures is easier than having to prep for class each day and again it’s a class period where I don’t have to be on and in character in the way I would if I were lecturing. 

However, I’ve found that this is a really effective way to teach a subject like logic. Students get nearly instant feedback on their solutions. We can also work through many more problems than we could if I gave them problem sets primarily as homework (I do still give some fairly brief homework assignments reinforcing the material we cover that we go over at the beginning of the next class). This is a huge advantage since I’ve personally found that for logic or any other similarly “mathematical” subject doing problems is the most effective way to learn the material. In fact, to a great extent it just is what learning the material is.

Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think there are a lot more cases where approaches that make our lives as philosophy teachers easier would also be more effective as learning strategies. I’d love to hear your own. If they’re really good I might just engage in the sincerest form of flattery again.

7 Years Later Excerpt #1: Handling Grade Inquiries

By Trevor Hedberg

For the first few excerpts from 7 Years Later, I'm going to focus on teaching. Most do not have much preparation for undergraduate teaching prior to the start of graduate school, and I found it to be one of the more challenging aspects of graduate school when I was getting started.

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One of the more awkward aspects of being a grader, teaching assistant, or instructor is handling students who confront you about the grade they have received. Addressing grade inquiries is an inevitable part of being an instructor – it’s not a situation unique to being a graduate student. No matter how clear your grading criteria or how much class time you devote to recapping mistakes from the most recent exam, there will always be some students who ask you for more information about why they received their grade. However, as a graduate student, these interactions can be particularly vexing since you will have less experience dealing with them. There are at least three distinct types of grade inquiries, and different responses are appropriate to each one.

First, there are grade inquiries that boil down to grade entry errors. One type  involves the score on Canvas or Blackboard (or whatever learning platform your institution uses) not matching the score listed on the assignment itself. Another might involve too many (or too few) points being deducted on a particular question. Imagine a “-3” next to a 30-point question but a numbered score on the page of 25/30. Resolving these kinds of inquiries is straightforward: confirm that there’s a mistake in how the assignment was scored or how the grade was recorded, thank the student for reporting it to you, and correct the score. Obviously, You don’t want these grading errors to happen often – not all students will notice them, which means they sometimes result in inaccurate assessments of students’ knowledge, and persistent errors of this type will cause students to lose confidence in your professional competence. However, you will grade enough assignments that some mistakes of this type will happen. That’s okay; just correct them and move on.

The second type of grade inquiry, which is probably the most common, involves genuine misunderstanding. This is a case where a student sincerely does not understand why they received a particular score on a question or assignment. This could be because written comments given on the assignment were too minimal, they don’t know how to interpret the feedback, or they were absent when you went over the exam in class. Handling these inquiries in philosophy courses tends to be more challenging than doing so in courses like physics or calculus. In STEM courses, instructors can usually reference an answer key and explain how the student made an error in their calculation or defined some term incorrectly. But explaining why a student’s argument is not very strong can be trickier.

Tips for supervising grad students?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am an advanced assistant professor getting ready to start supervising both an MA student and a PhD student for the first time. I would love to hear advice about how to do this well.

This is a great query. I haven't supervised grad students myself, so I'm not sure there's much that I can say. But it would be great to hear from readers--not only those who have experience supervising grad students, but also from grad students themselves! Do any of you have any tips or advice on how to supervise MA and PhD students well? Any do's or don'ts?

Talent and Bias

By Sam Duncan

In this post I want to dig more deeply into some points about the deeply worrying effects of our belief in talent on our students made by Allison Gopnik and Eric Schwitzgebel. As Gopnik notes there’s good reason to think that there is some causal relationship between the fact that philosophy puts so much stock in talent and our lack of gender and racial diversity. And Schwitzgebel paints a very plausible picture of one way that this likely plays out in practice; as he notes it’s a lot easier for a young white guy to get away with various ploys that allow him to seem smart than it might be for a woman or a member of a minority group (It’s also a lot less risky). However, I think there are deeper ways that a belief in talent sets up bias in our field.

Let me begin with a question: When you look at student papers or consider how to respond to student comments, questions, and challenges in class do you think about whose paper it is or who made the comment? I’m betting that you do. If you make much of an effort to know who your students are it’s hard not to do this, and to a great extent this is part of getting to know our students. But this also opens up a danger of bias and believing that talent determines success in philosophy makes this danger much worse.

Work habits on the tenure track?

 In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

As a (very) early career person, it would really help me to know how later career people spend (or spent, when they were on the tenure-track) their average week. How much time to you dedicate to writing? How do you make sure you are setting aside the right amount of time for editing / pipeline type work (responding to reviews, getting papers submitted) vs creating type work (developing new projects, drafting new paper sections)? I'm finding it difficult to navigate this and am curious if others have systems that work for him. I expect this varies widely, but it would still be helpful to hear about others' experiences.

These are very good questions, and I am very curious to hear how readers respond. It is difficult for me to give a simple answer in my own case, as during my time on the tenure-track (and post-tenure) my work habits have varied tremendously. A lot depends, I think, on how in need of publications one is. When I needed to publish a lot, if I had a two-day-a-week teaching schedule, I would basically spend the other three days of the week writing. On the other hand, during times that I didn't need to publish a lot or had a three or four day a week teaching schedule, there have been entire semesters when I've gotten very little writing done--and, in any case, I get the vast majority of my writing done during winter and summer breaks. In general, I've found it pretty difficult to shift-gears between teaching and research on "teaching days", and have friends who report the same thing--though maybe things are different in R1 jobs where one has a very light teaching load.

In terms of how I partition my writing time between pipeline-type work (editing pre-existing papers, completing R&Rs, etc.) and drafting new work, I'd say it's roughly 50/50. On writing days, I'll usually spend the first half of my day (say, 9am-1pm) drafting new work, and then the afternoon (2-5pm) on pipeline stuff. I will say that my sense is that it is vital to always be drafting new things. Most of the people that I know who are the most successful (including in terms of receiving tenure) are people who consistently publish a lot, and hence, always have quite a few things under review at any given time--which requires producing a lot of new work pretty consistently. 

But these are just my habits and experiences. What are yours? It would be great to hear not only from those on the tenure-track who are pretenure, but also (for obvious reasons) from those who received tenure. What does your average work week look like, and how do you partition your time between teaching and research, and between drafting new work and work in your pipeline?

Designing good PowerPoints?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader inquires:

I wondered if anyone in the discipline might be willing to share tips on designing powerpoint presentations. Or maybe even some templates or ideas for color or font schemes. I have always been aesthetically-challenged and while I understand the very basics—like don't fill the slide with a wall of text—I have always felt at a disadvantage here. Perhaps there are even some disciplinary norms specific to philosophy which I am missing. I would really benefit from any and all tips!

Good query! Me? I like to keep things relatively clean and simple. Although I recently started using title slide templates, for the most part I just use solid backgrounds (white or black) and sans serif fonts (e.g. Calibri) for easy reading. I also like to strategically use colored fonts for key terms and phrases to 'pop out'.

As an illustration, here's a copy of the précis I gave of my 2020 book, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality, in an author meets critics session at last year's Eastern APA. I'm not sure if my powerpoint style is everyone's cup of tea, but I've generally received positive feedback. What about you all? Any tips on designing a good PowerPoint? Feel free to share slides of your own to illustrate!

Incomplete grades & temporary faculty

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, MS writes:

How should people with temporary positions deal with teaching demands that extend beyond a particular course’s contract? Suppose I am contracted to teach PHIL 101 in the Fall term, and there is a student who (for legitimate reasons) needs to defer some of their term work until the following term. My inclination is just mark the stuff, since I’m invested in my students. But I also feel like there is something exploitative in having that even minor burden fall to temp workers.

This is a really good question. I imagine there are a few different situations where this can arise. First, one could be in a temporary postdoc or visiting position, and then leave for another institution before the student is able to finish the work they need to finish the Incomplete. Alternatively, one could be in a part-time adjunct position where a student needs to finish up work after the course of your contract is over (i.e. during the summer months). I agree that there seems to be something really unfair about expecting people who are no longer getting paid for a course to have to do substantial amounts of work like this after the term is over (or after they have left the university for another institution). But I also imagine that, insofar as Incompletes are covered in faculty handbooks and the like, they are nevertheless considered by the institution to fall under the terms of your contract. So unfortunately, I'm not sure what to advise other than making things as easy on oneself as possible. Perhaps departments could/should come up with policies to have full-time faculty do this kind of work (though I'm not sure whether that would fly with administrators). What do you all think? 

On the market with mixed student evaluations?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm about to go on the job market and my student evaluations are not the best. I mostly have averages from 3.5-4 out of 5 (at my university 4.2 is the overall average). I don't want to lie or obscure this fact, I want to own up to it and discuss how I plan to do better in future. But I don't know if that is a good strategy.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has been in this position, and how they handled it. Or if you have hiring committee experience, how you would think about someone who has somewhat below average scores discussing that fact.

A couple of notes:

1. I know that student evaluations are not a good indicator of student learning. And student learning is the most important thing.
2. I suspect my student evaluations aren't great mostly for personality reasons and because of my own social anxiety getting in the way of engaging the students well.
3. However, there are plenty of people who are both great teachers and get great student evaluations, and I believe we should all aspire to that. Students can learn from and like you.
4. I believe that given some time and without the direct stress of a thesis I will be able to work on the issues that I think are affecting my student evaluations and do better, while also teaching more effectively. But I'm not there yet.
5. This wouldn't be an issue for someone with an outstanding publishing record. But my publishing record is good (2 paper in top 15 journals) but not outstanding.

This is an excellent query, as I expect there are quite a few job-candidates in a similar situation. On the one hand, my sense is that many people on search committees take student evaluations with a grain of salt, as most of us know the mixed (at best) empirical findings about them. On the other, given that there will probably be other candidates with stronger evaluations, mixed evaluations are presumably a prima facie disadvantage. So, what to do?

How to list non-standard forms of 'teaching'?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about how to categorize a type of teaching that occurs outside the classroom. I have a student who wants to study a particular text with me outside of class, and I am going to guide them through the text and teach it to them. It will be a semester long project, and I have taken it on. It's not quite a reading group, and obviously not a course. Is this worth putting on a CV? How should it be categorized?

A postdoc submitted the following reply:

It might be too late in the semester bureaucratically (or maybe this isn't something your university allows), but I would look into whether you can get it registered as an independent study course. This is what I'm doing with an undergrad this semester: we're meeting regularly about a text, and he'll write a paper at the end of the semester. I think this can be an attractive option for students, because it'll count for course credit and be a place where they can do some independent thinking and writing without it being a thesis-level project. If you were reading texts on, say, Buddhist ethics, you could list it as "Buddhist Ethics (Independent Study Course)" along with your other courses for Fall 2021. I don't think making it an independent study course would be more work than what you're doing already; you can decide how long the final paper would need to be and you'd have to grade that, but the readings and discussion are the largest part of it.

But the OP responded:

I can't actually do an independent study at this point in the semester, and we wanted to start right away. So if that's not an option, is there any way to describe and categorize such teaching on a CV?

Good question. I think the thing to do here may be to list it under Service, specifically (assuming the OP has other service) under a sub-heading Student Engagement and Mentoring. Here's why. My sense is that one should normally only list under 'Teaching' courses that one has formally taught. All additional stuff outside of the classroom doesn't seem to fall under teaching, per se. Rather, in this case, one is taking the time to do philosophy with a student (i.e. reading and understanding a text outside of formal teaching duties), and it's a case where you are going well beyond formal teaching and mentoring a student directly. So, 'Service / Student Engagement and Mentoring' seems to me more appropriate. But, maybe I'm wrong about this. What do you all think?

Sacrificing Teaching on the Altar of Talent

By Samuel Duncan

We philosophers are in love with the idea of talent. As a group, philosophers think talent more important for success in our field than do members of pretty much any other academic discipline. Only mathematics really comes close to us but philosophers hold talent to be more important for doing well in our field than do even mathematicians for theirs. I worry very much about this and think our field would be better off if we did not venerate talent in this way. Now I am hardly the first person to worry about the way philosophers think about talent and success in our field; Alison Gopnik and Eric Schwitzgebel among others  have written some excellent pieces on the role our talent worship plays in the woeful lack of diversity in philosophy PhD students as a whole. Here and in the next few posts I want to explore another way that our emphasis on talent hurts philosophy: Belief in talent leads to bad teaching and our belief in talent no doubt makes philosophers worse teachers than we could be. While there’s no easy way to measure this, I’m also fairly certain that it makes philosophers on average worse teachers than our colleagues in less talent obsessed fields like history, political science, and art history. And unlike many other talent obsessed fields like mathematics, computer science, and economics philosophy cannot afford bad teaching.

Why do I say that belief in talent leads to bad teaching? I think there are some simple and fairly obvious reasons for this and some more complicated and subtle ones. In this post I will focus on the more simple and obvious ones. To begin, consider the research on effective teaching; one huge lesson from this is that good teachers don’t put weight on talent as a driver of success while mediocre and bad teachers do. In his “What the Best College Teachers Do” Ken Bain notes that one thing that unites almost all bad and mediocre college teachers (or as he euphemistically puts it “unexceptional” ones) is a belief that student success is largely determined by talent. Good teachers (exceptional ones in Bain’s formulation) don’t think this way. Instead they believe that students can get better through effort and that good teaching can make a crucial difference in helping them do so. Cathy Davis makes the same point in her “The New Education” and notes that a belief that talent is largely fixed is particularly detrimental to student success when teaching students from disadvantaged social groups who tend to be less academically prepared for college work.

Justifying 'generic' teaching practices?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, an Assistant Professor writes:

I'm going up for reappointment. I've been asked to describe the "aims of my teaching practices" in my reappointment narrative. But I think my aims are rather generic and I suspect that various deans and admins with backgrounds in pedagogy will see them as such. Any advice on how to describe what we do as philosophy teachers in a compelling way, without having to read whole books on uni-level pedagogy?

This is an interesting question, and I'm really curious to hear what readers think. At my university, teaching practices and pedagogy vary greatly. Some instructors utilize something like the class 'chalk and talk' lecture and open discussion with students (albeit, no longer with chalk, but rather with whiteboard markers that actually work for something like 15 minutes). Others use much more elaborate methods, including PowerPoint presentations, group activities, in-class debates, student presentations, and so on. Generally speaking (though I'm really not sure), I wouldn't be surprised if Deans and tenure & promotion (T&P) committees have biases in favor of the latter--as the more elaborate and creative the teaching practices, the more it looks like you are working hard an innovating, etc., etc. But I also know, for example, people who have served on T&P committees who teach in a more traditional way, and actually don't like PowerPoint presentations and the like. 

So, I don't know. I guess I sort of want to say to the OP that what they should do is to honestly explain what they do and why--and then, in turn, try to document in some way(s) that what they do enhances student learning. If they teach in a traditional, 'generic' way, why? Do they think it is valuable? Do their students respond well to it? Do they do other things as an instructor that is valuable, such as by giving extensive feedback on student work? I expect that if their student evaluations are strong (yes, I know, student evals are of dubious value), and the OP is generally doing good work (viz. research, service, etc.), then as long as they make a plausible case that they are teaching in a satisfactory (or even meritorious) way, they should be just fine in terms of reappointment. And, of course, if a dean of whomever wants to see any changes, I expect they will say so. This is, at any rate, something like what happens in our annual performance evaluations at my university (as well as in pretenure and tenure decision letters).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? (A final side-note: this may also be a relevant issue for job-candidates who use 'generic' teaching practices, as they presumably need to make a case in their teaching portfolio that departments should hire them!)

Pedagogical literature for philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm thinking about applying for a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (if you don't know about it see here: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/fellowship/fellowship) and for that I need to engage with the pedagogical literature. I've found plenty of literature on teaching at university in general. But I wonder if anyone here has recommendations for pedagogical literature that is specifically relevant to philosophy (or better yet, specifically addressed to philosophy lecturers).

I'm curious to hear recommendations too. I know of the journal Teaching Philosophy, but beyond that I don't have any specific recommendations. I'd love to hear from readers on particular books or articles they recommend!

Getting students to do readings?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Marcus mentioned this briefly in a different thread, but how do you get your students to do the reading on a semi-regular basis? I've tried quizzes, and while they had an effect, they also made me the bad guy and often ruined rapport. In upper-level courses I require weekly reading questions/posts. But I'm more concerned with lower-level mandatory classes.

This is an excellent question, and I'm curious to hear from readers. I too haven't found quizzes to be a good strategy. Whenever possible, I've found the best strategy to be short reading response papers--even papers that are just 4-5 sentences long. But I also teach relatively small classes, and I recognize this isn't a real option for larger classes. Do any of you have good strategies for incentivizing student reading, particularly in lower-level mandatory courses?

Tips for teaching one's first course?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Any advice for a PhD student teaching his first course? What to do, what not to do, things you wish you had known, etc. It's a 200-level course in metaphysics.

Great question! Another reader responded:

Play to your strengths. Do not try to learn a pile of new things the first time. If you know a lot about philosophy of time, or the mind/body problem, focus on those at the cost of other topics. You need to make things easy for yourself. Be humane to your students, and do not try to be the superdo bestest ever teacher. Aim to be an effective teacher. Design assignments that do not over burden you. Think of ways that get the students learning.

Here's what I'd add:

Online vs. in-person teaching experience?

A reader writes in by email:

I am currently adjuncting at a number of institutions (I've attached my CV). Most of the teaching I am doing is online. I wanted to ask how a hiring committee may view online teaching experience as opposed to in person teaching experience. Do you think one is--generally--better than the other? Or does it just depend upon the expectations associated with the position in question?

Good questions, and I'm curious to hear readers' answers. My sense is that while online teaching experience is definitely advantageous, hiring committees for tenure-track jobs are probably likely to weight in-person teaching experience more heavily. This is for a couple of reasons. First, COVID pandemic aside, in-person teaching is likely to be your primary mode of instruction if you're hired into a TT job. Second, in-person teaching requires distinct skills, such as being able to manage a classroom, answer questions and guide discussion on the fly, and so on. My sense is that those hiring for TT jobs are likely to care about these skills.

But these are just my reactions, and maybe they're wrong. What do you all think?

Teaching over-confident students?

In the comments section of my recent post on whether teaching is meaningful, Joe writes:

As a new philosophy lecturer, my enthusiasm for teaching declined significantly after I met a few students who greatly overestimated themselves. These students seemed to believe that they know many things and they must be right in most, if not all, of their beliefs, and behaved impolitely in class. I am not able to convince them as a math lecturer. Now I tend to only do "the bare minimum as a teacher", to avoid been frustrated or offended by these students, especially when my position is just temporary. But I know this may not be right. I wonder what are the thoughts of more experienced philosophy teachers?

This is a great question. Early in my career, when I was still obviously pretty young, I had students like this pretty regularly: students who seemed to think they knew everything, and challenged my expertise a lot, both in class and in terms of challenging assignment grades. Fortunately, as I've progressed further in my career, it happens a lot less. But regardless, it's a good question how to best handle these kinds of situations as a teacher. What do you all think?

Is teaching meaningful?

In a post over at Philosophical Disquisitions last week entitled, 'The Trouble with Teaching: Is Teaching a Meaningful Job?', John Danaher (National University of Ireland) gives a mostly negative answer to his title question, concluding not that teaching is totally meaningless, but rather "It’s just not as noble or inspiring as some people suppose." Still, Danaher is open to having his mind changed, writing "I hope that someone will convince me that I am wrong." So, let me try to give it a shot.

I agree with much of what Danaher writes. I agree that teaching is "a job and often a frustrating one." I also agree with many of Danaher's negative arguments, such as the general purposes and value of education are dubious, that teaching tends to fail to achieve its aims (viz. 'student learning outcomes'), that the feedback we receive as teachers is of dubious value, that there are institutional constraints that can seriously undermine the meaningfulness of teaching for those who engage in it, and so on. I agree with virtually all of this. And yet I still find teaching profoundly meaningful. Why?

The answer, for me, is grounded in a phrase that (surprisingly to me, at least) does not occur in his post: namely, making a difference in at least some of our students' lives. I not only think that teaching does make a meaningful difference in some of our students' lives, and in ways that probably few other occupations do. I also think that teaching can meaningfully approximate Platonic love (agápe, or empathetic universal love) and Aristotle's conception of true friendship. Allow me to explain.

Latin American Philosophy for the Non-Specialist: A Word of Encouragement

This is a guest post by Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr., Occidental College

Over the years, colleagues have expressed interest in teaching Latin American philosophy (LAP). And they’ve expressed hesitation. Often when I tell them what I’m working on, or what I’m teaching, they’ll respond with some version of, “Oh, I would love to teach LAP, but…”. Today, I’d like to raise and respond to a few of those “buts”. For those of you who are interested but hesitant, my aim is to encourage you to take the leap (or dip the toes). And for those of you who aren’t yet interested, perhaps I can entice you with a reading or two.

One of the biggest worries I hear from colleagues is that, even if they wanted to introduce LAP into their syllabus or research, they wouldn’t know where to begin. Without a familiarity with the history of LAP, it’s not clear how to choose a text or represent the tradition in a non-haphazard way. And the idea of familiarizing oneself with entire tradition just sounds like too much work.

I can sympathize with this reservation. As an undergraduate I remember having the wacky notion that there must be philosophers in Mexico, but not knowing how to find them. As a graduate student working on a dissertation on Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, I remember trying to piece together some story based on the names I had come across (e.g. Las Casas, Sor Juana, Ortega y Gasset, Vasconcelos, Ramos), but feeling like I was reading every fifth page of a Garcia Marquez novel, not knowing who was related to whom. But what I remember most was the feeling I had as a new professor, knowing that the first iterations of teaching LAP were haphazard and largely unsuccessful.

Thankfully, a lot has changed in the last 15 years and now one doesn’t have to reconstruct a narrative on one’s own. In fact, this was precisely the main challenge – among others – I had in mind when editing Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction. What I thought LAP in the US needed most was a guide that would enable the non-specialist to teach an entire course on LAP, with confidence, and without having to drop everything else. I wanted the text I wish I had when I started out, a text I could have built a syllabus around, and one that would equally serve the undergraduate, graduate student, and instructor alike.

To achieve this, I gave contributors a template based on the chapter I had written, and I asked them to include the following elements, which I believed would make learning a new tradition less daunting:

1. A close analysis of several canonical texts.
2. Large excerpts of the primary text.
3. The historical and philosophical background needed to situate the texts.
4. A discussion of their contemporary philosophical relevance.

I also organized the text more or less chronologically so that, collectively, the chapters serve as an introduction to the history of LAP. Again, part of the aim was to reconstruct a non-arbitrary narrative that gives reader a sense of how these texts, authors, and themes constitute a tradition. (See the TOC below.)

How far ahead to prep for classes?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

How far ahead do people prepare for classes (that they teach)?

I have been told by quite a few people that I should prepare for the classes one or two weeks ahead of the schedule. While I can definitely see the benefits of doing this, it did not work well for me. For a class I prepared two weeks beforehand, for example, I always need to spend some time reviewing what I had prepared and to add new things (explanations, examples, discussion questions, etc.) before the class. I find it way easier for me just to prepare for a class on the day/night before. In this way, I can keep everything clear and "fresh" in mind.

I guess this is more about relatively new classes than those I've taught several times. I am curious to see people's thoughts and tips. Thank you!

Great question! I always prep for classes the day or two before. Sometimes, of course, I have things already prepped from previous semesters, but even there, I virtually always go through things, change, and update things a day or two before I teach. Why? Well, I tried prepping a couple of weeks ahead of time a few years back, and I found it just didn't work for me--for roughly the same reasons that the above reader mentions. The material just wasn't fresh enough in my mind, and so the lectures and discussions just didn't seem to go as well that way. Further, as the reader notes, all things considered it actually took more time than just prepping a day or two beforehand (since, in order to remember my lecture notes, I actually had to spend time reviewing them, which I don't have to do if I prep only a day or so in advance).

But these are just my experiences, and I recognize we're all different. I know people who prep far in advance who say it works for them--though I'm curious what their process is like. Anyway, it might be good to hear from readers on this. How far in advance do you prep for your classes, and why? Also, if you do prepare significantly in advance, how do you deal with the issues mentioned above?

Teaching students how to write papers

I had an illuminating teaching experience this term that I figured I'd share with readers, and which I think might serve as a useful springboard for discussion. First, a little background.

It occurred to me recently that in all my years as a philosophy student, I was never directly taught how to write a paper. I wrote countless papers as a student, of course. But, by and large, I was mostly just expected to 'figure it out.' As an undergraduate, I was given term-paper prompts by instructors, and then did my best to write a paper on one of them. Then, as a graduate student, I just came up with the best ideas I could on the course material, and then write them up. Then, of course, I would received grade--and, for the most part, that was that. In a few cases (for example, my first undergrad course with Dan Dennett), I was able to revise and resubmit papers. But, as far as learning how to write papers, that was basically it. 

Anyway, because I found Dan's resubmission policy so helpful as a student, for many years I did the same thing as an instructor: I had a standing policy of allowing (and encouraging) students to rewrite papers as many times as they wanted. While this was an extremely labor-intensive policy (both for them and me), it generally seemed to work pretty well: a fair proportion of my students would rewrite their papers, improve their work, and appreciate the learning process and their improvement. Still, for all that, there appeared to be a lot of wasted energy in the process: revisions that only modestly improved the student's paper, me spending a ton of time grading them, and so on. Finally, a good proportion of my students never did them anyway--so, it seemed like the rewrite policy wasn't quite 'reaching' them. Those students (particularly the ones who didn't do well) were never learning how to write a good paper.

Because of my dissatisfaction with the revise-and-resubmit approach, a while back I began trying a new strategy: term-paper workshops. Toward the end of the semester, I'd devote half of each class period to helping work their way through each stage of putting together a good term paper. First, there would be a day devoted to brainstorming. I'd post a worksheet on Blackboard asking them to sketch out a few ideas they have for their paper (in response to the term-paper prompts), and which asks them to not only state a rough thesis (or theses, if they have multiple ideas), but also how they plan to argue for it and what kinds of objections a reader might have. Then I would have them discuss their worksheet with a randomly selected peer, who would then fill out a series of questions, commenting on how promising the peer thought the topic, thesis, and argument were, and so on. Then, over a few weeks, I'd use a similar process for workshopping drafts of parts of the paper. The workshop schedule would go something like this:

1. Brainstorming
2. Outlining the paper
3. Drafting an introduction
4. Drafting an exposition/summary section
5. Drafting an argumentative section
6. Drafting a critical discussion section (e.g. grappling with objections)

Finally, in order to incentivize student effort, I would grade students on the basis of the extent to which they put a good faith effort into both parts of the assignment: as author and peer-reviewer. I have to be honest, though: after a few semesters of trying this, I found the 'peer review' part of the workshops to be mostly useless. This was for a couple of reasons. First, my undergraduate students simply didn't have a very good idea of what a good philosophy paper looks like--so their peer feedback was often counterproductive. Second, they often seemed reticent to be sufficiently critical: they seemed like they wanted to avoid offending their partner, so oftentimes their feedback would (in my view) be artificially positive (and again, not very useful).

So what I did this fall, and in a couple of other recent semesters, was do the workshop, but only have students submit their workshop materials to me. I found this works like a charm. Indeed, the term-papers that my students turned in this fall were, on balance, the best papers I think I've ever had students submit. Why? Well, think about the process I outlined above. Anyone who has graded undergraduate term papers knows that students can majorly screw up at many different points.

First, they may simply have a bad/non-viable topic (i.e. thesis and argument). Having students brainstorm things, and then giving them formal feedback on their ideas before they draft the paper, can enable them to avoid this error. Indeed, even if what they brainstorm is bad, they can see why and then develop a better/more viable topic (several of my students this fall did this).

Second, in my experience students simply don't have a very good idea what a good introduction, summary exposition, etc., looks like for a philosophy paper--so, having them workshop each and every stage gives them a clear idea before moving on to drafting the next part of their paper.

Third, and this in my experience may be the very best part of the workshops, formally grading (and giving an 'unofficial grade') for earlier parts of the paper incentivizes better student effort when drafting. Here's what I mean. Most of us, I think, have had students submit shoddy papers--papers that show that they didn't put much effort into their paper (writing it, let's say, the night before it's due). Then, of course, we've had experience with these same students getting upset about their eventual grade, thinking they should have done better on the assignment than they did (let's say, because their instructors in other disciplines aren't very rigorous graders). What workshopping each stage of a developing paper enables me to do as an instructor is to show them very early on just how rigorous of a grader I am. So, for example, when they draft their 1/2 page introductory paragraph, and I grade everything about it to very strict standards (grammar, editing, organization, content, etc.), the student is apt to think to themselves, "Wow, I better put a lot more effort into my exposition section than I thought!". Then, when I subject their exposition to the same high standards, that seems like it solidifies the same point (viz. "Wow, I ought to put a lot more effort into my argumentative section than I thought!").

Long story short, I've found that the first drafts of student papers (viz. their workshop materials) tend to be far better than the final drafts of papers that I used to receive, and that insofar as students use the feedback I give them in the workshops to revise their papers for final submission, their final drafts (on average) this semester were vastly better than any that I received before. A couple of closing thoughts: it occurred to me that, in all of my years as a philosophy student, I never went through a process like this--and it was probably to my detriment. For example, I think it would have been great in grad school to have a seminar or workshops entitled, "How to compose a publishable paper", where an instructor would give step-by-step feedback on what journal reviewers would think is good or bad about this or that section of a paper. I never feel like I had a very clear idea about this except by learning it through trial-and-error (via lots of journal rejections). Second, I imagine that one potential concern about my workshop approach is that it might be 'too overbearing', imprinting upon my students what I think a good philosophy paper looks like, giving them too much direction rather than letting them figure stuff out on their own. I appreciate this concern, but think it can be mitigated by taking care to not simply "give students the answers" (viz. 'writing their paper for them'). The key, I think, is all in the kind of feedback one provides.

Anyway, this is just a teaching experience that I figured that I'd share, and I figure it could give rise to some good discussion. Here, for example, are a few questions to potentially discuss in the comments section below:

1. How do you teach students how to write philosophy papers?
2. Does what you work well? If so, how?
3. Do you think you were given enough instruction on how to write a good philosophy paper (say, in grad school)?
4. If so, what did that instruction look like?
5. If not, what do you wish your instructors (and/or grad faculty) had done?

Teaching applied social epistemology in a critical thinking course - by Carolina Flores (Rutgers)

Caught in a Bad Epistemic World: Teaching applied social epistemology in a critical thinking course

Carolina Flores (Rutgers University)

The traditional critical thinking course couples an introduction to logic and inductive reasoning with telling students how to detect a litany of fallacies. In my view, we can do much better by our students. Students in critical thinking classes are mostly not philosophy majors, and they are likely in your class because it fulfills some university-wide requirement. The best a critical thinking class can do for them is help them develop applicable skills to reason better about the world outside the classroom. Being able to detect fake news, or explain to their relatives how to do so, for example, is much more useful for that purpose than knowing truth tables for logical connectives.

More generally, we should make space to discuss questions such as: who should we trust and why? What news sources should we read? When and why should we question science and medicine? How should we engage with people we deeply disagree with? How can we make sure that we are not caught up in epistemic bubbles or echo chambers?  These are questions in applied social epistemology, a discipline concerned with the social dimensions of knowledge in real-world cases.

If you need more persuading that you should add material on applied social epistemology to your critical thinking course, here are five reasons to do so:

1. It is directly applicable material. Your students will have constant opportunities to return to this material. It is relevant every time you open social media, find yourself in a political disagreement, or check the news. This both makes it more useful for students and more likely that they will learn, given constant opportunities for reinforcement (especially if your class explicitly articulates such applications).
2. It brings up heavy-weight philosophical questions in a friendly guise. Questions about whether we should trust specific pundits or news sources and why, how we can know we are not in an echo chamber, why it is generally good to trust science though scientific findings despite bad science, and so on, are common-sensical questions that students might have thought of themselves, or which are easy to motivate. But they also get you close to traditional philosophical questions about the nature and value of trust, Cartesian skepticism, the nature of reasonable doubt, and so on. This means that this is a great way to get students to actually do philosophy in your class, applying the logic and argumentation skills a critical thinking class should help them develop and maybe motivating them to take more philosophy courses. (see Thi Nguyen’s twitter thread for more on this)
3. Students like this material and engage in the classroom. Because the material is applicable, it is easy for students to bring up their own examples. These examples are often funny or entertaining, which helps with classroom engagement. In turn, this makes this material fun to teach, and it helps you connect with students and get to know them better. It’s a win for you and a win for the students.
4. It provides opportunities to recap and apply classic critical thinking skills. Addressing questions in social epistemology requires careful argumentative reasoning, providing students with opportunities to practice their deductive argumentation skills. Considering problems with conspiracy theories, vaccine skepticism, and bad science requires students to return to material on inductive reasoning to detect what the problems with these kinds of reasoning are. If, earlier in the semester, you explicitly covered this material, this gives you a chance to reinforce that learning and show students why it matters.
5. Teaching applied social epistemology might make the world a little better. Here is a small dose of idealism. Imagine your students leaving the class with a good (or, at least, much improved) understanding of what a good news diet looks like, of how to detect fake news, of why conspiracy theories and science skepticism are dubious, of why they should make efforts to trust members of marginalized groups more than they naturally might, and so on. This is a win well beyond the classroom. It will make them more likely to form and maintain good beliefs and good epistemic habits. It will also give them tools to engage, and maybe even persuade, family members and friends who have fallen prey to some of these vices. In sum, helping students in this domain can make some difference to halting the spread of bad epistemology, which tends to seriously compromise democratic deliberation.

Summer community college teaching?

In our November "how can we help you?" post, Anthony writes:

Question: How does a graduate student find summer teaching opportunities? I would be happy to adjunct this summer at a community college.

Context: I'm currently earning a masters degree in humanities. For it, I'll take a couple philosophy-related courses. I'm actually halfway through a PhD in philosophy at a different institution; I'm officially on a leave of absence from my PhD program to complete this MA. I've completed graduate coursework at my PhD program. But my PhD program only grants masters degrees to those who exit the program early (which seems unjustified to me, but that's a different matter), so I won't have a MA degree until June. My only experience as a primary instructor was at a summer school, but I do have several semesters of TAing under my belt.

Good question, and I have to confess to not knowing the answer. I suspect it's easier to get teaching opportunities at a community college during the normal academic year, as there are presumably more course sections then. I taught at a CC for a couple of semesters during grad school, and if I recall I just applied when I saw an advertisement. But I never did during the summer, so again, I'm not quite sure what the answer to the OP's question is. Do any of you know?

Online/hybrid teaching technologies?

Several months ago, I shared some of the new teaching practices I experimented with this fall (my first ever time teaching in a hybrid in-person/online format). As I noted in that post, one thing that seemed to me to work very well has been having students record short Flipgrid video responses to daily readings. Although this seemed to me to work pretty well pedagogically, it was also a lot of work to watch and categorize which videos I wanted to discuss before class, and it got to be a real drain (and stressor) the further we got though the semester. I'll also be curious to see what my students thought of it in my end of the semester evaluations. I also avoided using online test proctoring services (such as proctorio), largely on the basis of privacy concerns--though I'm curious what other people think here (and how, if you don't use proctoring services) how you approach exams instead.

Anyway, in light of the above, I'm beginning to think about how I might do things next semester: whether I'll use the same technology, or do some things very differently, and if so, what might work better. Which brings me to several questions today for you all:

1. Which teaching technologies have you used for online/hybrid teachings this fall?
2. How did you use them in terms of a teaching tool?
3. Did you think it worked well or not so well? Why?
4. In light of your answers to (1)-(3), how do you see yourself doing things differently in the spring?

Tips for handling teaching/tutoring nerves?

In our October "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm currently tutoring for the second time (I tutored last semester, though it was cut very short for obvious reasons). It's a pretty simple introductory ethics course and I'm familiar with the material. However, I still find that I get really nervous before tutoring, both on the day and also, usually, the night before. This is really draining, and I also think the nerves impact my teaching ability. Whilst I know that this is not uncommon, I feel like the topic doesn't get discussed often. Do others feel similarly to me? And should I just expect the nerves to disappear over time - or are there useful strategies for dealing with them?

These are great questions. I've been teaching or TA-ing for close to twenty years now, and I still get nerves prior to every class (and indeed, the night before every day of teaching). It is draining, but I've never quite been able to come up with very good strategies for handling it. I sort of just power through the semester. Are people like me and this reader outliers, or do many other people have similar experiences? And in any case, have any of you discovered useful strategies for handling this well? I'd love to hear some tips myself!

Teaching in the time of COVID: what's working?, what's not?

Now that many of us are a month or so into fall semester courses, and have been teaching in new formats due to the pandemic, I thought it might be good to have a thread checking in with readers to see how things are going. What format(s) are you teaching in? What things are you doing that seem to be working well? What things haven't worked well?

In my case, I'm teaching two classes twice a week in-person in the classroom to half of my students each day, while the others Zoom in. By and large, I've tried to keep the class format similar to how I normally run courses, with the first-third of each two-hour session involving discussing student reading responses, the second third giving a lecture, and the final portion of each meeting having students do graded group work. Aside from using Zoom (which I think has actually worked quite well), the one major difference is that instead of having student compose short written reading responses to discuss, I'm having them record short video responses (there are a number of platforms for this, including Flipgrid). My basic rationale for trying this is that I took an online teaching-certification course this summer, and learned that one of the more important things (apparently) for online teaching is to get students engaged with each other. I figured that since my students aren't all going to be in the classroom with each other and will be wearing masks when they are, it would be great to begin each class session with students by playing selected video responses as a springboard for class discussion. I also thought this would probably work well given the general demographic of my students: namely, the fact that they are generally young people who grew up with social media, including short video platforms like TikTok (one quick note: I don't require students to actually film themselves on video. I leave it open to them whether to just record audio instead of video, and I'd say probably 2/3 record video and the other audio-only).

Anyway, I didn't know how this would go, but I have to say: I think it has worked spectacularly well. I have frankly been astonished at how consistently good and insightful their video responses have been. It's clear to me that students have a much easier time speaking insightfully about philosophy than writing about it--as the responses have consistently been far better than the kinds of written responses I've required in previous semesters. I've also found it helpful to play several video responses back to back when multiple students raise similar issues--as this can help them and their classmates see that more than one student had the same kind of reaction to the reading. Now, to be sure, there is a cost here: my students are doing more speaking this semester than normal, and less writing. But, to be frank, I don't think this is a bad thing. Students in my classes have plenty of other assignments where they have to write (including daily group assignments where they collaborate on Googledocs or whatever), and for most of my students who are non-majors, I'm inclined to think that being able to think and speak about philosophical issues competently is probably more important (after all, how many students are ever going to have to write about philosophical issues in their lives after university? It seems far more likely to me that in real life, the ability to think and speak about philosophical issues will be more important--as they are likely to have discussions about morality, politics, religion, etc. with friends, family, and so on).

Other than this, I've tried to keep my courses as close to 'normal' as possible. The only other major difference is that whereas students in previous semesters did group assignments in the classroom, this semester they are doing them via Zoom breakout groups--with some members of groups in the classroom (or leaving the classroom to work outside) and others Zooming in. Aside from giving groups more class-time to complete the assignments, I haven't done anything different here, and it all seems to work pretty well. To be clear, this has been a challenging semester. Teaching this way (half via Zoom, viewing and selecting videos before class) hasn't been easy, and has required more work and juggling than normal. But, on the whole, things seem to be going okay and my students seem pretty engaged and happy.

Anyway, this is what I've been doing.  What have you all been doing? What new things have you been doing that you have found work well? What hasn't worked so well? Why?

Mastery Learning and Argument Mapping in the Classroom (An Interview with Javier Hidalgo)

I recently came across the pedagogical work of Javier Hidalgo (University of Richmond), and I was especially interested to hear more about his experiences with mastery learning and argument mapping. Thinking that readers of the Philosopher's Cocoon might be similarly interested, I asked him for an interview. He was very generous with his time and, as you will see, is even more generous with the educational resources he has created. I want to thank him for his time and welcome him to the Philosopher's Cocoon.

Peter Furlong: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and explain what led you to seek less mainstream pedagogical methods?

Javier Hidalgo: First of all, thanks so much for the interview! It’s an honor.

About myself: I’m an associate professor at the University of Richmond in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. This is an interdisciplinary school and it’s a bit like a school of public affairs. I usually teach political philosophy, critical thinking, and topics in international affairs. Most of my students have never taken a philosophy class.

About my teaching “journey”: for years and years, it never occurred to me that teaching might be a real craft and that there’s rigorous evidence about how to do it well. I honestly never thought about it. Instead, I adopted the teaching methods that made intuitive sense to me and those that my own professors had used. And the rest I figured out through trial and error where the main feedback mechanism was student evaluations. In retrospect, I was probably not a good teacher.

But a few years ago I was preparing to teach a class on critical thinking. I was dissatisfied with the standard critical thinking textbooks. So I decided to look up what other people have done. It turns out that some people have actually studied how to teach critical thinking well. It’s tough to do rigorous educational research at the university level. Yet these people were doing their best, using pre-tests and post-tests and control groups. And they found that some methods seem to work much better than others.

How to know if you're improving at online teaching? (Guest post by Wes Siscoe)

Wes Siscoe is a Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Florida State University and the Mellon Course Design Coordinator for the Philosophy as a Way of Life Project at the University of Notre Dame. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona and has been a visiting researcher at Brown, Notre Dame, and Rutgers.  His research revolves around several themes – rationality, language, and virtue – and their importance for accounts of human excellence and achievement.

How Can I Tell if I am Improving at Online Teaching?

It is often difficult to tell when you're improving as an instructor.  Good student evaluations can be manufactured by watering down the course content, and grading can be inconsistent and inflated from semester to semester. These problems are exacerbated by the online environment - with less face-to-face contact with students, it is even more difficult to tell how student outcomes compare to past semesters. In this post, I will provide a step-by-step outline of our research-driven methodology for assessing the courses we have created at the Philosophy as a Way of Life Project, an approach which remains effective even when the majority of instruction happens in the digital classroom.

COVID/online teaching: are you assigning less?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am preparing Fall 2020 syllabi for mid-to-upper-level courses.

Synchronous-online instructors, how much reading material are you all assigning?

How much are folks assigning relative to what they would have assigned in a non-COVID-in-person scenario?

Good questions. I'm currently scheduled to teach a hybrid format: in-person in the classroom while livestreaming to other students via Zoom. However, for obvious reasons, I've designed my courses to be able to transition to online-only delivery easily. In brief, I've assigned the same amount of reading for my classes as usual. But what I have done is reduce the number and type of graded assignments students have to complete. The rationale for this is simple: anyone could get sick, both me and my students. Given that my lectures (which will be posted online) help students to understand course readings, it didn't seem to make sense to me to dramatically change the readings I've assigned. Graded assignments, however, can take real time to complete and if someone is out of commission for an extended period of time, then missing graded assignments could be a big burden on everyone involved. I'm not sure this is the right strategy--as, like many people, I'm designing courses like this for the first time--but it seemed to me the best way to go.

What about all of you? Are you assigning the same amount of reading material relative to non-COVID/in-person teaching? Have you reduced the number or type of graded (or even ungraded) assignments you're planning? Etc.

Teaching extra courses for financial reasons?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am a junior faculty member. Faculty salaries at my university are lower than the national average, but I am offered opportunities to teach extra courses, especially during the breaks. That's a big help for me financially (I have a family to support) but it's also a serious time commitment. I have a 4/4 load and can rarely have research done during the semesters.

I am curious how people decide whether to teach extra courses for financial reasons. I know this depends on each person's particular situation. And in theory, one should teach extra courses only if it would not significantly affect one's research. But I still feel hard to decide in practice. I am curious what others do and why you do it. Thanks!

This is a great query, and I am very curious to hear how people respond. Although I understand some people have families and may need extra money in the short term, in general--that is, extreme financial need aside--I'm inclined to think that it is probably better for junior faculty in permanent positions not to teach extra courses during breaks. In any case, even though I needed the money earlier in my career, I decided very early on to not teach additional courses. Let me briefly explain why.

How are you running your courses this fall?

Many of us, indeed probably nearly all of us who teach at a university level, will be teaching courses in new ways this fall. Although most of us had a little experience transitioning to remote/online delivery this past spring, I take it that this fall may be the first time that many of us have designed hybrid or online courses. Consequently, this fall is almost certainly going to be a real learning experience for most of us. Some of what we do may work well, some of it may not work well, and some of it may turn out to be a disaster (as is sometimes the case, in my experience, whenever one attempts radically new things).

Anyway, because most of us will be returning to the classroom soon (and much to my surprise, I've learned that some universities have already started!), I thought it might be helpful to run a thread on how readers are designing their courses. What format are you giving your course in, and how will you be running them? Why? The way I see it, the more details people choose to share, the better: it may give those of us who are still designing courses some helpful additional perspectives to go on. Allow me to start things off.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous: which is better?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

For nearly the entire summer, I had planned on administering my fall courses (all online) asychronously. This seemed to be the most recommended option, and the asynchronous system I ended up utilizing when COVID hit ended up working out okay.

But now we're facing a new school year, with new students many of whom are going to be freshmen! I've gotten the sense, from students who have sent me emails, that many of them are looking forward to potentially synchronous online classes. This has made me seriously reconsider my plan to do an asynchronous course.

To sum it up: my classes are going to be all first-year students. I worry that an entirely asynchronous course would be unsatisfying and for many of them would deprive them of what they feel is the beginning of their college experience. Does the fact that we are entering a new semester, several months into the pandemic and the new online learning paradigm, make it any more reasonable than before to try synchronous online teaching?

I decided to skip forward to this query because it seems rather time-sensitive. At my university, we've been instructed that at least 50% of our material needs to be synchronous and involve 'face-time' with students (in-person and/or over Zoom). I don't know the full reasoning behind this, but my sense is that it may have to do with students expecting synchronous instruction, and the sense that some robust amount of synchronous instruction is conducive to student-to-student and student-to-faculty engagement. I also want to do synchronous teaching because I think it's probably better for me and my students to expect each other to be present and engaged with the course material only during the meeting hours of the course (rather than the kind of 'round the clock' availability that asynchronous learning seems conducive to).

But really, I don't know. Although we could end up moving all online, I'm scheduled to teach my courses in a hybrid online/in-classroom format--so again, I really have to do a good amount of synchronous teaching. And, like most of us, this is really my 'first time doing this', as it were, so I really don't know what tends to work best. Anyone have any insight that may help this reader decide what to do, especially for a freshman class?

Extra effort for teaching remotely in the fall?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about preparing for teaching remotely in the fall: how much (extra) effort should I put into it?

I chose to run the classes asynchronously in the spring when we had to move everything online. I decide to run them synchronously in the fall. I feel that asynchronous online classes are not fair to students many of whom are expected to come back on campus (at least for now for my university) and to pay full or almost full tuition.

While I am learning about some really nice tools that help run classes synchronously, I have some worries and am wondering how much time and effort I should put into it. First, it seems to me that what we are facing is a pretty unique situation, and I am not sure whether we will encounter similar situations in the future (hopefully not!). And I am inclined to teach "real" online classes asynchronously to give students flexibilities. So, I am not sure if I will get another chance to teach remotely and synchronously in the future. Second, while I put a lot of time in it, I am not sure students will appreciate it. I read some articles and it seems that many students are disappointed about remote learning. Yes, I can probably design a really nice class and impress students, but is it really worth the time and effort?

I'll be very curious to hear what people think here, but for my own part I'm inclined to think it's best to keep things simple and as close as possible to how I teach in a face-to-face format. Let me explain why.

Diverse intro texts on 'what is philosophy?'

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, JR writes in:

I have a teaching question and request for recommendations from readers: I regularly teach the introductory philosophy course at my institution, which is required as part of the core curriculum for all undergraduates and is generally taken fall or spring semester of the students' first year. Given that this is typically their first exposure to philosophy, I have found it helpful to begin the course with a unit on "What is Philosophy?". For this unit, I have had great success using Midgley's "Philosophical Plumbing" essay, and Russell's "The Value of Philosophy" (chapter from Problems of Philosophy), but I'm looking for some different texts of this sort, ideally from more diverse voices and perspectives: short, discussion-generating takes on what philosophy is or why it is important that take a stronger stand than the usual bland introductions from textbooks, but also do not presuppose much background or use a lot of technical terms

Great question! Although it's not very short, the paper that immediately comes to my mind is Kristie Dotson's, "How is this paper philosophy?". Do any readers have any suggestions?

Motivation for teaching and the market?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

[A]m I the only one who isn't motivated by teaching? I try hard at it and treat it seriously, but there isn't really anything about teaching that I actively like or that motivates me to be in grad school or academia. (I don't dislike it either, it's kind of just a job.) I learned that I'm probably more of an exception in this regard, or else I'm one of the few willing to say that teaching doesn't motivate me. How should job applicants spin their relationship to teaching? Does it matter if we aren't passionate about it?

I too am curious to hear people's answers. By all accounts, being motivated by teaching matters very little for getting a job at a research institution. However, what about getting a job at a teaching institution? Here, it seems to clearly important to look as though one is passionate about teaching, and to be motivated enough to appear to be very good at it. However, as we all know from everyday life and Book II of The Republic, it's one thing to appear to be motivated by something, and another thing to actually be motivated by it!

So, then, how do readers actually feel about teaching--particularly those of you who have gotten jobs (and tenure?) at teaching-focused institutions? Are you actually motivated by or passionate about teaching? Or, is teaching 'just a job' for you that you've tried to be good enough at to get a job and tenure?

Having students write teaching letters?

In our June "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I know of someone who asked one of their former undergraduate students to write them a letter of recommendation that focused on teaching. They'd use this letter rather than a teaching letter from a faculty member.

When I learned about this, it made a lot of sense. Often faculty really have no clue about your teaching and aren't terribly motivated to learn about it beyond being told about it during a 10 minute meeting. Students, by contrast, are well positioned to speak about your teaching. Using a letter like this might also appeal to places that value the outlook of undergraduates (e.g. places where undergraduates are involved in the hiring process).

All of that said, it is somewhat odd, though perhaps it is more common than I think.

Do people do this? Do people think it's a good idea?

Interesting questions! Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Tips for supervising TAs?

In our June "how can we help you?" thread, firstTimer writes:

I will be the primary instructor for a class with graduate student TAs for the first time this fall. The TAs will be responsible for grading but there will be no recitation sections. I was wondering if readers could share tips about working with TAs -- how often do you meet? Do you try to calibrate grading standards? How? Should TA supervision be seen as an opportunity to teach grad students about pedagogy as well? Any advice for a first timer would be much appreciated!

It's been a long time since I've supervised TA's, so I'm probably not the best person to ask for advice--but, for what it is worth, I remember a pretty wide variance for how grad faculty approached this. On the one hand, some did very little like anon says here:

I did almost nothing re supervise the TA. I let them grade by their own standards, and had them come talk to the class about how they would grade. But maybe that's just me!

Others, however, were pretty overbearing, requiring TA's to meet to compare samples of graded work for every major assignment (exams, term-papers, etc.). I'm not sure what the right balance is. Anyone out there with experience here have any tips or insights to share?

Ensuring equitable and inclusive class discussions

Generally speaking, my approach to teaching appears to be conducive to equitable and inclusive class discussion. My students often remark positively on this in my course evaluations, and in most of my classes, the vast majority of students appear to contribute comfortably and regularly. I also try to take subtle steps to ensure that no one dominates or is excluded from the conversation, and to ensure that all of my students feel included in the discussion regardless of their social identity. However, in one of my smaller upper-division courses this spring (particularly before COVID moved us online), I ran into real challenges here that I struggled to resolve. Specifically, a relatively small number of students spoke far more often than others, and no matter what I tried to do to get everyone else involved, others seemed very reluctant to speak--and a few students remarked on it in my evals, saying I could have done more. Admittedly, I did experiment with a more "open round-table discussion" approach that differed significantly from how I normally run my classes (which tend to be more group-work oriented). So, the issue may have been an artifact of changing my class format. Still, because I think this is an important issue, I'd like to try to do better in the future--and I figured the Cocoon might be a good place to solicit tips. Do any of you have good strategies for ensuring equitable and inclusive class discussion? If so, how do they work? 

The Case for Teaching (by Saba Fatima)

This is the second installment of our series on how to counter racism in philosophy, and as philosophers. 

This entry is written by Saba Fatima, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and host of the podcast She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs

One of the main reasons I decided to switch careers from my bachelor degree in computer science to pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy was because I was lucky enough to take classes in philosophy, sociology, and journalism that were centered on race, gender, and imperialism. These classes shifted my perception of the world around me. In my senior year, I found out that a student I knew had secured a job in the White House and I thought to myself that there was a chance that this person too had experienced this shift in his worldview. In my imagined fantasy, one day he could be in Congress or Senate, and he’d be a better person, a better politician (like maybe he’d vote to bomb less places or something) because of the all critical humanities classes he took as an undergraduate.

It was a naïve thought at best. But if I experienced a shift, so must have others. And I thought it was the coolest thing ever to hold so much sway over how we viewed injustice and how we viewed our place within power structures we occupied. I wanted to have *that impact. And sure enough, once in a blue moon, I get an email from some ex-student of mine, telling me how my classes on Philosophy of Race or Islam & Politics or Feminist Theory have impacted them positively.

We are teachers by profession. This is what most of us love doing and probably even why many of us got into academia. Why not use our skill set, skill set we take so much pride in, that we develop semester after semester, that we write self-reflective narratives on, why not take this skill set and use it to answer the needs of our time.

So here are some basic suggestions on how we, as teachers of philosophy can fight against racism.

• If you are the chair of your department, introduce courses such as Philosophy of Race as part of the core curriculum. Keep the course in regular rotation. Hire qualified (full time) philosophers to teach it.

Teaching summer classes to high schoolers

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I will be teaching a summer course to a group of talented high schoolers in a few weeks. My impression from the department and the university is that I am *supposed* to teach the course as if my students were college-attending. But I am not really sure if that is feasible, pedagogically and practically speaking. (Worth noting that given the ongoing Covid-19 situation, the course will be delivered online.) I was wondering what other philosophers’ experience is like when it comes to teaching pre-college students, and if any tips or suggestions could be offered.

How to handle student evals alleging bias?

In our current "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about interpreting and incorporating instructor evaluations into my courses involving allegations of political bias. I am first year professor (tenure-track) teaching ethics and philosophy at a small public science and engineering school. My students are all undergrad scientists and engineers, which I am relatively well prepared for with my background. I've enjoyed teaching, and the Fall was hard but overall very good. One tricky thing has has arisen with my Spring 2020 evaluations is a small set of comments (5/45) noting and complaining about the "left-leaning bias" of my ethics courses. One was about my requiring of students to state and respect other pronouns, but the others where about content presented, readings, discussion questions, etc.

My institution takes these evals seriously, though the general expectation is for improvement and adaptation. I have good overall ratings (4.5/4), so this is more of a small aspect that I think might attract the attention of deans/admins (outside my dept.), especially at my technical (read: apolitcal, moderate) institution. While I do not think the students are wrong per se about the bias (at least given my own views), I am not quite sure how to understand these comments or what to do with them. (Not to mention that this was Corona semester!) Any advice?

This is a really interesting question. Because I'm not sure what is the best advice to give here, I'd like to just open things up to readers to chime in below. What do you all think?

Textbooks and teaching dossiers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a curious reader writes:

I have a question about how to approach sample syllabus development when heading onto the job market. Obviously, in this day and age, it’s important to have all aspects your teaching dossier / other materials stand out. Take, for example, a sample syllabus for an introductory course (whether intro to philosophy or intro to some sub-discipline). One way to make your syllabus stand out might be to include readings that are non-standard and hence eye-catching. Maybe this means including readings on non-standard topics, or maybe it involves ensuring the inclusion of authors whose work is overlooked in many syllabi for similar courses. Whatever exactly is involved here, it seems like the important thing to do is to ensure that the readings you select all express your pedagogicTeal commitments in a way that will be clear to a search committee.

However, now say that you discover an excellent textbook. Using this textbook in lieu of a bunch of papers might make it look, to a search committee member, like you were lazy and didn’t want to curate your own list of readings. In fact, however, you might have several good pedagogical reasons for using this textbook. It may even be that you selected this textbook at the last minute, only after having spent painstaking hours developing your own list of readings. In such a situation, do you go with the carefully curated list, or do you go with the textbook? The textbook itself may include a carefully curated list, but it might still look lazy to use (you didn’t curate the list yourself, after all).

The reason this sort of thing strikes me as a worry is that I can’t think of places in your dossier where it would be appropriate to justify your use of the textbook. Do you say in a cover letter that, while you recognize that the use of a textbook may look lazy, you have reasons X Y and Z for using it? Do you say this on the sample syllabus itself? This puts you on the defensive, and could raise more suspicion than it assuages.

I figure that the textbook case is an instance of a more general worry: if you think you are making a pedagogically sound choice that might look worse to a search committee than some alternative, what do you do? How far should I go out of my way to look original, rather than simply doing what I think is right?

Interesting query. This is a tough one, I think. On the one hand, I'm not sure how closely many search committee members look at choices of texts. I mean, I think people who look closely at a teaching file may want to see whether the course is up to date and on the leading edge of things, such as covering diverse topics and authors. But, for all that, I'm not sure how much time search committees spend thinking about the particular book(s) one chooses for a course. On the other hand, my own experience is that a fair number of philosophers do think, at least in principle, that good philosophy pedagogy requires having students primarily read original sources. The obvious thing to do here, it seems to me--since the reader implied that their textbook does have a carefully curated list of readings--is to actually list those readings (authors & titles) in the course schedule. That seems to me the safe thing to do, while retaining one's pedagogical integrity. In any case, I do think it's important to present yourself as the teacher you are, as putting together a teaching dossier that doesn't reflect your actual approach to teaching is deceptive.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Should we teach life lessons?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

What are our duties as professors? We clearly have duties to teach the material well and to be decent human beings and all that entails. But I'm also wondering if we have duties, or at least the freedom, to teach moral/life lessons to students. I'm curious what you all think.

I have in mind the following kind of case, which is very common in my position. A non-philosophy student needs my upper-level class to graduate at the end of the semester. But they simply don't do the work. I send them personal emails, spread out over months, about how they're at risk of failing. They don't respond, or they do respond but don't do the work at the rate or level required to pass. Time passes and final grades are due. Suddenly they're asking for any chance to pass. I tell them that I have been warning them about the situation for months now. Do I have a duty to teach them a moral/life lesson here? I tend to think I do. This doesn't necessarily mean I fail them, though I sometimes do that. Other times I make them do twice as much work after the semester is over and give them a grade after it's completed.

My thought process is this: many of these students seem to think they're entitled to something they put no effort into, or that there's never a point when they won't be given another chance, or it's rational to do as little as possible and bet on the mercy of others. So in giving a lot of extra work, or failing them, I aim to do my part to disabuse them of these notions (and the extra work option still lets them graduate, thus neither delaying their careers nor costing them more tuition money).

For anyone who responds, please set aside circumstances related to COVID, depression, family stresses, etc. For one, this kind of situation isn't unique to COVID. Second, I not only grant those in special circumstances exceptions, but I also to try and suss out who is in special circumstances to begin with (e.g., by reaching out, contacting their advisor, etc.). Assume, for the sake of discussion, that the students I'm talking about are not these kinds of students.

This is a great query, and I'm very curious to hear what others think. I'll save my own remarks for the comments section below, as I'd really like to hear what others have to say before weighing in!

Tips for moving into teaching and pedagogy?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

This may be a silly question, but I've been wondering recently if there have ever been postdoc or other positions that focus on teaching, SoLT [editor's note: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning] and philosophy? I want to shift more towards a teaching focus after completing my PhD, but I still feel like I need more time to devote to learning about theories of teaching and pedagogy. Does anyone have advice for shifting to focus more on teaching and pedagogy, after doing a PhD in philosophy? I think I'm on a good start, but could use some advice!

Good question, and I confess I don't have any good answers! Anyone out there with strong interests and experience in SoLT have any tips to share?

Teaching philosophy online (Zoom series)

We (Ian Schnee and Paul Franco) are lecturers at the University of Washington, and we have organized a Teaching Philosophy Online series to be held over Zoom. 

Currently, we have two sessions planned. The first will be held this Thursday, March 26th, 12 - 1 EST (panelists and the link for the meeting can be found below). The second will be held the following week (details TBD).

The sessions are meant to be relaxed and informal, and the audience will be able to participate via Zoom's chat function. We hope the sessions provide an opportunity to talk through the challenges we are facing, and to hear ideas about them from our volunteer panelists. We feel we have a great group representing a range of perspectives: mixing those with a lot of experience teaching in online environments with those doing it for the first time; teachers at SLACs, community colleges, and research universities; as well as senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students.

Dealing with Learning Management System (LMS) Infrastructure (Guest post by Johnathan Flowers)

This is a guest post by Johnathan Flowers, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Worcester State University, Worcester, Massachusetts

It is my view that online teaching should always be informed by infrastructure limitations of our learning management systems (LMS) and our institutions. By infrastructure limitations, I mean both the physical infrastructure, as in the local and cloud servers that host our LMS and the physical connection of our campus to the internet, as well as the digital infrastructure of the LMS itself, or the availability of specific features of the LMS under the strain of multiple users under less than ideal conditions. To this end, this piece will focus on structural considerations where online teaching is concerned.

I will address concerns with physical infrastructure first. Most institutions have a sufficiently robust infrastructure to meet the needs of both students and faculty. In fact, most institutions rarely exceed the capacity provided by their local internet connections. As an example, the closest my institution has come to exceeding its capacity for internet connectivity was during the recent release of major updates to the first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Warzone, and the MMORPG Division 2. With students and faculty away from campus, and not using the institution’s connection, there is little risk to exceeding the institution’s available capacity.

Not every institution has a robust internet connection: many rural or underfunded institutions may not have sufficient capacity to maintain stable connectivity to their web-hosted portals. Library websites, institutional websites, and other crucial forms of information made available to students and faculty through institutional web portals may become unavailable during times of increased load. While this does not directly impact student use of online learning and LMS, it does impact student ability to access those LMS and online resources should they not have the resources themselves bookmarked.

These issues can be resolved relatively quickly under normal conditions: IT can establish alternate portals to ensure availability or can take actions to limit the strain on web portals by through other technological remedies. However, these are not normal conditions. The speed at which our IT support personnel can respond to overloaded or crashed websites is dependent upon the availability of those personnel, and their ability to address a problem remotely as many may not be on campus during the pandemic. Further, in a remote work situation, with IT Help Desk lines forwarded to personal or home phones, IT support may be quickly overloaded with requests to address crashed websites or portals and may be unable to respond with their typical speed.

As someone who has worked with and for campus information technology services as a faculty and an employee, here are some recommendations to minimize the strain on IT personnel.

• Reach out to your senior most IT personnel to determine the best means to submit help requests in the event of a remote work situation. Standard mechanisms may be inadequate or insufficient to handle a large volume of requests.
• Reach out to your senior most IT personnel to determine the appropriate information to submit in the event of outage. Not all information will be valuable to address the issue and providing the most helpful information to your IT personnel can speed their response to your issue.
• Be patient with your IT personnel as they may be experiencing increased call volume. That was a joke, but one that is grounded in reality: your IT help center and help desks may be overloaded in the event of a major outage.
• Your IT personnel may not be able to address every issue that arises with online teaching or with your LMS. Some issues must be outsourced to the LMS providers, particularly if the LMS operates on a software-as-a-service model.
• If you have concerns about your specific LMS installation, consult the LMS help pages. As an example, for Blackboard, consult blackboard.com for specific advice.

The other aspect of infrastructure concerns that educators should bear in mind are the infrastructure limitations of the LMS itself. To understand this point, we have to take a walk through the architecture of a LMS, Blackboard in this example. That said, it needs to be stressed that each of LMS has different attributes and features which means that the infrastructures have different kinds of limitations and should be considered differently.

A brief tour of an online business ethics course (Guest post by Jake Wright)

A brief tour of an online business ethics course

Successful online teaching requires a different set of skills than successful in-person teaching.  Some of these skills are related to how a course is organized and how students interact with a course.  Having your course shifted online means that you lose all of the regular, impromptu, and informal opportunities to update your students on course logistics before class, after class, and whenever you handle housekeeping announcements like upcoming assignments.  Functionally, this means you have to plan for your students to be able to access all of the course’s materials independent of your guidance, especially if your course is delivered asynchronously. 

Having a well-organized course site can go a long way towards ensuring that students can navigate the course easily and independently.  What follows is a brief tour of my business ethics course, which I’ve taught online for the past six years.  Obviously, you might not be in a position to implement everything found in an online course that has benefitted from six years of iterative development, but having an example may be useful as you consider how to shift your course to online delivery.  The good news is that many of the features of a well-organized online course mirror or closely align with a well-organized in person course.

My course is run through Canvas, so major course components are divided into modules.  Similar divisions exist in other LMSes like Moodle or Blackboard, but the terminology might be different.  The main point is that all of the major LMS platforms are capable of supporting courses broadly organized in this way.

Facilitating Learning Online in face of Pandemic (Guest post by Adam Bowen)

Practical Strategies for Facilitating Learning Online in the face of Pandemic

By Adam J. Bowen, PhD

Assistant Teaching Professor

Dept. of Philosophy & Religious Studies

Ball State University

In the face of the imminent covid-19 pandemic, academics are being tasked with carrying out an unprecedented mass migration to online learning environments. For many colleagues at my institution and others across the globe, this is a daunting and stressful task, due to general unfamiliarity with online education and the tools available. I have been teaching philosophy online full-time for 5 years, and prior to that I utilized online tools to supplement my traditional courses, so I have been training myself on online teaching methods and becoming proficient at developing online learning experiences for over a decade. Given my virtual battle scars and time served in the online trenches, I acknowledge a collegial obligation to assist fellow educators in their efforts to transition their courses online, in an attempt to sustain our universities and colleges in this time of crisis. My advice is not intended as a guide to master online teaching, since that requires years of experimentation and revision to one’s methods, as with anything worth mastering. I will, however, offer some practical strategies for how to effectively transition into an online learning environment, implement course activities that help realize target learning objectives, and temper your expectations about how to undertake this without scrapping your course-plans for the current semester.

To begin, I recommend some reflection on the methods you currently use in the traditional classroom, why you make those pedagogical choices, and how those choices are intended to facilitate student learning. What in-class activities do you initiate that helps develop critical thinking skills? What is the purpose of your lecture? Do you use structured group activities to encourage peer-to-peer cooperative learning? These types of questions will help identify exactly what you want your students to learn and how your pedagogical choices are intended to accomplish these objectives. Everyone has already thought about this to some degree when designing our courses, but re-evaluating your course activities and content delivery methods will help you decide what you need the online tools to help you achieve, in a manner that is comparable to your traditional course. Will you be able to find an easy analogue for every aspect of your current course? No, that is unlikely, and it would be unwise to set that as your goal under the current emergency circumstances. Rather, I recommend identifying the essential features of your course, i.e. the content and learning activities that make your course valuable to your students. There are a diverse set of tools in the online toolbox, and many of them do not require mastery to successfully implement.

Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas (Guest post by Nicholaos Jones)

Some Suggestions for Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas

Nicholaos Jones, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama

I began teaching online four years ago. I have converted three courses into fully online formats. I offered my first online course during a summer semester, for the sake of experimenting with strategy. The next was a proof-of-concept for doing an upper-level undergraduate course online (Asian Philosophy) in a way that students found rigorous and engaging. I converted the third for the sake of gaining flexibility in balancing child-care with an emergent chronic health condition in my family.

My university will transition to online-only instruction beginning next week. As the chair for a joint department of Philosophy and Political Science, with faculty of all sorts and varying degrees of experience teaching online, I created a nut-and-bolts list of suggestions for switching quickly to online teaching, along with some samples of content I provide (when I have ample time to design the content).

My university uses Canvas, and so the suggestions are targeted for that platform. I do not know whether the suggestions are helpful for faculty who use other platforms. So please receive these suggestions with appropriate qualification. (Canvas offers free accounts to teachers and students. But if your institution uses an alternative platform, switching now is likely to cause logistical issues.) 

Like Professor McDonald, I prefer asynchronous teaching online. Disruptions to student schedules, and disparities in student resources and obligations, might interfere with their ability to attend an online session at a set time. Asynchronous teaching avoids this issue. Here's a suggestion for implementing an asynchronous approach.

First principles for emergency online teaching (Guest post by Jake Wright)

Some first principles for emergency online teaching

Many of us are struggling to transition our courses from well-planned in-person offerings to online delivery in various states of panic.  Perhaps we are worried because we have high expectations for our courses.  Perhaps we have never taught online before and aren’t sure where to begin.  And perhaps we are simply overcome by the news of the day and the speed at which it seems to be moving.

I am confident that many of the pieces being written for this series will ably handle specifics of how to rapidly prepare one’s course for online delivery in the midst of a crisis.  I also believe that one of the best things we can do to be successful is to take a moment, take a breath, and consider some first principles that might guide us through this rapid transition.  I would like to share my first principles here.  They all boil down to a pretty simple ethos: we find ourselves in challenging times that are deeply unsettling, but we can get through it by maintaining our communities and trusting ourselves, our students, and each other.

Trust your students

Even in normal circumstances, there is no better place to start than by trusting your students.  We all deserve grace and compassion in the best of times, and we especially need it in times of rapidly developing crisis.  These are not times where we want to obsess over how a rogue student might game the system to their advantage.  Rather, we should keep in mind that our students want to do right by themselves and us as surely as we want to do right by them.  Trusting your students will not only allow you to build and maintain an academic community (see below), but also frees you up to concentrate on what really matters—creating an online environment where students can successfully learn and demonstrate that learning.

Online teaching poster: 'do this, not that'

I came across this helpful poster on social media yesterday. It sums up a lot of advice I have heard recently that seems right to me, and which I myself plan to adopt:

Tips For Moving Your Course Online (Guest-post by Mary Beth Willard)

This is a guest-post by Mary Beth Willard (Weber State University). Many thanks to her for putting it together!:

Why Listen To Me:

Free advice is worth what you pay for it, but I have been teaching online with success for about seven years now, and I know many philosophers haven’t, and now have to do so with very little notice. 

You are not going to create an awesome, interactive, beautiful online course in less than a week. Online courses that are done well require enormous amounts of prep. You don’t have that, and you shouldn’t be expected to do that. A lot of the guidelines that are out there assume you’re designing a new course. This isn’t what we’re doing, so I wrote up some tips on Facebook. They were shared and liked and hearted so Marcus asked me to write them up for you all here.

I am assuming that you have access to a learning management system like Canvas or Blackboard, and that you will never put this class online again, and that while you’re willing to fiddle with your syllabus a little, you want to minimize doing so to whatever extent possible. I’m also writing under the assumption that this is for an undergraduate course. 

Big Picture Preliminaries

Backwards course design: That's the buzzword and the term to Google, but the idea is that you start with what you want them to learn and work back to how you will get them to do that.