Productivity and Teaching

 Legislators want more productivity these days.  In classrooms, particularly at the college level, this often means more students per faculty member.  If you give a lecture to 20 students, they think, you'll be twice as productive if you have 40 students in the class.  What they really like is the idea of faculty teaching internet classes with 90 students. 

There are two basic ways to increase productivity:
1.   have the same output using fewer resources
2.   increase the output using the same or fewer resources

When legislators want to increase class size, they may achieve an increase in productivity if by that they mean more tuition coming to the university for the same resources, or more students complete the class for the same resources.  But if you mean how much each student learns, the output goes down.  Learning involves interaction between the students and the teacher - during class, after class, and through comments students get about their work.  The more students in the class, the less interaction and feedback (and learning) students get.  (I'm assuming a good teacher here, who does actively give students in depth feedback.)

 All this comes up because I've been reading Robert Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members, in preparation for the new faculty mentor program I'm working on this coming semester.  A key concern for Boice is that new faculty work way too hard.  He's come to this conclusion from studying new faculty for many years.  I got to that conclusion by living it.

Boice quantifies the work load of a new faculty member teaching six hours (typically two classes) a week, a lower than average course load.

• 6 hr/wk in class plus some 20 min/day interacting with students before and/or after each class meeting (total = at least 10 hr/wk)
• 18-30 hr/wk preparing lectures/classroom materials via reading, notetaking, writing, plus another 2 hr/wk, on average, grading tests and paper, etc. (total = at least 18 hr/wk, often as much as 40 hr/wk)
• 6 hr/wk for office hours (total= at least 6 hr/wk, much more for faculty who do not keep office doors closed past official office hours) (p. 13)

This comes to  between 30 and 56 hours a week.  We're only talking about teaching now.

This is a reality I faced as a faculty member.  My preparation for class, after many years, could be reduced by relying on notes and handouts from previous semesters, though usually I wanted to tweak my old materials and that could get me back to the 18-30 hours Boice lists for new faculty.  I found, though, that my grading load was much higher than 2 hr/wk.  I had  students write essays and short papers.  I found I needed at least 30 minutes per paper to read them carefully and give useful feedback.  For papers that needed more feedback, an hour wasn't unusual.

Boice's example above is the load just for teaching two classes, while many, if not most faculty, have a three or four class schedule.  Boice's example  doesn't include time for the other two major functions of faculty - research and service.  At the University of Alaska Anchorage where I taught, the normal faculty load was 3-1-1.  That is 3 parts (60%) teaching, 1 part (20%) research, and 1 part (20%) service.  So, in addition to teaching, there is another 40% expected, and again for research and service, another eight hours each, isn't going to cut it.

Boice writes:

". . . where campuses demand loads of 9 - 12 hours, time spent at teaching usually equals 50-60 hr/wk during the first two years.  . . [T]hese averages afford far less time than anticipated for good starts at scholarly writing, for setting up labs and research and field programs, for preparing grant applications, for reading of the professional literatures, for keeping in touch with colleagues at other campuses, and for socializing on the new campus.  [Finally] the dearest costs of this heavy demand come in social/family life, exercising, health, and sleep." (p. 13)

People would hear that I taught three classes a semester - nine hours a week in the classroom and think I had it pretty easy.  They didn't consider the prep time, grading, and the research and service work that made my work week go into 50 - 70 hours.

But when I think of elementary school teachers, who are in with the students for six or seven hours a day, five days a week, I know my load was easy.  Being in charge of a classroom - the learning and the behavior of a classroom of students  - takes a lot of energy.  It's like performing and directing.  And so good teachers have to do most of their class prep and assignment feedback on their own time. 

Yet many legislators and the some of the public think that teachers have it easy.

Are there problems?  Plenty.  Some college faculty do take advantage of their autonomy and don't spend that kind of time on teaching.  The vast majority though are conscientious and there is a lot of pressure to get way too many things done in way too little time.  There's no such thing as overtime.  And for K-12 teachers, the much higher amount of in classroom time makes for a very exhausting job. 

How Do You Know?

I've been reading Jeffrey L. Buller's The Essential College Professor, as I'm thinking about this mentoring program for new faculty.  I thought I'd pass on some ideas from the chapter on Assessing Student Learning. This is probably the hardest and most time consuming (if done well) activity of teaching.  While for some this is well known, I'm sure there are those for whom this is new or needs refreshing.

Buller points out that you have to know what your learning goals are for the students before you can assess them.  And as part of this discussion he identifies different ways people have described 'knowing.'

Column 1Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning and Knowing Processes (1956) Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1983) Musical Bodily-Kinesthetic Logical-mathematical intelligence Linguistic intelligence Spatial intelligence Interpersonal intelligence Intrapersonal intelligence PLUS (2003) Naturalist intelligence Spiritual intelligence

Anderson and Krathwohl’s Respose to Bloom (2001) 6 Cognitive processes Remembering:  Recognizing, recalling, and retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory Understanding Applying Analyzing Evaluating Creating 4 Kinds of knowledge Factual knowledge Conceptual Procedural Metacognitive The links will give you more information on each model.

Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning Foundational Knowledge.  Understanding and remembering: information ideas Application.  Utilizing skills thinking  - critical, creative, practical managing projects Integration.  Connecting: ideas people realms of life Human dimension.  Learning about: oneself others Caring.  Developing new: feelings Interests values Learning how to learn by: becoming a better student inquiring about a subject improving as a self-directed learner

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It's useful to recognize that there are different ways of 'knowing' and different kinds of intelligence. Mostly college grades focus on logical-mathematical intelligence, but as Gardner points out, there are other kinds of intelligence that are important.

The chapter doesn't really tell us how to apply these models to construct class goals and to assess student work except in the most general way.  It does highlight an important thought on teaching:

Truly effective instruction is not measured by how much college professors teach, but by how much college students learn.

That ought to be posted above every college professor's desk. 

What New Faculty Need . . .

First, each new faculty member is unique, so each will have different needs, but I think they all need a support system of other good local faculty across disciplines and they all need ways to make the best use of the time they have.   They'll need some straight talk on how the tenure and promotion system works and how they can best prepare.  And an introduction to this campus and to Anchorage and Alaska.  Beyond that, some will want help with teaching issues and others with research issues. 

I met with some folks at UAA yesterday to talk about setting up an informal group of new faculty for the fall semester.  As someone who has taught for many years here, it seemed like something I could do.  I used to go to the new faculty reception and look for the most interesting new scholars and get a small group together at lunch.  It gave them a chance to meet people in other fields and me a chance to connect with interesting new scholars.   I went to the library after the meeting and pulled out some books just to see what others are saying on this topic.

The black book on the bottom was a nasty piece of work.  Anonymous - he said he had to be anonymous so he wouldn't lose his job - trashes everything about universities.  The faculty don't do any work, the students don't either, and the administrators are former faculty who couldn't teach or do research.  If it really was a faculty member, he would have been the kind he was complaining about.  But if it really was a faculty member, then the reason he had to be anonymous was because the book was so bad, no documentation, and totally unbalanced.  The tone starts off with a dedication to Hubert Humphrey:

"who, AFTER LOSING IN 1968, BECAME A PROFESSOR - AND THEREBY PROVED THE CORRECTNESS OF MY VOTE FOR RICHARD NIXON"

That's probably the most objective part of the book.   It was published in 1972.  The publisher, according to Wikipedia, 

Arlington House, Inc., (dba as Arlington House Publishers), now-defunct, was an American book publisher of jazz discographies, as well as conservative and anti-communist titles.

This book seems to be part of the early anti-public university movement.

I could tell you lots of things wrong with universities - but for the most part, faculty work incredibly hard.  Yes there are those who abuse the system, but the others more than make up for them.  So, I've got to write up a little more on this project.  If we can make it work, maybe next year we can bring in some other retired faculty to work with more faculty.  The other books have more useful content. 

When I first came here, all the faculty were pretty much in one building and people in different disciplines had offices near by and we all went to the faculty senate meetings.  But nowadays, it's harder for new faculty to find the people they ought to know in other fields.