The Teaching Professor Conference is an event where educators who are passionate about the art and science of teaching gather every year. This year, the education realm has been abruptly disrupted, but this has not prevented teachers from adding to their teaching repertoire, providing untold support to their students, and most of all, supporting one another. Now, we hope our virtual Teaching Professor Conference will surround you with the (virtual) company of like-minded educators, where you’ll engage in presentations designed to hone your pedagogy, drive higher student achievement, and advance your professional development. The virtual Teaching Professor Conference will give you access to on-demand delivery of 50+ concurrent sessions, and there’s even an opportunity for you to virtually attend live preconference workshops!
Below, we’ve asked a few of our presenters what key take-aways you’ll gain from their session, and we’ve also come across a few unexpected facts about our presenters that may surprise you! (Psst…one of our presenters is a licensed scuba diver, while another presenter just started backyard beekeeping with two beehives!)
This presentation, by Katherine Jones, undergraduate services librarian at Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus, seeks to get to the heart of what makes work worth doing (hint: it’s all about perception!) and how to train your brain to get the most out of your career at every stage.
What encouraged you to choose this topic to discuss at the Teaching Professor Conference?
Jones: Somewhere in the course of my relatively short (so far) career, I became deeply tired. However, since disappearing off the face of the planet for a 20-year-long nap like Rip Van Winkle is generally frowned upon, I decided to start examining the concept of professional burnout and how to fix (and prevent) it, instead.
In all seriousness, though, modern academics operate in a high-stakes, low-reward system. This session will address job satisfaction as a skill one must build and cultivate instead of a passive state of being that exists outside of our control. Like it or not, in many cases, the level of happiness we possess is in our own hands.
How have you applied this topic to your own teaching?
Jones: I provide in-class one-shot sessions primarily on content related to information literacy, but I have had fantastic opportunities to bring some of the concepts detailed in this session to students. We talk about the ways that students tend to think badly about themselves, others, and their world—for example, after receiving a low grade on a paper in need of serious revision—and how those knee-jerk negative reactions lead to unhelpful learning behaviors.
Practicing what you preach is never as easy as it sounds, but recognizing via my research how much of my falling sense of job-satisfaction was self-determined and therefore self-repairable has gone a long way to keeping me from chucking it all in and, as previously stated, attempting the world’s longest catnap somewhere in the Catskill Mountains.
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Jones: I actually never enjoyed reading Washington Irving as an undergrad. I always felt really bad for Rip Van Winkle’s “nagging wife.” Just help her with the chores, bro, geez!
Tori Norris, psychology instructor at Calhoun Community College, dives into an in-depth look at elaborative rehearsal, different ways it can be used by students, and various methods for incorporating it into your teaching practices.
What encouraged you to choose this topic to discuss at the Teaching Professor Conference?
Norris: Elaborative rehearsal is a unique metacognitive learning strategy that hasn’t had a lot of isolated research in the past. One of my goals during the process of concluding my dissertation research was to share the information with other educators. This conference provides me with an opportunity to do that.
How have you applied this topic to your own teaching?
Norris: Before conducting this research, I was using it in my classes to help students elaborate on their notes and as a study guide with what I referred to as “reading questions.”
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Norris: I am not only co-advisor of our Gathering of Gamers student club but am also a gamer myself.
Faculty have become convinced that the value of our courses is that they cover some agreed-upon set of content, which means students have mastered that material. In this session, Liz Norell, assistant professor of political science at Chattanooga State Community College, will cover how to shift your focus onto the students themselves.
What encouraged you to choose this topic to discuss at the Teaching Professor Conference?
Norell: Honestly, I was inspired to present on this topic after attending last year’s conference and listening to the conversations people around me were having about students. It just really made something click for me that I’ve been thinking about for years: namely that we are often too quick to blame students for the problems we see playing out in the classrooms and with their coursework.
Take, for example, students who sit in our classrooms and nap or play on their phones or get up to go to the restroom three times in a 75-minute class. It’s easy to roll your eyes and mutter, “Kids today…” under your breath. What’s harder is to step back and see that they bothered to do all of the things it took to make it to your class—getting out of bed, driving to campus, sometimes arranging childcare or arranging their work schedule—so they must want SOMETHING other than mentally checking out of class. If we can approach those students with curiosity, instead of judgment, we can find out what motivated them to come to class and work to leverage that motivation to everyone’s benefit.
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Norell: I beg students to come to me with math (especially statistics) homework they’re struggling with…and they never do! I married a mathematician and did as much statistics/research methods coursework in grad school as I did coursework in my major.
Every year healthcare students are inundated with critical pre-program paperwork. Traditionally, this paper-generated process places stress not only on the students, but also on the faculty. In this session, Ashley Marshall and Dina Peterson, assistant professors of clinical radiologic & imaging sciences at Indiana University, dive into how they created an e-onboarding system that streamlines both the student experience and faculty burden.
What encouraged you to choose this topic to discuss at the Teaching Professor Conference?
Marshall and Peterson: Based upon our success of converting paper onboarding to e-Onboarding, we wanted to bring our solution to other professors with similar onboarding requirements so they too may build a more efficient e-onboarding process. We found our electronic platform connects with iGen student’s comfort with technology, allows for on-the-fly-changes to requirements due to unforeseen events such as Covid-19, and eases the burden on faculty and staff in obtaining onboarding documentation.
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Marshall and Peterson: Ashley is a Harry Potter fan and a licensed scuba diver. South Korea is one of her favorite places to visit. Dina has a secret talent as a tap dancer. She really wanted to go to school to become a graphic designer, but her mother made her choose between being a nun or going into healthcare.
In this session, Melissa Michael, assistant professor of math education at John Brown University, highlights her journey with grading and feedback, and how she entirely eliminated grades from homework and quizzes.
How have you applied this topic to your own teaching?
Michael: I have tried several different grading techniques in my classroom and am excited to share them with other professors. I have seen interaction in my classes increase due to the new grading techniques I have tried.
What’s one thing you hope attendees will gain from listening to your session?
Michael: I hope the session allows people to think about the research and brainstorm ways to change their grading practices to increase student learning.
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Michael: I live in the country on 25 acres. Our neighbor puts his cows on our land, so we get to see baby calves regularly. I also have chickens and enjoy fresh eggs every day.
In this workshop session, Tona Hangen, history professor at Worcester State University, connects course and syllabus design together, focusing first on how to convert learning outcome statements into strong course components, and then how to align those components to relevant knowledge dimensions, cognitive processes, and assessment expectations.
What encouraged you to choose this topic to discuss at the Teaching Professor Conference?
Hangen: Good course and syllabus design are integral to creating a strong learning environment, and I think there can’t be too many professional development sessions connecting these topics together, no matter what career stage one is in. I think that many teaching professors want to apply proven principles of learning and effective course design to their craft but might not know where to start. Or they might have a clear sense of what and how they want to teach, but need help communicating that through the course syllabus. I know I learn something new every time an experienced instructor lifts the curtain on the “backstage” of their design process, like I will be doing in my session.
What’s one thing you hope attendees will gain from listening to your session?
Hangen: Greater confidence in designing new courses or retooling established ones, so they can showcase their course designs with syllabi they feel proud to share with students and colleagues.
What’s something interesting about yourself that would surprise our attendees?
Hangen: Our family has a small farm on a historic property in central Massachusetts. We keep chickens, goats and a miniature donkey, raise vegetables and perennials, and just this year started backyard beekeeping with two beehives.