Approaching the new semester: Teaching style, the cost of books and online resources

The semester begins in several weeks.

 

Several questions top instructors concerns:  the cost of textbooks; engaging students; being fair to different viewpoints.

Here is my approach in a highly diverse student population at a community college. 

The cost of textbooks

The new edition costs about $240. It is a paperback, 384 pages. The pictures are good ones, but there are 50 pages less than before. Missing are interesting maps and gone are the test questions at the end of each chapter for students to test themselves.

Buy it in digital format for $192. Rent it for the semester, $80. Used? It is fairly recent and used copies are available. If I allowed the students to use the previous edition, a used copy would cost about $25 and renting it, $16.

I could change textbooks or perhaps make my own compilation. I could also email students copies of articles (without infringing copyright) and use YouTube videos.

The real question is whether this textbook will be a good foundation for information and knowledge.  Whatever quibbles I have with the textbook, the students come to an exotic course about cultures in different places in the world and over millennia.

The book demands strong analytic skills. That is important, but can my students succeed?  

This is a community college with a diverse student profile. My students are from 17 to 65, more women than men, Latinos, Blacks, Whites and immigrants from across the world, vets, ex-cons, the variety of genders, some homeless, and all with varying degrees of English literacy. And generally less affluent than students at nearby four year colleges.

So, $240 for a 355 page paperback and an instructor with too many degrees? 

The question about learning certainly is about the textbook and its accessibility, but it also is about the instructors and the personal adventure they set for the student.

Engaging students

So, how do we get the curriculum to speak to the students? What are the recipes for inviting students to immerse themselves in the course’s subject matter?

•        Start the class before the class actually begins with some unusual music. We don’t only learn through reading. For anthropologists, we participate and observe the life of others ─ doing their rituals, eating their foods, dancing their dances. 

Suggestion:  Visit Caridad de la Luz on YouTube and watch For Witch It Stands.

•        No political correctness. Respecting each other is sufficient. 

•        Shocking students. That’s easy enough for anthropologists: Different cultures and different lifestyles are shocking. So, let’s deal with them. Avoid self-censorship based on a fear of committing a micro-aggression. Example: Divide the class into men and women (and for those with other gender identifications, they can choose whichever group they prefer) and have them read a Blackfoot legend about Old Man Coyote and Coyote Woman. Whoa! That has them laughing and blushing. This story contrasts with Genesis’s Adam and Eve creation story and invites discussion of power relationships, gender concepts and cultural notions of sexuality.

•        Balance the author’s liberal or conservative values and perspectives with opposite ones. Why not? Isn’t the university a broad marketplace of ideas? What is important is not to grade students on one’s own point of view, but to draw out competing perspectives. For example, faculty may be accused of bias, such as Islamophobia, racism, being a climate change denier and the like because they present competing perspectives instead of a truncated ideology. 

The textbook I use (Appreciating Cultural Diversity) fails to present competing perspectives on several important topics, particularly on Islamic terrorism and what draws individuals to this ideology as well as a one-sided view of climate change science. 

A dedicated talk-show host, whose interest is in clarity rather than seeking conformity, has taken on the task of creating an online (and free) “university.” Five minute talks by informed discussants challenge the viewer about how one might understand a topic. Rather than shrinking from such an approach, instructors should be able to challenge themselves in front of their students. We might call this the new pedagogy.  I imagine many instructors would dismiss this challenge based on the presumption of ‘I have my degree’; but the world is changing, and a Socratic mindset would challenge every instructor to start from the beginning with the famous dictum: The only thing I know is that I do not know anything. 

Here are several 5 minute courses to wake the students (and the instructor) to a brass tacks discussion:

ChloeValdary:   Don’t Judge Blacks Differently. 

Patrick Moore:  What they haven’t told you about climate change

Haroon Ullah:  Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?  

•        Have students do original research, formulating hypotheses and testing them. This requires considerable support, but it shows students that classroom studies can be practical and can help them get a job.  

Avoiding bias in grading

An instructor must take affirmative steps to prevent his or her bias from influencing the grading process. Here is what I do; other instructors should state their approach.

In the textbook I use, the author presents one view of global warming/ climate change. The question at the end of the chapter speaks to his perspective. In preparation for the final exam, I present his view in class and ask the students how they would answer the question from the author’s perspective. That is one point for knowing the author’s bias. Then I reframe the question from my perspective (the skeptical scientist rather than the true believer in computer modeling). I ask the students to answer the multiple choice question from my perspective. Score one point for knowing my bias.

The teachable moment is that students get two points – one for the author’s perspective, one for my perspective; AND they get to witness that instructors and book authors can disagree without the student having to adopt one or the other and being penalized for believing in the ‘preferred’ answer. The students should then realize that they have to think for themselves in the continuing pursuit of how to understand the world.

That is a pedagogy that allows for competing biases without penalizing the students. This approach is more difficult to achieve in an essay exam – not impossible, but more difficult. 

Making a pedagogical choice

Some students might prefer a less active teacher. So, this approach doesn’t work for all.  

But, for me, I enjoy teaching in this way and hope that my love for the subject carries over to those students who not only enroll, but come to class to engage with the subject.  

The classroom is a two-way street and involves more than buying a $240 textbook.

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Joe Nalven teaches cultural anthropology at San Diego City College.