Shifting Teaching Landscape

This may sound strange, but the teaching landscape in university and seminary education is really changing. The new focus is on learning.

You may ask, "Well, what was it about before?" There is always "what we say" and "what we do." The "what we do" is the real thing. The "what we say" is a game humans play, a very funny game.  The peacock squawks and spreads out its feathers.  It does a little dance.  That particular game is about mating, to put it nicely.

But teaching at the college level and beyond has tended to be about a professor saying something.  A professor was someone who had something to say, a smart guy or gal. Whether or not anyone learned anything was up to the student. In many cases, a grade might all come down to one test with one question at the end, a poor assessment at best.

Now, it's about good teaching or, more precisely, about effective learning. Online teaching has particularly hammered this fact home to me, especially in formats where the content and pedagogy are standardized and pre-loaded into the course like at the University of Phoenix. A person might be an amazing facilitator that the students love because s/he gives immediate feedback and is able to move discussion along in stimulating ways.

Notice I said "facilitator" rather than "professor." A facilitator needs to be good at facilitating learning. He or she or she doesn't have to be a leading expert at the subject, although certainly students prefer and benefit most from someone who is both an expert in a subject and an excellent teacher as well.

So many of us went into teaching (or preaching for that matter) because we like to talk or seem to know stuff. There will always be a place for a speaking circuit. But room for the genius know-it-all professor will increasingly be limited. Their days in the average college are numbered, because they often cannot do anything but talk.

While this is sad for people like me who like to talk, it's a boon for most students, who will learn more. And maybe we can bring in the brilliant but pedagogically-challenged occasionally as a side-show, just so students can know what genius is... but we'll have someone else help the students process the show...