Jeff Child:
Welcome to the Communication Corner, a McGraw Hill podcast for the communication discipline. I'm your moderator for this session, Jeff Child. Today, I've brought together two fantastic guests to discuss the focus of this podcast today about engaging the quiet voices, bringing every student into the classroom conversation. My guests today are seasoned instructors and professors who have extensive experience working in communication departments, and are fantastic professors. Today, we'll discuss a range of diverse strategies, tactics, and thoughts that help foster engaged classroom environments. Before we turn to discussion of the theme for this podcast, I'd like each panelist to first introduce themself. I'll begin. My name is Jeff Child, I'm a professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I tend to teach classes that are about 30, 40 students per class. I run them in a seminar style of engagement where essentially student reactions, understandings, and perspective shape how I use class time.
As such, engaging all student voices is something I've given quite a bit of thought over the course of my career. The next panelist I'd like to have introduce himself is C. Kyle Rudick.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Hi. Yeah, my name is Kyle Rudick, I'm a full professor and graduate coordinator at the University of Northern Iowa. I teach both graduate and undergraduate classes. A lot of the stuff that I teach is in research methods and theory, so classes that typically students are perhaps not as enthusiastic about as I might be as a big nerd. And so, trying to draw them in and to talk about these new types of thinking tools is a challenge. So, I'm looking forward to today's conversation.
Jeff Child:
Fantastic. Thank you for joining us, Kyle. I'm excited to hear what you'll contribute and help us think about this topic. Our final guest is David Kahl Jr. Dave, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
David Kahl Jr.:
Absolutely. I am a professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Penn State Behrand. I teach a number of classes in the speech communication area, including research methods and public speaking, and small group theory and some other classes along those lines. These are all smaller classes, and as I'll be excited to talk about today, I really work to integrate critical communication pedagogy concepts into my classes, and my research is in that area as well. And so, a lot of that is about promoting dialogue, dialogic interaction, empowerment of students, and trying to foster those types of things in the classroom.
Jeff Child:
Fantastic. I look forward to hearing your insight and how we can all think a little bit about how we approach our teaching. Well, thank you to both of you for being here. Just to provide some context, this podcast topic today and focus was actually suggested by listeners of the podcast. So, we organized this session today to provide those of you who listen to this frequently, greater insight into how you might engage and think about students and bringing their voices into the classroom today. So, I want us to begin by thinking a little bit about if you've had any experiences or changes with students today being more reticent, shy and anxious to engage. And then secondarily, why do you think this is more of an issue today that listeners of this podcast want more advice and perspective about this topic overall? So, thoughts on that?
David Kahl Jr.:
I think I've definitely noticed a difference since probably the pandemic. Certainly student participation has a lot to do with a variety of factors. It's demographics, backgrounds of students, the type of university you're at, a myriad of factors there. But I will say since the pandemic I think there's been a bit of a shift. Students coming out of high school maybe have had different experiences, maybe had a year or two where they really weren't in class. And some of their communicative abilities may have been diminished, or you may say they didn't use them as much as they had sometimes in the past. And so, they come to classes with a bit of a different background, a bit of experience, lack of experience that some of our students may have had in the past. And so, I think that's certainly part of the reason, and it's incumbent upon me and other instructors to really help them to use their voice and find their voice that maybe they had set aside for a period of time.
Jeff Child:
Yeah, I like that, use and find their voice. I think you're spot on, Dave, and some of the changes since the pandemic, a little more reluctant and unsure to speak up and share. Yeah. What do you think, Kyle?
C. Kyle Rudick:
So, I find that my students are initially more reticent to speak, but I also find that once you get them to a place where they want to speak, that they are quite enthusiastic about it. And so, I think that that's really the central issue is how are you creating a culture in your classroom that encourages students to talk about either the content of the class, or the things that are going on in their lives or anything else. Because I think that if you're doing that, then you start to see those dividends being paid in student participation, student engagement, and crosstalk, and the culture that's built there. But it's very difficult because, to Dave's point, I think that a lot of students are used to having a world where they're a little bit more shut off. As I walk through the grocery store I notice that people who are in their late teens, early 20s, they have big headphones on, they've got their earbuds in, their eyes are down.
They just have a world that is a little bit more enclosed I think, because of that. And so, it's a little bit tougher to break through that shell, but once you do they're there and they want to talk.
Jeff Child:
Yeah, I love your point, Kyle. Really, as instructors we have a lot of control over that classroom climate and getting students to a place where their voice doesn't feel threatened and they feel comfortable, and then you can't shut them up. Then they really have all kinds of things they want to contribute. I think one of the things that I've been more keenly aware of in my role as chair of the department and what I've seen more is it's in the same vein as you were talking about, Dave, with post-pandemic and some of the research I do with social media and use of new media technology is that we have so much technology now. And I'm really tuned into the Surgeon General warning that came out a while back about how use of social media can actually make us feel more socially isolated, more lonely, more disconnected.
And it's ironic to me because we have all these mechanisms for connecting and being able to interact with people, and yet for my students sometimes they tell me the last thing they do is some kind of voice or face-to-face dialogue they would prefer to reach out through social media, or connect through text or things like that rather than to share their voice. So, I think one of the challenges we face as professors in communication is helping our students to have effective dialogue and interaction with us, with other students. I often find too, it's difficult that they listen not to respond, but listen to understand one another. And so, sometimes I'll throw out a question and a student will say something, and they'll leave some sort of provocative insight on whatever it is we're talking about. Someone will jump to something else. I'm like, "Well, let's chain a little bit more."
So getting them with that effective, "Oh, I have a comment that builds on that," and that we're having a collective dialogue in this social media environment can be challenging. So, I totally appreciate that listeners of this podcast want more insight, want more perspectives to think about strategies alongside what they may be doing that can engage students in different kinds of ways. So yeah, I find this topic relevant and important, particularly in our discipline, that we're helping people to connect and use their voice, and build relationships and effective communication strategies. So yeah, having said that, let's dive in and put some perspectives out for us and the listeners to think about, and we'll have each one of us share some thoughts and insights as my guests have been thinking about this topic for a little bit of time, and then we'll react together, and then we'll move on to someone else and some other ideas and things to think about.
So Kyle, why don't you kick us off and share ... Kyle has a lot of expertise in this area in communication education, and an editor. And Dave, you too being a ... I guess all three of us have been former editors that you can bring to this topic, and I'm sure a deep understanding of the literature. So yeah, share some of what you've been thinking about for us to launch and interact with you about it.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Yeah. So, I would say one of the things that we talked a little bit about to your last question is the demographic change. And I think that demographic change has not just been about technology, it's also just who we have in our classrooms. I think we have more students of color, more international students, more first-generation college students. A lot of people who traditionally, the cultural backgrounds that dominate our institutions of higher education. And so, I think about this in terms of first-year master's students, whenever they're in a classroom with second-year master's students, all of them will always say things like, "Oh, it just seems like they know everything. They've always got something to say about the articles, they've got some brilliant insight that I'd never thought of." It's like, well, yeah, there's something to be said about knowing how to read an article and what it is that your instructor wants.
But there's also something to be said about just the confidence to be able to wing it out there a little bit, and just to talk through things that second-year master's students understand that first-year students are very reticent to do. And so similarly, I think for students who are not typically a part of our typical type of student for higher education might get into our classrooms and they might have that reticence as well. It seems like everyone else is saying smart things, seems like everyone else is contributing. And I don't feel like I have something to say that's worth being heard. And I think a lot of instructors might look at that as disengagement or as non-participation, or not being a good team member in the class, but there might actually be a lot of things going on there.
Culturally, they might value silence over talking through things, there might be this cultural mismatch. They might themselves not understand and so might not want to say anything. They also might not like you or the other people in the classroom, because we like to think of ourselves as instructors as being the good guy, but not every student perceives you perhaps that way. And so, the lack of communication might be signaling a lot more than just disengagement. It might be saying a whole bunch of things. And so, you really have to take a step back and think about what is it that I'm doing in this classroom to facilitate those things? Am I making all those efforts? And then, from there start to take stock.
Jeff Child:
I love that, Kyle. Yeah, we often bring assumptions to what do we think it means when they don't share, or they don't speak up or feel comfortable that could be totally off base, and the changing demographics are certainly something to keep in mind. I think in alignment with what you're talking about, one of the things that I think can sometimes empower students, and I get into this sometimes in more depth or less depth depending upon the course, but I find it's often helpful to tell students about imposter syndrome, particularly when you have a diverse group of students. Like at UNLV, it's the first institution that I've worked at that's not in the middle of the Midwest, which tends to be predominantly Caucasian, white focused in other places I've been, but here minorities are the majority. And so, it's really interesting when I walk inside a class and I see a ton of Filipino, and black, and Asian and just all different kinds of students.
And to say, "Hey, you might think and some of us sometimes feel like we don't belong here, we somehow slipped through and that we're an imposter, but we all feel that. And so, let's just support one another and let's have this be a safe space to experiment." A lot of the courses I teach people will reveal sensitive kinds of things too. So, I sometimes also tell them that, I know this will be a surprise to both of you given what I study in privacy and disclosure, I also say, "Let's just also make this a collective privacy boundary where what we talk about in here, we leave it here so that people feel comfortable talking about issues, problematizing, thinking about things through the literature, but also they don't have to worry about you talking about them when we leave this space, that this is a communally protected space."
And I found that sometimes giving people that license and also saying, "The only dumb questions are when you don't share your voice," that it sometimes can give people license for some of the shyness or reticence, or like, "Do I have something to share? Does my voice really matter? Well, do people want to hear this? Is this a dumb comment or question?" Because I think a lot of them think that. I think you're spot on in that assumption.
David Kahl Jr.:
Well, and I think to build on that, we have students from a number of different backgrounds who some are very comfortable sharing, that's students that I run into, and some aren't. And it depends on the class, it depends on the dynamic, it depends on everything that goes on. At the same time, I think it's important to help students use their voice, as I said before, and build communicative communication competence in the classroom because it is important to be able to share ideas in front of a group. And I think just coming from a critical communication pedagogy perspective, a CCP perspective, we want to avoid the traditional approach where we say, "Okay, we're going to lecture and then we're going to have a discussion, and then we're going to move to something else," and you get two people responding or you get the same couple of people responding.
And you don't know if anybody learned, you don't know if anybody comprehended the information, you just really don't know. So, that's an ineffective way to handle some kind of a discussion. But what we can do is we can foster participation in a variety of ways. And so, taking that think, pair, share method is always, I think really important, but it's also important to give students rationale for why we're doing what we're doing. So, if you're having a discussion and it's just not working, it happens, you say, "All right, well, we can adapt." As a critical instructor, we can adapt. We can say, "All right, I think what we need to do is take out a sheet of paper and I want you to write down your thoughts about this concept," and give them the rationale for it.
Tell them what that's doing. It's allowing you to think through it, to curate a response, and then they're going to be more comfortable. And then you move into sharing in a small group. And we get into small group, now they're able to share but it's with a small grouping of people, they can get feedback. And you tell them that, "This is why we're doing this. This is why we're working in this small group." And now you can bring it back to a full class discussion, a full class dialogue. Students are going to be a lot more comfortable at this point. They've thought through it, they've gotten feedback on their own answers, and now we can actually engage in some kind of a dialogic interaction with everyone. So, everybody's getting much more out of this. The instructor is getting a lot more out of it too, because you actually can discern whether or not your students are learning. So, I think that's one thing that we really should try to do and be a lot more intentional with our pedagogy.
Jeff Child:
Yeah, I love that, Dave. I'll share a colossal breakdown that I had earlier in my career where I had done a lot of what you've talking about, and yet sometimes things just don't go as you anticipated and you could learn from that. I had this wonderful lesson plan and I found this friends episode that I wanted them to critically analyze that would help understand the particular framework or theory, whatever I was doing. And so, I gave them a worksheet, we watched portions of it in class, and then I got them all connected to talk about things and the discussion was just flat. It just did not work. And part of it was that they were from a generation that they hadn't really, and this makes me feel old, hadn't really seen all the Friends episodes. I'm like, "Shame on you, this is my favorite sitcom."
Anyway, they were far more interested in watching it for pleasure than watching it to analyze it in the way that I wanted them to was part of it. And I think the second thing I learned is sometimes when you do that, and this is something I learned through my training as a doc students, we don't often give students enough wait time to gain a perspective and to think through their orientation on something. And so I, over my career, have also gotten more comfortable of like, "That's interesting, let's keep thinking about that. What's another idea?" And then not to fill in the silence, and to allow them a chance to process and think through things in a way that is more authentic to their own thinking and exploring a topic in a new way than maybe perhaps we had rehearsed or thought through ourself, that, oh, this should be going click, click, click in terms of their connections.
And so failure, to your point, isn't always bad, allows you to come again, try something new, but I love the sequence that you lay out there of first having them think individually and prepare, and then maybe doing some smaller engagements before you get to a classroom-wide kind of discussion.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Yeah. I will say, just building off what Dave said, I think oftentimes we as instructors, we like to teach the way that we learned. And as a person who is a white guy who did speech and debate, I study communication, has all this background, I like to talk things through. That's how I like to do them. And so, it's really easy to fall into a trap of, well, students who don't learn the way that I do, they must be bad students. The student who's sitting in the back of the classroom arms folded, well, that must be a bad student. They must not care. Well, maybe they're just processing differently. And so, I think these different ways that Dave has talked about, I also think whenever I very first started teaching I graded participation, people had to come into class and talk about the readings.
And then after a while I was like, "Well, that's privileging a certain type of learner, a learner that's like me." And so, I've since switched and said, "Hey, if you talk about the reading, you are noting very specific things out of the reading in your discussion, you get full credit." You can also come into class and at the beginning of class you can have written out a quote out of the reading that you really liked, and two or three sentences about why you liked it and a question that you might have, or a thought, or a whatever it might be. And so, whenever discussion then lags in the classroom I can pull those out and go, "Oh, well, here are what other people wanted to talk about." And so, I have background things that I can talk about but it doesn't put a person on a spot and make them perform in a way that perhaps they're not willing or able to do.
Jeff Child:
I think that's a great suggestion, Kyle, and that you're preparing people for the engagement before they get to class and you're giving them a range of ways to engage with the content material. And it's not just by talking it out, that they can engage in writing and that you're prepared with some general kinds of things. I think what you lay out and like, "Here's a reaction, here's something I really liked, here's a question, something I don't understand," or, "Here's an insight to think about a different application," you give students license to have the material be the starting point and to bring their own understanding, insight, life experience to it that values their own framing on it, and that you can keep that discussion going. That's great.
David Kahl Jr.:
And I would add students like to participate in different ways. And so, what Kyle said is great because you're giving students different opportunities to do that. And by sharing a question in writing, they get to still have their question asked, they still get to participate in that way and they say, "Oh, that's my question." And you feel good about that. And then, maybe in a future session they might participate differently, but you're encouraging that and they feel good, they feel comfortable in the class, and eventually they'll participate probably in various ways that they hadn't before.
Jeff Child:
Yeah, I think that's so ... Yeah, Kyle.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Oh, I was going to say that's definitely been my experience. And not every student who turns in something in writing later becomes a talker, but more than you would think. And so, I usually don't point out who the person is that wrote it, I just say, "This was one of the questions." But then yeah, to Dave's point, we start to discuss this idea and I think the student sees, "Oh, well, that wasn't a dumb question. That was actually a smart question, it generated a lot of conversation. We had a really good discussion." And then because people are talking, "Well, now I want to be a part of that because it was my question." So, it does become a way to engage people who might be a little reticent, but who would be willing to talk to do that while still giving other people who just, they're just not going to talk but, "Now I can demonstrate that I'm keeping up with the readings, I know what's going on." Or, "I have a really important question that I think other people should think about."
It just gives them a different opportunity and entrance into the classroom.
Jeff Child:
Yeah, I think that's spot on. I think one of the things that I've given a lot of thought to over my career and that I've changed strategies a little bit is realizing that effective discussions don't just happen without you putting in the work and the preparation as a professor to get people queued in and ready. I think early on in my career I found I had probably, and this fluctuates and varies from time to time, but I had more of what I would call more grade oriented rather than learning oriented students. And so, I have switched my approach to use of class time and assessment and engagement to a lot of micro assessments where I've learned that some of my students are more prepared and ready to engage if I have done a variety of micro assessments before we even get into the class so that they can ... Most often they use those points and those opportunities to be more prepared to have a perspective or an opinion.
So, I have them do comprehension quizzes before we even discuss the text. And so we're like, "Well, why do you do that" I'm like, "Again, because I want you ..." I said, "These are comprehension low level recall comprehension kinds of questions to see whether you're getting the core ideas from it." And then I come into class and we flip it, and we begin by what applications, curiosities, lack of understanding did you have? But I also pair that with an assignment that I call sometimes course engagement packets, that are really just intentional open-ended questions, no more than two or three sentences that I embed that are due before the class begins that get them to reflect maybe on an application level and higher on Bloom's Taxonomy on some of what the material is for the day so that I can come into the classroom and entirely flip it around and say, "Here's the macro, here's the big concepts of the reading and the material." And oftentimes students understand or don't understand these things, tell me what your reaction was from the quizzes, from what you did in course engagement packets.
And sometimes they'll engage right away and they'll have thoughts. And sometimes those are my high talkers, but I've also learned that, okay, if I want to, to what you've been talking about, Kyle and Dave, and not value just those that like to speak, is have them first reflect on what they wrote and review those materials before we start, and get that fresh in their mind. And then interact with one or two people around them, like you were talking about, Dave, and then get to more of a classroom discussion so that even if they're not sharing with the whole class, if they're sharing with another peer, they're having reinforcement with one or two other people, to me that's okay. But then the final piece of it for me is if you're going to have assignments like that where you ask students to critically reflect on what it is you're reading and either questions they have or applications, which is like a micro journaling or mini essay kind of thing, that you have to validate and value those assignments and give them feedback.
So it's more work for me, but every week I go in and I look at what they're doing so that I might engage one-on-one with some students that don't often share their voice with the whole class, but they see that their thoughts, their contributions as we engage back and forth through writing, that I'm pushing their thinking where some may do it dyadically. And then, of course there's always the three or four high talkers in a class that will engage in some of the classroom-wide discussions. So I'm curious as you think about that, if there are any unique things that you do to help students be more effectively prepared to engage. Because earlier on I thought, oh yeah, they'll be really interested in this and ready. And I would find when I would ask them realistically and confidentially before I did some of that stuff like, "How many of you actually read and you're ready to go?"
And I would have the minority at the class who I had done the work, so they value how to use class time according to sometimes how we show them what they should value with their grade. So anyway, it's just a thought and I wonder what reactions, what things you do to help prepare for those conversations to be more effective and more lively.
David Kahl Jr.:
One thing I would say is, again, assuming they've done the reading and assuming that they've done the work like you were talking about, Jeff, outside of class, I think it's important for instructors to become comfortable with using class time for discussion. Sometimes we think, "Okay, we got to structure our class exactly like this and we got to leave this much time for this." We have to be comfortable with that because they're going to learn more if they have time to actually work with the material, if they're able to discuss it, if they're able to dialogue, if they're able to critique it, if they're able to come to enhanced understandings from it. And the other thing I think is learning as an instructor to really affirm students' responses. When they say something, let them know that that was a good response. You don't have to go overboard with this or anything, but letting them know there are students who are very reticent and it might be really hard for them to share a response, but when they did, let them know that was a great response, that was a really thoughtful comment and tell them why.
Give them a bit of feedback. Or if it wasn't, I mean, if it was not exactly correct don't tear them apart, but let them know that, "I appreciate your response. Let's see if someone else can add to this, or can we take this in a different direction?" Or doing something to not tear down the comment, but to still let them know that there's maybe a better way to understand it.
Jeff Child:
I think that's great. Yeah.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Yeah, so I had I guess three little things I think that might help. So, the first thing I would say is, is in any type of preparation work that I ask students to do, I think it's really important that you're asking them to directly quote or very closely summarize key things that are in the materials that you're giving them in anything. So, typically what I do is I have a little device. It's called celebrate, confuse and contest.
Jeff Child:
I love that.
C. Kyle Rudick:
What's something that you liked out of the reading? What's something that you didn't like out of the reading or disagreed with? What's something that confused you in the reading?
Jeff Child:
I love a great alliteration too. Celebrate, confuse or-
C. Kyle Rudick:
And contest.
Jeff Child:
And contest. I love that, that's fantastic. I'm going to [inaudible 00:31:05]
C. Kyle Rudick:
And depending on what type of content I'm teaching, I might say, "I'd like for you to do all three of those." Or I might say, "Maybe just one or two of them." Because if I'm teaching a research methods class and I'm talking about how to use and in what ways would you use a Pearson's correlation?" Well, there's not a whole lot there for you to contest. Correlation is correlation. But you might have something that you can celebrate, something that you might think of that you could apply it to, something that you might think of there, or you might have something that confuses you about it. But you have that and you're asking students then to address the materials that you have in the class, again using direct quotes or strong paraphrasing, so that way it encourages them to have that engagement with the materials.
And then Jeff, to your point, it's important for me or any instructor then to do the work to read those things and to give feedback back to students. They're not just there for participation. Those things are there for me to understand, do they understand this work? And I find that if I have an expectation that they are quoting things, then yeah, maybe they only know the one thing that they quoted out of the entire chapter, but by God, they know the one thing that they quoted out of that chapter, which is better than nothing, which is what they had before.
So, I think that's one thing to do is to have something that has that sort of engagement. I also think it's important as instructors that we have good questions for students. A lot of instructors just walk in and they just say, "Well, what'd you all think about the reading?" Or, "What's something that you all wanted to discuss?" Well, a lot of students are looking for more direction than that. They don't know what's important out of the reading. I was in a master's class this last week and did the celebrate, confuse and contest. And one of the students was like, "It really confused me about the idea of Platonic Forms."
In this chapter, this was just an aside. It had no bearing on the rest of the chapter whatsoever, but they just got hung up on what was this term. They'd never heard of it before. And so, if I had just walked in there and said, "Well, what did you all think about the reading?" Well, then they might not have said anything about that, but because we asked them what's something that confused you, something specific, it elicited that response and then we could talk about this background knowledge. And the last thing I would say is just to be fine with silence.
I think, again, communication studies person, I like talking, so I think talking is better than not talking, but students might be ruminating. They might be building their stuff, they might be building a response, they might be making a note to themselves. Yeah, some of them are probably just staring at you and that might make you feel uncomfortable, but just because you are uncomfortable doesn't mean that that's an uncomfortable classroom or an uncomfortable situation. And so, a lot of instructors just aren't really good at waiting until someone talks. And so, just being fine with silence and being fine with rumination I think is important too.
Jeff Child:
I like that. Those are great suggestions, Kyle. Thank you for sharing those with us. See what I did there, Dave? I told him thank you, I appreciate your comment.
David Kahl Jr.:
Perfect, that's just right.
Jeff Child:
But also I think we can do a lot to help prepare students for dialogue. And I would also say that I've learned over the course of my career that less done more effectively is always more. And so, as I prepare for a dialogue or something I'll often find a pithy, funny YouTube skit, or comment or something that really hones in one key part of something that I think really is important to understand. And so, I'll guide and think about my class time, to your point, Dave, you don't have to talk about everything. But if I'm going to have them reflect back on this class, what are the two or three most important things to get out of it? Then I find something that can reinforce that. And then, I flag before I have them watch it, I'm like, "I'm going to show you something about this, and I want you to think about XYZ and jot down reflections on that. Then when we come back, we can dive into how does this apply to that?" Or whatever.
And so, they already have some goal in their mind. At some point I've done that with worksheets, but sometimes when it's too much they get flustered, they don't know what to focus on. So, I've figured out if there's one primary or two things I want them to pay attention to something we're doing, then we come back and give them a chance to think about what they've written down or what they've seen. And then we often have a really rich, interesting discussion and conversation on that issue. One example recently is I taught about Gender-Lex, how men and women approach conversations sometimes in different ways, and more about gender communication patterns rather than biological sex. Anyway, but one clip I do is there's this clip called, "It's Not About The Nail."
I don't know if any of you have seen it, but it's this clip of where a man and a woman in a relationship are talking. She has this giant nail in her forehead and she's like, "I just have these pains in my head that won't go away, and I snag my clothes." And he's like, "It's about that nail." She's like, "No, don't solve my problems" Anyway, it's so funny. And so, it's literally a minute or two, and then we talk about how we sometimes misinterpret connecting or solving people's problems. And so it's a really small impetus, but they can all connect to that and say, "When is a time where you've mismatched your goal with what perhaps the speaker intended, and how do we discern where we go?" And so to your point, Kyle, good questions are things you need to think about before you get in the spur of the moment.
It's not just like, "What did you think about this?" Because then it goes all over and you may not get to what goal for the class session is most important for your use of that time overall.
David Kahl Jr.:
Yeah. Question development is really important, because we can't ask two big, broad, nebulous questions because it doesn't, like Kyle was saying, it doesn't mean anything. They don't know how to answer it. And if it's too pointed, too narrow, then it's just yes or no, or content recall questions and that's not what we want either. And so yeah, question development, thinking about them, thinking about what are the objectives for your specific class, your particular lesson are going to be really useful, and it does take time to develop those.
Jeff Child:
Absolutely. Lots of great suggestions and strategies that we've talked about as we wind down and come closer to the end. Maybe if you were to give newer professors or faculty, I know we have GTAs and people in grad school who are listening to this, if you would give them one strategy or suggestion that they might think about as we wrap up, what advice would you give to your former you? When you were new, you all are well advanced now, we're all been doing this for a while, but one thing that you might show that you think can make a difference as people are trying to improve their competency in discussions.
C. Kyle Rudick:
I'm sorry, I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to have two.
Jeff Child:
Okay, good.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Okay, sorry.
Jeff Child:
And two's fine. That's fine, Kyle. Yes.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Okay, sorry. So, the first thing I would say is that especially whenever I was a younger professor and especially whenever I was a GA, I had so much anxiety about my own credibility in the classroom and my own being seen as a person that deserved to be at the front of the classroom, that it never even really crossed my mind to have guest speakers, to have other people come into my classroom. But I have found that even though now I like to think of myself as a person who knows what he's talking about, and I think that students respect that about me, that having another person come in and say things that are also really smart, and not maybe the exact things that I would say but in that same ballpark, it's validating, I think, for students to see, oh, Kyle is not just Kyle, there is a scholarly consensus going on about this thing, and other people are saying this too.
And that provides a different entrance into those conversations than just this is what Kyle wants to hear or what Kyle is looking for. Instead, it's this is something that a lot of very smart people who have spent their entire lives studying this thing have come to. So, that's the first thing that I would say.
Jeff Child:
I love it. Fantastic.
David Kahl Jr.:
One thing that I always try to do in my classroom, and it took probably a while to get to this point, but this is something I would tell to neophyte instructors, even relatively new instructors, even advanced instructors as well, is show your students that you enjoy yourself, show your students that you enjoy the material, show your students that you enjoy interacting with them. Hopefully that's why we're in this profession, hopefully that's why we're doing what we're doing. Not that we love every single lesson, not that we love every single concept as much as some others, but your students read that, they can tell. So, the more that we can demonstrate that affect for our material and for them, and approach it like a conversation. It shouldn't be so far removed from an everyday conversation. There's a structure to it, there's other things that are involved certainly, but we can really make our students feel comfortable and want to share with us if we show them that we're comfortable as well.
Jeff Child:
I love that, Dave. Yes, I think when you get to control the classroom interaction, pick things that you are passionate about either positively or negatively, that passion will come through. I just would echo that. My students have said the same thing is that it's easy, sometimes on course evaluations they'll say, "It was easy to come to class excited because he was excited about everything that we talked about," and that's contagious. And so, when you have the center stage, if there's stuff you don't think is particularly helpful or useful or important long-term to your goals, don't use your class time for it. Engage those concepts and issues that your clear passion can come through, and that you can bring that added benefit and value, because we're all going to approach a class differently and we can certainly hold people accountable to some out of-class learning and decide how we'll use time most effectively. I think that's great. Kyle, what's your second tip?
C. Kyle Rudick:
The second thing that I would say is, and this goes to what I was saying before, which is I think it's really important, especially for younger instructors, to think to themselves, "Who do I think of as good students and who do I think of as bad students? And how does that reflect back on me? What are the assumptions that are animating who I think of as a good student? Are they ones that look like me, sound like me, think like me? Are they telling me the things that I want to hear? Are my bad students the ones that are non-participative, or they don't seem to be doing the readings quite well?" Because I think a lot of instructors, we get into this, especially as professors, we get into this because of the love of our content area. Many of us like teaching, we might even love teaching, but the thing that really got us here was our deep love for our content area.
And so, we really like to see students reflect that because that reflects back on us. But whenever we fall into that trap, we start to think of students who don't act and think and talk like us as being bad students. And then in the aggregate, that has all sorts of bad effects, negative outcomes for those types of students. It decreases engagement, decreases their learning outcomes, decreases their participation, their opportunities for dialogue. All sorts of negative things are associated whenever instructors start to think of our own love of content as the very first thing rather than putting our students as that very first thing. And so, that would be the second thing that I would say is think to yourself, by what mechanisms am I engaging my students as good students or bad students? How am I giving different outcomes, grades or excuses for absences or anything else along those lines?
What are the things that I'm doing in the classroom that might be creating some of these inequalities that we see on a structural level in my everyday choices?
Jeff Child:
I love that, Kyle. Yeah, I think one of the things that I've learned as I've observed other people teach and have taught myself is grounded in your advice of trying to be aware of not only teaching to the two or three people who are as deeply passionate about every aspect of the discipline as we are, but to be able to read the room. And sometimes we go to one extreme or the other, the ones who hate it and hate everything or who love it, and you're having a conversation with two or three rather than trying to find a point of engagement for the majority of our students that we have in class with us.
C. Kyle Rudick:
Absolutely.
Jeff Child:
Well, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate your willingness to come and to talk, and share your expertise about how we engage the quiet voices. And I appreciate all of you for turning in to our discussion, and hopefully you walk away with a strategy that you might consider using to bring every student into your classroom conversation more fully. It's our hope that the information we share today has sparked your curiosity and interest in thinking more about something that you might try on your own. Each one of our podcast guests, I'm sure would be more than willing to continue the conversation with anyone offline about any situated questions or issues if you reach out to any of us. And thanks again for listening in and tuning to this next episode of the Communication Corner Podcast.
