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Teaching Climate Forecast: Warming Trend To Continue

Although potential changes in the global climate may weigh on your mind, actual changes in the campus climate for teaching should warm your heart.

The teaching climate is important because it affects our day-to-day quality of life as educators. Judging from the most recent annual Teaching and Learning Symposium on Jan. 11, the University’s teaching climate is becoming consistently more pleasant each year across more and more of the campus.

Attendance at the Symposium, held at the Bloomington-Normal Marriott Hotel & Conference Center, set another record: 430 people registered this year, a big jump from about the 350 who registered the year before. Although January’s chill permeated the outside air, the hundreds of educators who participated in the Symposium basked in a climate for teaching as warm as a tropical beach resort. I was also able to share with the luncheon crowd that professional development hours for 2011 reached the highest level ever at almost 11,000 hours of faculty time at Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology events and workshops. This marks the fourth year in a row that professional development totals exceeded 10,000 hours for the year.

This year’s symposium theme was Creating Climates for Teaching and Learning. I liked that it was about more than just being aware of climates or coping with climates – it was about creating climates. Although we can do very little about Central Illinois’ bone-chilling winters or steamy summers, each of us has the power to shape our campus climate for teaching and learning.

And, in fact, whether we intend to or not, each of us does contribute to the climate for teaching and learning at ISU. Our very presence, as well as the words we say and the actions we take, accumulate over time to make a difference for our students and for our colleagues.

A new year is a good time to consider our own contributions to the campus climate for teaching and learning. I encourage each of you to consider whether your words and actions have contributed warmth to your department’s educational climate. Are you consistently fostering a nurturing climate where creativity and a passion for learning flourish in your students? Are you a source of support for your peers’ efforts to improve their teaching? Or have you at times contributed a frosty blast of enthusiasm-chilling harshness, negativity or indifference?

All who devoted an entire day to connect with colleagues at the Symposium are demonstrating support of, and commitment to, a better climate for teaching. Because you are reading this Focus On Teaching column, I would also guess that you are a positive influence on the campus climate for teaching and learning.

Our challenge is to bring the climate so dramatically exemplified at the Symposium to our day-to-day campus life during the rest of the year. What can we do in our daily activities to contribute to a climate that supports teaching and learning? I have a few modest suggestions:

• Make your passion for teaching and dedication to learning visible to your peers. At lunch, in department hallways, after faculty meetings are opportunities to show genuine interest in your colleagues’ teaching. Ask your peers how their classes are going. What’s working well? What struggles do they have? Exchange ideas and share your own successes as well as your struggles.
• Ask a colleague to observe your teaching to give you some constructive feedback. Then offer to observe theirs in kind. (Note that CTLT can provide you with materials to inform and guide these observations).
• If you are a DFSC or SFSC member, encourage and recognize those who attempt informed experimentation in their teaching techniques. Trying something new is inherently risky, but if we never move away from our comfort zone, our teaching effectiveness (and student learning) will stagnate. When a new method is based on learning theories or scholarly findings, it should be encouraged and recognized, whether or not the immediate outcomes (e.g., student evaluations) are as positive as hoped.
• Join a teaching and learning community (TLC), either one of those on topics proposed each semester through CTLT or on a topic that you propose. Chances are you have colleagues across campus who share your interest. CTLT has a terrific list of TLCs proposed for spring semester (check our website for descriptions), and each includes modest resource support for materials such as book purchases for members. Faculty-proposed TLCs get the same support.
• Share with colleagues the ideas and methods that you take away from CTLT workshops, and encourage colleagues to join you in future workshops. You can be a catalyst for a small cadre of peers in your department actively supporting each other on your journey toward better teaching. Chances are you will begin to attract other like-minded colleagues and find your group growing in size and value over time.
• Bring a colleague or two to next year’s Symposium. It is always in early January on the Wednesday before the first day of Spring semester classes. Better yet, recruit colleagues this spring or summer for a teaching-related project that could be shared at a panel or presentation in next year’s Symposium.

If you are fortunate to be in a department or school where striving for better teaching is the norm and a point of pride among your peers, any of these will surely enhance your local climate. If, however, you happen to be in a setting that has been less supportive of (or at least indifferent to) better teaching, these steps are even more important as a way to create a warmer local climate. Like the weather, complaining about it does little good – but unlike the weather, you can do something about it.

And take heart, for you are definitely not alone. The growing turnout and genuine enthusiasm that pervades each year’s Symposium, as well as extraordinary participation in CTLT’s professional development programs throughout the year, demonstrates that ISU’s climate for teaching and learning is most definitely in a long-term and irreversible warming trend.

Patrick O’Sullivan is director of the Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology.