The Dialogue
Question:
Should colleges and university faculty be required to take
continuing education courses in effective teaching?
 Yes, unless it's a requirement, only
the converted are likely to show up.
Arthur Shostak*
Faculty need to be exposed to fresh insights about new generations of
learners, new strategies and tools, and the lessons we can mine from both
success and setback stories.
This said, eight related requirements immediately follow:
First, the administration and all staff must be required to attend relevant
upgrading courses themselves.
Second, the faculty senate or union must have a say in choosing the
outsiders hired to prepare and offer the courses.
Third, the courses must tailor some of the instruction for the various
disciplines, majors, and features of the curricula.
Fourth, faculty must be offered the opportunity to choose either an
on-campus or a distance-learning mode of instruction for the courses.
Fifth, the faculty senate and union must have a major say in assessing the
courses and deciding how to improve it.
Sixth, while performance in such courses should clearly not be part of any
assessing process for individual faculty, the courses should have a final exam,
the results of which are strictly confined to the test-taker.
Seventh, a mechanism must be created by the administration and the faculty
to include students in the selection, evaluation, and improvement of the
courses.
Finally, the college or university should boast in every tasteful way
possible of its pride in requiring this healthy and empowering program --- the
better to set itself apart and raise
* Arthur Shostak is the director of the Center for
Employment Futures at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
 No, there is no Holy Grail for effective teaching of college
courses
Dallas Browne *
To meet university-wide standards of performance for tenure and promotion,
faculty must be excellent teachers.
Professors must develop portfolios that include peer and student
evaluations. Failure to meet student and collegial demands for improvement in
specific areas of teaching usually leads to dismissal.
Bureaucratic control beyond this creates resentment. Faculty would perceive
the requirement of continuing education courses as a make-work project or an
excuse to hire more administrators. Professors admire individual achievement
and effort. It is associated with excellence. Conversely, they equate
conformity with mediocrity.
Imagine the resentment of those who have won awards for excellence in
teaching when we tell them they are "required" to take courses on
"effective teaching."
Mandating continuing education for faculty who routinely receive poor
teaching evaluations might make sense, but even in such cases faculty should
have the right to say "no." Poor teaching evaluations would lead to
their dismissal. Voluntary compliance is in the interest of faculty seeking
retention.
One size does not fit all in academe. Teaching college courses is an art.
Each discipline has its own methodology.
Mentoring programs are more effective than theoretical courses on "how
to teach college courses." Identifying great professors and encouraging
other faculty to observe how they teach would be useful. Exposure to several
excellent mentors would be worth more than a series of theory classes.
*Dallas Browne is an associate professor of anthropology
at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
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