The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Michel writes:

It seems clear to me that students benefit a great deal from having many chances to apply what they've learned through frequent assignments, scaffolded essays, etc. I'd be curious to know how Cocooners with hefty teaching loads balance the desire to do all that with the demands of teaching three to five courses or sections a term. Do you stagger assignments between your courses and sections? Do you use a lot of peer-grading? What else?

Great questions, and I'm curious to hear what readers have to say! Here are a few of my own thoughts.

Earlier in my career (during my non-TT years and before tenure), I gave my students many frequent assignments while having a hefty teaching load. Students responded really positively–often saying in my course reviews that my courses were super challenging and full of work, but that it was worth it and they learned a lot. Unfortunately, doing that basically required me to work myself into the ground and wasn't very sustainable, at least not if I wanted (as I do) to maintain a modicum of personal well-being. So, ever since getting tenure, I have changed things a bit.

First, I've increasingly staggered types of assignments across courses, based on reflection on what I'd like students in different kinds of courses to learn. For example, some of my courses (lower-level courses for non-majors) tend to me more exam based, along with many frequent smaller assignments (e.g. 5 sentence reading responses and in-glass group assignments). The basic rationale is that my primary pedagogical aims in these courses are to expose non-majors–people who may never take another philosophy courses–to philosophical material, help them to understand it, and get them to think critically about it (both as individuals and in groups) on a daily basis. Conversely, in my courses in the major I want to focus less on exams and more on longer (1-page) reading responses, term-papers, and final presentations. In brief, this is because I think it's vital for majors in particular to learn how to think more deeply about the material, and to develop their ability to write about and present complex material and original arguments of their own. Long story short, I've found that staggering different kinds of assignments across courses (doing different assignment-types and lengths in different levels of courses) can be helpful for ensuring that students in all of my courses receive frequent assignments and feedback without working myself into the ground.

Second, I've begun staggering the timing of assignments within and across classes. For example, in my human rights seminar this Spring, I had students do 1-page reading responses each class for the first 11 weeks of the semester. However, the last four weeks of the semester they no longer have reading-responses due. Instead, they have term-paper workshops that require them to do some work at home (e.g. a paper outline, drafting their introduction, drafting their summary) and then bring that material to class for peer-feedback and submit to me for instructor feedback. I've found this incredibly helpful, as removing the reading responses frees up time for providing them feedback on their workshop assignments–and devoting the second hour of class to workshops lessens the amount of prep I need to put into my daily lectures. In other words, I "make room" for an increase in grading load (e.g. giving daily feedback on partial-drafts of term-papers) by lessening my workload elsewhere (no more reading responses to grade and shorter lectures). Similarly, because in my upper-division applied ethics courses I think it is pedagogically valuable to end courses with student presentations (followed by short group assignments discussing each presentation), I am able to end one course (say, Biomedical Ethics) with no lecture prep the last two weeks, thus again freeing up time for other things (grading final presentations, etc.).

In short, although I still do a lot of grading and have frequent assignments, I've been increasingly looking for creative ways to lessen my workload in one area (e.g. lecture prep, grading reading responses) whenever my workload increases in another area (term-paper workshops, final presentations, etc.)–so that I'm able to keep my students engaged with frequent assignments without working myself into the ground as much as I used to. In full disclosure, I think there are some pedagogical costs to some of the choices I've experimented with (viz. having lower-division courses more exam- and short-reading response based, instead of, say, having term-papers). Fortunately, though, as someone who is always looking for better ways to do things, the costs I've perceived here have led me to think about other approaches that I hope to experiment with moving forward–ones that I'm excited to try out! Indeed, if I've learned anything about teaching at all, it's that its often precisely these kinds of challenges–viz. balancing various pedagogical goals with workload, etc.–that inspire one to continually rethink and refine one's methods and keep things "new", both for oneself and one's students.

But these are just some of my thoughts. What are yours?