I see my responsibility as a teacher as one of helping students learn to think in different ways. I do this, in most of my classes, by exposing them to ideas they may not have been exposed to before, pushing them to ask questions about those ideas, giving them analytical and research tools that will help them to both better understand the ideas and to find answers to their questions, and helping them to integrate those ideas into their understanding of the world. I do this, in general, by engaging a a variety of learning styles through a combination of reading, discussion, stories, and highly focused personal research.
There are several elements of the personal research associated with most classes, starting with index card assignments, which I generally assign between 10 and 20 times a semester. Index card assignments generally engage a simple observational or thought experiment, associated with the material we are covering, that helps students to engage the method we are discussing, apply the course material to their own lives, or advance a larger assignment. I frequently use these assignments as a basis for class discussions and to illustrate key concepts we are working on. Index card assignments are graded on a simple submitted/not submitted basis and count, in aggregate, as about a letter grade in the course.
A second persistent assignment is due at every class for which there is a reading. Students are generally expected to bring two or three questions to class each session. I generally open the class by semi-randomly asking a small number of students for their questions, write the key concepts in those questions on the board, and address those questions as I move through my lecture/discussion notes for the day. I generally close the question collection by asking if anyone has a question they really feel they need to ask. On some days the questions wind up structuring the entire class and I wind up moving through the lecture notes quasi-randomly. On others I shape the discussion around the questions as I move through my planned agenda, but giving more attention to the concepts that come up in the questions.
The core of the semesters work in my classes is always research that leads to papers and presentations. My goal, in these assignments, is to have students apply and extend the content of the course. They will generally need to find information about that subject matter on their own, integrate those materials with other class materials, and analyze and solve problems using those materials. Term paper and group project assignments usually force students to explore a problem from an angle that is difficult to find in the existing literature. These papers aren't always easy. I've been told more than once that a paper I have assigned was the hardest paper the student had ever had to write in their lives. So I generally take students through these assignments incrementally, moving them from one part of the problem to another in a sequence that helps them meet the challenge.
I increasingly regard these papers and presentations as the most important part of the course. Exams generally account for a comparatively smaller part of the overall class grade (although that varies with the level of the course) and generally include puzzle-oriented questions that require students to connect the dots between different sets of ideas that we explored in readings and the classroom. I generally eschew the kind of test that can be fed through automatic grading equipment in favor of exams that present students with problems that need to be solved. My goal is to give my students a toolbox that the can used to solve complex problems in their relationships, group interactions, organizations, communities, mass media productions, and the other media ecologies in which they operate.
Success in conducting
classes this way depends, at least in part, on making myself very available. This
translates not only to maintaining office hours and returning phone messages,
but to making myself available in venues that students are more likely to use
these days, including e-mail and Instant Messenger. I create discussion spaces
in conjunction with class. I encourage students to contact me with questions,
especially when they are working on papers and other complex assignments. Students
can routinely find me available via e-mail or on my student-focused DrFoulger
Instant Messenger ID (I have other IM IDs for friends and family). Indeed, I have
found that I am contacted more often via Instant Messenger than I am via phone,
e-mail, and office hours combined.