 We're at the top of the hour and let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the future transform I'm so glad to see you all here today We have a terrific guest and a key topic and I'm really looking forward to our conversation Now thinking about it is exactly what professor Jonathan Zimmerman has been doing during a fantastic career He has been giving us a whole way of looking into the history of higher education Education in general and most recently he's published a terrific book on the history of teaching and pedagogy in Higher education called amateur hour if you'd like to look at the book the bottom left of the screen You should see a yellowish tannish color button that just isn't the amateur hour click that you can buy a copy of the book It's terrific It's important and I'm bringing this poor fellow this this incredible scholar up here because I'd like to ask him What we can learn about the history of teaching in higher education and what it tells us about the future of it Welcome professors Zimmerman. Hi Brian. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, I'm so glad you could make it Thank you. Thank you very much my name. I also I see in the crowd That that we also have Greg Britton who brought my book to Hopkins Press and I believe also yours and I think frankly has done more to Expand and change the conversation on higher ed than anyone that I know so special shout out to Greg You're here Greg is a wonderful editor a wonderful publisher and I agree this line of books is just producing Remarkable remarkable body of work for for higher education Thank you, Greg. Thank you. We're gonna have to tease her about this in some way We'll think of a way. We'll think of a way Jonathan and I'm Manfully resisting making any Zimmerman telegraph jokes here by the way, just just I know you get that a lot But I'm gonna hold back job Dylan as well. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. But what it I'm curious when asked people to introduce themselves I asked them here What they're gonna be working on for the next year So you're looking at the rest of fall semester into spring and maybe summer 2021. What's uppermost in your mind? What are the big projects? Well, I just finished a small book Co-authored with Cygne Wilkinson the cartoonist on free speech held its free speech why you should give it down? and It's short by design and it's gonna be illustrated by Cygne who by the way want to put surprise for a cartoonic and and so I just put that to bed and My big project too big and will take too long is I'm gonna write a history of schools and universities during pandemics I Just had that that book doesn't exist yet. I know several people are working on it And I'm gonna do the best that I can Wow, I mean your best is is the best. I really look forward to that When when does your when does your free speech book come out it comes out in April? April Fool's Day actually and we're doing that by design because we thought it would work for a nice pitch You know like you might think this is a joke, but actually it isn't These are the reasons you should give it down Well, I I agree. I do give a damn and I'd love to I'd love to grab a copy I'd love to tell people about it when it comes out. So good. Yeah, or yeah, you can just wait for the film adaptation Are you are you gonna be teaching this year? Yeah, you know, I have your standard teaching load or research university, you know two and two and I'm teaching two courses this semester as per the norm and I'm one of the lucky ones the courses are small I always teach one undergrad and one grad course because I have this sort of dual existence as a professor in the ed school and in the history department It's typically teach a graduate class in the education school and undergrad class in the history department So I'm doing now and they have 20 and 15 students respectively So I feel incredibly privileged because I think it's just a lot easier than many of my colleagues Who are trying to teach large classes? Yeah, it must be well enjoy Friends I have I have a whole battery of questions to inflect on on John But I'm gonna hold I want to ask just a couple to get things going But the whole purpose of the future transform is for you to ask your questions So we're thinking about the history of college teaching as well as the present and what the future of it would be think about what questions you'd like to ask and The whole platform is available for you So again, just you know reach in the bottom of the screen you to press that raised hand and join us Or just you know hit the question mark and type in your question or a comment would love to hear your thoughts The first one I wanted to ask is it kind of I guess big picture question Looking for higher education in the pandemic What what lessons can we apply based on the history of college teaching for trying to grapple with how higher education pedagogy could be changing I'm thinking what do we what can we apply from from your work to look ahead? Well, I guess I'd say a few things I'd say that our moment is really different which is a historical claim right if you say something's different It's different from something that came before and here's how one of the stories that I tell in the book is Every time the institution expanded it also adapted new machines generally the way of Distributing education more widely So you see that in the wake the GI bill when suddenly the universe is get huge people don't realize this often But in 1947 half of our students were vets That's how dramatic the GI bill was an educational TV comes directly on the heels of them Because there's this feeling that we're not going to be able to teach everybody the old way They're too damn many of them. So we need a machine to expand it and You know when we get into the 1960s with so-called teaching machines a program learning Right, you have a new era of growth this time fueled by things like the higher education act And the sense that we're not to be able to do things the old way because they're there these new faces and What we need are new technologies that can help us bring in the new faces I think what's really interesting about our moment right now is that everyone is on the machine In fact, we are right now That's what makes it unique. So right, you know a hundred times more about this than I do We didn't invent online education during the pandemic. It's been around for a very long time But you're much more likely to experience online education if you go to Delaware Community College And if you go to the University of Pennsylvania And now everyone's got to do it. So there's a kind there's a radically egalitarian Dimension to this moment which I do think is without precedent But it's also going to raise I think hugely existential questions about not just education but democracy because if People at Penn decide that online education isn't good or isn't good enough Yeah, as many of them have already suggested then why exactly is it good enough for the students at Delaware Community College? And I think that's going to be something all of us are going to be confronted with Thank you for that that loom. I have a whole series of ways I want to follow that question with and I can't because all the participants have just flung a whole stack of questions at you They're much much better. Thank you. Thank you, John We have a question from a historian a fellow historian Phil Katz who is at the council for independent colleges and asks History of college teaching separate from a larger history of teaching in America Where did the verge or intersect most strongly? Well, it's not separate nothing is and I think that Phil's question is really important because I think one of the Distortions that a lot of us and I'm guilty of this to impose on the past is we imagine there's K through 12 education And then there's higher at and I even teach courses with those titles and I probably shouldn't Because of all the overlaps and I I think there's several important let's just say Cross mechanisms going on here But I would say that the most important one and in some ways the saddest one is as follows Because of the low status of K through 12 education K through 12 teaching and especially because the relatively low status of schools of ed Which are with preparing teachers a Lot of people in higher ed didn't want to engage educational questions straight on Because they thought that was what the ed school does and what the ed school does is down market Throughout the book when there's a call for reform When I hear people in the colleges and the arts and sciences saying is well We can't do that because that will involve us with the ed school And by the way, haven't you seen what they did to K through 12 education? It's not so hot So do we want that sort of regime being imposed upon us and obviously there are huge non sequiturs in this argument, right? Not everything the ed school did was terrible Nor does to make any Necessary sense that if the ed school does one thing with K through 12 it will do another in higher ed But these status Differentials matter they matter hugely and I could tell you that I mean it's a differential that I've experienced and confronted through my Whole career precisely because I do straddle these two zones So when I first got to NYU where I taught for 20 years I remember something the history department saying any John you just such good work Why are you in the ed school? I you know, I not knowing that perhaps this could be maybe a little itself And it's like John you're Jewish and you're not cheap, you know, this is very odd I could leave my change around and you won't take it again with no with like like with no cognizance that maybe But but but there was Even in this this little insult there was a certain sort of reality and even a certain sort of wisdom Which is that especially a big research university the school of that has always been the poor cousin And people don't want to engage in the subject in the dialogue precisely because of that I'm just struck by that story about the uh, sorry to that Well, that's a great question. Thank you. Thank you very much and and John what a what a wonderful wonderful response um Lisa Hinchliffe has a question and this is coming to you from the library world and she has a question about your title So she asks I've been my response is a bit negative to the frame, but I'd like to hear why it was chosen Reserving judgment Well, thank you Lisa for reserving judgment and also for the question. Um, let me reassure you that you're not alone um in in uh, uh, let's just say having a A puzzled or perhaps befuddled or occasionally offended reaction to the title and here's why it shows that Not because teaching is terrible Or terrific because with millions of people doing it It's going to be both those things and a million things in between The reason I chose the title isn't because of the quality of teaching at the university. It's because of the status of it and What I thought arguing the book is that that function has never been professionalized And it has been professionalized because we haven't really developed A core of knowledge about what constitutes good practice or at least not an agreement about that And we haven't created mechanisms To determine and evaluate whether we're abiding by those standards and practices not in a consistent way um, so each of us are like doctors doing And uh an appendectomy but just kind of doing it the way we think maybe it should be done And then we talked to somebody else about how to do an appendectomy now and again But there really isn't a consistent standard Or even understanding of what good practice would be and there definitely isn't a mechanism for seeing if we're abiding by it Again to emphasize to Lisa. It doesn't mean it's bad The greatest gymnast of my youth was Olga Corbett and she was an amateur That's because back then in the olympics you couldn't be paid Right, right. So it doesn't refer to quality. It refers to status. Does it does it echo? The status of student-athletes as amateurs Well, um, you know, uh, it's an interesting analogy and until I mentioned Olga Corbett. I hadn't really thought of it I but you know, uh I I would say that, you know, uh Student student-athletes in some ways Have a very elaborate Set of mechanisms to determine how good they are like in the case of track stars. You can actually time it um, what they don't have is The status and the remuneration That we typically attach to professional skill Although if you saw the new york times just published a posthumous piece by john thompson the long time I coached at the place brian teeth is georgetown saying we should we should pay college athletes There's a lot of people make that case um Lisa I I'd love to hear your final judgment And uh, thank you for a spot on the question We have a whole series of questions popping up everywhere and a lot of them Are aimed at history So let me just try to bring up a few of them. This is one from the awesome steven erwin who Who asks a methodology question? What kinds of evidence can you use to glimpse how the massive faculty teach in a particular discipline today? or 50 years ago Well, it's really hard and I don't know how far into the weeds even would like to go But this is one of my favorite questions because it's my passion right i'm a historian And uh, let me say a few things The fact that it is an amateur enterprise Makes it really hard to study I've been at Penn now. This is my fifth year. I've never been observed in my classroom Um, I have ironically had administrators come to my classes, but um only You know to to discuss matters of the day with my students not to evaluate me Um, I never yeah, this is my fifth year. I was at NYU for 20 years and I was observed my first year That's it Um, so this is actually this connects the last two questions All right in a way right because one of the reasons it's so difficult to study is we don't have very much of a paper trail And the reason we don't have a paper trail is It's not a professional enterprise Not really so how do you Sorry, how do you get behind the classroom door? And one I did was I just went hunting for every memoir I could find um I went hunting for all the student evaluations Which go back to the 1920s by the way student evaluations go back to the 1920s student newspapers And all the committees because even though in some ways Teaching has remained fairly static and I think Unfortunately There's also been a goodly amount of discussion about it and a lot of efforts to reform it And what that generated are the inevitable? You know committee reports and dialogue surrounding those Now all these sources are imperfect and incomplete like all sources are and we could talk about student evaluations Of course for a year Tell you some things and not other things but one thing I will say apologetically Is that because the book relies so much on archival sources? It definitely has a bias towards elite schools like fancy private schools and kind of big well-known flagship schools and the reason is those institutions have the wherewithal to preserve the most So that's where I could get the most stuff There are exceptions to that For some random reason that I still don't know Cal State Dominguez Hills has a terrific set of workouts Not not you know not an elite school fascinating school, but Not certainly not a rich one. So there were some exceptions to that But there weren't enough of them and that's definitely a bias and I think a weakness in the book Well, it's a it's an interesting weakness But doesn't sound like one that can easily be Cured or yeah Unless, you know, we that's always the thing with primary sources is the possibility of finding that one trove That's in the trunk. Yeah, that one's a Oh, definitely. Yeah We have we have more questions Just piling it all over the place and and this is great friends if you'd like to Declote any of your camera on and appear on stage that's easy as can be just click the raised hip I just didn't even finish saying that and someone clicked her head. All right, just for that's again, obama You get to come on stage. Now, let's see if she's if she's ready or she Hello Jen Hi, how are you? I don't know why I'm not showing Yeah, I'm just getting your uh your audio right now. Oh, there it is So I'm looking at my second screen um I I'm so not seeing but but we can hear your voice. So why don't you go ahead? Okay? Sorry. Well, yeah So my question I was trying to formulate it in the in the chat and it was a little long so I'm an instructional designer and I'm you know in the area that I that I may and I there are several institutions That's around me and I'm seeing a really big struggle with how to proceed with online education designing online education and Again best practices. Everybody wants to know best practices as you mentioned You know, we just don't have that much evidence going back um But what lessons from the past of of higher education? Can you think do you think we can take forward with us in conversations with administration and faculty? to get them to implement strategies That there may be, you know, not a lot of research on but you know showing Great promise things like engagement and you know sense of community and They don't want to hear it. You know, they're we don't have a school of ed A lot of people feel like it's just too touchy-feely. It's not really, you know research and You know, we're having these hard conversations I'm having a hard time having these conversations because it's getting it's getting really hard for people to listen about the The right reasons or the right way to in my opinion To design future online courses Well, you know, I think it's fascinating that um The question of online has already come up in so many different contexts because in some ways it did spawn the book A story I tell at the very beginning is that I conceived of the book when I was at a debate about online instruction probably five six years ago it featured in bold terms the The futurists against the led ice and the futurists said that online instruction was can make everything better because it was going to democratize Instruction and knowledge and the led ice said it was going to make everything worse because it was going to reinforce different kinds of inequities It was an interesting discussion But when I walked away, I actually realized that the two sides as it were Had much more in common than they recognized What I had in common was they believed they knew what the baseline was Right if you're going to say that either everything is going to be better or everything's going to be worse You must at least have some implicit understanding of what that everything is And and really the reason I wrote the book at the most pedestrian level was just to try to figure that out You know like what has the baseline been? And you know to to take the question more directly like what do what what do I think that? You know this particular educator could possibly learn or apply from this book I'd say a few things I'd say number one the importance of the student voice In reform and change This is a big theme of the book Because I would say if there was one thing that surprised me the most it was how much organized activity there was Across time by students to improve instruction. In fact at one point in the 1920s There's a conference in upstate new york state about college instruction a student conference Where students representatives delegates were 50 different institutions gather And they invited of all people games harvey robinson who was the historian at columbia and by the way a vociferous critic of how bad college teaching was To give like the keynote This is a student organized conference about basically how shitty college teaching is And this is in the 1920s when suddenly the university got extremely big basically because Two reasons it was a time of relative athletes and more women were going and at university of michigan, which is one of the places where Student evaluations were born again in the 20s people start writing these evals like you know I went to this course the room was supposed to fit a hundred. There were 400 people there They were sitting outside and in the hall. There was one guy up there with a mic that didn't work and he was mumbling Why am I in Ann Arbor? And and you know these complaints had effects And often good effects and they forced institutions to change So if you look in the 1920s, you have the introduction of precepts and tutors you have honors programs You have comprehensive exams You have other kinds of kind of small group instructional as they were called back then experiments Very much spawned by this protest and you know, I won't belabor the details But you can say see a similar dynamic in the 50s with the gis the gis were tough customers Like they come back like and if somebody's not doing the job, they let you know like these are not 18 year old kids Like they they felt like an guata canal, you know, they're not going to listen to this joke or just like jaw on um And and that was really important then in the 60s like we forget that you know The student movement as it were wasn't just targeted at vietnam, you know, and at You know civil rights slash racism, although of course those were motivators and targets. It was also targeted at poor teacher You look at the the you look at the paradigmatic or the first paradigmatic student protest document the poor tyron statement You'll find at least three gunkers in the poor tyron statement where they i.e. Tom Hayden who wrote it say and by the way We're in these huge impersonal classes where we're not learning very much And our professors seem to only care about their research and make things incredibly impersonal That's in the poor tyron statement. So I would say the first thing to remember is just how influential students have been in this story um And I guess the second thing that I would say is When teaching has improved Part of it is because students have demanded it But I think at other times different parties different faculty and administrative parties Have successfully persuaded their colleagues that this is an intellectual enterprise So I hear what the questioner was saying about the prejudice here and again like I was saying earlier i've I've experienced it directly. Oh, this is so touchy feely you know, uh, this is sort of emotional and He's kind of intuitive but boring It turns out that like how to teach algebra well is a hugely complicated question Um, uh, the problem is in our culture. We often don't regard it as such Um, and you know, I wrote an essay in the new york review of books a couple years ago about this where they gave it a terrible headline It was called why is teaching so bad? Which is a ridiculous title because what does it even mean right with millions of people doing it? My title, which of course they didn't use is why aren't teachers intellectuals? Um, not that I don't think they are but in the culture. They're not regarded as such And I would say the most successful changes have happened when Reformers had framed these things as intellectual questions, which by the way they are You know, how to teach any discipline well is an incredibly complex intellectual question and I think if you want to engage intellectuals That's what you need to do well said Thank you Thank you for the very very deep question and please good luck with your work at Stevens. Please say hi to my friends there, too Um, and john, thank you for that for that great question. Um, plunging back this time I love this idea of students holding a conference on the Yeah, we we have a a few more historical Questions I want to bring you up since we're in that mood And this is one from the splendid caper houseki at southwest, minnesota And uh, kate says she's curious. She went to high school in the and college in the 70s How would you compare the big changes then and the ones appearing to take place now? Oh boy Well Here's what I would say about the the big changes in the 60s and 70s Um, uh, a lot of them were about experimentation this thing called innovation And there was a great deal of it. Uh, it took a whole variety of forms Um, uh on small scale, uh, there were kind of encounter groups and tea groups and psychotherapy inspired small group activities But there were also kind of much bigger larger Um, in some ways as I was saying earlier more in-person reforms like so-called teaching machines And program learning which we associate with figures like bf skinner who's an important figure in my book So I would say that actually there was probably more flux and definitely more controversy about pedagogy itself You know, what I haven't seen in this moment yet is that There's a lot of discussion, but to cut back to the earlier questions I haven't seen a huge amount of student protests around these questions I suppose you could call some of the demands for tuition Reduction version of that. Yes, you know, um, but that strikes me as a much more specific and targeted thing You know, um, uh, that is obviously, um, uh the implication Or the assumption is it's not as good But I haven't seen A huge amount of student effort to try to document and establish and Promote that idea whether it's right or wrong. I think we could see that You know, I study dead people. So I don't unlike brian who's a futurist. I don't know anything about the future I but you know, I would say that the that The overlap would be that in both cases like to go back to robert zinnerman. We we know something is happening and we don't know what it is um, you know, uh, you know, mr. Or miss jones That there's clearly a sense that we're at some sort of precipice Unlike the 60s and 70s It was in some ways imposed upon us by the pandemic, right? And the pandemic is in that sense sui genre As i'll show in my next book we've had pandemics before but not pandemics that forced all of us to go on to our laptops Which is I which is where I am now But I think we're just too close to that revolution to To get a purchase on it Well, we'll see we'll see how we can do Exactly Well, thank you. Thank you Kate for the really nice question Sarah sangr goryo has a question that takes us a little further forward in history Uh, and she takes us to 1983 Uh, and sarah asks us about the uh, followed of the book a nation at risk for that report How can we start to professionalization? Systematic issues due to the commodifying of higher education Well, see this is really interesting Um, and there are many dimensions to sarah's excellent question I'm sure many of you familiar with nation at risk that that the mini history of it is to me fascinating Because jimmy carter was the first president who established the department of education Most people don't realize that and reagan was elected in 1980 on the platform of eliminating it I felt that it was extraneous that this was essentially a state and local enterprise and not a federal one But th bell who wrote nation at risk essentially pulled the rug out under from reagan He was this person this professor from utah nobody knew very much about him And it was thought that he was going to be kind of a placeholder until the department went away But bell wrote an essay. That's really what it is Arguing that our nation was at risk Especially at economic risk because we weren't actually preparing the workforce to compete with at that time The fear was japan now it would be china And and it was actually so effective And resonated so deeply that It eliminated the effort to get rid of the department of that and reagan apparently was pissed Because he did want to get rid of that but once the nation at risk happened He couldn't because again there was so much discussion around it And look, you know the nation at risk a lot of people have taken it to task for appropriate reasons Especially for the way that it imagined Young people only as future workers Not necessarily as citizens and the highly economicistic way it framed its appeal But at the same time it did galvanize attention around the issue And I would say to sarah that we are awaiting Our nation at risk moment In high red instruction Um, uh, obviously for people who care there's a lot of awareness about not how bad it is But how uneven it is. That's the adjective. I keep coming back to radically uneven Uh, uh, there is an awareness of that but there hasn't been a single galvanizing document or report or moment um, it really focuses us on weaknesses of Of this instruction and its unevenness and and uh, you know, I don't know if we're going to have one About 20 years ago. I would thought um, the uh, national academies book how we learned might have done that Yeah, yeah, and then there was the boy report, you know earners boy or did this thing that you know college teaching in the 90s And it isn't that we haven't tried You know, there's been a whole lot of talk. That's for sure You know, but there hasn't been anything that really resonated like nation at risk And look that the nation at risk moment. It might come about college costs rather than college instruction Uh, you know, yes, I I just reviewed the new york review a series of books about that, you know the cost crisis um, and I that might end up being what really gets people to sit up and take notice um, that is the price rather than the quality I do think they're related, but sometimes, you know, you get more attention by looking at the price Especially during a recession Friends your your questions are coming in and they're great. Um, and the uh, the questions are now shifting towards the present In this crisis moment and and pointing in the future. I just want to have a quick shout out You mentioned uh teaching machines twice and bf skender Just want to have a shout out to our very very first guest back in 2016 Audrey waters who has uh, who's the expert on this very subject um, so one question comes from um a gentleman who can't be here right now one Tobin and you two had an exchange we tangled with each other and the pages of the chronicle of higher ed Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I like I like what you wrote Yeah, this is this is back in march and and and you said that we should be Analyzing the shift online that was happening in spring and tom said no, absolutely not You can't do that because it's emergency learning I'm just wondering Six months now. I mean, it's a it's a long time seven months what uh What do you think now about uh analyzing this this this experience that we're in the middle of right now? You know, I took tom's point and I thought it was a really good point And I did try to nod to it in my own piece But I probably didn't underscore it enough that was an emergency And you don't render or you shouldn't render a global judgment based on people's response to an emergency um, but I still think you can learn stuff and I think that's sort of the gospel of Scholars everywhere, right? I think I take tom's point that perhaps I exaggerated what we could learn from that But it was still something like we could learn how people respond in an emergency Right and that's important because there will be other ones, right that we can't forecast Um, you know to cut to your question brian. I mean It's interesting, you know What difference does six ones make? I think that's an open question and because the system is so incredibly diverse and variegated I think the answers to that are going to radically differ depending on where you are on the system You know, there's no question that a lot of us myself included spent a big part of the summer Working on online adaptations and we weren't expecting to do that, you know But unlike tom most of us including me had never taught online until the emergency And so, you know, it's worth asking well, you know, is this part of the same emergency? Is this still You know a study of an emergency and not a test case about the medium itself and I think that's an interesting question I don't really hear the answer. Thank you. That's that's a very very generous and kind answer to the to the question And tom, thank you for thank you for raising that. I'm glad to see us continue this exchange Yeah, we have another question for another gentleman named tom who is also brilliant. Um, and also a friend of the program tom Haynes, uh, who asks, uh related question How much of the criticism of online or remote learning stems from the illumination of bad teaching techniques Um, that's interesting and you can interpret this question in a bunch of different ways, you know Um, uh, I would say that frankly one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that we're having this very discussion You know, I think that um, you know, for me The big question always now ever since the digital revolution is Why do we have to be in the same room? So, you know, I uh, brian you and I and the other people on this call are not in the same room Um, and we seem to be having an interesting discussion, you know, and I've certainly learned something from it Um, when and why do you have to be in the same room? Um to me that is the question My favorite song in hamilton is the room where it happens and this is very dweeby because now whenever I hear that song I think of this question like what is the room where it happens. What happens in that room in the physical space How's it different from a chat room? um, I The other way of thinking about the question is well Is the real problem is it's shown us that a lot of online instructors like zimmerman Who had never been an online instructor just aren't that good because they've never done it And that's also a very reasonable question I mean, I would argue to go back to when I said at the very beginning that because my classes are so small I think the gap between what I do now and what I did in the physical space is probably less There's still a gap and again, I'm not necessarily the best judge. This is one man talking and a highly subjective man at that um, but uh, I would expect that if I taught a class of 80 now online That the gap between what I was doing as an 80 person instructor online vis-a-vis face-to-face would be much larger Than the gap I'm facing now. I do feel a gap, but I don't think it's as big as it would be if my classes were bigger Understood understood. Thank you. Thank you for the deep question. We always count on time. And thank you for Comments just uh, just want to share from the chat one of them. Zach shank win the phrase of the day award for the zoom where it happens and uh Johnna Higgins freeze Says that one of the blinds is the one of the benefits of higher education is a sort of a meeting That college grads tend to marry into marry each other But we also have um, let's see a video a video comment coming from Ryan craig Who has a question to go back to the question of student evaluations? um How they play out and in full I have to confess In one of my classes ryan was a student and uh wrote some very fascinating research on student evaluations He's also an adamin physiology instructor. Um, so We have to bear this in mind Hello ryan Hello ryan your your introductions are always so fascinating on how you're going to flatter us Uh, professor ziverman fantastic to meet you virtually We too. Thank you So It was fascinating to hear you talk a little bit about the student reports of instruction or we can call them The uh, and of course evaluations the student evaluations, whatever you want to call them Uh, one question that I have for you is First off in what ways do you use those reports that you get from the instruction those evaluations those For your watching how do you break them down? How do you analyze them? How do you take those interesting bits of information and improve your own teaching? Well, um here, of course the expert is yet another author published by greg britain scott gelber who wrote a whole book about the history of these evaluations but To answer the question here. I think that what I learned researching the book is that they can tell you a lot Um, uh, but there are things they can't tell you So what can they tell you that really matters they can tell you things like Does the teacher return work in a timely fashion? Which turns out to be extremely important for people to learn in and you can only really glean by asking the students Does the teacher make herself or himself readily available outside of class? Also very important Also something you can only get from the students. Um, and those things really matter So I take those things seriously but and here's the huge but How much did you learn from this class? It turns out that all of us are very poor judges of that Um, and when we've actually tried to see if there's any relationship between people's perception of what they learned And what they actually learned as best we can determine it It's very tenuous You know tenuous doesn't mean absent. It just means tenuous, you know So I'm a big believer in student evaluations But I'm also a believer that they shouldn't be the sole measure You know, and I think that unfortunately that debate like so many others has just been ridiculously polarized Like your four student evaluations, you're against them and that's just dumb You know like like that's like saying to me like do you like weather? You know, it's like I like good weather. I don't like bad weather very much Um, so we should absolutely survey our students. We should listen very carefully to what they say But we should also acknowledge that there are Important things they can't tell us That we need other mechanisms for measure And I think that's spot on everything that you're saying. I think uh this room Virtually that brian has filled up here is the choir here in many different ways to what you're saying So how do we deal with those administrators and those promotion and tenure committees? That'll look at those student reports as the end all be all of how you're doing as an instructor And and how do we start to change that culture at the higher ed level across the board? Yeah, well, you know, I think in some ways it cuts back to what I was saying earlier about About embracing all this as intellectual activity, right? So if we really did that we would have cultures appear of you that were in some ways disciplinary specific um I have to tell you that I don't think I could go into your classroom if you were a physicist And render a really sound judgment of your instruction I I could pick up on some things and I would still like to go by the way I think I could learn something but I wouldn't want my Evaluation to be determinative in any way and the reason is I don't know enough about physics Um, uh, but I do want other physicists doing that and ultimately that's going to be the only solvent here, right? You know, uh, uh, I don't know how to make this happen But I do know that the only way To reduce an over dependence on student evaluations is to have a different card to have a peer driven card Right, there's your answer But there's also a cross time Been a huge amount of resistance to that and that's another thing to book documents Often and this was very painful for me to read about in the idiom of academic freedom This by the way drives me insane And the reason it drives me insane is I am a zealot about academic freedom I always have been in some ways my next book is about it What I understand academic freedom mean is that we all must be free to pursue our ideas And our research Without the state or anybody else telling us what we can and can't learn or know Or say and that's absolutely integral to the production of knowledge But academic freedom doesn't mean that I can just do whatever they want in my classroom, right? Um, uh, but you find across time a lot of people saying now I don't want you observing me in class because that's going to inhibit my academic freedom It's like how like how is that going to inhibit like your production of knowledge, you know Or your contribution to these dialogues it isn't That's a balderization and I think a radical misrepresentation of what academic freedom is or should be But it's a major game in the book I'm glad it is and and Ryan Delighted for your question. Yeah. Thank you so much It's a fascinating perspective that you bring and hope to more people in the administration following this line of thinking Yeah We try to Bring the end of the form Towards thinking about more of the future and we've touched on that a little bit But I wanted to bring up some questions that uh, folks have had that really are very direct on this So this is one from Shin Lee Wong the University of Manitoba Shin Lee if I mispronounce your name my apologies. I'm working on the Chinese pronunciation What's going to happen to the precarious labor situation in higher education? And I think in Manitoba they'd be called sessionals and of course here in the u.s. Uh adjuncts Um a proportion that grows ever larger This is a huge question and it's deeply connected the question of professionalization, right? I mean the the sad fact right now in the united states and because i'm american You know i'm pretty ignorant about canada with apologies But um, you know, we've got about a million and a half professors and only a half million of them are tenure tenure track So the majority of our faculty um or contingent or adjunct faculty and um Obviously, I can't speak to the future But what I can say and this comes up near the end of the book is that You know We're not going to be able to actually professionalize teaching In the ways i'm describing if we're simultaneously starving teachers Like that just doesn't compute Um and look not all adjuncts getting starved right and I think you know, that's important to point out too, right? If you're a law school and you hire a lawyer from a firm downtown because she's an expert on whatever product liability And uh, that's great. You know and but the point is she's got a day job and also a well remunerated one Right when i'm talking about the so-called freeway flyers Uh, which I was one at one point, you know, you're trying to string together four different classes without health insurance Um low and behold when we study those people we find out that they don't spend as much time talking to students And then we spend as much time evaluating student work. You know, why not because they're on the highway Like I wanted to honor if I were them um, so so so thank you for the question and you know, this is going to be a really hard one for all of us, you know, um You know, what kind of profession do we want to be? I think that what the question points us to at least in the American context the united states context Sorry Is a kind of dystopic idea where you have a small number of people who are researchers Who actually have health insurance and then a huge sort of academic? lump in proletariat of people that teach And I don't know how to professionalize the teaching function, but that ain't going to do it Right that will have the opposite effect Thank thank you for that for that vision. Michael meeks, uh, professor louise anastasia had a question about that I think you just kind of Walked into an answer for that But I want to um, and thank you shinly. I want to uh, bring up a related question to this that comes up from uh, Joe supernauh Who asks about lifelong learning, uh, how do you see, uh The shift towards I believe she's referring towards greater professionalization Towards the shifting of the future for lifelong learning well, look, I mean Um, I think those question is incredibly important and we have to remind ourselves always that in the united states Roughly half the students go to community college And uh, the community college students. I think I read recently the third of them are 25 or older You know, uh Because I teach at the university of pennsylvania a very expensive a very elite A very traditional in some ways school one of the big messages. I always have to give to my students is get out more You know like your experience is not the modal one nor was mine So think about this like I went to college when I was 18 I majored in a liberal art I was residential i.e. I lived at the college and I completed in four years Okay, and I thought that was the norm It isn't All right, and now it really isn't in fact all those experiences every single one that I just alluded to are minority experiences Like I am the minority The biggest major in the united states is business the second biggest major is the allied health sciences Most people take six years to complete they don't go when they're 18 Um, I uh the community college is almost none of them are residential So, you know, I think those question is just another reminder to all of us that we need to get out more And I mean god, we're to start. I mean there's so many dimensions of this I mean one of the reasons the community colleges were in many ways Leaders in the online space and brian will know much more about this than me is precisely because their students were in the You know what we now I don't like this term, but non-traditional category Right, um, uh much less leeway many more constraints both occupationally and family wise And so, you know, if we think about Life long learning as more and more people of different age groups Um, uh engaging themselves in formal education Uh, obviously, you know the technology piece is a huge part of that But again, again, my concern is this, you know, if we do decide Then there's a room where it has to happen and it's not the zoom room I don't want those people getting the short end of this stick Right, um, and that's a big if right because again, we're so close to this revolution We're still figuring it out But if there is something something irreplaceable that happens in the room the physical room where it happens I want all of our students and all of our future citizens to have access to that not just mine That is a fantastic statement and also I have to say a ringing way to conclude our session today Because we are right at the top of the hour and and we with all due regret. I have to wrap things up Um You've been a fantastic guest Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me and thanks for the great questions and also the way that you mediated them It's not easy, but you did a terrific job. So I'm really grateful. Thank you The forum community is a beautiful beautiful one one one question is uh, you mentioned Obviously, we need to be in touch with your brain to follow up with your thoughts We have a link to the amateur hour here But also, how can we follow your work in general? What's the best way? Yeah? Well, here's the thing. I I don't do social media and that's a whole other conversation So, you know, I do write a newspaper column every week Uh, and if you're interested in my work, if you just make a google alert about me, you will see it Sounds good. Uh, you know and that seems to be the reason I don't do social media is just because it would be too distracting for me You know, I know myself well enough And I feel so distracted already. It's not because of any sort of global objection to it. It's just because of You know, how I learn as an individual right? That's that's how that's how things go. Yeah Well, thank you. Thank you again. Uh, I'm really looking forward to bringing you back. Um, I think I like it Yeah, yeah, and I look forward to participating in other of these discussions. Thank you. Good luck with your next two books All right. Thank you. Take care But don't go away friends, um First accept a huge compliment from professor Zimmerman about your questions Uh, you guys are that good your questions are on that rich. Thank you. Thank you all Let me just mention a couple things about the next few weeks first of all, if you'd like to uh join our poll or we're asking about, uh, you know our schedule in december as well as about, uh Uh adding another social media platform as well as a couple things about guests Go to this quick poll. Just go to survey monkey.com slash r slash f t f 2020 and fill some things out Uh, if you'd like to keep talking about these questions about the history of teaching and about evaluations and about the Zoom where it happens. Uh, we have lots of room for this conversation to occur on, um on social media So just to use, uh, uh twitter is usually the most popular one just just use the hashtag f t t e Remember our topics for the next few months are just manifold Covering a whole range of topics. So make sure we get to see you there If you'd like to dive back into the past looking at our previous programs which touch on pedagogy and social justice And quite a few topics related to this. Please just go to tiny url.com slash f t f archive right there I need to um and above all It's been a great talking with all of you with thinking with all of you. Please Take care of yourselves. Stay safe during this outrageous time And, uh, we'll see you online next time Thank you very much. Bye. Bye