University teachers’ general reluctance to share openly their teaching material has bothered me for years. I do understand why, but at the same time not at all. I understand (but I don’t want to accept) that research has a higher value than teaching within universities, and that teaching therefore must be given a lower priority if you want to pursue an academic career. I also understand (but I find it deplorable) that a lecturer without a tenured position need to guard the strenuously developed teaching material to ensure further employment. I don’t understand why highly qualified persons, who are used to compete for research grants and whose research is scrutinised inside out, are afraid of letting colleagues in to their classroom and to open up for critical feedback on their teaching. Teaching is private. Sharing is scary. Maybe even more so at the local level, within your own university.
Two of my ongoing projects have a common goal: To find and document good examples of teaching and to make them public. One project is about Object Based Learning as a tool for active learning and the other is more broadly about learning in the multicultural classroom.
One of my very creative researcher/teacher colleagues – she is, by the way, also very good at sharing – verbalized what could be one of several potential outcomes of my projects: A lot of half-done stuff (in Swedish: “en massa halvfärdiga grejor”) for other teachers to be inspired by, to take home and rebuild and improve and use. Who wants to show and share their half-done stuff for the public?
Writing is serious business for me and I hate to let go of unfinished texts. How can I then, in my privileged project leader position, expect my teaching colleagues to let go of their favourite methods without knowing how the material will be re-used, attributed or contextualised? I have decided to go first. My official blog at Lund University will be published soon (not quite yet, I have to squirm and ponder and dread a bit more). I will describe and share some of the tools that I have found useful over the years, for meetings and for teaching. On themes that I find challenging, such as introduction, inclusion, participation and cooperation. Good enough for others to use, hopefully, but informal and not as elaborated as it has to be, to be presented at a conference or published in a journal.
More about sharing:
Corina is crap but one good thing might come out of it. Online teaching, and meetings, is so much easier if you can prepare and share the sessions together with colleagues, and I do hope that shared teaching will be a norm when the pandemic is over.
Reference
Higher value given to research is not a Swedish phenomenon, see for example:
EUA, Career paths in teaching: Thematic Peer Group Report. Learning and Teaching Paper #2, 2019.
