Dear readers: The News of the Week is going on vacation! We will be back in your in-boxes on August 4, rested, refreshed, shaking the sand from between our toes, and ready to go. Hope you, as well, can take a break – SV.
Teaching and Learning
An Instructor Reveals the Ins and Outs of Ungrading (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2023): Robert Talbert reports on his push to minimize or eliminate grades, and the questions that were raised in the process. [And two books on grading: David Clark and Robert Talbert, Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices that Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education, Susan D. Blum, ed., Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), and Joe Feldman, Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms.
How Did You Get Here? (Matt Brim and Jessica Murray, June 28, 2023): The authors describe how having students write educational narratives can promote slow active learning.
4 Steps to Help You Plan for ChatGPT in Your Classroom (Flower Darby, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2023): Why you should understand how to teach with AI tools – even if you have no plans to actually use them.
Coachin’ in the Classroom (Greg Flebig, Faculty Focus, June 26, 2023): Colleagues who valued students above content stood head and shoulders above their peers in the eyes of their students, colleagues, and supervisors. They taught so students could thrive. They challenged students to take responsibility for their education and worked alongside them in the teaching and learning process as mentors or colleagues.
Reimagining the High-Impact Educational Practices That Change Lives (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, June 26, 2023): How to implement at scale the educationally consequential activities that will make college the transformative experience it ought to be.
As an example of one transformative educational experience, we can point to the “Global Connections Classes” offered within the GLCA/GLAA. Here’s Deidre Johnston (Hope) and Irene Lopez (Kenyon) to explain further: How Can I Get Started with a Global Connections Class? (Deidre Johnston and Irene Lopez, Psychsessions: Conversations About Teaching N’Stuff, May 16, 2023): In this AskPsychSessions feature, Marianne talks with Dr. Deidre Johnston from Hope College and Dr. Irene Lopez from Kenyon College about how to create classes with global engagement. You can learn much more including how to assess the impact of these experiences by reading their book The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement. (A 32-min podcast)
Getting Ahead of Ghosting (Kerry O’Grady, Inside Higher Ed, May 3, 2023): Advice for working with student who, with no proactive communication, don’t attend class or miss assignments.
First-Gen Students
Q&A with Thea Smekens at Ohio Wesleyan University (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, June 26, 2023): In her inaugural role as director of first-generation student success, Thea Smekens will oversee a new office for first-gen learners, promoting community and access for students.
How Academic Advising Impacts the Question: Are You Coming Back Next Semester? (Dimple J. Martin, Faculty Focus, June 28, 2023): Given the importance of academic advising, research consistently highlights its great significance for students’ personal, academic, and social lives, especially for first gen students.
Student Mental Health
Student Mental Health and Pressure to Do Well (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, June 29, 2023): Respondents to the Student Voice survey on health and wellness feel pressure to do well at different rates based on mental health, with students who describe their mental health as poor feeling the most pressure. What’s going on and how can higher ed help?
Affirmative Action: And Just Like That…
Supreme Court Rejects Affirmative Action (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, June 29, 2023): Justices deem admissions programs at both Harvard (private) and UNC Chapel Hill (public) to be unconstitutional.
Ketanji Brown Jackson Exposed the Supreme Court’s ‘Colorblind’ Lie (Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, June 29, 2023): Sometimes when you say that the sky is falling and someone tells you that it’s not falling at all, there’s a distinct chance, as Anita Hill once put it, that the two of you simply live under a different sky. See, as well, ‘Destructive’ and ‘Devastating’: Dissenting Justices Denounce Majority Ruling in Admissions Case (Nell Gluckman, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2023): In a 69-page dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, she argued that “minority students will bear the burden of today’s decision.”
The Supreme Court’s Decision Reveals a Gulf Between Two Views of Race and Merit (Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2023): The U.S. Supreme Court looked behind the curtain. Then it knocked over the table and chairs. Now, colleges are left with one big mess and a slew of questions that will define a new era for college admissions in a nation riven by racial disparities.
The Supreme Court’s Blow to US Affirmative Action Is No Coincidence (Eddie R. Cole, The Guardian, June 29, 2023): The court’s ruling reflects a decades-long drive to return higher education to the control of a white privileged class. See, as well, This Moment Is the Culmination of a Decades-Long Backlash Against Affirmative Action (Jerome Karabel, New York Times, June 29, 2023).
Curtailing Affirmative Action Is a Blow Against a Rising Generation (Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic, June 29, 2023): The gap between a more diverse America and less diverse elite colleges will only grow.
‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal’ (Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic, June 29, 2023): Race, by definition, has never been neutral.
The Decision That Upends the Equal-Protection Clause (Adam Harris, The Atlantic, June 29, 2023): “Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent.
The End of Affirmative Action (Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, June 29, 2023): The scale of what has been lost is difficult to assess in the moment. But not entirely impossible.
After Affirmative Action Ends (Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker, June 26, 2023): The next big question for school admissions will likely be the legality of “race-neutral” methods that are designed with the continuing goal of producing diverse student bodies.
What Comes After Affirmative Action? (Rafael Walker, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2023): The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t need to be a setback for social justice.
The Long Read: Reading
Everyone Likes Reading. Why Are We So Afraid of It? (A.O. Scott, New York Times, June 21, 2023): Book bans, chatbots, pedagogical warfare: What it means to read has become a minefield.
On the Bookshelf
The Other Climate Crisis (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, June 29, 2023): How to teach responsibly in today’s highly polarized political climate. Features overviews of two recent books on moral and intellectual history: Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (Harvard) and Susan Neiman’s Left Is Not Woke (Wiley).
Webinars
The Future of Race in Admissions: Wednesday July 5 at 2 p.m. ET, a virtual event examining the U.S. Supreme Court’s new ruling rejecting colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions. (Available for Chronicle of Higher Education subscribers.)
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)