Perhaps academic freedom and course quality issues come into conflict all the time, but it is usually hard to see.
From the instructor’s point of view, academic freedom extends to many areas, including how a subject is taught, what work is expected of students, and what readings are assigned.
From an administrator’s point of view (and we can count here department chairs in places where those people have control over evaluating faculty), course quality may be a concern but is difficult to assess.
In many colleges, there are two assurances of course quality. One is at the college-wide, course-level certification. Here the curriculum committee examines state and federal standards, and assures that courses approved to be offered at the college fulfill these standards. The second assurance is faculty evaluation. Faculty whose class offerings are not up to the standard of the college are weeded out, corrected, or reassured during faculty evaluation.
For some administrators, this is not enough. They want to be able to walk into a class at any time, sit down, and see what’s happening. In some places, they do. In others, this is seen as an intrusion that not only makes an instructor nervous, but suggests distrust that is then communicated to students.
Online teaching takes care of this problem, at least from the administrator’s side.
It is now technologically possible for an administrator to enter the college’s course management system and “sit in” on any class. At some colleges they do this with permission, at others they just do it. At some colleges, this is transparent and expected, at others it is not. I just heard a respected administrator say at a conference last week that they sometimes ask permission, sometimes notify the instructor, and if there’s any refusal or “problem”, they just do it. After all, it’s their job.
In California, Title V says that “regular effective contact” must occur between instructor and students. Since often an administrator’s first concern is about how often the instructor is “attending” their own class, this provides an excellent justification for entering a class online to “see what’s up”. In online classes, students feel free to email unedited complaints, often to not very web-savvy administrators, that their instructor didn’t answer their email (it’s been all of 6 hours) or failed to notify them of a deadline (which has been posted in three places on the class website for weeks).
Does this kind of thing violate academic freedom?
Not if academic freedom means only the right to teach a class using the materials and approaches the instructor wants to use, and the administrator’s visits don’t seem to affect that.
But if you consider the tradition of academic freedom, we should also look at what it means, not just what it does. Academic freedom is based on respect for the individual instructor. It is the idea that political differences should not be a cause for restricting the content or method an instructor uses, not only because politics are malleable, but because the professor is considered an expert in the field. S/he is respected as more of an expert than the administrator when it comes to the discipline.
Coming in and sitting down in a professor’s class to “see how things are going” violates that respect, whether it’s on-site or online.
Now, I realize that many departments restrict the academic freedom of their own colleagues, dictating which textbooks they must use and which method they should use. The claim (always) is that it’s easier for students or “ensures” that all students in the same section of the class “get” the same thing. As far as I’m concerned, if we’re thinking like this, we are also showing lack of respect for instructors, and we might as well just all do computer tutorials of the same content the same way.
Such incursions on academic freedom are rarely questioned, and they aren’t questioned at all at for-profit institutions, where not only textbooks but entire courses are designed by someone other than the instructor, who just guides discussion and gives grades. This model provides “consistency”, they say, and value for money, as these instructors are paid less than those at public institutions.
Online education is new enough that people can make up rules as they go along. When I began teaching online in 1998, it would have been absurd to consider that the “rules” were different for online — the challenges, yes, but not the traditions of academic respect. Over the years, this has radically changed, until we are accepting of a system that lauds methods which value standardization over creativity, and administrative interference over academic freedom.
The system has become so oppressive that it is almost impossible for instructors to take back their right to teach the way they want, using the resources they choose. Given the fast-paced changes occurring in our “classroom” (the internet), we are reneging our responsibilities if we don’t examine the options for learning, take advantage of the affordances of the web, and experiment openly with new methods and resources. It is very difficult to do this with administrators hanging out in online classes, adopting Course Quality rubrics based on decade-old models, and telling us we all need to use Blackboard because of FERPA (not so) or college liability (also not so).
But, they say, what about the online prof who doesn’t show up for committee meetings, only logs into their own class every two weeks, doesn’t answer student emails for a month, and just uploads handouts into their classes without offering any form of student interaction?
That’s what faculty evaluation is for (remember that? scroll up). If an on-site faculty member didn’t come to class, read aloud for hours out of the textbook, lectured in long boring tirades, we’d see it on student evaluations and class visits that are part of evaluation. Course quality can be improved for all classes through better faculty evaluations, especially those which include instructional innovation, originality and creativity as evaluative factors.
Course quality and academic freedom meet here, where all elements of a class and its teaching are discussed. We shouldn’t let the ease of accessing online classes (and of standardizing instead of innovating) set a different standard for online, just because we can. In doing so, we’re losing valuable elements, academic freedom being the most crucial.
This is a really interesting post for a number of reasons. I’ve found myself (very undesirably) on the other side of the fence. Last year I was tasked with an “audit” of existing use of technology in the Faculty, and part of this was to login to each and every course in the LMS to see what people were doing. Beyond the administrative pain in the butt this was, it really didn’t feel right.
Knowing what was being done in courses was (and is) something I’m really interested in, but conducting an evaluation without the involvement of the instructors (and indeed perhaps even without their knowledge) just felt inappropriate.
Ultimately I boiled down the data to the point where it was speaking generally about percentage of courses that used XYZ, rather than specific examples. But I was definitely struck by the distinct differences in perspective about what the instructor’s rights were.
As another (far worse) example, at one point there was an industrial action initiative undertaken by one of the local unions that involved withholding marks while the debate raged. At the same time I got a call from someone inquiring about whether anyone was using the Grade Centre in the LMS. No specifics were mentioned, but there was little doubt about “why” they wanted to know.
Truly I felt like a hitman here and really didn’t want to be involved, so I ultimately tried to distance myself from the situation as much as possible because nothing good could come from such an invasion from my perspective – and really a violation of confidentiality and trust in me.
I emphasised something to the effect of “Yes some courses do have marks in the grade book, however you can’t take them at face value because there’s no way of telling whether they’re comprehensive and/or final – you’ll need to speak with the instructor on that.”
It was a truly horrific experience that did little to inspire my confidence in the system, or make it appear that learning and teaching was the shared goal. Indeed it did more to disillusion me than anything else had before. Politics like this has no place in an institution, and yet still politics exists – and in fact influence how (and even “if”) learning and teaching actually takes place.
I’ve just depressed myself thinking about it…
I’ve found surveys to be a good way of finding out how faculty use technology. 😉
These experiences are horrible, but I’m not sure why they put you on the other (I assume you mean administrative) side of the fence?
As an adjunct, I have no problem with admin types coming into my class, because at my former school, no one ever did. It was disturbing, to say the least, that I taught there for 3 years and my chair came and watched me teach exactly once, for 20 minutes. My dean here has come to see me teach, and I have no problem with them ‘sitting in’ on my online classes, as long as they do not insert themselves into the class (responding to students, etc). If that were the case, I would be livid. Yes, you can observe, and talk to me about it, but do not usurp my authority.
But you raise an interesting point about FERPA and all of that. I detest Blackboard with a vengeance. I want to take the creators of Blackboard to an undisclosed location and get them to scrap the whole thing and start over…anything that makes it less cumbersome! I’ve thought about going to WP, or Moodle, but wonder about the FERPA implications, and question if too MUCH openness can cause students to withhold something for fear of inviting unwanted (and unenrolled) attention. Hmmm. I must htink on this.
Hi Melissa! Yes, indeed – when I was hired we had an associate who hadn’t been evaluated for years, and was begging for it (this was a standard, on-site class). That’s another issue of faculty evaluation for sure!
You might enjoy my post on FERPA. I think it’s a good idea to follow case law and the Supreme Court on this stuff, because we sometimes get interpretation that’s already been made into policy.
Lisa, great post! It’s refreshing to see topics like this shared openly. Too frequently they go without discussion. You’ve delved into several issues and, for me, I see a broad, over arching message about the ways our insitution of college teaching is subverting the ability to innovate our learning environments. At the OTC last week, I had several individuals approach me and share how frightened they are to take a risk and try a new teaching approach because they know that a poor student evaluation could be the death of their income (let’s remember that MOST college classes arevtaught by part-time instructors).
Today there are no experts in teaching. We’re all in a fluid time of change. Our students are engrossed in a culture of participatory learning, which is an entangled process in which individuals learn from one another through contributions and sharing. Faculty members need to be empowered to experiment and take risks –and failure is a necessary step in innovation.
So, I’m curious. Who out there has an evaluation model that encourages “instructional innovation and creativity,” rather than one that breeds fear of failure?
I’m curious too. The only models I’ve seen say vague things like “updates course content regularly”, which is hardly what we mean, is it?
It would be interesting if we could have something that goes beyond “updates course content’…something like ‘did your instructor announce that he or she was trying something new this semester? what was it? what did you think about it?’ — but that would require them to actually be invested, and as we all know, some students aren’t invested, and others are.
Melissa, YES! I agree, I just had a chat with a relative who just received his degree from a public 4-year university. He was reflecting on how irrelevant and “the same” all of his classes were. I noted how scary it can be for faculty to try something new. Professors are, after all, viewed traditionally as the expert; hence, a new approach undercuts their power. He quickly replied with surprise and said how much he’d support and encourage any professor who conveyed an interest in trying something new. That’s the response I have received from my own students too. When they understand they’re part of an innovatiion, there’s a certain energy that is infused into the class which stimulates community building.
What if faculty were incentivized to share a teaching innovation, along with student feedback, along with an evaluation? And that innovation gets shared with a CC license and extended into the teaching community?
Lisa, this is a great dialogue! Thanks for starting it!
Poor student response may be one reason why people don’t try new things. If a student complains on an evaluation that a particular technology didn’t work, that can be inhibiting. I’m not in favor of having student surveys weigh so heavily for this reason (and others).
Instead, perhaps the emphasis on innovation could be part of the instructor’s self-study. A simple question such as “In what ways have you engaged in instructional innovation since your last evaluation?” could change everything.
I don’t know if it’s just adjuncts at my school, but there’s no self-evaluation as far as I can see. Wish there was.
But here’s where it gets odd for me. This summer, instead of doing a research bibliography project, I tried to do group wikis, where each week, students would post a section of the wiki (images, links, mini-bios, etc). I’m getting students who are doing all the work for their group. Even though the students are aware that they will be getting half their points from their fellow group members, and could, if they don’t participate, flunk the assignment , I can’t seem to get a sub-set of students involved. And I’m dreading their evaluations on the project. I’m lucky if 20% of the class even DOES the evaluations, so it’s tough. Because the ones who do them either love the class or hate it. There’s nothing in between, and my new dean and I are strangers.