If I were a Professor

As I finish up my doctoral program classes and start on my dissertation full time, I’ve been reflecting on the learning experience.

I’ve posted many of my assignments as writings here and in my newsletter, and I’ve published all of my assignments at drjethro.com.

The thing that is always important to me is that learning is real for students, whatever level they are at.

I’ve often said if the audience is just the teacher, then that’s no real audience.

And, especially at the doctoral level, I think the students should really be scholars, and there should be much more co-creation.

I have several ideas how doctoral students and professors could work to make something co-created.

Here are a few. Use the classwork, time, and readings:

  • As research for writing a co-authored journal/magazine/etc article. 
  • As a chapter in a book. 
  • To create a webinar that you would sell or deliver to people interested in the topic of that class. 
  • To create a proposal for presenting at a national conference (just because it gets accepted doesn’t mean it has to be presented)
  • As a faculty meeting “course” or agenda for the teachers we are leading. 
  • For making a five year plan for our schools
  • As an integral part of the dissertation. 
  • As a podcast series about the topic. 
  • As a series of YouTube videos explaining/teaching a particular concept

Here’s what I would do if I were a professor (but alas, I am not, yet):

First, I’d have an email list of people interested in the things I’m teaching. I’d ask to regularly tell me what problems they’re facing in relation to what I teach.

Each class I taught would have an associated product that solves those problems with it, one of the above (though depending on class sizes and topic, it could be multiple). 

Then I’d organize the class around accomplishing that project. 

If it’s a book, I’d assign the chapters (perhaps after making the outline), I’d prepare it for print-on-demand, and set the due date to be a couple weeks before the semester ended to give us time to get it edited and ready for publication. And our class sessions would be breaking into small groups and discussing our writing progress and processes, and giving feedback about our ideas.

The final would be hitting publish on a ready-to-go book.

The readings go from giving us something to learn to giving us research, data, support (or not) for the ideas we believe should be out there. 

In my opinion, nobody loses anything by having these outcomes and this approach. You gain by having the students contribute as scholars to the field. And they get experience doing the kinds of things that scholars do. 

Throughout a program, you could try all different kinds of outcomes to give experience and opportunity, and by the end, people would know what they enjoyed, what they hated, and what they might want to pursue.

Those different experiences would also contribute to a dissertation in practice by having them do one of those things as their dissertation, and because they’ve learned the whole process, they could be more ready to do a different kind of dissertation. 

For example, if you’re writing a book, and one person’s writing isn’t good enough to be published in a book, they’ve got an answer(!) to what they should or shouldn’t do, and the lack of a specific chapter shouldn’t derail the whole book, but should add to the “work to be done” next time. 

If the scholarship is not up to snuff for a scholarly journal, there are other magazines, or places where you could submit it. The ideal is to publish, but the point of the course is to submit for publication.

Since my program focuses on character education, we could design a whole implementation for character education for a specific school, that the one person would deliver to just her school.

What errors or problems do you see with this approach? 

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