The hardest job in 2022

I used to think professors had a pretty chill job. Isn't it the dream to get paid to research whatever obscure topic they happen to be interested in, and to be low-key famous with hundreds of students who attend their lectures every week? Well, it turns out research and teaching are not their only responsibilities, they also have to manage something or someone. And both doing research and teaching a course in the current climate are tough tasks.

In a previous post, we talked about the fantastic benefits of the so-called flipped classroom, a course design model that includes recording lectures for students to watch before coming to class, and making class time all about practice and interaction. To illustrate the point that being a professor is no walk in the park, let's talk about what it takes to design and develop a flipped course. Here’s an inexhaustive list:

Design

- Get to know your students
- Articulate quality learning and other goals
- Build a curriculum (select themes, topics, problems, and examples)
- Decide how to teach the curriculum (what students will do at home and in class)
- Write lesson plans
- Design feedback systems
- Calculate the workload and check its appropriateness
- Design summative assessment that is valid, reliable, and transparent
- Iterate the design to align it with student needs and course goals

Development

- Curate existing materials (select articles to read, lectures to watch, podcasts to listen to)
- Produce original materials (record and edit videos and podcasts)
- Develop and automate quizzes
- Create discussion boards and assignments, and write instructions for them
- Find and learn how to use appropriate digital tools
- Upload all materials to a learning management system and organise them
- Package and communicate the course

Delivery

- Coach and motivate students
- Give feedback
- Answer student questions
- Present coherently
- Facilitate interactive class activities
- Spark students' interest
- Grade exams and assignments
- Adapt the course and teaching style based on feedback

To say this is a ton of work would be an understatement. And yet, at too many higher education institutions, all this is done by one person. In business, you would hire a whole team consisting of subject matter experts, instructors, curriculum and instructional designers, assessment specialists, rhetoric coaches, educational technologists, user experience designers, project managers, product managers, video and audio producers, graphic designers, copywriters, data scientists, and an assistant. In fact, the Delft University of Technology, a leading Dutch university, is acutely aware of the workload of modern teaching, and its (online) course team includes 16 different stakeholders.

To sum up, when being a university teacher simply meant lecturing, it could be a one-person show. But today courses have become a much more complex endeavour, and we can’t afford to pretend that one person alone can manage to design, develop, deliver and evaluate them. Especially when teaching is often one of several roles that professors assume alongside their research and management activities. Let's face it - teaching must become a team sport unless we want a professor's job to continue to hold the unwelcome title of the hardest job ever (according to me, at least).

Photo by Joel Danielson on Unsplash