Making the case for better faculty training

Sound clip: You’re listening to a Times Higher Education podcast.

Sara Custer: Hello and welcome to the THE podcast. I’m Sara Custer.

Miranda Prynne: And I’m Miranda Prynne. In this show, we are discussing what we’ve been calling here at THE Campus the elephant in the classroom. And by that, we mean this lack of basic knowledge of course design and pedagogy that exists or existed among university faculty. And this is certainly made clear during the mass move to online and teaching and learning in the past year and is a big part of the reason why we launched THE Campus to begin with, our teaching practice community.

Sara Custer: Yeah, that’s right. And our interviews this week bring in two very different perspectives on the issue. We spoke to Alexandra Mihai, who is a learning designer at UCL and has more than a decade of experience in this field in European higher education. And Brian Schmidt, president of the Australian National University, who is a fierce advocate of research-led teaching and a Nobel laureate. Miranda, let’s start with you. What did you speak with Alexandra about?

Miranda Prynne: Well, Alexandra was able to provide really good insight on what it’s like as a learning designer working with faculty to enhance the student learning experiences. So, we covered a lot of ground, but I guess some key points that stood out were that she felt it was not the job of instructional design teams to sort of teach faculty how to teach. It was much more about collaboration and equipping them with the tools they can use to design and deliver really quality online courses. And the other thing that she sort of touched on quite a lot was just the importance of a kind of open mindset from all parties, really, to try out new friends, new things, sorry, and innovate and come up with kind of new ideas for teaching.

Sara Custer: Great, I can’t wait to hear it.

Miranda Prynne: Hi there, I’m chatting today with Alexandra Mihai, who is a learning designer in the online learning team at UCL. She has more than a decade of experience in European higher education, having worked as a researcher and curriculum developer at the Institute of European Studies in Brussels and led the Centre for Teaching Innovations at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Miranda Prynne: Today we’re going to discuss what we’ve termed the elephant in HE, which is the fact that many faculty, while experts in their disciplines, don’t actually have a great deal of pedagogical knowledge. And this has become a lot more evident since teaching moved online. So there’s currently no professional teaching qualification actually required of those who teach in higher education and I think we all are aware that traditionally research has been prized above teaching as a marker of success. Alexandra, why do you think this is and is it perhaps time universities professionalize the teaching element of higher education?

Alexandra Mihai: Thank you very much. Really happy to be chatting with you today. Indeed, for a long time priority has been given to research and career progression depends on it to a large extent. So quality in publications is much more important than teaching quality. So teaching has been given much lower priority and unfortunately I cannot really say why this is. It’s really becoming a pattern. It’s become a pattern in fact and especially at research intensive universities it’s quite difficult to break this pattern. So we were in a way lucky to see that COVID has forced us to think more about our teaching and in many cases also to spend more time on it, especially at the stage of preparation or preparing our courses. So we need to start thinking now moving forwards how universities can make sure these new habits and new modes of working stick. So what I’ve noticed in the past month, in the past year in fact already, is that new structures and new roles were created, temporarily of course for the COVID period such as learning designers, learning technologists or increased the number of such roles increased at various universities. Of course there is a big there are still big gaps between the resources allocated at various universities but still all of them tried to some extent to create new structures and new roles and now I think it’s a good time to start evaluating those structures to see what worked in terms of these practices and those that worked need to be institutionalized. And how can that be at least in my opinion? I think first of all those roles especially the ones where we’ve seen a real good benefit from having them included in our structures are to be made permanent. So having permanent roles in faculty development and those including also career progression so that people see it as really a career path. Then, of course, it’s really important to allocate time and space for faculty, space, I mean, really even mental space, but also physical space for faculty to engage with teaching more as an integral part of their duties, actually. So, not as an extra thing that they do, you know, extracurricularly, basically. And it needs to be rewarded in terms of career progression, equally at least with research. There are different incentives possible here. Of course, it can be monetary, but it also can be sabbaticals, it can be buy-offs and so on. Usually, you buy off, you know, to do your research, you buy off from your teaching. It probably could also go the other way around. So, really, there are different ways and patterns that can be used here. The idea is to offer and to reward, to offer time and to reward these efforts. I think what also can be encouraged and could help this process of professionalization is trying to encourage a partnership approach between educational developers and faculty. I’m going to come back to that probably later as well, but the idea is that they should be working, we should be working together. There shouldn’t be such a big divide between admin and not between academic and non-academic staff. Apart from that, at the more institutional level, I think that new quality assurance and accreditation processes need to be put in place in order to acknowledge the new reality basically and also the diversity of teaching modalities. I think those are some ideas I have, but of course, maybe I’ll get to elaborate a bit in the next questions.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, sure. I mean, that’s lots of ideas to be going with. You’ve obviously touched on sort of accreditations and incentives and so on. I mean, do you think some kind of formal training should be put in place, whether at a sort of institutional level or departmental level, or maybe a wider sort of, you know, multi-institutional level? Would that help?

Alexandra Mihai: I think definitely formal training is part of the solution and also part of this professionalization and institutionalization process of these practices. It is not, I think, the only solution, but I think definitely it can be part of the equation. For formal training, I would probably do it both at the more central level and also partly at faculty level, because what we noticed is that the closer the trainings are to the faculty needs, and of course they differ according to discipline and faculty, the better it is, the more effective these trainings are. What I would include in those, of course, again, it can largely vary, but I would focus on main pedagogical approaches and concepts, really, not necessarily on technology. Of course, at the moment, we talk a lot about teaching with technology and online teaching and online learning. This should be and will definitely be also part of the future educational offer. And this diversity of modalities will actually enrich our educational offer, but still, the training, I would focus on basic pedagogical principles and concepts: you know, building designing a syllabus, lesson plans, assessment, feedback, communicating with students and so on. I think that good online teaching is just good teaching. And when I say just, it’s between inverted commas because obviously it’s not easy to achieve that either. You did mention multi-institutional, and I wanted to touch a bit on that because, of course, a training at institutional level is very important. But I’ve noticed, and we are definitely aware that not all universities have the resources and have had the resources to address the needs during COVID and, of course, also in the future for teacher training and also for all professional development needs. So I think we probably could encourage a bit more cooperation and resource pooling between different institutions. Again, this is a little bit at macro level and it’s not that easy to achieve, but perhaps it’s definitely an important thing to put on the table.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that would also, I suppose, involve this idea of collaboration that you’ve talked about, obviously in more in the context of collaboration between faculty and instructional designers, but I suppose that can be widened, can’t it, to sort of institutions working together. And on that subject, how, you know, you’ve talked about faculty and instructional designers working more closely together. How do you think universities, university leadership can kind of foster that relationship so that there is a greater link between these two areas of expertise?

Alexandra Mihai: That is indeed a very good question. And it is something that has been on my mind for a while now. And it’s something I intend to do some more research on because I find it really fascinating. The most important thing here is that we notice that institutional structures really matter on this topic actually. It’s really important to look where the educational development specialists are placed within the university ecosystem because this really plays an important role in the relationship they build with faculty. For instance, really there is again a huge variety as we can expect. In some universities, there are really not very formal structures like teaching and learning centers. In some others, these teaching and learning centers are positioned centrally. Sometimes they are even positioned within an IT department. Sometimes they are like really in different places, can be more academically inclined, can be more admin inclined. But there are also faculty-based structures. So there are centrally based structures, but sometimes there are also faculty-based structures. At UCL, we have a mix of both. And I think this has been really initiated, of course, with COVID, or at least reinforced with COVID. And I have the feeling because it really seems to be working at the moment. So I have the feeling if this new network that has been built sticks, I think really we’ve made a good use of this pandemic because I find this collaboration between the support we can provide at faculty level and the support we can provide at the central level, both on pedagogical aspects and on technological aspects, really works well. And again, the idea is really to, you know, another key of success, I think, is to try to go beyond or to make this distinction between academic and non-academic or admin stuff really irrelevant. So we should really go beyond that and try to establish a sort of partnership between academic developers or faculty developers and faculty. And this is easier said than done. I think it’s again a sort of tradition, like with research and teaching bias. I think it’s these patterns are also quite difficult to break. But I think we can really work towards that. And a good start has been made during the pandemic to really have a sort of team design, faculty coming to educational developers to ask and to instructional designers and to learning technologists to ask for support because we were thrown into a new environment. But that can be a good start. And these new habits of team-based course design, for instance, should really be supported in the future and encouraged in the future as well. Last thing I wanted to mention here, again, for forging a closer partnership, is to try to create a more evidence-based approach to faculty development. And I see that as basically faculty teaming up with educational developers to do research, to do research on their teaching. Of course, that can feed back into the quality of the teaching itself, into student satisfaction, but it also really helps advance the literature on the topic. And we definitely sorely need that right now.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, no, definitely. I can see there’d be a huge place for that. I mean on just continuing on from what you’re saying about the need for these two sort of elements I suppose of the online teaching offering to come together. As someone who obviously has worked a lot in instructional design and learning design, how would you, you know, how can instructional designers, I suppose, go about sort of teaching the teachers in inverted commas? I imagine it’s not necessarily always easy. What would be your sort of approach to that or tips for other people?

Alexandra Mihai: Interesting question, because actually, first of all, I think they should not aim to teach the teachers. The idea here, at least I can tell you about my approach. My approach has always been to work together with faculty. And not really, I’m not saying this as a sort of rhetorical level now. I’m literally telling you this is how I work. So I try to equip faculty with the necessary tools and frames of mind and vocabulary to be able to actually tell their story and build their course narrative. So the first few meetings is always me listening to faculty and listening what their educational philosophy is, what their teaching philosophy is, what methods they have been using, what they want to achieve together with their students. And slowly, slowly, they actually, with my support, bring out the course narrative by themselves. And it’s really a very satisfactory, very enriching process in a way. And I think we on both sides need a lot of patience and a lot of empathy, and acknowledging that not everyone is the same and not everyone has the same starting point and really working with that because this is what we can be sure of. I personally learned a lot by working with people from various disciplines. This has been really one of the highlights of my work, at least in the past year. And I do hope to do more of that in the future. Really being aware and focusing on these nuances between disciplines, between what academic staff really needs and wants, what are their approaches, and trying to find a flow between what we would like them to use and what they actually feel like they need. I think it’s an interesting dance.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, I can imagine. So, I mean, I guess what you’re saying is, yes, again, it’s very much collaboration, it’s working together that heralds the sort of best results. I suppose one of the dangers or things that those who might be might challenge the idea that academics need to do more teacher training or professional development in this area. One of the criticisms that might be leveled is that there’s a sort of risk of academics losing that sort of very unique individual style and approach to instruction, which, of course, academics have kind of often been celebrated for. You know, some big character lecturing to a packed lecture hall is the sort of mythical image that people have in their head. Do you think that’s legitimate? And if so, kind of, I guess how, you know, how should academics approach this so that that isn’t a risk?

Alexandra Mihai: I don’t, well, I can see the point here, but I do not necessarily see it as a risk, at least not in light of my answer to the previous questions, and not in a way I see faculty development evolving. Because as I said before, training should be focused on the core pedagogical aspects. It should be sort of agnostic of what people are actually or what people’s philosophy of teaching is all about. That emerges in these discussions. I have one-on-one or with a group of a program team, for instance, or a course team if they are doing co-teaching. And there is really a process of crafting together the course based really on their views, on the way they actually want to see the course evolving, their vision. So, what I do is basically equip them with the tools and sometimes with giving them some pedagogical advice, sometimes more technologically related advice, but it’s basically based on their vision. I would never try to stifle it by prescribing a certain approach. So, being over-prescriptive is definitely a risk in this case. And it’s also a risk of not being taken, there is also a risk of not being taken seriously and not being taken, seen as partners or equal partners by faculty. So, that’s why I try to avoid as much as possible and try to base all this process on faculty’s vision of what they want to do with the course as a starting point. That’s really the best starting point we can have.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course, because then people obviously preserve their individual style. You’re just helping them deliver it, I suppose, in the most effective ways using the tools available. I mean, on to that point, you know, what do you think are the kind of basic skills that all academics need to sort of teach effectively and effectively, particularly in the digital online space?

Alexandra Mihai: Well, first of all, I think there are a few things that, again, work for both, work in all worlds, digitally and analog world. And these are, I think, just very general principles which I find extremely important for teaching. So first of all, they may not be the main skills that you can imagine, or the obvious ones. But I find empathy very important. So trying to get to know our students well and trying to imagine and map their journey through the course really helps us create better courses, design better courses and teach better courses. So empathy, training or empathy and of course teaching online makes it even more important because we don’t get to see our students often. This is also linked to communication. So communication skills are also very important, trying to be very clear, precise, managing expectations well, trying to be forthcoming. I think these are very, very important skills, trying to be very precise in the instructional text and instructional communication that we give. It’s not that easy because we’re not used to doing it in written form. So with online teaching, that has become sometimes a challenge, but that maybe also is helping us find a voice that we can use regardless of the environment we are teaching. Then there is storytelling. It’s a very interesting skill because how I try to approach the course design with faculty is trying to imagine it or frame it as a story. So they are telling their story, they are building a narrative for their course, and they are trying to take the students along. So trying to focus on that rather than the content that they need to deliver. Of course, there is also awareness of core pedagogical principles, and that’s where the formal training comes into place. But last but not least, very importantly, the openness to learn. Really being open to learn about new technologies, learning from their students, learning from colleagues. Openness to learn is very important. These are really more general, let’s say, skills for teaching effectively.

Alexandra Mihai: Now, going into the digital world, what we noticed in the past months really made me draw some main ideas, let’s say. And I think the advice I give most often is focus on learning, not on tools. So really, again, focus on the things I just mentioned before and leave the tools last because they are simply tools, tools, platforms. We can work together, find the best ones, but before that, you need to have a very clear idea of where you’re going, of the learning objectives, of what you want to achieve with your students. So, that is an important thing, teaching digitally or in a blended format. Then, the other thing is we need to be online, we need to be much more intentional in terms of choice of tools and but also methods of what we are doing. So, we need to design for interaction. We can’t expect interaction and engagement to take place spontaneously, like it sometimes does in the face-to-face environment. We need to design opportunities for interaction, a variety of channels, variety of activities. Then, we also have to design opportunities for feedback. It’s very important to be there for the students, to show our teacher presence, even though we are not physically there. That can be again a challenge. And also, design opportunities for reflection. Just because we were all thrown into this new world, I think it’s really important to reflect, both our students and also ourselves, to reflect on how that has impacted our learning for the better or for the worse, and what we can take from it. Last but not least, I think focusing a little bit more on structure and sequencing rather than on content itself and making sure the story flows. So, that’s a really interesting one because, obviously, online, it’s really easier for different activities to be perceived as fragmented, as just a fragmented series of events, basically, without links, without the glue that links them together. So let’s think more of that glue of how we can make the story flow rather than just create activities. I think that’s it. And maybe the last word is try to connect with other like-minded educators. I think, beside the formal training that universities can offer, it’s really important for us to search for a space where we can collaborate or communicate and share our experiences, get inspired and inspire our peers. I think that can happen in lots of networks, physical ones, but currently more online ones, including Twitter, social media and so on. But of course, also faculty-based communities. These emerging communities within institutions and beyond institutions, I think, are a part, a big part of faculty development and should be in the future.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course, because I mean, that sort of, you know, that discussion with peers, colleagues, sometimes friends, whoever, you know, is often where sort of fantastic ideas develop, isn’t it? Just, I mean, following on from that actually very sort of comprehensive overview of where, I suppose, you know, the skills are needed or the sort of skill set that’s needed, where in your experience are the key skills gaps among academics?

Alexandra Mihai: I definitely think, of course, the pedagogical principles are still a gap, and that’s the one you identified in the very first sentence, I think. Because there is no coherent framework for professional development in higher education. Of course, for any other level of education, there is, and in many European countries, but for higher education, it’s still missing. And I think that is really something we should be striving towards. Of course, university-based programs exist, certificates and so on. I think it’s becoming more common than in the past. So there are good signs, but I think we should work definitely more towards that. And the pandemic showed us that this is actually missing because when we were trying to support faculty to transition to the online environment, those gaps became much more apparent. The gaps in basic course design, pedagogical principles and so on. So I think once those are sort of bridged, we can move on to more nuanced aspects, such as learning with technology. But I think we did it a little bit the other way around because we were forced by the pandemic. But I think definitely something to work towards at national level and even internationally recognized professional development programs from higher education. It’s a really, really important thing.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, and I guess that is sort of something that has, as you say, been highlighted by the pandemic, but therefore, I suppose an opportunity created to act upon it, where action may have been without the pandemic quite slow, some would argue. We are pretty much out of time, so I just actually wanted to sort of round off by I suppose asking you for any academics who are listening for any sort of top quick tip or hack for an academic who is sort of looking to improve their online teaching delivery.

Alexandra Mihai: So it’s just a little bit of a summary of what I said before. I think for me, the most important thing is reflect on your teaching, try to connect with others and reflect together and share these reflections. This is a kind of a meta-process that has been really, I don’t know, I think it has worked for me and the people I’ve been working with, and I think I can really recommend. So be reflective of what you’re doing, keep a teaching journal, try to connect with others in different spaces. It’s not necessarily a quick hack, but I think it’s a way to develop a good habit, a good habit. And I think that’s something that can stick with us longer than the pandemic, hopefully. And the other thing is really being open, being open. And we show that we can do it in the past months, but there is also always more space for learning. So being open to learn from our students, actually to learn with our students, to try out new approaches and to actually be intentional. Whatever we decide to use, really use it for a purpose. These are, I think, the tips I give most often. And I think these are really, really important. Also, not to forget, even though teaching online might seem a little bit more impersonal, isolating, especially because of that, in fact, make an extra effort to be there, to find ways to build your presence online as a teacher. There are ways, try to find your voice and try to find your presence. And actually, it can be small touches, but the students really, really will appreciate this, will notice and will appreciate it.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, brilliant. Well, look, thank you so much for talking to me today. That’s been absolutely fascinating and loads of actually great sort of practical takeaways as well as very interesting discussion of kind of issues at hand. So yes, very much appreciate you joining us today.

Alexandra Mihai: Thank you very much.

Miranda Prynne: So Alexandra seemed to think a more sort of focused professional development framework in higher education might help with the development of pedagogical knowledge. It’ll be interesting to hear what Brian Schmidt’s take on how universities should approach improving their teaching offering.

Sara Custer: Yeah, so Brian’s coming at it from two interesting angles. One is a university president, but also someone whose career has been based on great success in academic research. He won the Nobel Prize in 2011 and he has always been a fierce advocate of research-led teaching, the Humboldtian model of higher education. And that’s the first thing that we started off talking about was potentially how his opinions of research-led teaching may have changed now after the massive move to online teaching and learning. And then we also talked about the future of the lecture, which is definitely something that a lot of people are considering right now, especially universities in Australia. And he said that he tells his faculty that they should be like theatrical events lectures, that they should be like a Pink Floyd concert, in fact. And then he also talks about how the pandemic has shaken university business models. And this is especially true in Australia, whenever so many institutions are dependent on international student tuition. And currently international students aren’t even allowed to enter the country. So it’s really rattled how universities operate as businesses. And one of the points that he makes is that providing really good teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate level might become the only way the universities will survive into the next decade.

Sara Custer: Hello, Brian. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Brian Schmidt: G’day.

Sara Custer: So, Brian, just for some people who might not know, you have historically been a very fierce advocate of research-based teaching, which is the Humboldtian model of a university. And this makes sense because you’re a Nobel laureate, you hold an Australia Research Council Federation fellowship, you were elected to as a fellow of the Royal Society, so it makes sense that you supported this and have supported this so fiercely. But about this time last year, in March 2020, at the Universities Australia Conference, you acknowledged that universities have reached an uncomfortable state and questioned the efficacy of the Humboldtian model for every institution. I’m just going to give your words back to you. As THE quoted you saying, I subscribe to the notion of a Humboldtian university, at least for some universities. But if you’re going to train 300,000 domestic students, do all of them need that? Do we need to reset our sights and say there’s research-led teaching and there’s non-research-led teaching? Because research-led teaching is expensive. So I’m wondering, after a year of the pandemic, the massive switch to online teaching and learning, how have your opinions perhaps changed about the Humboldtian model of higher education?

Brian Schmidt: Yeah, I mean, I think that my view has solidified. About three years ago, I talked about the importance of the Humboldtian model and how it was being eroded away. And my concern is it was being eroded away in even research institutions. And I do think we continue to need a research-led teaching section of the sector. But unfortunately, especially in places like the UK and Australia, we sort of have systems which sort of treat everyone equally. And there’s reasons for that, but it does give you probably not the best outcomes for the whole system. And so I do think that research-led teaching, while I think is incredibly important for many people in the sector, it is not appropriate for educating the entire population. As I said, it’s very expensive. And whenever it can be done to support, I think, cutting-edge research that has huge spillovers to the economy, it’s a good thing. But I think the reality is here in Australia is we fake it a bit. And a lot of research-led teaching really is just teaching with a little bit of research on the side that probably isn’t doing anyone any good.

Sara Custer: Tell me a bit more about how you expect this to, or how you could see this playing out. I mean, I’m envisioning almost a two-tiered system where there is research-led teaching at perhaps elite institutions that are at the cutting edge of innovation and knowledge generators, and then more of perhaps maybe a technical institute or perhaps preparing people for jobs after they graduate instead of down an academic career path.

Brian Schmidt: Well, I think there’s, of course, an infinite number of ways one could make it happen. I think there has to be some sort of signal of price, probably, because I think if you are getting the benefit of a research-led education, sometimes that does actually give you, you know, better financial outcomes down the track. But I don’t think it has to just be reserved to specific institutions, elite institutions. I do think that many institutions have areas of excellence, of research-led teaching. And I would think that those could be a really important part of the ecosystem if a policy system is put in place around it. So imagine both the UK and Australia have this sort of research assessment exercise, ERA as it’s called here, and a similar thing, the REF in the UK. And here it has really no use except for some sort of exercise to demonstrate your wares. But one could imagine that there would be a different price for courses which have, for example, a university has an ERA 4 or 5, which are the highest two levels here, and that you get a cheaper education in the other areas. It may well be that we create the moral equivalent of liberal arts colleges of the United States, pedagogy-led. So here in Australia, Bond University is more or less something like that. Of course, they charge a lot, but they provide a really good student experience by everyone that I’ve talked to. So I think there is a number of ways to do it. And I think also extending what we do and getting interoperability between the university system and the VET sector, the vocational education sector, I think that’s what the 2020s and 30s are going to need, because we’re going to need to have this training and very specific skills that are changing rapidly layered on top of the education. And having just two separate systems like we do in Australia, I just think it’s very counterproductive. And we need to quit being snobby and say elite institutions. We’re all trying to do different things that are appropriate for people. And research-led is one way of doing it. And it’s important for creating the future researchers of the country, which we need. But the reality is only 10% of our students are going to go off and do that.

Sara Custer: I’m wondering if we could shift a bit to just talking about the quality of teaching that exists within higher education. And being a good researcher does not mean that you’re a great teacher. And what we’ve seen this year is that there are big knowledge gaps in basic course design, pedagogical principles among the academic workforce. So whether it’s research-based teaching or not, do you think more needs to happen in the realm of training university educators after what we’ve seen this past year?

Brian Schmidt: Well, I was pushing to train university educators before the COVID-19 crisis because pedagogy is important. And we do have this sort of sense that you just go off and do it the way you were taught. And that’s really good for some people, but it’s not great for probably most people. So yes, I actually think we do need to put effort into whether people are researchers or not researchers and making sure they understand how to transfer knowledge. And it’s not just getting up and lecturing the way that we were all taught. There are many ways to do it better. There’s evidence behind it. It’s kind of fun and interesting. And, you know, there’s a bit of setup that’s extra work, but once you get it going, there’s, you know, in some sense, it can be even easier long term. For example, having short digital lectures that replace the stand-up and deliver lecture. And when you do a lecture in person, then, you know, I describe it here as, you know, make it a Pink Floyd concert. You know, make it interesting and a theater thing that really gets people emoted because you can’t reproduce that on the video. But, you know, we need to have things be really, really good and not just kind of meh, which is, I’m afraid, what a lot of stuff is right now.

Sara Custer: I want to come back to your thoughts about the future of the lecture. But just talking about training teachers and the incentive systems that exist within a higher education. And what would you say to the researcher who has a million citations behind them and really just can’t be asked to go through teacher training because they know that that’s not going to advance their academic career? How do we incentivize those types of people to rethink how they’re transferring knowledge and to get some pedagogical training and take it seriously?

Brian Schmidt: So, most of my best researchers want to be good teachers. You know, if you’re going to work at a university, part of the deal is teaching and doing research. You’re not just judged by research. And I know we have, there’s a certain view of that because of, you know, largely rankings like THE, among others, are driven by research rather than by what I would describe as the student experience. But when I look back at my time, for example, at Harvard, the professoriate at Harvard, some of the best researchers in the world, they were competitive about how good a class they delivered when I was there. It was important to them. And I think it’s a cultural question. And it’s very hard to change someone who’s at the end of their career to suddenly go and rethink teaching. But as we bring young people through the system, early career researchers, supporting them to get their teaching right straight up, making sure they understand that it’s essential for promotion, then you’ll get the culture right. But it’s very hard just to flick a switch and fix 50 years of problems in one year.

Sara Custer: Going back to the idea of the lecture, I mean, this is something that a lot of your peers in Australia, Murdoch, Griffith University, they’ve said, that’s it, lectures are done, we’re scrapping them completely. Is that sound decision-making? And do you think the pandemic has sounded the death knell for university lectures?

Brian Schmidt: Well, when I’ve talked to my staff, you don’t want to just default and use lecture as a crutch for poor pedagogy. It’s the way we’ve always done it. Lectures have a place, in my opinion. Lectures can, as I said, be the Pink Floyd concert of academia, where you get people excited about what they’re doing and change their whole framing of how they look at a subject. But the reality is you’re not going to do 36 lectures in a row and do that. They have a very emotive, I think, opportunity to them. But as a way of just taking information from, you know, the world and putting it into a student’s head, they’re not actually very good. It’s much better to use, I think these days, short, sharp, digital clips that have little quizzes and things like that. That’s what all the pedagogy said. You need to have active learning for most of the information exchange. And, you know, one needs to follow the pedagogy and understand that the lecture probably has a place, but not nearly as prominent as it did in the past if you want to do really, really good pedagogy.

Sara Custer: And especially online teaching as well. As you’ve mentioned, you can’t necessarily transfer the Pink Floyd lecture into an online environment. And as we’re looking more to hybrid models or some sort of synchronous, asynchronous situation, the lectures potentially just aren’t fit for purpose as much.

Brian Schmidt: It is certainly true that you can make good online lectures, but they are normally fit for asynchronous. They can be reused. They tend to be short and sharp. And students can go and rewind and understand. And so they can be really excellent. But they’re not just a stand and deliver a lecture for an hour and do the same thing again an hour later to another class or another year later. You need to create them a bit. But then, as I said, once you make them, you can reuse them.

Sara Custer: So a lot of universities are asking themselves these big questions about teaching models, lectures, incentivizing teachers and researchers to train better, to increase their knowledge of pedagogy. And a lot of this is happening against a backdrop of really dire financial outlooks for universities and greater precarity for the academic workforce. This is certainly true in Australia in particular, where I believe you’ve lost over 17,000 staff across the country, with some estimates saying it was even higher, about a quarter of the workforce. So I’m wondering if putting any greater emphasis on teaching at an institution might alleviate some of the burden of the casual university workforce?

Brian Schmidt: So, yeah, the whole casual workforce is a very complicated thing, how it interacts with teaching. So, some institutions have intentionally made their researchers more research, higher fractions of research, almost 100%, and then have backfilled that teaching with temporary casual teaching loads. And I’ve come out very critically of this in years past because ultimately it just you’re setting yourself to be outsourced by for-profit at that point. Because doing that type of education is, there’s nothing research about it. What’s the purpose of the university? Why would people spend the premium that comes with the university to go get educated there once they realize that the whole notion of research-led education is a ruse? So, they’re paying extra dollars for something that is quite frankly a cheap off-brand product. So, that’s what I think the danger of going that way is. But, you know, right now, big shock to the system: if you’re a university that has a really poor student experience and the students end up realizing that and going other places, it’s game over, right? Research does not pay for itself in Australia. It’s pretty good in the United States. It’s sort of in between in the UK. But here, if you’re entirely saying, I’m just going to be great research and not have any students, you are going to go bankrupt. So finding a model where, yes, you support people to do great research, but also insist that good teaching is done as part of your model, I think that is the only way you’re going to survive for the next decade after the COVID-19 shock has really rattled the foundations of our business model here.

Sara Custer: Tell us how you are. You’re head of Australia National University, one of the leading research institutions in the country. Tell us how you are placing your own institution in this conversation. How are you looking forward to the next year, five years, if you even dare, in terms of your institutional strategy and how you might be shifting to respond to a post-pandemic higher education future?

Brian Schmidt: Well, we’re trying to focus on the teaching side, saying everyone here doesn’t have to, we’re a research-intensive institution, and one of the great things of being at ANU is you don’t have to teach as much as other places. But when you do teach, I’m insisting that people teach well. And that will not be something that we just let slide if you’re not very good. We’re not gonna take the bad researchers and stick them in the classroom and punish the students. We’re going to insist that people teach and teach well when they teach. So, you know, that’s going to take some time to really get flowing through everyone, but people have heard that for the last couple years. So, we really want to have a great undergraduate program to begin with that’s not too big and brings people from all over Australia and they get a great education that’s unique in Australia. But I think we also need to be looking at new things. For example, very specific postgraduate qualifications, either master’s degree, but probably one-year master’s degrees, perhaps for people to add on to their undergraduate degree at another institution and come and do international relations here. We’re one of the best places in the world to do that, or things like that. One can also imagine having people later in their career having a more flexible online delivery than with intensives on campus. Now, everyone’s done this in the past, but we need to do a lot more of it because there’s a lot of demand out there. But when you do it, you have to do it really, really well. You know, students, especially after they’ve been out for 10 years, they have high expectations, and it’s going to be a highly competitive field. And so you need to go and design these classes so they are truly excellent to take. And people are doing this because they want to improve their career prospects. And so ultimately, it needs to translate to better jobs for them. And if it’s not, they’re not going to take them. So I think those are sort of the spaces we’re looking at in addition to various forms of short forms of courses of executive education in areas of intense interest. I think those types of courses you need to cycle pretty quickly because the interests change quite quickly. And people are going to want to do something, get ahead, but three or four years later, it’s going to be a completely different set of skills they’re probably looking for.

Sara Custer: And would you say, I mean, that all is, I feel, is very much a response to the changing nature of the job market that people are going to find themselves in after the pandemic. Has your strategy completely changed as a result of that? Or is that something that you’re already kind of on the path toward anyway at ANU?

Brian Schmidt: Absolutely was on the path. Of course, COVID-19 has been the great accelerator. It’s taken five years in the future and put it into 2021. And, you know, the other side of this coin is, of course, the research side. Because the thing that we can provide are world experts doing this teaching. So we have to find this balance of people spending that time to get their teaching done, to do it well, and then trying to free up the rest of their schedule and clearing out a lot of the administrivia and stuff that universities are famous for doing really poorly so that they have time to get out and spend the time to do their research. And it means not fragmenting their day and giving them the support they need to do that research really well so that they can bring that extra nuance to the classroom that they just can’t get anywhere else.

Sara Custer: Brian, my last question for you is just one that’s a bit more practical for someone who might be in a similar position to you as a head of an institution or maybe a bit further down the chain but still leading a team of faculty on how to encourage them to take teaching more seriously even if their perhaps professional or career incentives aren’t necessarily there yet.

Brian Schmidt: So I always ask my staff to think back when they were a student and think what they wanted and needed and to look into the eyes of the students, hang out with them. You know, our students are back on campus here. They are partying like it’s 1999 because the COVID-19 veil has been lifted and they’re back to normal life. Our staff, not quite there yet, but when you hang out with students, you feel young, you’re excited. And what you need to know is you have a responsibility. Take that responsibility and translate it, your knowledge, into paying it forward to the next generation. So I think people need to have a real heartfelt responsibility. And I really encourage our staff to make that connection because when they do, they are motivated on their own and they get going. And the universities have to, you know, universities are always, you know, lagging behind what needs to be done because that’s just the type of institutions we are. We have lots of inertia and that’s good, but it’s bad. Universities are going to have to pay attention to teaching in the future. So don’t think you’re going to be disadvantaged by doing this. Look after your research, but also look after your teaching. When I came to ANU, I volunteered to teach in my first year here. Everyone said I was nuts because I had a research-only contract, but I thought it was important. It allowed me to connect with the students here at ANU. It allowed me, I think, ultimately, to be a better person and a better researcher. And one would not say it held me back in my career. Definitely not.

Sara Custer: Brian, thank you so much for your time and your excellent and considered answers. I really appreciate it. And I hope you get some time to party like it’s 1999.

Brian Schmidt: All right. Thank you very much. Take care.

Sara Custer: And that was Brian Schmidt, the president of Australia National University, giving some, I think, really good and grounded tips for everybody working in a university right now about how they can perhaps reignite their passion and connection with the students who they should be doing a great job teaching, hopefully.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, and if you are keen to learn more about, you know, the digital and pedagogical skills that can enhance online course delivery, as well as tips for ensuring just smooth collaboration between the various teams within the university, the learning designers, digital team, faculty, you’ll find all of that, lots of fresh insight and ideas in our recent spotlight collection entitled Bridging the Digital Skills Gap. And that’s at timeshighereducation.com/campus.

Sara Custer: Well, that’s it for today’s show. As always, if you have any ideas or suggestions of topics you’d like us to cover on the podcast or to see on THE or THE Campus, please do get in touch with us. You can email us at thecampus@timeshighereducation.com. Big thanks to Brian Schmidt and Alexander Mihai for joining us on the podcast this week via interview. And Miranda, thanks very much for joining me today.

Miranda Prynne: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Sara Custer: Thanks very much and we’ll see you next time.

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