How to Improve the Quality of College Teaching

Jonathan Zimmerman is not only a leading historian of education, whose many books include a global history of sex education, a history of public schools and the culture wars, and a how-to book on teaching contentious issues in the classroom. He is among the academy’s most thoughtful and prolific public intellectuals.

His opinion pieces include a fascinating essay on how the contest of ideas on today’s campuses differs from that in the late 1960s, higher education’s selective defense of academic freedom and how sports betting sites target college students.

Here, I want to reflect on one of his most recent essays, “Why Professors Can’t Teach,” which just appeared in Washington Monthly. It grows out of his fascinating 2020 history of college teaching, The Amateur Hour. But even more than that book, it offers practical steps for improving instructional quality.

The essay exemplifies Zimmerman’s signature strengths: His breadth of historical knowledge, his eye for the telling quotation and a writing style at once witty and trenchant.

In this essay, he demonstrates that:

• Outspoken criticism of the quality of college teaching is more than a century old, with William James complaining in 1903 about dull, uninspired, ineffective instruction.
• The dream of college teaching reformers—to transform teaching into a professional enterprise on a par with scholarly research—dates back decades and is largely a history of failure, for reasons that Zimmerman details.
• Almost every pedagogical innovation that we consider novel has precedents, with teaching evaluations introduced in the 1920s and 1930s, seminars widely adopted in the 1950s, and pass-fail classes and self-paced modules experimented with in the 1970s.

So, why can’t professors teach well? The reasons are straightforward.

• Because they lack formal training in pedagogy and grading.
• Because of misplaced institutional priorities, including a tenure and promotion system that tends to reward research output, grant acquisition and scholarly publications over teaching effectiveness.
• Because of an overemphasis on content transmission as opposed to other skills, like the ability to break down complex concepts into digestible parts, engage students with diverse learning styles and create a supportive learning environment.
• Because many instructors struggle to communicate effectively, by inadvertently using jargon, assuming prior knowledge and presenting material in ways that are inaccessible to students who are new to the subject.
• Because instructors lack incentives to invest time and effort into improving their teaching practice.
• Because professors rely on methods—like lectures and instructor-dominated discussions—that they are familiar with.

Too often, pedagogical discussions conflate facets of teaching that need to be disentangled.

While certain traits like charisma and humor can naturally enhance a professor’s ability to engage students, these qualities aren’t amenable to formal instruction. However, there are specific, teachable skills that significantly impact the quality of instruction and can be deliberately developed through training and experience.

We can work with faculty to ensure that their lectures are well organized and clearly presented. A key to high-quality teaching is ensuring that a class’s learning objectives are clear, the flow of the lesson is logical, key points are highlighted and the content is accessible to all students.

Clear presentations help students follow along more easily, understand complex concepts and retain information. This can be nurtured through workshops on lesson planning, effective communication and the use of visual aids or technology to enhance clarity.

Engaging and motivating students is another crucial aspect of effective teaching. This goes beyond simply delivering content; it involves creating a classroom environment where students feel motivated to participate, ask questions and explore ideas deeply. Active learning techniques, interactive discussions and real-world applications of concepts can foster greater engagement. Faculty development programs can offer strategies for enhancing student motivation and participation, helping instructors connect the material to students’ interests and career goals.

Effective classroom management is essential for creating a learning environment where all students feel safe, respected and able to focus on the material. This includes setting clear expectations for behavior, managing group dynamics and addressing disruptions in a constructive manner. Training in classroom management can provide faculty with tools and techniques to handle a variety of classroom scenarios, ensuring that the learning environment remains productive.

High-quality teaching also involves aligning teaching strategies, activities and assessments with desired learning outcomes. Faculty can benefit greatly from training in curriculum design, where they learn to create syllabi that clearly articulate learning goals and develop assignments that are directly linked to these objectives. This alignment ensures that students understand what is expected of them and how they can succeed in the course.

Understanding how students learn is yet another key to effective teaching. This includes knowledge of cognitive science principles such as the importance of retrieval practice for memory retention, the benefits of spaced repetition and strategies for promoting a growth mindset.

Teaching centers can introduce instructors to the science of learning, helping them apply evidence-based techniques to improve student outcomes. For instance, teaching students how to study effectively, encouraging metacognitive reflection and designing assessments that reinforce learning rather than just test recall are all strategies rooted in learning science.

Beyond classroom teaching, effective mentoring is a critical component of a professor’s role. Mentorship involves guiding students through their academic journey, offering advice on career choices and supporting their personal and professional development. Training faculty in mentorship skills, such as active listening, providing constructive feedback and fostering a supportive relationship, can significantly enhance the overall educational experience for students.

There is a growing recognition that teaching in higher education should be viewed as an intellectual challenge deserving of serious attention. Just as research requires rigorous inquiry, so too does teaching require thoughtful reflection, creativity and a deep understanding of pedagogy.

Encouraging faculty to engage in scholarship on teaching and learning, participate in teaching communities and reflect on their teaching practices can elevate the status of teaching within the academy. By treating teaching as a serious and essential intellectual endeavor, institutions can foster a culture where excellence in teaching is indeed highly valued.

In his essay, Zimmerman makes a highly persuasive argument that “We can improve college teaching if we, as a nation, decide it’s worth improving.” I wholeheartedly endorse his recommendations:

1. Improve the way we evaluate teaching. While student teaching evaluations can provide useful feedback on certain aspects of an instructor’s teaching, they cannot be the main measure of teaching quality. They can tell us how engaged and satisfied students feel in a course and provide feedback on how clearly the instructor communicates course material, organizes the class and explains complex concepts. They can also help us understand how fair and supportive students perceive the instructor to be. In addition, students can offer insights into the classroom environment, including whether it was conducive to learning, inclusive and respectful.

However, student evaluations are not reliable indicators of how much students have actually learned or retained over time. They emphasize short-term satisfaction rather than long-term impact.

Without a doubt, high evaluations sometimes reflect lower academic rigor, where students appreciate lenient grading or less challenging coursework. In addition, student evaluations can be influenced by biases related to the instructor’s gender, race, age or appearance. Equally important, students only see a portion of what constitutes effective teaching. They’re largely unaware of the pedagogical strategies, course design principles or assessment methods that an instructor uses. As a result, their evaluations overlook important dimensions of teaching quality.

In Zimmerman’s view, universities should move beyond superficial measures such as student evaluations and instead invest heavily in peer reviews of teaching, similar to how research is evaluated. I’d urge campuses to develop sophisticated rubrics to evaluate teaching.

Evaluation should take place across two dimensions:

• Mechanics, including clarity, organization, engagement, timeliness and responsiveness, and
• Substance, instruction that goes beyond edutainment and content transmission and involves critical analysis, advanced frameworks of interpretation and serious skills building.

Schools should also take exit surveys much more seriously. Ask graduating students to identify those faculty members who had the biggest impact on their thinking, who were the most innovative, who did the most to mentor them and whose classes made the greatest difference in their education.

2. Institute a more robust and systematic approach to preparing future faculty for classroom instruction. Even today, after decades of criticism, many doctoral programs provide minimal training in pedagogy, often confined to a series of short workshops. This lack of preparation contrasts sharply with the rigorous, years-long process required to become a credentialed scholar. Zimmerman suggests the need for more comprehensive and systematic training for future college teachers, starting in graduate school, to better equip them for effective classroom instruction.
3. Incentivize faculty and institutions to take teaching quality seriously. Taking teaching more seriously must begin with changes in the hiring and promotion systems. Don’t just require job candidates to provide a teaching statement; ask them to teach a class. Have external observers evaluate faculty coming up for promotion, examining not just their classroom performance but their syllabi, instructional activities and assessment strategies.

It seems reasonable to me to require faculty members to regularly provide evidence of teaching improvement and to require departments to identify bottleneck courses, with unusually high DFW rates, performance gaps and poor student evaluations, and take proactive steps to strengthen these classes.

4. Place a greater emphasis on teaching quality in college rankings and re-accreditation. Currently, most college rankings do not accurately measure instructional effectiveness, instead relying on proxies like graduation rates, faculty salaries or student-faculty ratios, which do not necessarily correlate with good teaching.

Accreditors and college ranking can enhance the evaluation of educational quality by focusing on more meaningful factors that reflect students’ overall learning experience and outcomes. Instead of relying solely on traditional metrics like graduation rates or faculty qualifications, they should consider:

• Access to mentored research and internships. Hands-on research and internships provide students with practical experience, critical thinking skills and exposure to real-world applications of their studies, all of which are essential for preparing them for careers and advanced study.
• Engagement in inquiry- and project-based learning. Inquiry-based learning, where students actively engage in questioning, investigating and problem-solving, and project-based learning that encourages collaborative, interdisciplinary work promote deeper understanding, creativity and the ability to apply knowledge in complex, real-world scenarios, which are key to developing lifelong learning skills.
• Involvement in experiential learning. Experiential learning opportunities such as studio courses (common in arts and design programs), field-based courses (which involve hands-on learning in real-world settings), and capstone projects that integrate and apply knowledge from students’ entire course of study help students synthesize their learning, apply it in practical contexts and demonstrate mastery of their discipline through culminating projects or performances.
• Student engagement and active learning. The National Survey of Student Engagement offers an instrument for evaluating the degree to which students are actively engaged in their learning through discussions, group work and other interactive pedagogies, rather than passive receipt of information via lectures.
• Faculty mentorship and advising quality. Strong mentorship and advising are critical to student success, helping them navigate their academic paths, make informed career choices and develop professional networks. Campuses should measure the frequency and quality of faculty-student interactions beyond the classroom, including advising, mentorship and availability for academic and career guidance.
• Interdisciplinary learning opportunities. In today’s complex world, the ability to think across disciplines is increasingly important, as it allows students to approach problems holistically and innovate in ways that single-discipline perspectives might not. Campuses should measure the extent to which students have opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary studies, where they can draw connections between different fields of knowledge and apply diverse perspectives to problem-solving.
• Student-centered learning environments. Personalized and student-centered learning approaches recognize that students have diverse needs and help ensure that all students can succeed, regardless of their background or learning style. Campuses should measure the degree to which their institution fosters a learning environment that is responsive to the needs, interests and learning styles of students, including the use of personalized learning plans, adaptive learning technologies and flexible curricula.
• Quality of assessment of learning outcomes. Clear, measurable learning outcomes provide evidence that students are acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in their careers and as informed citizens. Institutions should describe how they measure and demonstrate student learning outcomes, including critical thinking, communication skills, quantitative reasoning and other core competencies.
• Postgraduation success. The ultimate test of a college’s educational quality is how well it prepares students for life after graduation, both professionally and personally. This should also include measures of alumni satisfaction and long-term career trajectories.
• Institutional commitment to teaching excellence. Campuses should report their investment in professional development for faculty, the use of evidence-based teaching practices and the degree to which teaching excellence is valued and rewarded within the institution.

At the broad-access institutions that serve a majority of the nation’s undergraduates, the single most effective way to address their enrollment and financial challenges is to dramatically increase retention and graduation rates. While improvements in teaching quality aren’t, by themselves, sufficient to address those challenges, they can certainly help.

To elevate the quality of college teaching, it’s not enough to offer various teaching awards or to set up a teaching center. Campuses, accreditors and college ranking systems must do more. This will require a shift in mindset, campus cultures and institutional priorities and investments.

In a wonderful line in his essay, Zimmerman quotes an emeritus professor at Colby College after the campus decided to open a teaching center. “A Center for Teaching and Learning?” he asked in 1992. “I thought that’s what the whole college was.”

Teaching and learning should be at the heart of every campus.

While specialized centers for teaching and learning (like the one I directed at Columbia) are valuable for providing focused resources, training and support, the broader goal should be to cultivate a culture where teaching excellence and student learning are prioritized across the entire institution. This means that every department, every faculty member and every campus initiative should be aligned with the goal of enhancing the educational experience.

When teaching and learning become central to the campus ethos, the entire institution becomes a dynamic environment where both students and faculty are constantly growing, experimenting and improving.

While centers for teaching and learning are essential for providing targeted support, the real aspiration should be to create a campus where the principles of these centers are embedded in the fabric of the institution itself.