You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
This conversation is with the authors of the chapter “Centering Resiliency: Principles for Academic Leaders and Teaching Center Directors” in our new co-edited book, Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education (JHU Press, 2024). The book (in paper and ebook form) is available for order from JHU Press and on Amazon.
Matthew Kaplan is the executive director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. Mary Wright is associate provost and executive director of the Sheridan Center at Brown University. Derek Bruff is an associate director at the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia.
Q: What main themes of your chapter would you like readers to take away and bring back to their institutions and organizations?
Matthew Kaplan: Our chapter focuses on the ingredients necessary for centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) to develop the resilience that will enable us to play a key role in the evolving world of higher education. That world will be increasingly characterized by ongoing disruptions, from unexpected crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, to technological innovations like the rise of GenAI, to the wider social and political environment often skeptical of the value of universities.
Moving forward successfully in this environment, we suggest that centers will need to leverage their unique capacities for resilience, and academic leaders will need to recognize and support CTLs on their campuses. In particular, we point to two features of educational development that centers will want to cultivate—improvisation and collaborative networking—as well as the importance of robust support from academic leaders.
Improvisation entails the ability commonly found at CTLs to adapt programs and services that meet the needs of the institution and the higher ed landscape. Undergirded by ongoing reflective practice, centers will need to both react to arising shifts and proactively examine their practice to discern the new and changing demands on their institutions. The ability to establish and foster collaborative networks draws on a core strength of CTLs, which often serve as hubs for professional development on campus, with ties to leadership at all levels (central administration, schools/colleges, departments) and to individual faculty, as well as writing centers, technology offices, innovation centers, and many others. Successful networking for CTLs depends on the ability to identify partners and then build cooperative relationships that draw on the unique strengths of each organization.
To realize the full potential for CTLs to contribute to the evolving landscape of teaching and learning at universities, we call on academic leaders to provide meaningful support through policies, practices and resources. This includes recognizing the full range of contributions CTLs can make, inviting them into significant conversations and collaborations before crises arise, and investing in the quality and quantity of center staff—including efforts at retention, such as robust promotion ladders. With these key elements in place, CTLs will be well-positioned to advance a culture of teaching in a rapidly shifting landscape.
Q: What are potential opportunities and levers to recenter learning within research-intensive colleges and universities?
Mary Wright: The teaching and research missions of universities do not have to be oppositional. With intentionality at multiple levels, research-intensive colleges and universities can also promote effective and equitable learning. During COVID-19, many institutions saw teaching and learning as core to operations and strategy, and the continued inclusion of learning-focused initiatives in university strategic, operational and fundraising plans is core to recentering learning.
I recently heard John Gardner suggest that provosts could think of themselves as chief learning officers, and that commitment from the top is also important to communicate the value of teaching. As their name suggests, centers for teaching and learning are key organizations for recentering learning on many campuses. Matt’s summary of our chapter offers important suggestions for supporting (and leveraging) these valuable units.
I offer additional suggestions to senior leaders in my recent book about CTLs, including staffing, budget, positioning on key committees and highlighting the center’s work in speeches or university communications. And the work of individual instructors matters—including a commitment to ongoing professional development around teaching and to equitable and excellent learning experiences and outcomes. Finally, although there is not ample space to reprint them here, I value the 11 questions that Corbin Campbell asks in the final chapter of Great College Teaching, which suggest levers to realize a future where “the best teaching is understood as the best university.”
Q: How might the rapid evolution of generative AI impact the work of recentering learning?
Derek Bruff: Not unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, the advent of readily available generative AI tools has made visible some of the weak points in teaching and learning in higher ed. For example, there are types of student writing assignments that many instructors use to assess learning that are easily circumvented by tools like ChatGPT. Many of these assignments weren’t very good assessments of learning to begin with, while others weren’t seen by students as having intrinsic value and thus viewed as busywork. It’s much harder to avoid those problems in an age of generative AI.
The good news is that shining a light on these weak points means higher ed is in a better position collectively to do something about them. When discussions about teaching and AI can avoid the us-versus-them narrative that pits students against instructors, those discussions can often turn into valuable conversations about learning goals, assessment strategies and teaching methods. It’s time-consuming to rethink these things in light of generative AI’s potential role in teaching and learning, but the resulting assignment and course redesign can lead to a valuable recentering of learning.
Because of CTLs’ experiences working with faculty on course (re)design, they’ve been well-positioned to provide just-in-time professional development opportunities for instructors grappling with these challenges, often leveraging existing partnerships with writing centers, instructional technology units, libraries, and other units. Many CTLs also support departments and schools in curricular (re)design, efforts that are now starting to integrate AI-focused learning objectives at the program level. This kind of rapid response does, as noted above, benefit from institutional investments in CTLs, from inviting CTL staff to key AI committees and working groups to supporting CTL staff in taking time to explore new technologies like generative AI and their impact on teaching and learning.
