Teaching Philosophy
My pedagogy is committed to the liberal arts virtues of critical thinking, intellectual exploration, practical wisdom, and civic engagement.
Today’s students have lived through a once-in-a-century global pandemic, economic upheaval, climate change, hyperpartisanship, rapidly developing artificial intelligence, pervasive social media, unceasing gun violence, and more. These and other developments necessitate educational approaches that prepare students to succeed in this complicated mediated, political, and technological environment. A liberal arts education—one anchored in practices such as critical thinking and problem solving, ethical perspective building, civic engagement, and sustainability—is especially suited to such a moment. My courses are undergirded by these approaches to a liberal arts education. I utilize a combination of theory and practice, as well as lecture, discussion, and application, in order to educate students in the fields of rhetoric, communication, media studies, and leadership. I also work to create a space space of intellectual inquiry for my students and I believe strongly that students should be taught through multiple methods and assessed through a variety of assignment types. And, finally, I take seriously the notion that my pedagogical development is a career-long effort of trial and error, success and failure, and learning from both my students and colleagues. I detail these areas of my teaching philosophy in more detail below.
My courses help students to develop both problem solving and critical thinking skills as well as an ethical perspective on civic and community engagement.
This is especially evident in my COM 217: Video Games and Contemporary Problems course. Students collaborate with their peers as part of three long-form video game labs (five weeks each, 75-minutes per week) and shorter in-class play-throughs deemed “free plays” (40-45-minutes, sessions distributed across lecture and discussion sessions), both of which provide them with concrete opportunities to solve problems, learn from failure, and develop their skills in interpersonal communication. Labs are ordered purposefully. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) gives students time to adjust to playing video games in a classroom setting while also providing an expansive, open-world suitable for developing problem solving skills in spatial reasoning, interpersonal communication and teamwork, and time management. Firewatch (2016) builds on this foundation by helping students to think critically about civic issues such as addiction, family trauma, and disability. The lab sequence concludes with Cities: Skylines II (2023), in which students are tasked with considering the complexities of community building and infrastructure through the construction of a sustainable city. “Free-plays” focus on particular types of problems, critical thinking skills, and communicative contexts, as well as civic issues. Examples include Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020; debt), Florence (2018; interpersonal communication, particularly within romantic relationships), It Takes Two (2021; marriage and divorce); Night in the Woods (2017; economic insecurity); Papers, Please (2013; immigration and borders), Stardew Valley (2016; burnout and work); and Undertale (2015; ethics of violence). Building from course readings and these applied lab and “free play” experiences, the course concludes with an assignment that tasks students with composing and pitching a video game designed to assist players in better analyzing, understanding, and solving a substantial problem facing their community. Combined, these lab, free play, and presentation experiences provide ample opportunities for students in this course to develop and to refine their skillsets in problem solving and, importantly, to reflect purposefully on the necessity of such skills to effect civic change in response to real-life issues facing society.
I utilize a combination of lecture, discussion, and application in my courses.
My courses introduce, reaffirm, and assess knowledge through a variety of modalities. In my 100- and 200-level courses, I regularly incorporate shorter lectures, usually of between 15-30 minutes (depending on the length of the class session). These lectures function to introduce core theories, histories, and other pertinent information to students. I supplement these lectures with a combination of minimalist slides, notes on the board, and embedded examples (videos, images, charts, passages from an assigned text, etc.). These materials, in conjunction with the lecture itself, provide students with ample opportunities to take notes. I also lecture in my 300-level courses, though these lectures tend to be shorter and less frequent, as I prioritize student discussion in such classes. In each course, regardless of level, I provide opportunities for student discussion of course content, including assigned readings and examples provided in lecture. I am to be a facilitator of such conversations, with the goal being students engaging each other in a critical engagement of course content. Discussions tend to be shorter in my 100- and 200-level courses. In 300- and 400-level courses, such discussions are the primary modality for student engagement with content. Alongside and in support of both lecture and discussion, my courses, regardless of level, include recurring chances for student application of content. For instance, my COM 104: Modern Communication course includes weekly case studies; these case studies invite students to consider how an individual, group, or institution should respond to a given communicative context (e.g., how to respond to a romantic partner’s angry text, how to navigate an organizational crisis on social media, etc.). In addition to case studies, students are able to apply content in my courses through analysis of rhetorical texts (e.g., considering the health communication in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond or Grey’s Anatomy, as students will do in my forthcoming ECC 199: Health Communication first-year seminar course). This diversity of modalities better captures—and holds—students’ attention and provides them with repeated opportunities to both learn content and put it into practice.
My courses assess students through a diversity of assignments, projects, and other demonstrations of learning.
In conjunction with the learning modalities overviewed previously, I assess students using a variety of assignments and activities. I do so for two reasons. First, I recognize that students learn and demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of ways. Some excel at exams, while others perform best when presenting or through writing Still others achieve their most success when leading group projects or utilizing their creative skills. Second, I believe that students should be given the opportunity to develop and refine their skillsets across multiple forms of assessment. It is incumbent on instructors to guide students in the continued growth of their developed skills and, also, to provide regular feedback with the goal of developing other areas in need of improvement. My courses utilize various forms of assignments and assessments, including presentations, daily homework, quizzes, exams, in-class and out-of-class writing, individual and group projects, reading assessment, and assessment of in-class engagement. I endeavor to weigh these different forms of assessment as equally as possible. For instance, in my 100-level courses, including my LDR 115: Introduction to Leadership course, presentations, quizzes, exams, homework, and class engagement (including things such as reading assessment and discussion assessment) are each worth 20% of a student’s final grade. My 200-level courses function similarly, albeit daily homework tends to be replaced by the completion of one or more projects. Students, once they have reached upper-division, 300- and 400-level coursework, are assessed by more in-depth assignments, including semester-long projects and written analyses, both of which prepare them for professional and community success as well as for continued education in graduate school. However, I still maintain a balance of different forms of assessment in these advanced courses, though each category becomes worth more of the student’s final grade (for instance, 25% or 33.3%). For instance, in my COM 304W: Communication and Media Theory course, students are assessed through a 12-15-page research essay, through a combination of quizzes and an exam, and through class engagement; each is worth 33.3% of the student’s final grade. My courses also, regardless of level, position students to develop long-term understanding and knowledge of course content. Students are exposed to information multiple times: first through reading or engagement with other assigned media (including television, as in my COM 215: Relational Communication course, and music, as in my COM 108: Media and Culture course), second through in-class discussion and lecture, third on a quiz, fourth through the correction of quizzes, and finally on a cumulative final exam or as part of an applied final essay or project. This approach to student assessment provides opportunities for regular feedback, for student growth, and for the development of both knowledge and applied skills related to course content.
