And by Teaching, you Mean Mentoring, Right?

When I attended college as a freshman in 1994, it made a lot of sense to spend a lot of money and time sitting at the feet of those who had spent their entire lives studying a given discipline. It made sense because that was the only way to get access to such information. I suppose there were libraries and encyclopedias and such. Still, I knew the broadest and most meaningful way to gain access to the most compelling resources was to pay tuition and enroll in classes at the best university or college. Even though every semester, I had to stay up till midnight to punch the course code into the phone registration system, hoping I wouldn’t hear the dreaded busy signal indicating that the one class I needed was likely filling up at that very moment. Even though once I finally got into the classes I needed, I spent the entire time furiously writing down anything and everything the professor said, hoping I would capture something in my notes that would actually be on the test. Even though learning how to fulfill my graduation requirements seemed to be a complete mystery to myself and everyone else I spoke to, including my counselor, academic advisor, and professors. Despite all these gross deficiencies in facilitating a positive learning experience, it was still the best way to explore the disciplines and subjects that would lead to personal growth, knowledge about the world I lived in, and ultimately a successful career. I believed it then, and today I still feel I was justified in thinking that way back in 1994.

However, in our day, this is no longer true.

While many things have stayed the same (i.e., cumbersome registration systems, unknowable graduation requirements, and auditorium teaching), some things have changed significantly since 1994. For example, my 14 yr old daughter has free and unlimited access to more information in her handheld device than any number of professors and staff could ever hope to learn or deliver in any number of courses. Since it’s estimated that over 90% of Americans have a similar device in their pocket, it seems indisputable that the purpose of attending school is no longer to gain access to information. As a result of this single fact, it seems evident that the role of teachers and faculty needs to change as well.

This rapidly progressing situation begs the question, “What is the role of the teacher in the modern classroom?”

There can be no doubt that teachers are still indispensable in our classrooms and fulfill many critical roles in furthering education. However, one role they are NOT needed for is to focus solely on disseminating information, even when that information might be relatively new.

No one person or even a group of people can compete with the internet when it comes to disseminating information. That is what the internet was born to do, and it does it better than any other mechanism ever created, and it’s only getting better at it. Any teacher, course, textbook, or institution will find in the coming years that their dependence on using instruction time primarily to disseminate information (lecturing) will be more and more of a liability in comparison with more relevant teaching and learning strategies.

So if the role of a teacher is no longer to disseminate information, then what is it?

This question has many answers, but perhaps the most important role a teacher could adopt is to truly mentor the learners under their stewardship.

Being a mentor means instead of lecturing about content, they teach how to critically distinguish between reliable sources of information and those less so. It means instead of expecting learners to listen to and accept the conclusions and opinions they have come to through years of scholarship, they teach learners how to become a scholar themselves and allow them to formulate their own opinions and conclusions. It means instead of asking them to memorize a set of facts and figures to be recited back in typical exam formats for an arbitrary grade, they teach how to apply those facts and figures by solving significant and complex real-world problems that result in a portfolio of demonstrated competencies.

This suggested shift is not a new idea, and it will not be simple to implement, especially when lecturing has been the foundation of higher education for well over 100 years. That fact in and of itself should be a red flag. Can you think of anything else that we do today that we do the same way we did over 100 years ago? Nothing in our society has stayed stagnant that long, especially one so heavily influenced by the use of technology.

So if the role of a teacher is no longer to disseminate information, then what is it?

This question has many answers, but perhaps the most important role a teacher could adopt is to truly mentor the learners under their stewardship.

One of the many appropriate and long-overdue responses to this challenge is to pursue a more in-depth and collaborative integration of learning design into our curriculum development process. Not just for online course delivery, but certainly for that too. Faculty are subject matter experts. In most cases, they are neither trained nor expected to know how to implement active learning design principles in their teaching. That’s ok, however, to stay competitive with the crushing number of new educational opportunities popping up every day, it will be critical for all institutions to respond with an approach to learning that is much more than just the dissemination and regurgitation of decontextualized information. This is especially true when you consider that anyone can Google practically any subject imaginable and, in under a second, obtain access to millions of sources from around the globe.  

Traditional higher education must offer their students more!  

Take all of this and add the impact of a tragic worldwide pandemic. When campus life, athletics, performing arts, and all the added benefits of attending a university have been shut down or canceled, students will very quickly see behind the curtain. Institutions that have collaborated with learning designers from the start, and as a result, have built less expensive, more flexible, and more effective learning experiences for their learners, will have a significant advantage in the future of education. When you take away all the campus bells and whistles, and the learner is left to compare one online program against another, suddenly, the quality of the curriculum matters more than ever. In this new normal, the institution that wins will be the one with a more affordable, better designed, and more engaging curriculum. 

In summary, teachers should be spending less of their precious time standing in front of learners talking about what they know and spend more time mentoring learners in ways that help them sort through and apply the information they have access to already. These well-proven yet long-ignored changes in learning strategies can be accomplished through a deliberate partnership between the subject matter expert and a learning designer. These changes aren’t just about promoting learning design; but are more about preserving the future of traditional higher education for many years to come.