Most students find topics in philosophy intrinsically interesting when they are presented in an accessible way. There are also extrinsic benefits to studying philosophy: learning to evaluate arguments, learning to revise prior beliefs, and learning to read and write about complex materials. My primary goals as a philosophy instructor, then, are exciting this intrinsic interest and achieving these extrinsic benefits. I seek to introduce material, explore that material, and create assignments and assessments with these goals in mind.
Introducing a topic well is extremely important. If ideas are miscommunicated at the outset, mistakes in understanding are often compounded later. I believe that the biggest barriers to effectively communicating ideas in philosophy are introducing with a lack of clarity and/or not introducing them in an interesting way. One strategy to combat both of these barriers to an effective introduction is the use of media such as a movie clip, or part of a podcast, or even a piece of visual art. Often times this gives students a concrete example to use in explanations of some topic while also supplying a shared reference frame and vocabulary to refer back to throughout the exploration of that topic. For example, using a clip of Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray has to relive the same day over and over is a great introduction to Determinism – the theory that all events, including people’s actions, are totally determined by prior events. As a class, we can build on this intuitive example to introduce technical terms or alternative positions. (e.g. “The people in Groundhog Day appear to be deterministic machines because ….” “Why would Groundhog Day not be an interesting movie, if it took place in a non-deterministic world?”) I try to use examples like this that serve the double function of piquing interest in a topic and providing fertile pedagogical ground. The examples can generate questions for tests or short writing assignments. They can be used by students in generating counter-examples or illustrations. However, if examples do not serve these larger functions, then they end up as little more than cute ornaments to the class. So I try to revisit ones that do not work, and collaborate with other teachers on ideas.
In logic, I have experimented with different ways to introduce material, especially material not covered in the textbook. I have created documents to supplement various textbooks (example); however, I noticed in my second time teaching logic how often students seek out videos that explain how to solve various problems. Students now entering college are much more familiar with crowd-sourcing problems and searching youtube for how-to videos than I ever was. I am attempting to respond to this by incorporating supplemental videos (example) talking through problems that I can post to blackboard.
Assignments are not just exercises to assess student learning; they can also be exercises that foster student learning. For example, instead of assigning a series of unrelated papers, I like to create assignments that build on each other. After one assignment to defend a position, students can might be asked to write a critical response to their first paper as if the first paper was written by someone else. This kind of assignment inculcates a greater appreciation for argument construction and encourages a kind of intellectual modesty and sympathetic reading all while demanding serious thought about some philosophical topic. Other small ungraded assignments can also set up later graded ones. I privately refer to exercises that lead up to larger ones as “baby-step” projects. Not all are complex. Another kind of “baby-step” process I use is teaching students how to write detailed outlines of their reading, by giving them a partially filled out, but very detailed, outline of a reading (example). This assignment can springboard to either creating a full outline for a different reading, or using the completed outline to make an outline for an essay on that reading.
In logic, I have begun to more fully appreciate the value of asking meta-logical questions on homework and tests, i.e. not just asking them to perform some procedure using logic, but to be able to explain what the procedure is and what it does. These might be questions about definitions of key concepts. I might ask them to explain why a certain procedure is not useful for a certain end. This focus on meta-logic has also guided my choice in textbook away from books I was more familiar with to ones that were interested in discussing this kind of content in an accessible way. The value of asking meta-logical questions is related to a philosophy of tests I have developed. I think only one goal of a test should be assessment, tests can also serve a pedagogical function. When I ask these kinds of questions about logic on a test, the students continue to learn by thinking about the material from a different perspective. Similarly, in my non-logic classes, I have shifted from in-class tests to take-home tests for two reasons. First I think in-class tests reward quick information recall as much or more than understanding, and I do not think someone has to be good at quick information recall to be good at philosophy. Second, by giving the students more time, I can ask more complex questions that elicit original thought (example). The students continue learning while they take the test.
Finally, I think that accomplishing the goals I have mentioned above–exciting intrinsic interest, learning to evaluate arguments, learning to revise prior beliefs, and learning to read and write about complex materials–is aided by modeling these behaviors to students. They need to see that I am excited about the material. Here, I take the performative aspect of teaching seriously. I have found that if students see me excited about some apparently esoteric argument or see me having fun doing logic it psychologically gives them permission to find the argument exciting or have fun doing the logic problem. When I express my own ignorance about some topic in ethics, it gives them permission to admit their own lack of confidence. When I explain how difficult I find a passage and read it with them, it gives them strategies for approaching difficult texts.