Intentional Teaching
Intentional Teaching is a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. Hosted by educator and author Derek Bruff, the podcast features interviews with educators throughout higher ed.
Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Intentional Teaching
Student Agency and Rhetorical Triangles with Paul Hanstedt
Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.
Back in February 2024, as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I reached out to Paul Hanstedt, author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, to talk about the "rhetorical triangle" as a way for thinking intentionally about writing assignments and other types of assignments. We had a fantastic conversation that I shared on Patreon at the time, and I’m now very glad to share the interview here on the main podcast feed.
Paul is the vice chancellor for academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. We talk about how UMR is not like other institutions, then we talk about Paul's new book, the second edition of General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty. Paul has so much wisdom on the design of general education curricula and on the process of designing those curricula. Finally we get around to talking about authentic audiences and rhetorical triangles.
Episode Resources
· Paul Hanstedt on Bluesky, https://bsky.app/profile/curriculargeek.bsky.social
· General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty, https://www.aacu.org/publication/general-education-essentials-a-guide-for-college-faculty
· Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, https://www.routledge.com/Creating-Wicked-Students-Designing-Courses-for-a-Complex-World/Hanstedt/p/book/9781620366974?srsltid=AfmBOoqsAbLJZT5zCC9UovFUp9sTbqZJkd8KgRD0V_vFflZdQ1Wdb6H_
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Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
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Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.
... welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas and teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time. Today, I'm excited to share the last of the interviews I conducted back in February 2024 as part of a slow read of my book, Intentional Tech. The last chapter in that book focuses on using technology to connect students with authentic audiences for their work. After writing that chapter, I read Creating Wicked Students Designing Courses for a Complex World by Paul Hanstedt, where I was introduced to the idea of a rhetorical triangle. I've used this idea in every workshop since where I needed to talk about the authentic audience principle because it so elegantly explains why audience matters in the assignments we give students. As part of the slow read. I had planned to share a few bonus resources with my Patreon supporters, so I reached out to Paul Hanstedt to talk with him about the rhetorical triangle as a way for thinking intentionally about writing assignments and other types of assignments. We had a fantastic conversation that I shared on Patreon at the time, and now I'm very glad to share the interview here on the main podcast feed. Paul is currently serving as Vice Chancellor for Academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota, Rochester. That institution is not like other academic institutions, and we start our conversation by exploring some of those differences. Then we talk about his new book, the second edition of General Education Essentials The Guide for College Faculty, which came out earlier this year. Paul has so much wisdom on the design of general education curricula and on the process of designing those curricula. Finally, w get around to talking about authentic audiences and rhetorical triangles. We cover a lot of ground in this interview, and I think you will find it inspiring. Paul, thank you so much for being on international teaching. I'm excited to talk with you today about lots of different topics and thanks for coming on the podcast.
Paul Hanstedt:My pleasure. I'm delighted.
Derek Bruff:Let me start with my usual opening question. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?
Paul Hanstedt:Oh, yeah, I can. It was in my senior year of college. It was an October day in Decorah, Iowa. We were it was one of those fall autumn days where the sky was a dark, cloudy, gray. And in such a way that it brought out the colors on the trees and made them even brighter somehow. And I was sitting next to the window, and I think I'd gone and played racquetball this morning. So I had kind of a dopamine endorphin and feeling going on. And I was I was just kind of sitting there listening to the class, not really participating. And it was a poetry class. And the professor asked a question, and then no one responded and asked the question and no one responded. So I finally raised my hand and sort of gave an answer. And he said, Yeah, that's that's good. And and the conversation continued. And I remember thinking, I felt more comfortable in the classroom having these discussions than anywhere else.
Derek Bruff:Hmm.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, It was a very distinct moment.
Derek Bruff:Wow. And that motivated you to pursue a career where you could keep having those those conversations, right?
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah. Well, there was, you know, after my senior year, I went back to England where I'd started a band and rejoined that band. But when. When, when when fame and fortune didn't come calling.
Derek Bruff:Okay?
Paul Hanstedt:Ye. Then I went on to grad school.
Derek Bruff:Yeah, well, you know. It's nice. To have a safety plan.
Paul Hanstedt:You know.
Derek Bruff:Ph.D. in literature. As your. Fallback.
Paul Hanstedt:As your fallback? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derek Bruff:Well, let's. Fast forward a little bit. You have recently made a pretty big career change moving to the University of Minnesota. Roche. Mm hmm. What motivated that career change, and what are you hoping to accomplish in your new position at the University of Minnesota?
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, I. So I'm going to try not to let this become too long of a story. I was a my my first institution out of graduate school was Roanoke College, and it was a wonderful place to be. And I loved the work that I was doing there. I was there for 23 years, so I loved being there. But after 23 years and 19 of them had me commuting about 100 miles a day. Yeah, I was kind of ready for a change. Got an offer at another institution that I where I could walk to work. Seemed very convenient. Ended up being probably a little too convenient. Love the colleagues wasn't a particularly good fit. Wasn't the kind of place where I could innovate and build things. So I'd been there. It was the kind of place, frankly, where the pandemic made it better because at least I was useful and my usefulness was so foregrounded. I founded a center for teaching and learning there and and helped, you know, I was able to keep busy and feel like I was really being having meaning doing meaningful work during the pandemic. After that, I kind of looked around and thought, I just don't think this is for me. And I was kind of looking around and then search firm reached out to me and said, you know, this places this, this place. And I simply looked at Minnesota because my wife's family is here. And the search firm said, this place is not like any other place. And I've kind of I've worked for a lot of places. So I was kind of like oh cute. Right.
Derek Bruff:Those places are like most other places, you know.
Paul Hanstedt:And most places insist they're not like any others. So and then I got on the website and I thought, Wow, this place is not like any other place. And for for tenured and tenure track faculty, scholarship of teaching and learning is the primary form of research that they do.
Derek Bruff:Wow.
Paul Hanstedt:I don't know if there's any other place in the world like the self they've got for learning outcomes. Self-Regulated learning is one of them. So they're being very intentional about putting the students in a position to succeed. There are no departments. Everybody is in the Center for Learning Innovation. That is it. So you have technologists next the historians, next to philosophers next to chemists and they work together. A lot of collaborative teaching. It is just like any unlike any other place that I've ever encountered.
Derek Bruff:Does it have a particular focus in terms of degrees and majors?
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, well, it's in Rochester, Minnesota, and so when I look out my window, I can see the Mayo Clinic and and, you know, we not idiots.
Derek Bruff:Right. Right.
Paul Hanstedt:So there's.
Derek Bruff:There's a lot of health professions, action.
Paul Hanstedt:Possibilities there. Right. So, yeah, it is health services facing, but broadly written public health as well. You know, one of the sort of leading students who's about to graduate in June is going to become an educator. Right. So we we we we approach health services. We're dedicated health services. 80% of our students have some sort of substantial interaction with Mayo Clinic as an internship, as a undergraduate research work study, shadowing any any number of things. So it really is focused on that. But we approach it very, very broadly. We open in 15 or 2009, 15 years ago, and we were built from the ground up to be different and delightfully so. I mean, Laurie, my boss, is also a former Center for Teaching and Learning director. Yeah, it's it is it is a delightful place to be. I mean, I come home grinning, you know, that's after 12 meetings, back to back meetings, all great. But I'm just surrounded by I mean, we because of our uniqueness, we attract unique people. We attract people with personalities, with the sense of humor. Almost every one of our faculty has a road to Damascus story where they talk about working in chem labs, you know, doing bench work and being successful and enjoying it, but thinking, you know, there's where's what else is there? And then they find scholarship of teaching and learning and how do we make chemistry accessible? We we are 67% historically and structurally marginalized students.
Derek Bruff:40% students of color. 40% First gen. We have no achievement gap. Wow. Yeah.
Paul Hanstedt:And it's not because we've lowered standards. Just because because we are able to focus thoughtfully. I mean, it is.
Derek Bruff:Whereas most institutions I know, if they start to break out their grades and student success data by demographic groups, there's these big gaps in kind of the places you would expect to see them. And so you don't see that at. Rochester.
Paul Hanstedt:No, it's it's it's delightful. And our students are it's just an invigorating place to be.
Derek Bruff:I also want to ask you about your book, General Education Essentials. And so I understand from social media that I think today is the official publication date of the second edition.
Paul Hanstedt:I can't remember. Yeah.
Derek Bruff:Right around here. Yeah. So. So this is a book about general education and you know how a second edition that's coming out about, I think, 12 years after the first edition.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah.
Derek Bruff:So what, what motivated the second edition? What led you to go back there and dig into this topic again?
Paul Hanstedt:Well, when the first edition came out, there really weren't and still aren't, a lot of books about general education dedicated to general education, general education reform, and the really thoughtful ways that we can approach it. And so the first edition concentrated on sort of integrative approaches and the implications of that for student learning and the implications of that for what we did in the classroom and and really how to make something that was oftentimes sort of dismissed, get it out of the way into something meaningful and powerful and impactful with students. And then, you know, you know, how this is. And then I went on the road and I became part of the faculty of the AAC&U Institute on General Education and Assessment. Now, I think it's general education, pedagogy and assessment and just worked with dozens and dozens of schools, you know, maybe five dozen individually. And then at that institute, you know, another 2 to 300. And the content shifts the way we can rethink general education, make it more powerful or were an important part of the argument. And I really focused on that in the first book, in the second edition and over the years of working with a variety of different schools and watching my own thinking evolve to, there are two changes in the second edition. The first one is there's about a 50 page section at the end of the book that talks about process.
Derek Bruff:Ok.
Paul Hanstedt:That.
Derek Bruff:Wow.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah. That you can. It's great to have great ideas, but if you can't move on your campus, you're not going to get very far. And and there are some things we can do to make the conversation more productive. Right. And part of that, again, is sort of mindset approaches. Let's make sure it's an intellectual conversation, not a political one. I mean, part of that are just particular steps institutions can take. One of my favorite things is, you know, beginning the conversation by having faculty generate a word cloud of their aspirations for the graduates of their institution. What does a graduate of UMR or Roanoke College or the University of Mississippi look like? Right. How do they act? How do they interact with the world? I think think not less about the knowledge that they have, but how they use their knowledge. Right. What are their affective aspects? Who are they as people and and think aspirationally, think idealistically. And I love to have them generate a word cloud and then have a discussion about that word cloud, anything surprising there, anything missing, anything that should be bigger, anything that should be smaller, anything that should be taken out and then do it again. And then the key points of that word cloud become the beginning of the development of the general education learning outcomes that will drive the conversation. So just something like that that gets the faculty from across the campus, from across disciplines, from across departments to think about what they have in common. Their students and their goals for their students. Right? I mean, we can become cynical. Am I allowed to say bastards? Well, you become cynical. Sorry,
Derek Bruff:It's my podcast. I make the rules.
Paul Hanstedt:you do you can bleep me out if you want. But I'm so cynical, right? And and partly we're trained to be cynical and critical, and we see that as sort of who we are and what we add to the conversation. But but we're also idealistic. We work so hard and so long and so tirelessly, finally, because we care about our courses and our students and learning and the condition of the world that we live in. And we think that what we do matters. So now so find ways to work around that.
Derek Bruff:An process is so important too, because what I heard you say was you would do that near the start of the process with all the faculty you can get in the room together. Whereas I feel like at a lot of institutions, a move to revise the general ed curriculum starts with a, you know, select working group or committee where there's it maybe it's a big one, maybe there's 20 people in the room. But but it's not everyone. It's not engaging the entire faculty at the start of the process, which I think is critical because you need to do some kind of visioning together as a faculty.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, Yeah. And one of the things that's really important in a gen ed revision and this is something I emphasize is finding ways to make sure the less dominant voices are heard, right? Becaus oftentimes you will have senior faculty who feel empowered to stand up and speak, speak. And oftentimes that can be in favor of and oftentimes it can be against I my impression generally is, is that people who are fearful of change are more outspoken and they can dominate the conversation. So can we use poll everywhere? Well, that's an interesting comment there. You know, Professor Miller, can we let's get a feel for the room right now and sort of see. It can be. And that's useful for the general committee because it could be that everybody agrees with Dr. Miller. Sure, it could be that that nobody agrees with Dr. Miller, in which case, I can guarantee you Dr. Miller is probably not going to be quiet. But but it's useful for the other people in the room to see or it could be that everybody's polarized and all of those outcomes are really useful for moving forward. Yeah. The second thing that I just I don't want to belabor the point, but the second thing that that that really changed is in my own thinking, in that I incorporate in this book is I still talk about an integrative as opposed to a, you know, an integrated approach of general education that that foregrounds the interaction between fields and disciplines and courses and our lives rather than the content. So it's not just about a sociology course, a biology course and the art history course. It's about how those interact, what do you learn in one that's going to be powerful in another, what are the differences between the two? What analogies play back and forth between the two? In the second edition, I still focus on that. I still think that's really important. That is as far as some universities are going to get. But I really start focusing on high impact practices as a. Yeah, I mean, the fact is there's no evidence that a breadth or distribution model, but there might be evidence that a broader distribution model is powerful. And of course, we know that breadth is valuable, but we have evidence at a high impact practice that high impact practices really have an impact on students. Sure, that they actually do work, particularly in terms of equity and inclusion.
Derek Bruff:Mm hmm. Now, what is a high impact practice? Because I know that is a particular piece of jargon that has a lot of definition and meaning to it. But I don't know if our listeners.
Paul Hanstedt:That's there know, I'm like, Yeah, good, good pushback on that. I mean, the terminology comes out of a work from the AAC&U, you and the National Survey for student engagement in in the 2000. And I think generally people point to George Kuh as sort of the leading voice on that. But his work, you know, he certainly is a leading voice and a powerful mind. And also, I will admit, a friend of mine and a fellow alum, from from Luther College, which is one of the. So but, you know, he was working with a lot of different people. Julianne McKinsey and Carol, Gary Schneider and just all sorts of folks, Ashley Finley, You know, it's just a lot of really wonderful folks. And but it basically comes down to a lot of research looking at what actually has an impact on students, what helps students when they graduate, you know, be able to solve problems, be able to think critically, be able to communicate productively and effectively. You know, all the things that we're really kind of looking for. And originally there's a list of ten that included things like first year seminars, capstone courses, undergraduate research, internships, writing intensive courses, courses that featured heavily collaboration, learning communities, those kinds of things. It's like the Seven Dwarfs. I'm never gonna be able to name all ten. And then I want to say there.
Derek Bruff:But there's a list.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, there's a list. And then in the late teens, Kuh went back and added E portfolios. So and me and, and Kinsey have been pretty careful about making the argument that, listen, it's not just these practices, it's a careful implementation of these practices that focuses on on time, on task, public sharing of findings, or an understanding of the implications outside of the academic community for the work that you're doing. Regular feedback from both peers and faculty members, you know, things that really have been around for a long time we can go back to Dewey for that stuff, right?
Derek Bruff:So I remember when I saw that list of ten of these kind of structures that were known to have a lot of impact on students, I thought at least are the places I've been either as a student or as or as a faculty member or staff member. These are things that some some students experience occasionally in their curriculum. Yeah, none of them are kind of across the board and none of them happen regularly. Right.
Paul Hanstedt:Right. And I'll tell you what, I can't tell you the number of times I've been in an institution where I'm talking about this and someone will raise their hand and go, Well, I'm the director of the honors program, and we have all those things in the honors program right? So think about that. The best students on campus get the most impactful practices I did boggles the mind. And that's.
Derek Bruff:There's another way to think about that.
Paul Hanstedt:Think about that so that actually there is evidence, you know, from going back 14 years that shows that, yes, they benefit everybody, but the lower the in incoming A.C.T. score, the more benefits a person, the lower the GPA, the more it benefits, the more the from a marginalized population, the more it benefits them. You know, So how about we work with that? And that's kind of the argument. This is the second that I've added to the second edition is there are general education models where the high impact practice leads. It's not a distributional aspect. It's learning communities at Wagner College, it's asynchronous learning communities at Drury University. It's a problem based courses of Worcester Polytechnic, no problem. Again, problem based isn't designated as one of the high impact practices, but implemented carefully with all these elements. You know, this secret sauce bits it can be.
Derek Bruff:Let's take just one of those examples. So what would a general education curriculum built around learning communities? What what could that look like?
Paul Hanstedt:Sure, sure.
Derek Bruff:Or what does that look like at some of the places you just named?
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah. So Wagner College is a good example. And what they have is in the first year, students have to engage in one learning community that crosses three different core, that includes three different courses and has a community based experiential aspect to it. Okay, Wagner College is on Staten Island. They've got New York City. They're you know, before they implemented this, they had massive attrition problems. And then they looked and thought, you know, maybe we could use New York City to our advantage. And so they brought it into their curriculum. So students will engage in a learning community. The first year will.
Derek Bruff:So that means I'm a student, I'm taking these three classes and all the students in those classes are the same. Yep. Right. It's it's the group of us. We're all taking the same three classes at the same time and.
Paul Hanstedt:And we're crossing and consequently we're sort of crossing the boundaries between those classes, you know, well-implemented the faculty from those classes will be in conversation with each other so you can use. You know, I used to teach a humanities course called artistic and literary responses to science and technology, and I would have loved to link that up with a psychology professor and a biology professor.
Derek Bruff:Sure, yeah.
Paul Hanstedt:And think about the things I could have done in my course if I'd known some of the things that were being covered in the biology course and brought into play and think about some of the things they could have done in the biology course had they known what I was doing in my career. So and so they do at Wagner, they do one of the first uses.
Derek Bruff:It's it's kind of startling. I'm like, Oh, that's how my fourth graders curriculum works.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah.
Derek Bruff:She has two teachers. She, you know, one for English and social studies and one for science and math. And they coordinate, right? And when they do it, well,there's so much cross-pollination between those two different disciplines.
Paul Hanstedt:And this is kind of part of it. I mean, when we talk about gen ed and gen ed reform, in the process of gen ed, reform, it's a successful conversation. Even if the curriculum that's proposed fails, it's a successful conversation. If those silos have been broken now, you know, and an institution needs to have a conversation like that regularly, you know, to check in about who we are and what we're after and what we have in common and what the challenges are and what we want for our students. S to not have that and then to expect students to go from from one area to another area to another area without us helping them,oh my God, if we're not able to do it or willing to do it, and then to ask them to be able to do it. Yeah.
Derek Bruff:So now let me ask let me kind of follow up on that a little bit to see if you have some more thoughts. I feel like there is there's been a growing critique of higher ed in the past couple of years that it is not worth the money right now. It's not worth the time. It's not worth the money. I think the kind of economics argument is actually pretty solid, that if you have a if you have a if you have a bachelor's degree, your lifetime earnings potential is way higher than if you don't So like. But that's not always persuasive. Do you find that there are ways to to kind of use the general education curriculum and the revision process there to try to articulate a different kind of argument about higher ed? It's a very big question.
Paul Hanstedt:But it is a very big. Question.
Derek Bruff:You're the guy that ask it to.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, I'm wishing I had another cup of coffee. I think I think I might have a third cup. I do. And it's and it's and it's not unproblematic, right? Because I don't want to slip into the neo liberal, you know, the purp, you know that, you know, we're going to do what we're going to do so that you can get a better job. You getting a better job is a legitimate goal. But I also want you to have a meaningful job, a purposeful job, a sense of a sense of mission. I mean, one of the things I love about e portfolios as a high impact practice, Randy Bass, as you know, in the building, you know, describing a community college with a nursing program that had e portfolios. He goes therein lies the construction of that identity of a nurse, right? Yeah. I love that quote. But we want that. Therein lies the construction of the identity of an engineer. Therein lies the construction of the identity of a historian. Therein lies the construction of the identity of a philosopher. I mean, those, y know, the deliberate building of who I am and who I want to be and how I want to enter the world. And if we're not paying attention to that, then all the external narratives that have an agenda are happening. You know, I mean, even the many of the arguments against higher ed are coming from a political stance with a political purpose that if we can, you know, the recognition that the more likely people have you know university degrees, the more likely that they're going to vote one way or the other. Right. So just as a name, the thing that we all see is there are probably so I think, you know, in the end, you know, I don't like using the term general education. I mean, which is ironic because my book.
Derek Bruff:It's the name of your book,
Paul Hanstedt:it's almost like I didn't get to choose a title.
Derek Bruff:So we're to you how that works in publishing.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah, but the term liberal arts is the term that I prefer. And I know that's not unproblematic. I was actually at one university that you might be familiar with where I was told that in this state we want to we can't use that term and but liberal arts derives from ars liberalis, the arts by which a person is free. And that's what we're after were after students were after the opportunity to create students who walk into the world with a sense of agency in their own lives that they aren't defined by the narratives around them, whether they're coming from a political party or from their family or from higher education. Right? Yeah. And that they have that agency in their lives. This is kind of finally the goal for. So I feel a little bit like I can't tell if I'm completely on target for the question you asked or completely off target, but I think it could you know, I think it is it is for me, it is about what kind of world that we live in and what kind of people do we need to have that will be a successful, productive place? You know, where we can cross, where we can have conversations with each other and have an understanding of the complexity of the people that we're we're surrounded by.
Derek Bruff:I want to take us now I'm imagining a video game where we're way up above the world and now we're going to zoom way in down, down to the ground right. Because and you mentioned this kind of in passing in terms of the kind of the thoughtfulness around particular pedagogies. Yeah. So one of the chapters in my book is on using technology to connect students to an authentic audience for their work.
Paul Hanstedt:Right.
Derek Bruff:And I had some experiences in my own in the writing course as I was teaching, where I got to see how the students kind of came alive and how they engage more deeply. When we took some of their work and made it public in a in one fashion or another, making it. And so then I went and I read your book Creating Wicked Students, and there's a whole piece in there about this rhetorical triangle and can you tell us about the rhetorical triangle and kind of what role it can play in helping students engage in that more? More? Sure.
Paul Hanstedt:Sure. Randy Bass once invited me into a class he was teaching at Georgetown University, and the graduate students he was working with greeted with greeted me with, Hey, it's the triangle guy. So this is this is not an uncommon line of questioning. So this is I mean, I want to be very specific. I'm not a I'm not a rhetorician by trade. I've done a lot of work in composition and rhetoric all the way back to grad school, but I don't have a Ph.D. in the area, so I want to be a little careful about that. And my my use of the rhetorical triangle is loosely based on Aristotle, but okay. But I'm sure it's constructed in the way that the way that I think about it is that every rhetorical situation has three aspects to it. The writer or speaker. The topic about which they're writing or speaking and the audience to whom they're writing or speaking, right? And, and a couple of things are important to just sort of take forward from that. One is that you shift one of those things and everything else, the dynamics of everything else shift. So if a student is writing about a class to their grandmother, it's going to be different than if a student is writing about a party to their grandmother. Okay. If a student is writing and it's also going to be different, then if a student is writing about a party to a friend or about a class to a friend, right. All of these are going to look different. They're going to have different language. They're going to have different evidence that's presented. They're going to have different tone, a different feel, a different dynamic to them. And what I love about that is when one thing shifts, everything shifts, right? So it's not just the audience has an impact on on the language that I use. It has an impact on what I'm going to talk about with the topic. It also has an impact on how I'm going to construct myself that the me that I'm going to present to Grandma and the me that I'm going to present to friends, the me that I'm going to present to colleagues and the me that I'm going to present to students are different. Right? All right. The second thing, th, and that I'm in control of that I'm making some choices deliberately, right?
Derek Bruff:Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Hanstedt:But of course, the choices that I'm able to make are determined by the rhetorical context that is set for me, wh is another way of saying that as academics we have power to shift the dynamics of the rhetorical situation. And so the way it's we oftentimes lay it out when we're sort of going with traditional practices and and sometimes those traditional practices are perfectly appropriate, say, in an advanced class within a major. Right, write to scholars within the field. Okay. I'm about to graduate with this. I should be able to do this right, is that we kind of take the assumption that that if a student can't write a good paper to me, the professor, it's because they don't know the topic well enough. It's a failure of their learning and their mastery of the content. In reality, as anybody who fears public speaking or doesn't like writing knows, it's actually fear of the audience. I can be a genius in the topic, but if I don't have a sense of my ability to put words on the page, I'm stymied completely, right? So the way I kind of like to think about this is that if we take the, you know, isometric rhetorical triangle and we reshape it to more accurately portray you've got the topic and the professor at the top of the triangle and student way down at the bottom. And my my friend Nancy Welch, who is now retired, I think from the University of Vermont, used to say it looks so much like a dagger, you might as well put a handle on it.
Derek Bruff:Oh, my gosh. Oh, I pointed at the student. Right.
Paul Hanstedt:Pointed at the student. And think about the consequences of that. Right. I mean, all the maneuvers that students make because of that sense of powerlessness that they must have, you know, they don't even try or they fill the paper with outside quotations because that's safer. Right? I don't have the authority the professor does. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to I'm going to borrow other people's authority or they use jargon to sound like they know what they're talking about when they really don't or they cheat. In reality, the professor is the authentic audience, but they're inauthentic because the student can't rhetorically really meet the expectations of that audience. So what I strongly recommend, and this comes from Jane Danielewicz and Jordan Jack is shifting to a less informed audience. So shift the dynamics so that instead having the audience above the student in terms of what they know and being an insider on this content, the audience is below the student. They know less about the content, which then pushes the student to assume authority, to assume mastery of the content to take it on,because now they have to explain the concepts to somebody else. And that often that's where authenticity comes into play. Me as a 20 year old explaining to a professor something the professor already knows is inauthentic. Yeah, me as a 20 year old, explaining something about gender studies to a roomful of 12 year old boys that authentic, right. So I hope that made sense, but that's how I got it. Yeah.
Derek Bruff:So what could that look like in terms of an assignment for students?
Paul Hanstedt:Mm. Any number of things. It, you know, Jordan, Jack and Jane, Danielewicz sort of break it down into an unfamiliar audience and then a general or a popular audience. So it could look like an op ed explaining voter fraud in your newspaper, right, to a general population it could look like. And that example of a of a you know, I was running a workshop in Delaware once and someone who taught a gender studies class said, you know, I keep having my students do oral presentations to everybody else in the room who already knows this stuff because they've already been, you know, and it's boring. Right.
Derek Bruff:Right, right.
Paul Hanstedt:She said. So what I want them to do now, what I'm going to have them do now is talk about gender studies and constructions of maleness to a room. Imagine they're doing it to a roomful of 12 year old boys, which has a purposefulness to it right there, meaningfulness to it.
Derek Bruff:And I would say that's a hypothetical audience, right? Yeah. In that case, they're not actually presenting to a roomful of 12 year old boys, but just having that hypothetical audience can shift the, the, the students positionality within the triangle.
Paul Hanstedt:And I could see some people saying, well, actually that's less authentic. I get that. But the fact of the matter is, as all audiences are constructed, when I'm writing a book to a room, you know, to academics, I'm considering who academics are and what they want and what they care about. And when the student is writing to a professor they're, they've got assumptions about who that professor is. It isn't accurate. It might be accurate. It might not be. It might be in some ways and not in other ways. So yeah.
Derek Bruff:But it's still a little hypothetical.
Paul Hanstedt:It's it is a little hypothetical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so a there's a paradox to this that that what's more authentic, t actual audience or the fake audience, but all audiences are constructed. Always Yeah, Yeah.
Derek Bruff:Well, let me see if I can tie all this together a little bit, because you, in talking about the value, the liberal arts, you talked about helping students build their own agency in their lives.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah.
Derek Bruff:And so do you see this kind of shift in audience as a way to help students do that?
Paul Hanstedt:Yes. Yes. The term I use, and it's not an unproblematic term, is is authority. I'm not talking about authoritarianism and I'm not talking about confidence. I'm talking about a sense of knowing the content that I'm talking about. I have authority over the content, but also authority in terms of authorship, that I'm saying something that hasn't been said before, that I have a right to add to the conversation. You know, there's a there's a long I mean, Marcia Baxter Magolda does a lot with developmental theory. She talks about self authorship, right? Students writing their own script of who they are as opposed to it being written by the world around them. And the implication is so that then they can go into the world in meaningful, powerful ways. I just take that implication a step further. And she and that term authorship is really the idea of author, of creating, of making of saying more. Yeah. So being in a position where you're actually helping somebody or explaining something to them that they need to know builds a student's sense of of who they are and what they're capable of.
Derek Bruff:Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what I saw when I started having my students write for a public blog or put together podcast episodes. Right. Is that is that they weren't in this artificially constructed rhetorical context, right? Where they have been assigned a role and they have very little power in that in that context to kind of change things. They're put in the position of saying, Oh, no, I'm I'm the one talking about this topic and I'm I'm going to figure out kind of what's important to say about it.
Paul Hanstedt:Ye. Yeah. And it hopefully ceases to be transactional. Then it ceases to be just about the grade. And sometimes it will be right. I mean, students are doing a lot of work for us for a lot of different classes, so there's going to be varying levels of investment, but let's at least try to make it right, you know, so yeah.
Derek Bruff:Well, Paul, this has been delightful. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. And we've covered a lot of a lot of ground today, but and I know there's more in your book for folks who are who are exploring their general education curriculum revision. That's always happening somewhere.
Paul Hanstedt:Yeah. Oh, Lord, yes.
Derek Bruff:I know your book will be a great aid to a lot of folks. So again, thank you, Paul. This has been delightful.
Paul Hanstedt:Like, Well, thank you. I love to some wonderful questions and I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Derek Bruff:Oh, that was Paul Hanstedt, vice chancellor for academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota, Rochester. As mentioned, Paul is the author of two fantastic books, General Education Essentials The Guide for College Faculty, now in its second edition and creating Wicked Students Designing Courses for a Complex World. I took so many notes when reading his Wicked Students book. It's it's really, really good. If you have thoughts on Paul's comments in this episode, I would love to hear them.There's a link in the show notes. You can click to send me a text message with your thoughts or you can email me at derek@derekbruff. org Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. And the show notes. You'll find a link to the ACA website where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities and professional development offerings. This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website, the intentional teaching newsletter and my Patreon where you can help support the show for just a few bucks a month. If you found this or any episode of intentional teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot. As always, thanks for listening.
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