Professors who ‘practise what they preach’ help humanise research management

Throughout my career as both a face-to-face and online university English teacher, I have always considered writing along with my students as a fundamental teaching activity. My best analogy for this thinking is sports-related: would you take lessons from a golf professional who did not also play the game? Then why would we ask students, who are learning to develop one of the most essential skills of their lives, to take writing “lessons” from someone who is not practising the very activity that we are trying to teach them?

The old canard often stated by teachers who focus only on teaching instead of also writing and researching is not only a false dichotomy but is also harmful to the self-actualised educational process – ie, one that realises the full potential of the curriculum and instruction, trying to take full advantage of every possibility for growth and learning.

Therefore, if your aim is to humanise research management and measure success in an online educational institution, a key method can be directly integrating research, writing and publishing into how faculty are evaluated.

To develop a self-actualised classroom, faculty don’t only need to be encouraged to practise work in their profession – this practice also needs to be integrated directly into the classroom.

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While all educational institutions should encourage faculty to perform in their profession, most online academic institutions have non-tenured adjuncts who remain outside the traditional faculty environment and are often not provided with any additional professional support. As such, I am primarily addressing improvements in online institutions. That being said, any academic institution would benefit from these recommendations.

Fundamentally, online institutions need to sustain research, writing and publishing by reimbursing faculty for conference participation and professional membership fees. That should be a given. However, they should also go further and make this a requirement by including it in their faculty course room expectations rubric and evaluations. In other words, online universities should do more than merely reimburse for professional participation, they should also make professional involvement a bedrock of the faculty evaluation system.

Don’t get me wrong, online institutions should continue to reimburse faculty who demonstrate academic and professional success, but reimbursement is not compensation. Merely reimbursing faculty members for professional memberships, conference fees and travel expenses does very little for promoting faculty engagement in research, writing and publishing. Reimbursement is not a reward but an action that merely lessens the punishment. As such, currently, professional engagement has become an extracurricular activity, at least in most online academic institutions. This needs to change, and it would be best served by making such activities a teaching requirement and then compensating faculty for it.

Integrating professional activity into the classroom

The simplest and most direct way to develop academic performance as integral to teaching is to encourage faculty themselves to demonstrate how their professional activities work in their classroom. For example, the peer-reviewing of any writing assignments should be a requirement on the course rubric, and the instructor’s own writing should be included in that peer group. Students would then comment on the instructor’s work like any other peer, and this simple inclusion would work for any course that requires writing.

This exercise elevates how the instructor’s work can be utilised in classroom instruction, which is more important than just the completion of the work itself. Put the burden of proof on faculty and then make that item the top line on teaching evaluation reports – ahead of such things as their proficiencies in grading, discussion board participation and crafting announcements.

Not that those aren’t important issues – they certainly are – they are just lower concerns in a self-actualised classroom that prioritises the integration of faculty’s professional performance.  A teacher who is practising what they preach is always more effective. Instructors who are sharing their work in the classroom get more sustained reward than those who might publish one article every five years in a top-flight, peer-reviewed journal. One professional activity is not privileged over the other because what is rewarded is sustained performance and classroom integration.

Online institutions, then, should develop a pay scale to compensate faculty who not only perform well on the institution’s conventional teaching evaluation rubric but also demonstrate professional success and how they share those particular proficiencies with students.

Therefore, the institution is developing higher-level teaching performance by rewarding self-actualised professional behaviour. Let me be clear: anyone subject to a teacher evaluation – adjuncts or full-time instructors equally – should be included in this requirement and compensation. Acknowledging all faculty in this initiative will create a unified educational and professional culture.

Finally, having instructors directly integrate professional activities in the classroom humanises research management primarily because students see their instructor going through the same throes of learning as they are being asked to experience.

James Meredith teaches writing and literature at Colorado State University Global. In other academic capacities, he has served as the president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation & Society and has researched war literature and film across the globe.

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