Teaching Problems as Intellectual Challenges

October 15, 2026

In this toolbox, I make four brief, related comments about our work as educational developers, followed by a teaching intervention that illustrates some of my points.

Once in a while we have faculty who request consultations with us because they feel obligated to, either because of a strong recommendation from their academic unit head or mentor, or as a requirement for their tenure or promotion portfolio. We do appreciate that unit heads, mentors, and other people with influence support our work and promote our programs. Many have been "regular" faculty in the past, and some have worked with us closely, even as faculty associates. And we are obviously happy to help faculty who encounter difficulties in their work — that’s part of our job. And yet, there is the risk that "sending" faculty to us, or having the perception to have been sent, creates the impression that we provide mandatory training for those who are somehow in trouble. In our experience, mandatory training is something one tries to get through in order to get back to one's "real work," and that perception makes it harder for our work to be successful. Participants tend to be more motivated and engaged if educational development is voluntary.

A second comment: In the perception of some in the JMU community, the work of the CFI is remedial or introductory. From that perspective, we step in if someone has problems, for example in their teaching, or we show new faculty the ropes; what we do is not for faculty who are experienced teachers and successful scholars. I think that this perception of educational development being for novices or special problem cases is wrong: We all have problems that we have to solve in our work, throughout our careers, and we want to recognize that such problems are a normal, even good aspect of our work (more on this below). And: Educational development is something that should be part of our work beyond specific problems that need fixing. Our work evolves as new technologies arise, student cohorts come in with new experiences and predispositions, and our interests and professional needs change, and we develop (ourselves) along with these changes.

A third comment: The previous point is related to the fact that we are not called Center for Educational Development or Center for Teaching Excellence. These names, common among similar centers, would suggest a linear progression from "needing development" to "having reached excellence." Instead, we believe that the center (ha!) of faculty work, throughout our careers, is innovation, as in making it new, in all areas of our professional activities.

My fourth comment is more closely related to teaching. There is a peculiar difference between our scholarly and our teaching work that has been commented on by a number of authors (especially Lee Shulman): Our scholarship is usually, on the whole, public and communal, while our teaching is often considered a private and comparatively isolating matter. We present our scholarship publicly, publish it, and frequently invite scrutiny of its problems, which are often viewed as a sign of serious scholarship (unless they are the result of gross incompetence). Teaching, in contrast, is something that we like to keep confidential, especially if we encounter problems that may suggest desirable changes to our teaching. Something that doesn't work is not an exciting intellectual challenge that the community of teachers should tackle but an embarrassing sign that we may not be excellent teachers, something we'd rather hide from others. We try to change this perception of teaching at CFI, since we think that teaching problems are exciting intellectual challenges that deserve public, or at least community, investigation. (We find that increasing numbers of faculty at JMU are willing, even eager, to approach teaching problems in such a way — see the growing community of faculty sharing open educational resources, or CFI programs such as Teaching Triangles, to be offered again in spring, or the Engaged Teacher Scholars).

Here is an example of how these ideas can look in practice. I've taken it from Tobin and Behling's Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone. Robin and Behling suggest a fairly small-scale teaching practice that they call "20-minute UDL" (UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning). You do the following: Go over your syllabus, lecture slides, exams, homework assignments, or whatever material makes sense for your class, and make a list of the things — content, skills, practices, you decide — that students struggle to learn. (These are some of the exciting teaching problems I referred to above.) Let's call these things bottlenecks in reference to Middendorf and Shopkow’s Decoding the Disciplines project. Then you identify those bottlenecks that you teach in only one or two ways. For example, you may explain something only in a lecture, and it's covered in the readings; or you may have it only introduced in a video that students review before class. Pick the bottleneck that you find most important and add a teaching activity that helps more students get through the bottleneck: If there's a reading about the point, add a video, or an application activity, or a jigsaw unit, or another way to "cover" the difficult material. The important thing is that the additional activity should be different from the one that you're already using; adding a second reading, or expanding an existing lecture, are not recommended, since the different way of engaging with the material offers students multiple ways of learning it.

This "20-minute UDL" intervention is something many classes can benefit from, whether they are taught by novices or experienced teachers, whether they are taught by someone whose teaching requires lots of development or whose teaching is overall excellent. It responds to changes in student preparation and motivation — what may have been clear to students ten years ago may not be clear today. And it treats teaching problems not as instructor failures but as challenges that can be addressed with creative design of teaching activities.

What is your exciting teaching problem that is worth discussing with other teaching colleagues? Grab a coffee with a colleague to talk — or join the CFI Coffee and Conversation session next month.