Third of a series
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin
By Rick Vacek | September 24, 2024
Three accomplished writers are prepared to do a lot for the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) as it authors a new chapter.
Dr. Sarah Moore of the Naveen Jindal School of Management and Dr. En Li and xtine burrough of the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology are the first Provost’s Teaching Fellows.
For a term of at least one year and up to two more, they have committed to helping plan and present to CTL workshops, faculty learning communities and even asynchronous learning experiences, a welcome assist in a program initiated by the Office of the Provost at The University of Texas at Dallas.
“The Provost’s Teaching Fellows lets them expand beyond what they’re already doing in a way that’s highly efficient,” Moore said. “It enables the CTL to hit on some current topics in areas of need without expanding staffing but instead building upon the strengths of faculty.”
The strengths of these faculty members go beyond writing.
Moore, a former newspaper reporter who once covered education, has built a considerable repertoire of knowledge about artificial intelligence (AI).
Li published her first book last year on a topic closely related to her work as an assistant professor of modern East Asian history and has begun a tome about something of great interest to higher education faculty: the tenure-track process.
And if faculty want to learn more about writing textbooks, burrough is ready to offer her expertise. The professor has penned several about digital media art and has much to share with her colleagues about her ideas for the classroom.
Dr. Karen Huxtable-Jester, the CTL director, said the trio’s writing experience is a welcome byproduct but was not a focus of the search.
“We had no preconceived ideas about what we wanted to see or what we were looking for,” she said. “Because the program is new, we treated this process as open-ended and exploratory. We received an impressive number of high-quality applications, and it was challenging to choose a small number for this initial pilot year.
“What may seem surprising is that the three who were selected were viewed as very different from each other. But because writing is, in many ways, a logical next step in developing as an educator, it is not so surprising that there is this common thread.”
Talking about writing with these first Provost’s Teaching Fellows is like tapping a gold mine of discoveries.
Moore talks fondly about her days at the newspaper, with the editorial department in the front of the building and the print shop in back, but she wasn’t as enamored of the space restrictions that were a regular part of daily journalism.
“I loved to write long form. When they told me to write 200 or 300 words, that just killed me,” she said.
A meeting with a former UT Dallas administrator, Dr. Robert Nelsen, proved career changing. His eloquence about the power of working with college students convinced her to resume her education, and before long she was a writing tutor while completing a master’s degree in literature and later was a lecturer at the University.
Her PhD, also from UT Dallas and also in literature, followed 10 years later. Moore has been regularly involved in CTL programming while serving as an associate professor of instruction in business communication. She has led CTL workshops on AI and on syllabus policies and, in 2018, helped pilot a teaching-intensive program with the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE).
“I am a poster child for CTL,” she said. “I’ve been all in on CTL.”
The story of how burrough went all in on manipulating computer-generated images goes back to her college studies in photography. She learned Adobe programs, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and Macromedia Director (no longer available), and discovered in her first teaching job that other instructors had never touched a computer. “But these computers were my studio,” she said. “I loved them.”
Not surprisingly, she soon found that the digital imaging course materials were as prehistoric as the general know-how in that emerging new field.
“I noticed that there really wasn’t a textbook that was bringing these tools to the classroom in the way that students experienced all their other arts classrooms,” she said. “All of the books were focused on the interface but not on why you use it and what you do with it and how the history of design and computing intersect.”
She published her first textbook in 2008, followed with two more and is finalizing another manuscript. Now, as a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, burrough is eager to pass on what she has learned.
“There’s a lot to share – how you might think about your class materials, where you might think about publishing, what presses, what other classrooms might want to use this, with whom you might want to collaborate,” she said. “Those are broad-brush strokes. Then you can get down to how many chapters it should be, how many images you need to have, where you can source your images, how you write captions that extend the story or instruction in the manuscript.”
Li’s first book, Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late-Qing China, explores how a game called weixing – betting money on which surnames would pass the civil service exams – affected Chinese culture in the late 19th century.
Her diverse interests are reflected in two other projects, on hula dancing and on a historical Chinese board game.
Earlier this year, Li began writing another new book in, of all places, Denver International Airport. She even thought of the proposed title – Ten Years on the Tenure Track – while on the layover.
“Instead of talking about what needs to be done, I want to humanize and contextualize the tenure-track process,” she said. “How do you continue to rise? How do you do the job and start a family?”
The wife and mother of two is in her second year at UT Dallas as an assistant professor in modern East Asian history and knows how important tenure is to her colleagues.
“I want to create a series of podcasts and workshops,” she said. “I just want people to hear a different voice.”
Besides helping with imagining and writing textbooks, burrough has other creative ideas, such as testing materials in class by having students write the test, watch each other take it, revise it and give it to someone else.
She also has proposed write-a-thons or image-a-thons in which faculty participants work together to start proposals.
“You won’t finish it, but you might be surprised at what you can dream up in community with your peers,” she said. “Writing is such a solitary process, or it can be. Co-authoring can help, even if it’s just parallel play.”
There’s no doubt that Moore’s AI sessions will have few parallels in attendance and interest. That’s just a fact of higher education life these days as faculty try to figure out how to use it to their – and their students’ – advantage.
Part of Moore’s task is to defend it as she explains it.
“I think there’s a misconception that you’ll hear: ‘It’s AI. It’s cheating.’ But really what you see more of is student success being enabled by AI,” she said.
For example, she showed her students how they could update their LinkedIn profile with AI by using content in her class.
“There are so many opportunities for that,” she said. “What fills the headlines is bias, which is a concern, and academic dishonesty, which is a concern. But if you can harness the power of AI, it’s really efficient and kind of fun, in my opinion, to play with the way you can use it to supplement your teaching.”
Just as Moore, Li and burrough will supplement what CTL does.
“The Provost’s Teaching Fellows,” Moore said, “is an incredible opportunity to address things that are current but perhaps will change.”
The new story has just begun.
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Also in this series:
CTL’s ‘Pedagogical Magic’ Shares Tricks of Good Teaching
CTL Workshops Offer Neighborly Advice to Faculty