{"id":18941,"date":"2016-07-27T08:22:13","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T12:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=18941"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:11:40","slug":"blog-professors-assign-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2016\/blog-professors-assign-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: Should professors assign their own work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science <\/em><\/p>\n

Summer typically means the time to design fall course syllabi. In deciding which readings to include, should professors assign their own work?<\/p>\n

In the case of required books for purchase, there is the potential conflict of interest owing to the instructor profiting (however modestly) from the sale.<\/p>\n

Some universities have rules around not profiting from sales; some encourage instructors to donate royalties to student scholarships; some instructors have told me they regularly donate royalties to charity.<\/p>\n

I think the issue of profits is ultimately less interesting than it seems. This is only one example among many of the potential conflicts between professional demands and personal desires that we each have to navigate: whether professors assign shorter papers so they have less grading to do, whether they make themselves as available as they can be to students for office meetings, whether they return work in a timely manner, and so on.<\/p>\n

More worthy of wrestling with, in my opinion, is the question of whether, by assigning one\u2019s own work (say, in the case of \u201cfree\u201d articles), one is implicitly pressing students to \u201cagree\u201d with one\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

Over at American University, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is explicit about this: “You will notice that none of these learning objectives say anything about ‘knowing what PTJ thinks about theories of world politics and being able to spit it back to him,'” Jackson writes in his course outline, \u201cbecause I already know full well what I think (indeed, I am in print on the subject, and I have deliberately not assigned any of my own scholarship in this course) and I don\u2019t believe that your critical capacities are greatly enhanced by trying to figure out what I might say about some issue. So don\u2019t bother trying; focus instead on developing what you think, in dialogue with the authors we read and the discussions we hold.\u201d<\/p>\n

On its face, Jackson\u2019s point sounds prudent. There are other points to consider, though.<\/p>\n

One is the issue, which may be more pronounced for both younger faculty and for women or other minorities, of establishing professional credibility. Students may want to know that their professor actually has some expertise on the topic. Including one\u2019s writings is one way to do this.<\/p>\n

The other is the aim of modeling. To inspire students to relish scholarly research and writing, it can be helpful to see that someone they know in three-dimensions is also an author of scholarly work.<\/p>\n

A related benefit is to enable students to dialogue and engage directly with the author of a piece. While they may be reticent to offer direct criticism, students can at least be encouraged to ask questions about the research and writing process, whether and how the article was first rejected, what revisions were required by editors, and so on.<\/p>\n

Finally, while we are here to teach \u2014 not to preach \u2014 there is something about course instruction that does legitimately lend itself to encouraging students to think like us. In the case of existing debates, we don\u2019t want students to feel that have to \u201cagree\u201d with us because we are the instructor, of course. But presumably we want students to deploy the kind of tools of question-generating, evidence-marshalling, inference-drawing and theory-applying we use in our own scholarship. We want them to write well. Assigning our work helps reinforce the very skills we are trying to teach.<\/p>\n

In short, I think there is little wrong \u2014 and there may in fact be lots right \u2014 with including one\u2019s own work on one\u2019s syllabus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Summer typically means the time to design fall course syllabi. In deciding which readings to include, should professors assign their own work? In the case of required books for purchase, there is the potential conflict of interest owing to the instructor profiting (however modestly) from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlog: Should professors assign their own work? - Teaching and Learning Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Summer typically means the time to design fall course syllabi. 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