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Higher Listenings
What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
What if the biggest barrier to innovation in our teaching isn’t time or training—but fear? And what if the antidote isn’t a full course redesign, but a single courageous step?
In this episode, we sit down with teaching fellow, serial risk-taker and unshakable optimist, Damien Hommel to unpack what it means to be brave in the classroom. From small nudges to bold experiments, Damien argues that finding the courage to change is both more necessary—and more doable—than we think. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?
Guest Bio
Demian Hommel is an associate professor and teaching fellow at Oregon State University. The recipient of Top Hat’s Most Innovative Educator Award, Demian is an advocate for place-based and experiential education, service learning and evidence-based instruction. When he’s not engaging his students (and boy does he ever), Demian shares his insights on teaching and learning in Faculty Focus and Harvard Business Publishing Education.
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I also think having courage has a very important and practical role for each individual. That's in the classroom, and I think what you learn from being courageous is that actually a lot of this was in your head, that people are often a little bit more forgiving than you think they were going to be, and that a lot of our greatest accomplishments come from taking those risks. The less that we step out of our comfort zone, the less opportunity we have to meet new people, to understand how things work, to take new, interesting directions in our own professional and even personal lives.
Speaker 2:What if the biggest barrier to innovation in our teaching isn't time or training, but fear? And what if the antidote isn't a full course redesign but a single courageous step? In this episode we sit down with teaching fellow, serial risk taker and unshakable optimist, damien Hommel, to unpack what it means to be brave in the classroom From small nudges to bold experiments. Damien argues that finding the courage to change is both more necessary and more doable than we may think. Besides, what's the worst that could happen? Welcome to Higher Listenings.
Speaker 2:So you do a lot of things, I imagine, as a teaching fellow, but I would suspect that your job really boils down to encouraging instructors to experiment, to explore new possibilities. But we're creatures of habit, right? I mean, I'm thinking about my coffee order. I order the exact same coffee every day, and I've probably done that for the last 15 years. Probably done that for the last 15 years. So we like to do what we know, what feels comfortable, or, you know, we may think that things are working pretty well, so you don't see a need to do anything different. So how do you start these conversations around change and courage with the faculty that you interact with?
Speaker 1:I've been at this for a few years, and so I've developed my strategy sort of gradually. But one of the things that I lead with is asking faculty why they approach their classes the way that they do, and that's been very surprising. Actually, it's usually one of three answers, the first being what do you mean? And that sort of leads to a whole conversation. The other two are because this is the way that it was taught when I took the course, which could have been decades ago, or this was what I was given as a package when I was hired or when I took the class over.
Speaker 1:So, if you can, going to the student perspective a little bit, there is an infinite number of ways that you could teach a course, and students think, when they take a course, that that's the way that that course is taught, and so what I encourage faculty to do as much as possible is to be intentional about the why. You know, why am I doing things this way? What is the purpose of structuring the class this way? What is the purpose of the assessments that I'm running? What am I trying to help students learn through these assessments, and so on?
Speaker 2:So why do you think habits hold so much power in higher education? And trying to affect change, or getting you know an instructor to think of it differently, about the many different ways they could potentially teach a course?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, obviously it's human nature in many ways. We're creatures of habit. We, we like the known. There's a lot of tradition and and there's also a tremendous efficiency, right.
Speaker 1:So often, many, many folks who are in the role of teaching for the first time were hired as research faculty and don't probably have a lot of experience in teaching, and if they did they, it was in one specific area or using one specific kind of pedagogical approach, and so I think it could be boiled down to a lot of things. But it's fear or laziness maybe and the fear part is incredibly important to try to understand, right. Often, getting to the question, what's the worst that could happen? You don't want students to laugh at you or not respect you or feel like that. Maybe you weren't the right one to be teaching the course, so there's some real reasons for that.
Speaker 1:But I also think that when we know what we can expect if I'm going to, you know I have a 50 minute class period If I'm going to lecture for that 50 minutes, I can control exactly what happens. All that content delivery, there's not much risk. When I open it up to activities where I don't necessarily know what's going to happen, there's a little bit more risk the conversation might not go the direction I want, I might not get through the content that I think I need to deliver, and so on. So there is this, possibly even a threat to my understanding of what I want to happen, and I think that can be a barrier, a challenge for folks.
Speaker 1:The amount of fear there is around trying something new in the classroom. To me and I've been doing this for a few years, it's not exhaustive, right, it's a small N of the number of maybe 50 people 50 faculty members I've worked with, but in almost every case I don't even think I can come up with an example of someone who resented trying something new, resented like employing something that could be fun or different or a little bit risky or whatever. In every situation there was always, even when it failed miserably, the attempt provided some inner strength and I just, I hope folks could just feel that out there. You know, the idea that really fear itself is really the only thing we're worried about.
Speaker 3:So you've been in a really in somewhat of a privileged position here to have these conversations with faculty. I remember the first time I stepped into a role like that the opportunity to visit other disciplines and see faculty engaged in practices that were very different from mine and in contexts that were very different. What's been surprising to you about this experience? What have you discovered or uncovered that you weren't anticipating?
Speaker 1:I have some great examples of folks who are willing to sort of take on some of this courage to reshape the structure that maybe that they had relied on for a long time and, through some small, deliberate, intentional changes, really affect the way that their professional life goes. If teaching is not going well, it has this negative feedback right. Teaching is not going well, it has this negative feedback right. You're not getting, you know, good affect from students, you're not feeling enlivened by the classroom experience, you're getting bad teaching evaluations and that's probably making you negative about it. Whereas I have a couple of examples, specifically in my program, of folks who decided, you know I'll just give you one very tangible example A faculty member that I've worked with decided to take a very new approach to the structure of her class, focusing on sort of a pre, during and post strategy for each day in the class.
Speaker 1:And the idea here is that when students come into the classroom, it shouldn't be a mystery what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:They should have done some preparation, maybe a short quiz.
Speaker 1:It could even be auto-graded, so it doesn't require a lot of extra effort and then there's an active learning component to that classroom session and then there's some kind of metacognitive reflection piece that happens after and just approaching each day intentionally had this effect on her class of students really starting to enjoy it, to feel where they are in the moment of the class, to see how it ties together.
Speaker 1:Her evaluations are getting better, her feeling about teaching is getting better and I think you know we all want our best professional lives. It's one of these things where it does take some effort, does take a little bit more communication being intentional, but I think the rewards are such that it pays off in all kinds of ways, including just the personal. You know I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing. When you create an effective learning environment, it pulls students in that may not have been interested in the class or that particular day and and you know the difference anybody who's in a teaching role or just in an organization where they have to deliver information. When you feel that buzz, that everybody's paying attention, I mean it's, it's reward in itself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and there's nothing worse than, you know, just bombing a class. I just I'm not clear. They're not into it. It's just one of those hours where it's like please end now you know kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, luckily I had plenty of those early on and sort of motivated to try to try to take a different approach.
Speaker 3:Right. There is something about this kind of activity where you're stepping into a room full of students in a context that is increasingly complex and challenging, trying something new. It calls for maybe a level of vulnerability that is not normally encountered in the day to day life of an academic, and, in fact, vulnerability is not highly regarded, it's not prized in academia as a virtue, so much so. How do you talk about vulnerability or do you work toward this kind of vulnerability when you're working with instructors in this experimental way?
Speaker 1:Now I'll say that just for the listeners. This is a personal style thing I know everybody can adopt, and that's maybe a tremendous benefit here is that everybody's going to be taking their different approach.
Speaker 1:But, I think vulnerability is essential. I think it's essential for growth and connection. The work of Benet Brown says a lot about this being open to not only recognizing our own struggles but then trying to empathetically understand that everybody out there is dealing with some sort of challenge, and I think that that's ultimately where the learning happens. You know, it's a path to connection, and so being open to this I think is extremely important and I think it's really relevant in academia. I wish that we were more transparent about that, about how our own experience getting to where we are certainly probably was not a straight path and that can help students understand, you know, and that help navigate their professional and career experience that it's probably not going to be a straight path and that failure can be really important.
Speaker 1:It can be, you know, if you have an internship in a field that you think you're going to go into for a career but you decide that you don't like it, you're not interested in it, there's just something doesn't feel right. That's a great form of education, that's a terrific, terrific opportunity. So trying to kind of model that again is where I'd like to go and where I sort of push folks in this fellowship role.
Speaker 2:There's an element of grace that comes out of that too. You know, I think if you're standing up in front of a class saying I'd like to try something a little bit different, I'm not sure how this is going to go. Here's why I'm doing this what I think the value is going to be and maybe it doesn't go according to plan, but I think you create some grace among students for some empathy back, you know, if that actually doesn't go maybe the way you thought, yeah, I mean, I think you know, just throwing different activities into a classroom without any intention might be a problematic way to approach this.
Speaker 1:But having a reason, you know I'm going to, we're going to try to do this today, and here's the reason, because maybe research has shown, or maybe you know, the idea is that this will stick longer and it's something that maybe you haven't tried before.
Speaker 1:Those things can be really effective in helping students understand that you're a real person, that you're trying to do the best for them. But you don't necessarily know and again, we know there's so much diversity and difference in the way students learn the things that they're interested in that trying these different approaches, using different modalities, can be effective at bringing some of those students in that might not have been otherwise. And I think the real question at the end of the day is you know what's the worst that can happen? The class doesn't go the way that you want, and then you try again next time. I think we do a lot of catastrophizing, of thinking this is just going to be. It's so much safer if I just do the known, you know, powerpoint lecture and just pointing at bullet points in my push the slide forward and so on, but it's not a very effective way to learn and it's still traditionally anyway the way a lot of higher education happens, and I think that again we can take some of this courage on a little bit and try some new things.
Speaker 3:I want to stick with this transparency idea a little bit. When you get experimental, how transparent do you be? When are you transparent? Is there privilege involved here that makes it okay or easier for me to be transparent without penalty in a way that you know an instructor in their first year on an annual renewable contract may, you know, be more vulnerable in that context. So I wonder how you counsel the faculty you work with about this transparency? To what degree? When should you really emphasize that hey, this is experimental. I want your feedback and this is why I'm trying this right. So talk a little bit more about how you navigate the transparency conversation with the fellows you work with.
Speaker 1:Again, it can be challenging because it's a style thing and certainly there is a percentage of folks that wouldn't feel comfortable being very transparent, not just because of the philosophy of how it might be engaging or, you know, helping with vulnerability to students, but for those other reasons you mentioned, brad. There can be a feeling of risk, professional risk. I think that we all have to navigate a variety of these issues. We're all being courageous already. I'm trying not to start with a negative and say that everybody needs to get to work. I know that many of us are just trying to get through it.
Speaker 1:At the same time, what I hope to present here is an idea that if we do take risks, if we do have a reason behind those risks and certainly don't risk your professional life for this, there can often be an outsized reward. There can often be the opportunity to not only engage with your students more but to drive the learning in a way. Maybe that wasn't happening and I think that can be its own important feedback, feedback that can be. A valuable lesson here is that you know. I think that certainly we've all learned from James Lang, his work in small teaching that you don't have to burn your syllabus and your whole curriculum to the ground. There's some small evidence-based practices that you can incorporate that can make significant difference, and I think there's plenty of resources out there for folks that are interested in just making those small changes.
Speaker 2:So we've talked about courage and teaching, but what about for students? Because I'm just picturing the courageous teacher getting up there trying something different, something new, putting that big question out in front of the class and it's kind of crickets because students don't want to speak up or they might be worried about what their peers are going to think or looking silly, that sort of thing. So is there anything that you do to inspire students to be more courageous in their own learning journey? Like, are there any actual tactics that you try to implement in order to create those, those conditions for us?
Speaker 1:taking. As I've said, I try to model that, that risk taking, with trying things that I'm not sure how it's going to go. But there are other evidence-based practices. There's early low-stakes assessments opportunities for students to get feedback before they you know, much of their grade depends on it Early and continuous feedback, just in general. There's growth-oriented assessments. There's formative assessments, where you're trying to help students learn through quizzes or tests, even that really sort of help over the long term.
Speaker 1:And then the idea of reflection is really, really important.
Speaker 1:I use it a lot in terms of trying to think about what are the things that I don't know, that students don't know, and so I'll ask them to reflect on what aspects of this class not only were difficult or murky or what did you not understand, but what were moments where you maybe felt like this was outside of your comfort zone in terms of not only participation but maybe the information delivery or maybe the challenge of some sort of assessment.
Speaker 1:So I check in with them to try to make sure that I'm getting them to think about their experience in the class. And that might not seem as courageous as having students, you know, get up and sing. You know, some version of an extra credit assignment, certainly, but I do think that having that reflection, that metacognition, which has been shown to be one of the only things that helps students make learning stick over the long term, can be really powerful, not just for them but also for me. It helps me understand where they are in the process of the course and otherwise I feel quite blind to knowing how my course is impacting them.
Speaker 3:This notion of anti-fragility, I think is really intriguing, and in my own professional life, especially for the last couple of decades in positions of leadership, it's been my intention to try to help both the university and the organizations that I was directly responsible for to be less fragile. So I'm wondering if there is in the context of teaching maybe it's teaching communities, maybe it's the work you're doing with fellows that's surfacing some strategies, but thinking about anti-fragility in the teaching practice. So you try something new and it doesn't work. Small teaching maybe, is an example of kind of building in some anti-fragility, because if a small teaching experiment doesn't work, it's small stakes, right. So, thinking about that concept applied to a course, is there something that you're discovering there to build not just resiliency but actual resistance to impact, like AI coming into the scene in the middle of the semester, that would make a course more anti-fragile in that sense.
Speaker 1:I think that, specifically in my work as a fellow, this comes up all the time. Where, for example, something's not working in a course, it could be the exam. It often is the exam. Students aren't doing well on the exam. It often is the exam. Students aren't doing well on the exams, and I feel like that this is often an opportunity for something in a course to break, to essentially become fragile. One example from several conversations I've had is okay, so if the exams aren't going well, why wouldn't you just give the exams on the first day? Give students the exams on the very first day to let them know what is actually going to be asked of them by the end of the course.
Speaker 1:And this is an incredibly unpopular idea for a variety of reasons, but it shouldn't be a mystery what's going, what, what the purpose of the class is, what, what the learning goals are, what the objectives are.
Speaker 1:You know what students should come away with. And so this is not a specific example of something breaking, but it's an example of faculty in the position of questioning everything that they had thought about doing up until that point, and I've seen several examples of faculty members really taking this on and realizing oh okay, so what you're saying is that I'm not doing a very good job of helping students learn what I hope they learn in the course. I need to rethink this whole entire thing. But I think that in many cases, helping faculty realize that again, there's an infinite number of ways they could approach their curriculum and choosing some very intentional and evidence-based practices that might be completely outside of the range of what they've used before, what they're comfortable with, can really be one of these anti-fragile examples where something it wasn't necessary, it was thrown on just as an addition, it just came with the course itself. Maybe we need to break it to try to recreate something better.
Speaker 3:Your provocation. You know why not give the exam on the first day, like just distribute it so that they know what's going to be on the exam is a real provocation. You've had these conversations with faculty where it really draws out some hidden commitments or you know challengeable assumptions around the purpose of the exam and and why they might react to that provocation in the way they do. I mean I certainly, early in my teaching career, would have been, or the response would have been, emotional, you know, highly emotional, like how that, like what it just seems to undermine the whole enterprise in some way. That would be my first reaction that we could then have a very profitable discussion around. Are there other provocations like that that you think we should be entertaining as educators? So it's a good question to ask yourself why am I committed to this practice of high-stakes exams? Given everything you've said in just this hour and that we know from a whole lot of other research, what are some other provocations that ought to challenge us like that?
Speaker 1:So I think a major provocation is putting the responsibility on us to help students who want to get through our courses, to help them pass. I think that's one big one. I also think and this is something that we've been fortunate to work together on, brad, I think that's one big one. I also think and this is something that we've been fortunate to work together on, brad. But I think the idea that if we don't cultivate an effective learning environment in the classroom, what is the point of jumping into content, you know, taking the temperature of the room and seeing how students are doing, trying to build community in our classroom, trying to make students, especially students who might be first generation or feeling sort of not included in the community of that classroom, how can we better engage with these issues of diversity and equity in our classrooms? And I think if we create a situation where learning can be more effective, then effective, then we can go so much further. But if we think of that as a waste of time I've even heard a faculty member say well, I don't have time to talk about my feelings. Well, I think that's a misguided approach.
Speaker 1:Students are emotional beings. The more we can do to help recognize that. And again, I think vulnerability is really important here, to show that I'm also an emotional being and I have good days and bad days. I'm not just a robot. I think that that authenticity, maybe, is really important. I do think there are ways in which we can model that and not only create more successful students, but a better citizenry as a result. More empathy all around.
Speaker 3:That, as you just noted, that's a big step for a lot of people to take. It calls for a lot of courage and vulnerability. If you were to encourage listeners to take just one small courageous step in their teaching, what would it be, and why?
Speaker 1:There's a great little book called the War of Art, and it's all about trying to kind of become more aware of our own internal resistance and you don't have to be an artist to take this on.
Speaker 1:But the idea is, you know, we all, there are things that we like to do and don't like to do, and it turns out that doing things that we don't like to do and don't like to do, and it turns out that doing things that we don't like to do is actually pretty good for us. I do think that we all are actually pretty good at knowing what's not going well if we take a moment to reflect on it, and that reflection can be an incredible tool to making small changes that have big impact. Not to sound like another appeal to James Lang and flower Darby, but I do think that can be really important. You know what's something that you that's not working, and come face to face with it. Be a little bit courageous, make a small change and see what happens again. What's the worst that can happen. It won't work, and then you'll learn a lot as a result.
Speaker 2:It makes me think I should go do my expenses now to learn a lot as a result. It makes me think I should go do my expenses now. I tend to resist that. Maybe there's a way to make that sort of fun and engaging for myself, but no, I think it's really. I think it's really a wonderful insight and great guidance. Is there anything that you hope? Is, you know, thinking about a legacy for this work? You're doing this, thinking that you're doing around courageous teaching, like what you hope maybe higher ed looks like in the next five or 10 years, if we're all to embrace this mindset.
Speaker 1:I might as well be political. I mean, higher education is in the sights of the incoming administration here in the United States, and so I hope that being courageous amidst all kinds of challenges to our very existence is one way this idea could be applied. I also think courage having courage has a very important and practical role for each individual that's in the classroom. I think it's an experience that can obviously bring a lot of vulnerability, especially in situations where you might not feel prepared.
Speaker 1:You didn't have a lot of teaching training, you're teaching a subject that you don't have a good handle on, and I think what you learn from being courageous is that actually a lot of this was in your head, that people are often a little bit more forgiving than you think they were going to be, and that a lot of our greatest accomplishments come from taking those risks. The less that we step out of our comfort zone, the less opportunity we have to meet new people, to understand how things work, to take new, interesting directions in our own professional and even personal lives. So I think that it's both at a societal level and also at a personal level. It provides tremendous value and then, last, obviously, I think, for our students. I've had the experience myself in my own teaching and also working with others that if you help students feel like they're a part of what's going on, it's not even a class anymore, it's a learning community that you're just helping facilitate You're not necessarily driving and that becomes really exciting.
Speaker 3:I just think it's a beautiful note to end on and I do think your call to courage, to participatory, community-centered teaching and trying to create that kind of community is something we do need right now and I think would all benefit from. I just want to say how much I appreciate your joining us for this conversation.
Speaker 1:It was fantastic to be here, great to talk to both of you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, damian. Thank you. Higher Listenings is brought to you by Top Hat, the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education. When it comes to curating captivating learning experiences, we could all use a helping hand. Right With Top Hat, you can create dynamic presentations by incorporating polls, quizzes and discussions to make your time with students more engaging. But it doesn't end there. Design your own interactive readings and assignments that include multimedia, video, knowledge checks, discussion prompts. The sky's the limit, or simply choose from our catalog of fully customizable Top Hat eTechs and make them your own. The really neat part is how we're putting some AI magic up your sleeve. Top Hat ACE, our AI-powered teaching and learning assistant, makes it easy to create assessment questions with the click of a button, all based on the context of your course content. Plus, ace gives student learning a boost with personalized AI-powered study support they can access anytime, anyplace. Learn more at topatcom slash podcast today.