My Teaching Philosophy: Making It Mobile to Make Us Agile!​

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My teaching philosophy is making it mobile to make us agile. These two moves enable my classes to maintain interest and maximize learning for students who do their soul-searching on digital devices. Digital content increases access to different belief systems, yet audiences still spend relatively little time detecting how their beliefs – let alone, the beliefs of others – shape modern life. This is where my teaching philosophy comes into play, because my approach traces how beliefs (and non-beliefs) move students toward particular lifestyles and careers. To this end, I make class information as mobile as possible, via a wide array of lesson delivery modes which reward students for interacting with course content by imagining, memorizing, judging, and creating ideas. This diverse delivery ensures that the course content moves with students as they grow in the class and through life. This is an organic approach, because students naturally consult a wide array of traditional and non-traditional sources for information that helps them navigate their lives. These lesson structures help students to carry the awareness of these belief systems’ influence in their journeys of growth (making it mobile), which empowers students to come up with ways these beliefs can steer our pathways through life (making us agile).

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As I teach, I want to give students the learning experience that is just like the once-in-a-lifetime college course that enhanced my life. I was one of 575 students in Professor John Boyer’s Spring 2005 “World Regions” course at Virginia Tech. I continually remember Professor Boyer’s unmatched energy, ahead-of-his-time teaching methods, hilarious connection with our class, awesomely engaging lectures, and empowering point-earning course structure, which inspired us to value and retain our learning, rather than focus only on the final grade. I strive to provide every student in my courses everything that Professor Boyer provides for his World Regions classes. Naturally, it is impossible to match his uniquely awesome class experience. Nevertheless, I continually draw inspiration from Professor Boyer to make my courses once-in-a-lifetime learning experiences for as many students as possible, in my own way.

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I explain this intention to students as they start their course journey. I also assure them that I make my courses mobile to welcome different learning styles, diverse individual life situations, and varying knowledge levels. Throughout the semester, I maintain a “Build-A-Score Syllabus.” All students start at zero points and build points toward their grade, rather than start with a perfect score and lose points on tests or evaluations. This approach is more about encouraging the positive and the learning, and less about emphasizing the mistakes. Students earn points on a week-to-week basis, by doing optional, low-stakes activities. These activities include, but are not limited to, short summaries of assigned readings, sharing online content on the course Social Media Wall, contributing a brief “mini-presentation” of their original conclusions about class content, participating in class discussions on an online forum, and brief reflections upon movies or media related to course themes. Completing these activities allows students to earn their points according to the grading scale that assigns a certain amount of points to a final letter grade. Naturally, students need to do many activities to earn the “A” that sits atop the points scale. Yet, students with differing learning styles, life situations, and knowledge levels can apply a different level of commitment to the course and still be able to learn and earn a respectable letter grade.

The “Build-A-Score” approach cultivates student habits such as earning and keeping track of the “points” (money) that they earn, refining their abilities to undertake some projects while avoiding others, discerning what they can and cannot realistically accomplish due to time constraints, and finding ways to accomplish tasks, despite complex instructions. These skills benefit students in any discipline. Crucially, students also enjoy this structure, as evidenced by one evaluation which reads, “I really liked the way the grading system is set up. It makes me less stressed about doing the assignments, and allows me to do what I need to do to get the grade I want and not have to worry about every little quiz or assignment.”
 
As I grow as an instructor, I am learning how to make myself mobile and agile for the sake of students. In the classroom, I intentionally bring an enthusiastic energy into lecturing, to show that I am invested in the material I teach, and that I want the students to retain the course information. This energy also involves discerning student engagement, offering opportunities for them to describe their learning experience, and reforming the class in response to their insights. Such was the case during a crucial learning moment in Fall 2020’s Global and Cultural Perspectives. When I called for anonymous feedback, the class let me know that the in-class small group discussion were not productive, because students preferred to engage in class-wide discussions. I gradually phased out the small groups in favor of addressing the entire class, which improved the quality and frequency of student participation. Likewise, in Spring 2021’s Biblical and Historical Perspectives, students described their difficulties in keeping up with the amount of reading that I assigned around the University’s midterm season. I took this as an opportunity to reformulate those readings, by instituting a “Sabbath week” which granted a break, as well as bonus opportunities for students who were still willing and able to complete the readings.

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I also embody mobility and agility to enhance the lives of students beyond the classroom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned how to effectively lecture on Zoom, as well as offer “hybrid” learning experiences that allowed some students to attend class in-person, while others attended digitally. Also, I learned how to show grace and fairness in guiding student learning through several difficult situations, such as sickness and grief. One student notified me about a personal difficulty that required disengaging from course activities for a few weeks. In response, I charted an expansively flexible path of engagement that granted this student the time to complete those activities, as well as the opportunity to digitally keep up with classes. One student evaluation acknowledges this mobility and agility: “He is…really helpful when it comes to grading and missing assignments, especially in emergency situations.”

    

At this point in my teaching career, I hold diverse experience in teaching a survey of the world religions (Global and Cultural Perspectives) and a summary of the Old and New Testament (Biblical and Historical Perspectives). Further, I created an entirely new Honors Essential Questions course entitled “Will We Find Faith in Media?” and taught the similar, already existing course “Religion, Media, and Pop-Culture” – both explored the interplay between faith and technology. I also teach foundations, current contexts, and future directions of ethics in "Theological Ethics" and "Intro to Ethical Reasoning." I thoroughly enjoyed teaching each course. I look forward to future opportunities for teaching similar courses, with greater incorporation of cutting-edge digital and social media platforms, and more exploration of the spiritual themes contained in specific movies, comics, and video games.

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Overall, I ensure that the course material moves with students' life experiences, to make their learning meaningful in the context of our current and future interconnected lives. I also strive to model mobility and agility in order to successfully enrich the lives of students, faculty, and community, and to make my courses to be the living, breathing version of the digital devices which students consult for their soul-searching.