The Kind Academic

A couple of weeks ago, after a long day academic-ing, I left my office in the Business School and squeezed into the lift on Level 5 to begin the journey home. Of course, because I am me, I got stuck stopping at every floor on the way down.

On Level 3, a group of boisterous, energetic students piled in. There were four or five of them. One student turned to another and said, “Hey, should I bother going to class today?”

The other replied, “Why do you need to go to class?”

The first student said, “Because I need to get the participation mark, but I really don’t feel like it.”

The others made fun of him, everyone laughed, and they all got out of the lift except for the original student.

As the doors closed and we continued down to the ground floor alone, I said, “You should totally go to class today.”

He turned around, noticing me for the first time, and said, “Sorry?”

I said, “You should go to class. I’m a lecturer, and I just want to tell you that your lecturers work really hard to make sure that your course is engaging and interesting. You should go to class so they can see that you appreciate the work they’re doing.”

Yep. I gave a student I’d never met a slightly self-righteous lecture in a lift. You could call it a little unsolicited life lesson.

He smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll go to class.”

We both laughed, and then I walked off. I don’t know whether he actually went to class, but I felt good having said my piece.

The next day I attended the annual University of Sydney Learning and Teaching Symposium, and, as always when I go to events like this, I was blown away by the things academics are doing to make learning more relevant, more compassionate, more engaging, and more exciting.

One presenter talked about the ways he encourages students to attend lectures. He brings giant stuffed mascots into class to promote wellbeing, gets students creating memes, runs activities throughout the lecture series, and awards virtual prizes that build across the term. Students who accumulate the most prizes receive additional rewards.

Another Communications lecturer has created an entire TEDx-style event in her course where students don’t just learn presentation skills: they deliver their talks in a professionally staged event attended by industry guests. Some students have even secured internships from judges who came to watch them present.

I saw examples of academics incorporating craft into learning, with students creating their own zines using materials like magazines, newspapers, paints, and crayons. And there were countless other examples.

It continues to amaze me that, while not everybody teaches this way, in the circles I move in there are so many passionate educators, learning designers, lecturers, and tutors putting enormous amounts of time and energy into creating learning experiences that are as meaningful as they can possibly be.

So this post is, firstly, a shout-out to all of them, and hopefully to all of us. I certainly try to do these things too.

But it’s also a reminder to our students.

Learning is a partnership. We usually say that to remind ourselves, as educators, to think carefully about the people we teach. But a partnership only works when both sides show up. We, the educators, pour in the energy, the creativity and the late nights building something worth turning up for. The other half of the deal is you, the students, choosing to be part of it.

So, go to class. Totally.

* Dictated by me, polished with Claude (Anthropic’s AI), edited by me.