{"id":130,"date":"2011-01-11T10:34:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T10:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html"},"modified":"2011-01-11T10:34:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T10:34:31","slug":"what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html","title":{"rendered":"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/blackboard.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"blackboard.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/83\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt\" height=\"219\" width=\"275\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow I start teaching my course on Religion and Popular Culture at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.units.muohio.edu\/religion\/\">Miami University<\/a>. I am excited about teaching &#8212; and particularly about the course topic, religion and popular culture. This gives me an excuse to watch too much television and call it &#8220;work,&#8221; and I am all about that.<\/p>\n<p>But consider this. The last courses I taught were at Barnard College\/<a href=\"http:\/\/columbia.edu\/\">Columbia University<\/a> in 1997. <em>1997!<\/em>&nbsp; We thought we were cool if we showed a VHS tape in class. Here&#8217;s what I remember from education in 1997:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No one had a DVD player, or if they did, they didn&#8217;t use them to teach.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>No one had invented <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ratemyprofessors.com\/index.jsp\">ratemyprofessors.com<\/a>, that all-too-necessary website that evaluates professorial merit on the basis of &#8220;hotness,&#8221; among other factors. How did education ever proceed apace without this?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>No one tweeted during class about how boring your lectures were. They just sucked it up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>PowerPoint was nowhere to be found in the classroom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Students didn&#8217;t expect to be able to contact their professors 24\/7.<\/li>\n<li>A &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/behind.blackboard.com\/s\/student\/\">blackboard<\/a>&#8216; was a chalkboard with actual chalk, not a soup-to-nuts education website.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Clearly, a lot can change in just over a decade. What changes have you seen in education?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow I start teaching my course on Religion and Popular Culture at Miami University. I am excited about teaching &#8212; and particularly about the course topic, religion and popular culture. This gives me an excuse to watch too much television and call it &#8220;work,&#8221; and I am all about that. But consider this. The last&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-commentary"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching? - Flunking Sainthood<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching? - Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tomorrow I start teaching my course on Religion and Popular Culture at Miami University. I am excited about teaching &#8212; and particularly about the course topic, religion and popular culture. This gives me an excuse to watch too much television and call it &#8220;work,&#8221; and I am all about that. But consider this. The last&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-11T10:34:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Riess\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching? - Flunking Sainthood","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching? - Flunking Sainthood","og_description":"Tomorrow I start teaching my course on Religion and Popular Culture at Miami University. I am excited about teaching &#8212; and particularly about the course topic, religion and popular culture. This gives me an excuse to watch too much television and call it &#8220;work,&#8221; and I am all about that. But consider this. The last&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html","og_site_name":"Flunking Sainthood","article_published_time":"2011-01-11T10:34:31+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg"}],"author":"Jana Riess","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html","name":"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching? - Flunking Sainthood","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg","datePublished":"2011-01-11T10:34:31+00:00","dateModified":"2011-01-11T10:34:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/#\/schema\/person\/fe5046ba89e9602d4de4c0e9b4ef53f8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2011\/01\/blackboard-thumb-275x219-20834.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/what-changes-have-you-seen-in-college-teaching.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What Changes Have You Seen in College Teaching?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/","name":"Flunking Sainthood","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jana Riess","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/#\/schema\/person\/fe5046ba89e9602d4de4c0e9b4ef53f8","name":"Jana Riess","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/954\/9541c99a399647166f0db1fe22b238ecx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/954\/9541c99a399647166f0db1fe22b238ecx96.jpg","caption":"Jana Riess"},"description":"Jana Riess is the author of Flunking Sainthood, a 2011 book about failing at twelve different spiritual practices. 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