Katheryn Anderson: So my name is Katherine Anderson, and I am a third-year lecturer here at Iowa State University, and I teach the foundation courses this semester; most recently 1500 and then I also work with the advanced comm program teaching 302. 302 excellent!
Connor Ferguson: You’ve got like a wide range of what you’re teaching at the University, and have you taught all these classes before? Are you teaching any of these for the first time this semester? Anderson: No, I have taught each of these classes before. This is only my second or third time teaching the 302, but I’ve been teaching the 1500 this will be my fourth year now of teaching 15oo courses and that’s what I taught before I came to Iowa State. I taught a college preparatory writing to juniors and seniors in high school for seven years.
Ferguson: Where did you teach high school at?
Anderson: I was actually a contracted teacher so I was hired independently as a contract worker and then I would come in and teach the classes that they needed me for.
Ferguson: What’s your education history when it comes to like your degrees, where you started, how you ended up at Iowa State, the whole overview of how you ended up teaching here?
Anderson: So my undergraduate degree was believe it or not elementary education, okay, and I substitute taught for many years. I taught a lot of different grade levels, I mean even up to like seventh, eighth grade grammar, I mean taught it all. And then realized very quickly that I wanted to teach high school, that I preferred working with older students more, and so I got my endorsement and I taught high school English, and I continued that way teaching the advanced placement and all those kinds of things. I taught both private, public, I had kind of an eclectic teaching background, I’ve taught just about everything I think. I was also the elective teacher at one of the schools I was at so I’ve taught a crazy range, including drama.
Ferguson: Do you mind me asking what contracting teaching is like?
Anderson: Actually, it contributed to moving towards starting to consider teaching in higher education. The format was I came in once or twice a week, did the teaching, sent the students off with their assignments, and then I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do these meetings with the faculty.” And so we told the students, and they learned: they had their assignments; they had independent work, and then came back for the lecture the next week.
Ferguson: Could you explain that experience with more of a higher education format in terms of the way the instruction is delivered?
Anderson: I thought, “Well, this is kind of neat; I kind of like this; this is kind of cool.” So I did that for quite some time, it’s been 20 years, . So then, 2020 hit COVID, and a couple of things had been kind of pointing me towards higher education, and feeling like that that’s where I was being called to. And, of course, 2020 was difficult for everyone, and I remember thinking, things are just going down hill very quickly. I started getting really close with some of my nieces and nephews, and they were all getting to that 18-20 year old range. And then we lost my niece who would have been 25 that year. My heart just really grew for the young adult age group. I really felt like that experience as a contract teacher, and then going through all of that in 2020, I started feeling like this was some place that I was supposed to venture into. I decided, I’m going to come out of 2020 with something more than tears and thought I’m going to look into getting my master’s and consider what I’m hearing and experiencing.
I was looking around at different programs, there were a lot of online programs that I considered, but ultimately I’m such a people person and I was hoping that teaching would at some point go back to in-person. I’d done my undergrad from Iowa State in the College of Education, elementary education, so I had my teacher’s license, my folder number, all that from my undergrad and I considered, do I want my Master’s in education? Do I want it in English? English had always been my area, always from day one. I thought it was really a practical decision. I thought it was more practical to get my Master’s in English, and I also wanted to push my education in terms of really specialized education in English so that I could be very much an expert, not just an expert at teaching, but an expert at English. I went through the literature track here at Iowa State.
The first year was online, but the second year was in person. I got to experience that in person and I really enjoyed that. And so after that, I became a lecturer here at Iowa State. Now I’m starting my PhD as well, but I’ve flipped back to education for my PhD, just with this voice in the back of my head thinking about being a supervisor for student teachers even in the English department, or maybe teaching teachers, or some learning communities of teachers or those kinds of things. That’s kind of where that’s going and also just continuing my education and furthering myself, and taking a stab at research my dissertation experience. Pedagogy has always been my focus, and I’ve always said, oh, I’m not a researcher, I’m not a researcher, well maybe I’m a little bit of a researcher. And to be a good practitioner, I think you need a little bit at least of that. So that’s what’s happening now, that’s where I’m at right now.
Ferguson: Do you have any interest in talking a little bit about your dissertation and what kind of research you’re doing right now?
Anderson: Well, I’m at the very early stages because I’m first year PhD, so I’m brainstorming and getting things to land. But I do know the areas of focus have always been student engagement, looking at how do you inspire students to want to learn, to become lifelong learners. Looking at what makes students perform well. What can we do as instructors to be an important factor in making that happen? I think that it’s going to surround student engagement. One of my other areas and what I did my master’s on was Edgar Allan Poe. I am interested in reader response theory, which isn’t a real popular thing right now, but I look back on my teaching experience and when I went through my Master’s and realized I’ve been doing that all along and didn’t even know it was called something.
Ferguson: Do you mind explaining reader response theory, the elevator pitch of reader response theory?
Anderson: Reader response theory is a theory that developed in the 60s, around then, and it basically states that when I’m reading something or I’m experiencing a text, it’s pretty much impossible for me not to bring something to that experience, so that somehow this text gains more meaning as I’m reading it because of what I’m bringing to the text and/or what this person’s bringing to the test, and how it has some sort of fluidity to it. Because the theory is that we can’t help but do that. I was reading one of the narratives for a 1500 class and they were doing a moment of dialogue in their narrative assignment, and their character was their mother. The mother instantly went “well, it’s okay”. I feel like a mother wouldn’t just jump in and go that’s okay, and I thought oh, I’m sorry, that’s what I’m bringing to your paper because I’m a mother, and so I naturally brought that. And then it gave me a moment to say by the way, that’s called reader response theory. It was kind of fun, and it was kind of a cool moment of conferencing that student because that just came up naturally. I look back on all the times I taught AP American literature and all different types of genres, and seeing the students and what they individually brought to each thing, and just always doing that ,never really realizing I was doing that. So I think that’s important to understand that from a practitioner’s view. But [for my dissertation], I think maybe something surrounding Gothic literature and how it’s used in the classroom and how does that connect with student engagement, and there’s not a lot out there right now.
Ferguson: One thing that I’m seeing come up a lot in the questions that we’ve asked already in your responses is that you are really student-forward, student-facing; you really prioritize your students, and even in your personal reasons as to why you came back to education, you were thinking about young adults and the world that they’re living in now, and why literature and writing is so important. Something I’m curious about, especially in your work in the ISU Comm Foundation and Advanced courses, is why do you think teaching rhetoric and composition is still so important, especially in the current academic environment?
Anderson: I think it’s more important than it ever has been. Gen Z students, they grew up with a screen in their face. And I’m not anti-technology at all; I’m very much open to how do we actually educate our students with AI and all these other technologies? I’m definitely not in any way implying that technology is this evil thing, but there’s that a factor in their experience: the way that they are connecting with other human beings is different, different than the generations before. The idea of connecting, it’s really weird. We were leading into peer review, and I was doing a new lesson that I was trying on, actually teaching peer review to freshmen. How do you peer review? Before we peer review, I had them just sit and look at each other in the eye, this random classmate, and they were all just like, “this is so weird”. It’s so vulnerable. Sharing your writing is very vulnerable. It was strange for them. And I said to them as we were doing it, most of the time when you’re seeing other people, you’re not actually physically seeing other people. The majority of time that you spend, you’re seeing images of people or what they give you to look at. And on social media, technology is communication.
Ferguson: The persona is more important now than ever. And so being in that classroom space in peer review, that embodiment and that connection is really valuable.
Anderson: Oh, yeah. The word connection, that’s the whole, that can sum up why it’s important because we need to connect with other human beings, and this is where I’m coming from at a different level, particularly for these Gen Z students who’ve grown up not connecting that way for the most part. , getting comfortable again with looking with someone in the eye and saying, “I can connect with you as a human being.” And what we’re focusing on in 1500 and even 2500 is, we have facial expressions, we have body language, we have tone of voice when we’re speaking. But in written language, you have your words, and we need to be able to communicate in a way that’s going to result in connection.
I think for me, that’s the importance, is to be able to realize that written language is different than spoken and the way that we connect with other people, it’s more than just what they grew up with. There’s so much more in connecting with other living beings and seeing them, really seeing them and then feeling like you’re seeing and be able to be seen because you can experience it. You can express your thoughts, your feelings, your ideas. I can’t just be like, I need you to hear me.
I teach the design learning community for my 1500 sections this semester, in the spring I taught general population sections, but for the LC, one of the things that the Design Center said to me in collaborating with them, they said: we need the students to be able to talk about their work, talk about where their work comes from. That’s about connecting too, and in particular for this LC, and being able to work with these students to have that be the place where we finish. And I always say the beginning of each semester, no matter what class I’m teaching, I want you to walk out that door with a different skill set than you came in with today. I want you to feel like you are more capable, more communicative, more confident about the way you communicate than you walked in just a few minutes ago. That’s the goal. I mean, that’s broken down into our specific objectives, but, overall I feel like that’s always there. The broad, holistic goal.
Ferguson: Bridging one of your points that you were talking about earlier, you were talking about the Redesign Institute and your work, and how when you enter that space, it kind of shifted your perspective a little bit. So just reflecting on your time in the Redesign Institute, what was your experience like entering that work and what did you learn about your own instruction style throughout that process?
Anderson: I would say I came in, believe it or not, I think people sometimes can come off as, super confident. But it’s all on my sleeve. You can see it. I’m an open book, really not confident about what I knew about using AI and how that would all work. And when we started out, we started out very quickly and a lot thrown at us was very quickly and I’m like, “okay, breathe.” But after that initial kind of flooding, as I came back the next day and went, “okay, now that I can take a second to digest some of that, there’s a lot here that could be highly instrumental in my effectiveness as an instructor.” Mm-hmm. Because of my goal as an instructor. When they do walk out that door, I want students to be able to have those skillsets and be expert communicators and to be able to express themselves. If there is a tool that can help them, they need to know how to use it or it doesn’t make them better. It can either make them better or it can make them worse. I guess that’s my viewpoint on AI. I don’t want to say in a rough way, but in essence, it’s like you can use a calculator to do your multiplication your whole life, or you can learn simple multiplications so that you can function well.
[AI is] moving forward. It’s here. We’re going to have to learn it. So now our responsibility, in my opinion, as educators is to go, how do I position AI in my classroom? So as to best compliment the acquisition of the skill sets that I’m aiming to develop in my students.
Ferguson: Could you speak a little bit about how you’ve brought AI into your classrooms at all this semester or even in a broader sense, like how you’ve been integrating more technology in the classes that you’ve been teaching over the last year?
Anderson: With my advanced business course, we dove right in. Right at the beginning. Module one, we dove right in. I started out with a PowerPoint where I really just talk about it. Students don’t know as much as you think they do when it comes to technology and AI. If we make those assumptions as instructors, we kind of miss an opportunity. So first of all, saying, “this is what an AI actually does.” And then talking about next, now what does it do well? And then talking about how might this tool work if you were to use it for fill-in-the-blank. Yes, there’s some cautionary tales that need to be discussed, and those are included in this presentation that I start right away with. But then I talk a lot about how you would talk about any skill you have to instruct. You have to instruct. And I think we get to higher education and sometimes we forget that. And yes, the difference I always say between high school and college is high school, you’re fed the answers, college, you find them: however, sometimes you need a map. And they are drowning, especially as freshmen, that’s a lot of change. It’s a lot of change in these freshmen. Sojust a quick moment to say, let me [your instructor] just guide you to the map. Let me just map this out for you and then you can fly with it.
I think sometimes we tend to skip over that with this; we get this, I want to say pompous attitude, but a little bit of a “well, you’re in college now, you need to figure that out.” There are moments that that is true. But I think especially in the foundational courses, the 1500 and 2500 […] not even just in a normal situation, but in COVID, what skillsets did they miss getting here? We need to evaluate. I will often ask questions such as “what do you know about AI? Who knows what a zero-shot is?” None of my juniors and seniors even knew what a zero-shot was. None of them know that terminology. So if I’m up there teaching with this terminology, and they don’t know what that terminology is, they could be using it without having that larger knowledge base about how to engage with the platform itself or the technology too. I’ve used the word ‘interact’ a lot when I’m, when I’m saying that they’re allowed to use AI.
I’m an educator for life. I came from a family of teachers. My dad was a high school history teacher. He’s an adjunct teacher now with constitutional law at Grand View. And he’s an attorney. My sister’s a preschool teacher, my other sister was a third-grade teacher, my mother was a teacher. So when it comes to just the idea of learning and teaching, the classroom feels like home to me and it’s always going to be underscored with, what do you want to learn? Do you want to have AI do your homework? What did you gift yourself with your payment for that seat in this classroom? What do you want to get for your money? Who do you want to become, and what part of this knowledge base is going to become an integral part of who you are in your life, your career, everything else moving forward? So when it comes to AI it’s no different than anything else in terms of it still comes down to what do you know? How do you want to grow? What do you want to know? Who do you want to be? That is in each student’s control, and as educators we’re just there to help them along and give them that little boost.
Ferguson: Is there anything specifically that you’re bringing into the Foundation Courses or the Advanced Comm courses that you’re teaching this semester that you feel like is moving towards those goals that you have in relation to AI and technology awareness? And getting those students to think about what they’re trying to gain from these courses?
Anderson: Like I said with the Advanced Comm courses, I opened that can of worms right from the start. I’m trying to do methods around it. For 1500, I waited till Module Two, which was also where I introduced it this past spring, which was kind of my first experiment with it to see what they would do with it. I start right off in the first module with Word Hippo, which I always like, it’s the best thesaurus of all time. The goal is to get them thinking, practicing writing the way you would practice a free throw, you step up to the line and you shoot. And Word Hippo, it doesn’t feel a hundred percent right to explain it like this, but it’s this thesaurus that will actually go, “if you’re meaning it as a noun and you’re meaning it to be like this, here’s all the words that could be used. If you mean it like this, here’s all the words you can use.” It’s fantastic, highly recommend.
Anyway, so when we transition into AI, I kind of approach it the same way. So now you’re writing, you’re having trouble with a sentence, write it out a few ways, or maybe let AI give you an example of sentence or add this literary device about that. And then, look at it again and then look at it compared to yours, and pick the best one and then put that in there, and then when you get to another spot that you don’t like, get some help and use AI to write the sentence and see what it thinks. Is it a strong sentence for this particular idea? So we talk about AI applications outlining, how could you use it?
But a lot of what I’m doing is providing [students] with the pieces and then letting them try to figure out where those pieces fit. The only way to do that is just to get in there and try it. So with the second 1500 assignment, which is the profile, that’s where I kind of start going, okay, let’s play with some AI.
We talked about one of the alterations I made to the profile assignment was profiling an object. That’s a great use for AI. I’ll be like “ask AI just to write you three sentences about, and of course talking about prompt engineering, describing this. And then 90% of the time, they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s not very good?” I’m like, “okay, why isn’t it good? It sounds really stiff.” So then we go through and ask, what did you write about it? And then comparing. So it’s really just giving exercises and small chunks at a time, especially with the freshmen again, so that they can start using their critical thinking skills as we’re learning to use the AI, so that it is augmenting their abilities and not replacing them. They realize really quickly, which is funny how quickly they realize it as freshmen, that their sentences are better. I can strangely enough be a competence building tool for students because they can see how their work is better than something that an algorithm can create. Because after [students] are like, mine’s better. The next thing you see is a smile on their face.
There is no reason to be afraid of AI as an English teacher at all. It actually, I don’t want to say it makes our job harder because if I say that everybody’s gonna think, oh no, it’s because I have to worry about plagiarism and all this other stuff. It makes our job harder because we have to be better instructors. It will force us to work with the students on critical thinking more and metacognition and all of these things that it’s so easy just to go do the assignment, write the narrative. Write the profile or even think that students know already what metacognition is in some ways than they don’t. No, they don’t. And again, we’re back to that, not assuming that they’re just supposed to figure it out because they’re in college now. They didn’t wake up one day and all of a sudden can do those things just because they’re in college now, right? So I think there’s all kinds of opportunities with it. I think there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it for us as educators.
We’re there to guide them. So yes, they need a map, but we’re part of that map. In some ways, especially to these younger students, we are their map. If you want to use something more technology-wise, we’re their GPS. So they want to use AI. Some of them, some of them really don’t. But we’re going to have to pipe in that location, which is to become proficient. Sometimes you have to reroute. You have to reroute when you realize you’re not on the right road right now. But we do have to be their GPS in this new adventure in this new time of AI. So there’s no way to walk away from that responsibly.
But I’m always going to give the positive spin, to something every time. I mean, it’s just me. But it also gives us an opportunity, to grow ourselves, in our own field, in our own careers, we have to be better. And that’s always a wonderful thing. We’ve never arrived. As an educator, you never arrived.
Ferguson: We’ve talked about AI. We’ve talked about integrating technology, but do you have any words of advice or guidance for new and incoming instructors of the Foundation Courses that you would really want a new instructor to know?
Anderson: Well, I guess the last thing I said would be the first thing, we never arrived. Allow yourself to experiment. If you’re always in your comfort zone, you’re not going to really get it anywhere the magic happens. If your comfort zone is this big, the magic is happening just right outside that comfort zone, no matter who we are. So if you’re a little bit uncomfortable in the classroom, that’s okay. That means you’re going to grow. So that’s the first thing. If you get in there like, okay, I am really uncomfortable right now. This doesn’t feel easy. This doesn’t feel good. I’m unsure. Great. That’s great. Because you’re where the magic’s going to happen, right? So difficulty can be an invitation.
What you’re feeling is totally fine. Reach out, get help, ask for materials, ask for materials, get into [the repository] and click on that and start reading the Institute’s exercises and ideas that are all right there in one document for you. Right there in this beautiful little digital handbook and just go through them and go, “Oh, that exercise speaks to me. I can see myself as an educator. I can visualize myself as an educator teaching this, this particular exercise.” Talk to people when you’re struggling.
I think that’s the thing I found the hardest when I switched to higher education. I think the hardest thing for me was it’s a little more isolated than say a high school setting or other educational settings. You’re teaching your classes, you’re doing your thing. So when you have those opportunities to connect with other people in the department or even across campus, do it. I’ve been in several mentoring groups, both as mentor and mentee, in both in the English department and across campus. We need that community so badly as educators, we need to hear what other people are doing. Go to the Teaching Labs, go to the Brown Bags, go to anything that is out there for you because it’s just going to help you connect. And then it sparks those spirits, those ideas on. And then that grows your confidence. And then you feel more confident. And all of a sudden that comfort zone is bigger and you didn’t even know that it got bigger.
Ferguson: I think what’s interesting, thinking back on our conversation, is that when I asked you about what interested you in becoming an instructor and the way that you engage with your students, it was about connection. Communication is about connection. And even talking about what you want new instructors and even continuing instructors to know is that community and that connection is really, really important. So I’m, I’m really thankful that you brought up that point. Just to close us out, I’m curious if you want to talk a little bit about the Teaching Lab that you’re going to be teaching, and also anything else that you would like people to know that you’re working on in the department.
Anderson: So my upcoming first thing that’s going to happen is in October. I’ve been, um, so graciously asked to be part of the Teaching Lab. Peer review has been the thing in student reviews that I will focus on, and when I ask for reflection with the students that was the topic I got the biggest variance on. “Oh, peer review is awesome. This was the thing that helped me so much in this class to peer review”, and then, “Peer review is an utter and complete waste of my time.” I think, how and why is there this huge variance? So I really kind of dialed down about three years ago, two or three years ago on this topic, and I wanted to develop different methods and different ideas and exercises and activities. How can we make peer review more effective to a greater number of students to make it more the norm with a small exception? Over the last couple of years, I’ve been experimenting. Just last week, I tried one more new method, and then today I tried a second try at a new one. And I’ve really been pleased with the way that it is seemingly having an impact on students’ impression of peer review, and their own personal experiences.
And of course, if we’re going to be spending class time doing peer review, I mean, I’m the one in my classes always saying the kids wish we had more class time. I’m like, yeah, I could just teach all day long and just keep doing it. And so by trying these things, I’ve seen an uptick in more level perception of peer review by the students. And so I’m going to keep working on this. I have the opportunity in October just to share what I’ve done so far. And the things that have gone well, where I’ve made some mistakes, some ideas that then other people can run with and see how they might change those and come up with more ideas. Because reflection and peer interaction, it’s all so important. It can’t all come from me. It shouldn’t all come from me, as an instructor. Saying this is co-production of knowledge with my students. And that co-production, it’s going to have to involve peer review.
And I’m going to get to talk about that in October for a Teaching Lab for the English department here. So, I’m kind of excited about that and to just share that out there and then see what people might do with it or what they might then bring back to me with feedback so that I can still continue to get better and keep trying these things. So, that’s coming up. I’m working on some resources for the Advanced Comm program as well. I’m trying to create a bank of lesson plans. So, a first-year teacher, say for 3020, would be like, “OK, it’s the first time I’ve ever taught 3020.” I have a whole new text. I have all these new challenges, and now I can just jump in there and seize all those lesson plans. I also have contributors that are going to be adding their lesson plans like, “OK, so here’s some other lesson plans for that same week just to give them something similar to what you’ve done.”
This process is kind of reflective of my teaching high school days, in that you were handed a basil. Most people are like “what is a basil?” It’s the textbooks with the teacher guides and all that stuff. I guess to say, here you go. Now do with it what you want to. Use it, don’t use it, whatever. But it’s here for you. So that’s a really big project that’s been ongoing that I started working on last spring. And across campus, I’m taking a lot of the CELT workshops this semester that I’m really excited about, that I’m doing with the Circle through CELT. But I hope as I continue, that I get more of a feel of what instructors need, maybe even outside the English department of working with CELT a little bit.
So that’s kind of something in the back of my mind. Thinking, continue to familiarize myself with how could I serve not just the English department, but campus as well in terms of pedagogical strategy and lesson design. And maybe somewhere I get to put some of that dramatic, artistic side of me into lesson planning and lesson design, because my teacher me obviously isn’t the me I am at home. I think there’s something to that, too, in the classroom, being able to perform a little bit, as instructors, because if you go see a motivational speaker, they should be engaging and exciting to listen to and all that. And essentially, we’re all motivational speakers in a way. Some of that bleeds right into my lesson plans, I guess. Those are kind of my current projects, along with working on my Ph.D. work, and learning how to be a researcher as well.
Ferguson: Well, thank you so much for your time today and answering all these questions and being willing to engage in so many different parts of the conversation about what it’s like to teach. And I would agree and also say, be a lifelong learner and a lifelong educator, and seeing how those two mesh together. I’m really looking forward to your teaching lab coming in October. But again, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
