Christina Katopodis, educator, author, and Mellon Senior Researcher at the City University of New York’s Humanities Alliance, will deliver the keynote address at the 2025 UW–Madison Teaching & Learning Symposium on May 15. CTLM’s Meredith McGlone spoke with her about her co-authored book, “The New College Classroom,” and the techniques for engaging students that she plans to share in her talk. A digital copy of the book is available through University Libraries with NetID login.
What inspired you and Cathy N. Davidson to write this book?
Cathy was on a book tour for “The New Education” at the time and I was teaching an early American literature course at Hunter College. I left 60% of my syllabus blank intentionally. I set up our course, our room, as a “Senate floor.” And I had students in groups work on different parts of the syllabus and propose amendments. The course policies were up for grabs, except for some of the requirements that we couldn’t edit. And then, as we went along, several weeks before we hit a blank spot, I asked them, “What do you want to do next?” They proposed ideas for what we could cover next, like a key question or several texts that they wanted to cover.
And I was blogging about it. Cathy started reading my blog, and her first question was, “Why don’t you write scholarly articles the way you write blog posts? These are far more interesting, far more animated. And you sound happier.”
Weeks and months later, she said something along the lines of: “People keep asking me, ‘How do we do this? How do we implement the learnings from this work?’ So many people want a how-to book – do you want to write one together?”
While you mention the wealth of evidence showing that active learning strategies help students, you also have two other compelling arguments that may surprise some people. You say that these strategies can actually take less time to prepare, and that instructors will enjoy using them more. How is that so?
I had begun asking students for more feedback from my classes – what was your favorite class period? And the overwhelming response was, the deconstructed lesson plan. This was something that I came up with on the fly because I had no lesson plan.
I was trying to write a dissertation. I was teaching at two different institutions – one in Manhattan, the other in New Jersey – and I was also trying to plan a wedding. It was an absolutely insane year.
I had taught this Nathaniel Hawthorne story so many times before that. And I ended up in a situation where I got onto the subway for class, having no idea what we would do. I had a pack of lined note cards in my bag. And I thought, I will use an entry ticket: ask them to write a discussion question for the class on their note cards. I’ll collect them and then I’ll ask them their own discussion questions without saying anything in response and see how they respond to one another’s questions. So, like, 5 minutes of critical thinking on a subway commute led to their favorite class period.
Whenever a discussion petered out, I went back to the question asker, and I said, “What prompted you to write that question?” And we learned something about the question asker, which also brought a lot of introverts into the conversation. We talked about what makes a good question. That led to talking about thesis statement questions. And it was much more enjoyable to me to listen to students rather than dictate to them.
Register to hear Christina Katopodis on May 15 at the UW–Madison Teaching & Learning Symposium
So if people are in the middle of a semester, I recommend they just open up to Chapter 6 (“Activities for Any Day of the Term”) and read that, and then put the rest away for a summer break or winter break, for longer reading and longer thinking.
It’s surprising and rewarding, whether you put a little bit in, like I did on the subway that day I was teaching Hawthorne, or a lot in. And you can pick and choose.
Coming out of the pandemic, colleges including UW–Madison, are seeing a number of challenges, including greater gaps in incoming students’ preparation and lower attendance and engagement during class sessions. What implications does that have for the practices that you’re encouraging?
What we wrote about in “The New College Classroom” – trust and connection – are more important than ever. There was a study done by ActiveMinds and Timely Care in February 2024 of about 1,100 students in colleges and universities across the nation and around 65% of students described themselves as lonely. I see that loneliness. We know that loneliness and mental health challenges can reduce student engagement, students’ sense of belonging; it could slow down progress to degree and lower degree completion rates.
And so leading with connection is one of the things that I talk about in workshops and keynotes now, and it’s something that we advocate for in the book. For deep and meaningful learning to happen, you must feel connected. You have to be part of a community. Making the effort to get to know students, to ask them questions and to trust them, is extremely important to nurturing the life of the mind.
There are tons of great activities in the book. One that I particularly liked was the “everybody raise your hand” exercise. Can you talk through first, the neuroscience behind the act of everybody raising their hand, and then walk through how the activity works?
So I’m not a neuroscientist, but I do enjoy learning about the brain. And there’s something about going through that motion and that activity that engages the body and the mind.
This method comes from Samuel Delaney, the polymath and amazing thinker, who said that when he began teaching at the college level, he was so excited and then so disappointed and sad when not everyone was raising their hand and enjoying the privilege of being there. So he said, “From now on everybody has to raise their hand, even if they don’t know the answer.” Students can refer to one another and say, “Well, I don’t know the answer, Professor Delaney, but I’m curious about what Meredith has to say.”
This is about looking to one another in the room and thinking about a community that is successful in its collaboration and collaborative thinking rather than the onus being on the individual. Everyone raises their hand, even if they don’t know the answer. And if they don’t and they’re called on, then they can invite another person in the room to respond.
What’s so important is that this requires 100% participation. Instead of always calling on the hand-raising few, the usual suspects who always raise their hands, everyone practices self-advocacy, leadership, communication, volunteering, participating.
We love inventory methods that require 100% participation, because, you know, we normally feel good if 4 or 5 people raise their hands. But then, what is everyone else in the room learning?
What do you hope that folks can bring back to their courses from your talk?
Practical ways to lead with connection and make teaching more joyful and sustainable – things that they could use immediately in their classrooms the next day and some food for thought, for planning over the summer for the fall 2025 semester.