Change seems to be an issue for many people.
I must admit that I feel trepidation whenever I have to/need to/want to make a change or do something differently. Yet I tend to embrace the change if it is something that I think will help me do my job better. That’s especially so because teaching and improving learning is somewhat imprecise and isn’t represented by a tangible object that can be easily measured.
It’s interesting to watch others’ response to proposed change. The variations in response always surprise me, even though by now I should expect it. Although I think of educators as thinkers and innovators, not all are. Many are content to do what they’ve always done, just as others in non-education fields can be content.
A colleague once told me that when we redesign courses, we should not only look at those courses where the failure rate is high. We should also examine the courses (especially when they are the same courses) where the pass rate is extremely high. The issue might be that the standards in the course where the pass rate is extremely high either have answers that can be passed along or that that particular instructor is not holding students to high standards.
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