Can you hear me now?: UNC right to look to faculty for classroom advice

UNC administrators are getting behind a novel approach to improving efficiency and academic quality at the University: talking and listening to faculty to figure out best practices.

It seems like a logical strategy; after all, faculty and professors are the ones in the trenches, in touch with the preferences and attitudes of students. Administrators are a few degrees away from the reality of the classroom.

The process is called “appreciative inquiry.” This initiative involves training faculty members to interview each other about best practices and what is most successful in the classroom.

In an interview with a Daily Tar Heel reporter, McKay Coble, faculty chairwoman, characterized the process as stemming from the “ground up,” instead of a “top-down” approach.

Hopefully, these ideas will be concrete, practicable enhancements, rather than lofty ideological goals, which are in many cases the result of a hierarchical disconnect.

 While administration officials are certainly qualified to enact educational reforms in the classroom, faculty members are more connected to the students. That is why the appreciative inquiry program seems like a good idea with real productive potential.

The best interest of the students should be at the heart of all initiatives aimed at improving the academic quality of UNC.

Classroom techniques that faculty use to educate students should integrate what are considered to be the best, most effective practices. After all, education is the overarching purpose of all universities.

The appreciate inquiry initiative stands to give faculty a better understanding of what the most effective practices entail. The collective classroom enhancements of the faculty at a large research university should certainly prove more effective than a top-down, administrative-led approach.