Across higher education, instructors are struggling to teach effectively and (re-)engage students as we return to in-person learning. And it’s not been easy; it’s hard to teach students who aren’t in class, or who are attending but not meaningfully present, yet the incidences of both grow more numerous by the day, it seems. Some responses to this state of affairs urge us to double down on “standards,” to “toughen up our courses again,” to rediscover and re-instill rigor. After all, learning is supposed to be hard, and maybe a return to that set of challenges is what students need to re-connect them to their education…right? 

But what does “rigor” look like to students? There is research suggesting what we define as rigor and what students experience in so-called “rigorous” classes are vastly different things. What if, instead of promoting meaningful, challenging learning, we’re actually placing barriers in front of our students? This talk will explore the need to find balance between our conceptions of rigor and students’ academic well-being. We’ll consider the ways in which rigor manifests itself in our teaching and learning spaces, and how the concept is often weaponized against the very things we say are important to our courses. Finally, we’ll consider specific strategies to challenge our students in ways that promote, rather than prevent, their success.  

About the speaker:

Kevin Gannon is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and his writing has also appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. His current projects include a textbook on the US Civil War and Reconstruction eras and a critical examination of gateway and survey courses in higher education.