Dr. Brian Butler is dean of the College of Communication and Information Sciences.
Framing the Conversation
Q: When you think about teaching excellence at The University of Alabama, what does that mean to you personally and professionally?
A: Creating opportunities for students to join us in our mission of changing the world and driving positive change — as scholars, professionals, leaders, teachers and agents of change. Creatively meeting students where they are at and helping them become what they aspire to be and do what they dream of doing.
Q: How does your college define or recognize excellent teaching among its faculty?
A: Annually, we celebrate a faculty member with a BOV Teaching award and the Hagood award (which includes teaching excellence). We also regularly recognize faculty who, through their mentorship and leadership, contribute to our students’ success and our overall educational mission.
Fostering and Supporting Excellence
Q: What initiatives, programs or incentives within your college help faculty enhance their teaching?
A: Our newly formed Teaching and Learning Committee is charged with actively providing opportunities and highlighting resources for C&IS faculty to enhance their teaching. Faculty at all levels across our department are encouraged to work actively with the UATA. Special initiatives, like support for faculty seeking accessible design training, also encourage faculty to expand their skill sets with regard to teaching and learning.
Q: How do you balance the demands of research, service and teaching while maintaining a culture that values instructional excellence?
A: Faculty are encouraged to think about their teaching as an opportunity to advance and disseminate their research and creative work.
Q: Can you share an example of a faculty member or department that embodies innovative or student-centered teaching in your college?
A: Chandra Clark (JCM); George Daniels (JCM); Mike Little (APR); Heather Hayes (Com); Jamie Naidoo (SLIS)
Collaboration and Innovation
Q: What role do partnerships — such as those with the UATA or OTIDE — play in supporting your college’s teaching mission?
A: Many C&IS faculty are involved in UATA and work with UATA as leaders, fellows and participants. OTIDE is an important partner in our many online programs.
Q: How is your college approaching new teaching frontiers, such as AI, active learning or experiential education?
A: In addition to our long history with traditional experiential learning, we have identified setting a new standard in this critical area as a priority for the college.
Invest in Student Impact and Well-being
We willset the standard for student success by combining excellence in traditional metrics, such as retention, degree completion, and career outcomes, with the expectation that our students graduate not only with a degree but as accomplished professionals.
Goal 3: 100% of students have a significant, externally recognized accomplishment, demonstrating significant impact and success prior to graduation.
The units in C&IS have each begun to invest in ways of ensuring students not just have an “experience,” but to have success — a published story, an exhibited film, a professional presentation, an implemented client project — that launches them on their chosen path. This includes collaboration between our academic units and practice groups, such as the Digital Media Center and the Capstone Agency. Ultimately, our goal will be to provide C&IS students with the opportunity to envision and create new ventures, from published stories and information resources to media properties and community organizations, during their time at the Capstone.
AI is central to this vision as an enabling tool. At the course and program levels, each of the units in C&IS is actively incorporating activities and education into their offerings to ensure that all C&IS students are able to make effective and ethical decisions about when and how to use AI in their professional and personal lives.
Impact and Vision
Q: What are some of the most pressing challenges your faculty face in teaching today, and how are you helping to address them?
A:
- Concern about strategies for effectively teaching controversial topics (with some concerned about personal risk associated with doing so).
- Developing appropriate strategies for integrating AI into courses — recognizing that it is simultaneously a skill to be learned, a tool for enhancing learning environments, and a hindrance to learning.
- Strategies for helping students learn skills, knowledge and topics that are both timeless and facing significant upheaval (e.g., the core functions of journalism remain essential and challenging, but journalists’ social standing, tools, practice and industry are undergoing significant change).
Q: What is your long-term vision for teaching and learning in your college?
A: Our mission is to drive positive change through groundbreaking research and creative work, transformative partnerships and life-changing education, unleashing the power of communication and information to address pressing societal challenges and improve the world for everyone.
Fundamentally, the C&IS community seeks to be leaders in the creation of the next generation of communication, media and information ecosystems — not just users of the current tools, techniques and technologies, but the architects of the next generation of platforms, institutions, organizations and systems that enable us to share information and communicate with one another.
Participatory teaching and learning are central to this mission and approach. We will succeed only if we can regularly and truly invite students, alumni and partners to join us in the process of discovery and innovation — and in the process learn how they can contribute to the ambitious goal of creating media, communication and information ecosystems that make the world better for everyone.