Moody Faculty Spotlight: Jennifer Barbour
Published Summer 2023
Jennifer Jones Barbour is an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Communication Studies at Moody College. She is the Associate Director of the Communication and Leadership Degree program and teaches courses on leadership and communication, philanthropy and development, and public memory and leadership. In 2019, she won the Moody College of Communication Teaching Excellence Award.
In this interview, Professor Barbour shares some thoughts and ideas about student engagement, and some of the strategies she uses in her courses. For example, she explains how she approaches students in the first day of class to encourage them to participate and build community, the power of silence and the importance of recognizing that students are safe in the classroom, and it is ok to make mistakes, it is part of the learning process.
This is her last semester as a faculty at Moody College of Communication, as she is moving in Fall 2023 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. CATE team thank you for all the support in our trainings and initiatives. We wish you all the best!Jennifer Jones Barbour
The first thing I do is make sure on the first day of class they get their voices in the room. It's a purposeful choice on my part. The first day of class is always like, let's go over the syllabus and the policies and let me tell you about the class, very professor focused. And I figured out that if I want them talking in class, they have to talk on the first day. And they have to talk to each other, and they have to talk to me. I think that was the first kind of real key pivot for me to think about student engagement, to be purposeful that I wanted their voices in the room on that first day.
Something I try to be real conscious about is to recognize that not every student wants to engage in the same way, right? Some students don't like public speaking and talking up in a class is public speaking for them. And they just have no interest in that. It's scary.
I always try to create activities for that first day where they're talking with each other, they're talking to themselves. Maybe it'll be a reflection piece where they write down an answer or that they are talking to me, but that they get to be in the space. All of us. So probably the first thing is getting their voices in the room right on day one, because I want them to be in the room for the rest of the semester. And then the other piece of it is thinking about what are different ways to give students the opportunity to participate in the discussion that isn't just the kind of model of one student raising their hand and speaking up.
How can we design a course and a syllabus centered in student engagement? Do you have any reflection upon this?
I see course design in a context in which I'm building a relationship with the student. And if my goal is student engagement, then my syllabus should build that relationship, right? And should articulate that in different ways. I can give some examples. One of the things I think is really important is the community in the classroom and building a safe space where students feel they belong to that group. We are going to learn together, recognizing that we all are going to learn differently. But it also means that we are going to make mistakes together, that we need to be able to make mistakes so that we can learn. I will make mistakes, they will make mistakes.
If you look at any of my syllabuses, I use words like we expect that you will […]. So just even at the language level I am creating a culture and assignments that say it’s ok for us to work collectively. When you think about designing a syllabus, it is about creating that relationship.
I also think about that in terms of my own kind of design, I have a 50-minute block of time. Well, if I'm serious about student engagement, I can't be the one that talks all 50 minutes. Because that's not engaging, right? There has to be flow and while it is the case that I am the expert in the room, and that I want to share my expertise with the students, they also have information, and they can share with me. We can co-create, I can learn from them, I certainly will learn from them, and they definitely are going to learn from each other.
I always structure the course calendar on a day-to-day level where there's a flow through the conversation where maybe we start with their questions or concerns. Having a moment at the beginning of the class where I say all right, we ended on Wednesday talking about this. Who wants to summarize where we were? Or what was the question that we were wrestling with on Monday that we didn't come to a conclusion? Some way that the conversation starts with the students again bringing us up to speed, packing that they didn't get to act the first time. So it sort of creates the continuity.
And then the other one, and this is so simple, I try really hard not to say anymore “Does anybody have any questions?” What I say instead is, all right, ask me three questions, and it is funny because sometimes they'll have three questions, then other times students will be like we don't have any questions about the content. And I say all right, you still can ask me three questions. Ask me about anything. That I didn't think it would work. And it worked. It was amazing.
And how did you learn these triggers? Did you use any resource or were inspired by any professor during your journey?
That's a great question. So the “We expect that you will”, and “You can expect that we will” instead of “you can expect” or “you know”, that framing was on my PhD advisor's syllabus when I thought with her 20 years ago, and I’ve tweaked it since then. I remember thinking how awesome this is as a way to create a relationship in this space. And I've used that ever since.
I had an English professor as an undergraduate, Barbara Seidman. I had a bunch of classes with her, and she taught me the power of silence. And the reason I say that is because, you know, I can feel the time, I can feel the space. I have lots to say. I've been doing this a while. It's content that I'm familiar with and I'm excited about. But I remember as her student being struck by the ways in which she would wait us out. She'd ask a question and then she could sit there and wait for somebody to answer the question. And gave people time and space to do that thinking and not an adjustment way. She just was like alright, let's do some thinking about this. And I didn't realize how powerful that was until I got into my first classroom as a graduate student.
One of the pieces of feedback that I got from somebody who did a speaking observation was: you do a lot of talking. And when you ask a question and they can't answer the question right away, you answer the question for them. You should let them do a little bit more thinking about it. And that was such an aha moment for me. I got to channel my inner Barbara techniques because I need to be quiet, I need to give them time to answer and it was uncomfortable for a long time, and I probably didn't wait as long as I should have for many times. But as I've gotten older, as I've done more teaching, I think it's better to wait and to let them answer. Jump count in my head sometimes actually, because I packed myself trying to answer the question or reframe it right. I'm like, did you misunderstand the question? And instead of being like OK, just count to 20, Jennifer.
Now that you are moving to a new position at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, what are you taking from UT Austin to this next stage of your career?
I loved my time at UT Austin, I have felt such a connection around. I like the slogan “What starts here changes the world.” I think that's a really kind of interesting framework for communication and leadership degree students, the desire to lead positive change, to make the communities that they're going to be a part of better places.
I was reflecting on this the other day, and thought I'm just going to manifest that for my students in the next institution I'm going to, cultivate that perspective. Some of them might come in the door with that, some of them won’t, but they will leave the classroom with a set of tools to make the world a better place right in their communities in the way that they want. They will lead a positive change. I think having that as my kind of framework, I'm excited to take that with me.