The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching

by David Gooblar

Professors know a lot, but they are rarely taught how to teach. The author of the Chronicle of Higher Education's popular "Pedagogy Unbound" column explains everything you need to know to be a successful college instructor.

College is changing, but the way we train academics is not. Most professors are still trained to be researchers first and teachers a distant second, even as scholars are increasingly expected to excel in the classroom.

There has been a revolution in teaching and learning over the past generation, and we now have a whole new understanding of how the brain works and how students learn. But most academics have neither the time nor the resources to catch up to the latest research or train themselves to be excellent teachers. The Missing Course offers scholars at all levels a field guide to the state of the art in teaching and learning and is packed with invaluable insights to help students learn in any discipline.

Wary of the folk wisdom of the faculty lounge, David Gooblar builds his lessons on the newest findings and years of experience. From active-learning strategies to course design to getting students talking, The Missing Course walks you through the fundamentals of the student-centered classroom, one in which the measure of success is not how well you lecture but how much students learn. Along the way, readers will find ideas and tips they can use in their classrooms right away.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Academic, Nonfiction, Academia

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

David Gooblar is Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Temple University. His Chronicle of Higher Education column “Pedagogy Unbound” offers college teachers practical advice, informed by research, on how to create more effective student-centered classrooms. He has written widely on American literature, including most recently the book The Major Phases of Philip Roth.

Reviews

[K.P. Ambroziak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a handy compilation of ways of being in the college classroom. I am certainly happy I added it to my shelf of “how-to’s” for teaching. I started teaching around the time Gooblar started writing for Vitae, and his advice has always been useful. This tidy book, however, ties it all together. If you’re looking for the latest on pedagogy, this revives some old forgotten favorites but also teaches new ways to think about your role in higher education with the aim of making you better at what you do.

Though this will also suit the new college instructor, I happen to think those with experience may get more from this because Gooblar reminds you about perception, yours and your students’, while also encouraging you to keep evolving and trying new things. He begins by suggesting the students are the subject, no matter what you teach, and gives you examples and practical activities to begin structuring a course with that in mind.

The takeaways for me are innumerable, from letting the students help me build my syllabus to suggestions for in-class activities that spark genuine participation. At this point, we all know about the values of active-learning, but Gooblar gives you the practical here, not simply theory. He’s even got some stellar advice on revision, which I plan to use next quarter. As with the guidance in “The Pocket Instructor” and “Teaching with Classroom Response Systems,” the advice in “The Missing Course” makes me feel more adequate in the classroom, and maybe even makes it so.

[Nicole Simovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that I wish I had read in my “teaching psychological science” course in graduate school. David Gooblar, who has the popular blog Pedagogy Unbound, presents the need-to-know information that all professors in the college classroom need. Gooblar’s thesis isn’t necessarily groundbreaking: active teaching is the key to good pedagogy and good student learning. We all know this, or at least if you have the privilege of teaching in a college classroom you should know this. But teaching good is hard, and requires time, dedication, and work.
I can’t wait to get back in the real classroom to implement these strategies — asynchronous online courses, the subject of this week’s essay, is just not the same. How can you implement active learning in an asynchronous online course? Honestly, I have no idea. But, if you want a book to inspire you to be a better teacher in the classroom, Gooblar’s The Missing Course is the book you need to get.

[Harry Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this for my teaching practicum class. It's a requirement for first year teaching assistants. It's all about how to be a better college instructor. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It has material about the importance of being a modest instructor, how to handle feedback, how to improve participation, etc. It's too early in my own career to say I'll be a professor some day. I can say that it is nice to know the method to the madness of why my professors have taught me in a particular way.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a lot of great advice here, all rendered in an accessible and easy to read style. Gooblar's book is especially good at balancing the reasoning behind his advice (all grounded in empirical work) and the advice itself. Overall, this makes for a quick, fun read that will provide both novice and seasoned college instructors with good ideas and quick changes they can make to their practices that will (hopefully) make big differences.

[Cana McGhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

really solid overview of techniques and things to think about when teaching at the undergraduate level. it was very affirming to read this and feel like i was implementing some of these strategies in my teaching already, and i gained new insights from psychological and sociological studies about why certain approaches work better than others. big takeaway for me is that encouraging self-reflexive learning is key to ensuring student success

[Michael Wolcott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for any junior (and even senior) faculty member. It offered a contemporary perspective of teaching that was student centered and culturally responsive. Only down side is the strategies are really peppered throughout so it’s more a perspective piece than useful manual. Overall, highly recommended.

[Ryan McShane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this with a reading group that included other faculty at my University. It gives a good collection of ideas to try in the classroom and return to periodically as we revise our teaching. The advice contained within this book is best for those who have never taught, although those who have taught and refelected on their pedagogy (like myself) will still find nuggets throughout.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for beginning college faculty and those needing a refresh. Has some extra focus on teaching writing. Does an excellent job of summarizing SoTL on several issues. Final chapter on burnout such good advice for any faculty.

[Hannah Potantus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more of these books I read the more I realize they are very similar. They aren’t all terrible, which is nice, they just have different ways of saying the same thing. They have different ways of implying the same biases. They have different ways of giving similar advice.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should be required reading for all college professors.

[Spencer Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must read for new college-level teachers

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Bok seminar class. Pretty useful read, even if all aspects are not agreeable to me and if they are more geared towards established professors. Very useful in terms of ideas.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit that I was skeptical about this book when I learned it was a required text for a pedagogy course I took as a doctoral student. What could David Gooblar teach me about pedagogy that I had not already learned from sustained reflection on my own experience as a student in university classrooms for more than a decade? I knew which pedagogical styles I liked and wanted to adopt as a teacher and which ones I disliked. What more was there to learn?

As I read the introduction to The Missing Course, I quickly realized that there was a lot more to learn. Gooblar stresses that teaching is a craft and a profession. As with any profession, to do it well requires familiarity with its norms, best practices, and up-to-date research. Good teaching is more than just an intuitive exercise. In fact, as I read The Missing Course, I noticed that the teachers I admired most utilized many of the pedagogical methods and course design strategies that Gooblar recommends. Their teaching was not simply the result of pedagogical instinct honed over many years; it was also the product of careful and deliberate reflection on how to help students attain the learning objectives in their classes. The Missing Course prompts readers to partake in this same reflection. It equips nascent teachers with the principles (teach the students in your courses, not the material), the concepts (the constructivist theory of learning), and the strategies (backward course design) to excel at the craft of teaching.

Of the many tips and recommendations Gooblar offers, I most appreciated his participation policy adapted from David Foster Wallace, the idea of a low-stakes writing diagnostic to assess students’ prior knowledge, his proposals for how to model scholarly behavior for students, and his exhortation to write post-class reports that document what one did in each class to improve later iterations of the course. Above all, Gooblar’s emphasis on learning as the revision of prior knowledge and his repeated insistence that students, not the course content, should be teachers’ central focus have reoriented my pedagogical approach. The Missing Course is not a radical or revolutionary pedagogical manifesto; rather, it synthesizes recent educational research and anecdotal testimony from successful instructors into an eminently practical handbook for college teachers.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book for new and experienced college instructors. I gave it a quick re-read prior to planning my new syllabus.