​Four Pivotal Elements in the Teaching/Learning Exchange

When college instructors teach their courses and when college students learn in those courses an exchange occurs. It is an exchange of knowledge, information, experience, perspective, opinion, insight, beliefs, values, and norms. This teaching/learning exchange is powerful, impactful, and expected in the college setting. There are four pivotal elements in the teaching/learning exchange—pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings. Pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings are pivotal elements of the teaching/learning exchange (or teaching/learning exchanges) because the successful teaching/learning exchange is dependent upon these four elements. The exchange is dependent upon these four elements because the foundation of successful teaching and learning is purpose, focus, and planning.
 
Pedagogy is a behind-the-scenes practice initiated and completed by an instructor in any given university, college, department, program, and individual course. Pedagogy is the art, the practice, and the method behind and of the teaching act. Any art, practice, or method involves purpose, focus, and planning. Course mapping is where instructors align the outcomes of their course with activities and assessments. Like pedagogy, the instructor of a course completes course mapping. It is intentional, focused, and planned before a student enrolls in a class. Syllabi are documents created by instructors that outline and describe the course subject matter, policies, materials, assignment and assessment deadlines and that provide a partial articulation of the instructor’s pedagogy. The class meeting is where pedagogy, course mapping, and syllabi are in play and where students are active players with their instructors in the teaching/learning exchange. The class meeting is a ritual. The class meeting is an expression, a demonstration, and a space where interplay, interaction, consensus, and conflict occur. The class meeting is like a “borderland.” It is simultaneously liminal, transitional, and unstable because the class meeting is at the border of new knowledge, new information, new ideas, new insights, and new perspectives. Students are constantly on the border of recalling prior knowledge, inserting new knowledge, and generating yet a newer knowledge. This threefold foundation is the pivot upon which teaching/learning revolves and evolves.
 
Attention to pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings is well worth the investment of time by college instructors from graduate assistants to full professors.