Welcome to the Fall 2021 issue of Utah State University’s Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence! This marks our tenth overall issue, and the teaching landscape has changed in ways that could not have been foreseen in 2016 when JETE first entered the world. While JETE obviously filled a great need in teaching pedagogy when it debuted, the changing world of teaching has made the work we share in this journal essential. We always encourage submissions that contribute to this conversation, and we are currently reading for our future issues. Please continue to send work our way. We also encourage you to click the follow button on our homepage, https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/jete, for updates on new issues and calls for articles.

At this point in the fall of 2021, it is hardly noteworthy to state that the last year and a half has changed the way teachers at every level approach their craft. Many articles and talks have been given on myriad ways of discussing these changes, including incredibly important ones that appear in this issue. As we transition from the “teaching differently than ever before” phase to a “how these changes manifest into superior teaching” phase, it’s essential that the research done on these changes does more than simply report their existences—they need to show practical ways of how to manifest that change into exemplary teaching and mentoring of students.

The articles in this issue of JETE talk practically about how instructors face the increasingly online world of teaching and how research can be applied in practical ways to help students. It begins with Julia M. Gossard’s (2021) review of Flower Darby’s Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes (2019). Gossard brings us into her first-time online classroom and shows us how she applied Darby’s techniques into her pedagogy, emphasizing the practical application of the book’s teachings.

Elena Taylor (2021), in “Using Online Genres to Promote Students’ Audience Awareness,” describes practical ways of encouraging student writing in the online environment by employing the genres students and instructors already read and write in non-academic settings. Taylor’s description of scaffolding activities for each of the genres discussed allows readers to easily understand her methods and how others could adapt them.

“Designing and Implementing a Land-Grant Faculty-to-Student Mentoring Program: Addressing Shortcoming in Academic Mentoring” by Law, Busenbark, Hales, Taylor, and Spears (2021) recounts the building of a Faculty-to-Student Mentoring program and how best to undertake such an important and difficult task by providing both the research that inspired the program and the specific process of creating and carrying out the program itself.

Joanna Weaver and Grace Mutti (2021) contribute the article “A Study of Incarcerated Youth: The Effect of Interest on Comprehension and Engagement” and discuss the role of individual motivation on a student’s capacity to improve—in this case, the literacy levels of incarcerated youth in rehabilitation facilities. Of fundamental interest are the case studies on the specific ways the mentors studied used individual student motivation to improve student performance.

We conclude this issue with another book review that emphasizes the application of the book under discussion. In this case, Cuthbert, Rogowski, Vakula, Aguilar, and Kesler (2001) review David Gooblar’s The Missing Course: An Introduction to College Teaching for Graduate Instructors. The authors guide the reader through not just the book itself, but the process they experienced as they read, discussed, and attempted to apply the book’s recommendations—a process that changed their own perceptions of their power to implement classroom change.

The world of teaching has not only changed in the last year and a half, but the result of that change is not yet fully known. As we continue to navigate these challenging waters and successfully help our students, one of the most valuable things we can do is show our colleagues how these applications can work. That is why this issue of the JETE is of utmost importance to our collective pedagogy as instructors.

References

Cuthbert, J. M., Rogowski, A., Vakula, M. N., Aguilar, J., Kesler, K. (2021). The Missing Course: An Introduction to College Teaching for Graduate Instructors. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 5(2).

Gossard, J. (2021). Small Changes for a Big Impact: Book review of Darby (2019) Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classrooms. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 5(2).

Law, D. D., Busenbark, D., Hales, K. K., Taylor, J. Y, Spears, J., Harris, A. (2021). Designing and Implementing a Land-Grant Faculty-to-Student Mentoring Program: Addressing Shortcomings in Academic Mentoring. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 5(2).

Taylor, E. (2021). Using Online Genres to Promote Students’ Audience Awareness. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 5(2).

Weaver, J. C., and Mutti, G. E. (2021). A Study of Incarcerated Youth: The Effect of Student Interest on Reading Comprehension and Engagement. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 5(2).