Q&A with Adam Kadlac

Faculty Feature

1. How long have you been teaching online?

Four years. Like many people, I started teaching online back in 2020 during the COVID era. I kept my divisional teaching online until we were back fully in-person and have continued to teach my summer courses online and asynchronously. As I write, I’m getting things organized for the upcoming Summer Session I!

2. What do you enjoy most about teaching online?

I think that philosophy actually lends itself to asynchronous engagement, so I like teaching in a format that allows students to chew on some ideas and reflect on what they want to say. In-person synchronous discussions are great, and when they are working well, those conversations provide some of the most rewarding moments in teaching. But they can also sometimes favor students who are more comfortable thinking out loud in real time (or, to put it somewhat less charitably, students who are comfortable shooting from the hip). Teaching online creates a space for students who might want to take a bit more time before sharing their thoughts or who are just more reticent to talk in front of larger groups of people. And because this tends to mirror my own preferred way of engaging with philosophy, it is a natural fit for me as a teacher.  

3. What do you find the most challenging?

It is definitely harder for me to get to know the students online than it is in my in-person classes. Interestingly, I think students feel like they get to know me pretty well, since I put a lot of effort into being present in my online courses in a variety of different ways. But there is no substitute for seeing students in class on a regular basis. (That said, I might get to know some of the quieter students a little better online than I would in-person, so I wouldn’t say online teaching is a complete loss in terms of developing relationships with students. It just looks a little different and requires a bit more intentionality.)

4. What have you learned about yourself as an instructor through your online course?

At this point in my teaching career, I’ve made peace with the fact that there are no perfect classes and that we always have to make tradeoffs in how we approach our courses. Teaching online has helped me see that what I most want students to get out of my classes is a sense that philosophical questions arise all the time in the course of everyday life, and that they have probably been wrestling with such questions for a long time, even if they didn’t realize it. I think of it as trying to encourage a kind of philosophical awakening, and it’s a priority I have taken back into my in-person teaching when thinking about the kind of material I assign in class and the sorts of assessments I decide to use. 

5. What advice do you have for other online instructors?

I’m generally reluctant to give advice, but here are two thoughts that might be of use to some people. The first relates to my answer to the previous question. Give up on trying to make the perfect course and focus instead on the things you most want students to get from their time in your class. That will probably differ from what some of your colleagues most care about, and that’s good. (We talk a lot in the philosophy department about how our students benefit from the fact that we all have different teaching personalities. Over time, they benefit from the variety.) Second, it has helped me to think of online teaching as a creative outlet that can reflect my personality as a teacher and philosopher. It turns out that I actually like constructing Canvas pages, recording videos, and working to make the online environment an engaging place for students to spend time. Framing that work as a creative opportunity has helped it to feel a bit less like work!