Internet Learning Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2012 | Page 2

Internet Learning—Volume 1—Number 1—Fall 2012

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The Professor as Craftsman in the Digital Age
Dr. Frank McCluskey
American Public University System

T

he architecture of the university classroom has remained very much the same from its
beginnings at the University of Bologna in 1088 to the present day (Hunt 2008). If one
were to walk into the classroom of a contemporary American college or university it
would look very much the same as the classrooms of Salamanca, Paris, or Oxford a millennium
ago. If we were to find ourselves in a classroom of a medieval university we would find a teacher
standing in front of a room speaking. If we were to see the view from the lectern in the medieval
university, we would see rows and rows of students in desks taking notes about what the
professor said. It looks very much like the modern university. From the beginning, the professor
did his or her work in isolation from other professors. The professor was alone in a classroom
with their students as they were alone in their research and scholarship. From the beginning of
the European university, there was little team teaching and there is little evidence that teams
created syllabi together (Hunt 2008). While a few classes used the Socratic method, science labs,
periods of disputation, and study groups, the main method of delivery in the university has been
the lecture. The professor is an individual craftsman and one of the products that they produce is
the lecture (Brown and Rice 2008). Like craftsman who make pots, paintings, or unique furniture
pieces, the lecture as product of the professor is absolutely their own creation. They are solely
responsible for its content and form and it is not verified or checked by anyone else. Just as other
craftsman work in isolation, the professor does so because he or she is the expert in the field they
lecture in. While Bologna has claimed to be the first university founded in 1088, the first modern
university is often thought to be the University of Paris, founded around 1190. The University of
Paris is regarded as the first modern university because Bologna was founded by a student guild
and was student run. The first faculty guild was thought to be at the University of Paris, where
the faculty governed the university. From that time to the present, faculty governance has been
an essential hallmark of institutions of higher education. Why have faculty had the power in the
university? The faculty had the power because they had the expertise and one product of that
expertise was manifested in the spoken lecture. Students would come to universities to hear the
lectures of famous professors. The lecture is a solitary activity and a good lecturer is often
thought of as a “good teacher.” Teaching is the thing that was measured and valued in the early
literature of the university.
The lecture is a one-time event that had to be scheduled at a particular time and place.
Three hours a week of a college class are more often than not three hours of lecture. The lecture
is a kind of performance that could not be captured in writing because it varied class by class. In
this way the professor is like a traditional craftsman. A good cabinet-maker may be able to
recognize the work of another craftsman in the same field. The great craftsmen leave their own
mark and have their own distinctive style. In the long history of the university, there was no mass
production of the lecture and there was no way to exactly to capture the style of the great
lecturers. The lecture becomes a kind of performance art. The professor is a like craftsman
whose work is distinguished from all others by the uniqueness of their personality and style. But
just as woodworker is limited by the quality of the wood she works with or a sculptor the quality
of the marble, so a teacher must adapt to the quality of the student body. This means that