The New Commandments of College Teaching
13 things that you'll never see in a student course evaluation, but that you should absolutely do (and not do) in your courses.
My work involves talking to a lot of students from various institutions. We discuss big topics: free speech, student mental health, academic success, and more.
But if I were to summarize the amalgamation of viewpoints that I’ve collected from students, the only consensus would be a set of “good” and “bad” things that today’s professors do. It’s rare to see entire webinars dedicated to granular teaching decisions like when it’s acceptable to cancel class or whether to ban phones and laptops. Even if recommendations on these micro-level decisions are buried in a toolkit on your local institution’s teaching and learning website, these decisions substantially impact your students’ experience in your course.
I’m calling these “things” and decisions commandments, because as tribal and siloed as faculty can be in their thinking—the laptop banners vs. the digital pedagogues, the academic freedom fighters vs. the accountability culture creators, the inclusive teaching practitioners vs…..“fairness” (whatever faculty mean by that)—there has to be a set of practices that we can collectively hang our hat on as a profession. We can keep our diverse views on technology and free speech and belonging, and we can continue to preach them to our choirs and to any new faces who happen to show up. But we all have to get the little things right.
There needs to be a starter kit for college teaching. Along with all the innovative, award-winning teaching out there, we also need a floor. Simply put by Jodi Walker of The Ringer (who gave me inspiration to write this article), “There’s no right way to use the internet, but increasingly, there are more wrong ways to use it.” The same can be said for teaching.
Before I started writing, I did what any seasoned journalist might do when researching a topic they’re writing on in 2025: I free dove into the chilling, dangerous depths of “#badprofessor” and "#collegetok” on TikTok to see whether any of my proposed commandments aligned with the viral vitriol for bad professoring that circulates the internet from September to May.
They do. And what was made apparent to me is that millions of college students want to send that strongly worded email to their professors, finally standing up for themselves and their classmates, finger hovering over the “Send” button. But instead, they backspace, delete the draft, and record a 2-minute TikTok video instead because, well…power dynamics.
The list is not exhaustive, nor is it set in stone like the 10 commandments literally were. Please note that these commandments could be entirely unhelpful in 12 months if AI continues to do things we’ve never seen before. But if I had to guess, these things are pretty AI proof. I ordered the commandments for the flow of the article; they are not in order of importance.
If the commandments in this article are plainly obvious to you, share this article on your socials for those who are not yet initiated. However, if you have a rebuttal for the arguments that these practices support, speak now—in the comments—or forever hold your peace.
Thou shalt not assign high-stakes group projects
Yes, students will likely work in professional teams after graduation. Yes, students need to build collaborative skills for those work situations. Yes, group projects help them as current students: they learn about how other students learn, they gain ideas for refining their own processes for studying and class prep, they get some helpful peer feedback that they can apply to other assignments. And of course, putting students in groups means that instead of grading 5 different projects, you’re only grading one.
The argument for graded final group projects is flawed. Most professors aren’t taking the time to teach students how to collaborate respectfully and productively. Some students learn this in K-12, and K-12 is different from higher ed because 18-24-year-olds have more complex human emotions than they did in middle school. They’ve seen more examples of how adults abuse power and operate within bureaucracies that often make collaboration futile. Not to mention that traditionally-aged college students are just now assuming adult-level responsibilities that can inhibit their ability to collaborate with others productively.
I strongly recommend doing the group stuff in the classroom (Zoom or in-person), where everyone involved can make the most of peer learning. Too many professors have this backward. Instead of lecturing in class and assigning group work outside of it, assign the group work as practice while students are already grouped in the room together. Leave the solo work for outside of the classroom. And you don’t have to grade everything. Save the grading for what students produce individually. Let the sole purpose of peer collaboration be to support their learning, which, if they really want it to be helpful for them, they’ll learn to do well.
Thou shalt not spend the entire first class going over the syllabus
Your students can read. They don’t need you to read the syllabus to them. It’s okay to go over the syllabus, just not for the whole first class. Do a syllabus scavenger hunt where students—before looking at the syllabus—write down as many questions about your class as they can come up with. Then, put them in group to find the answers to the questions in your syllabus, followed by a discussion about where you answer questions that students still have. Or, do the syllabus stuff in the second class period. The first class is a movie trailer for your course. Give me an explosion, someone crying in a hospital hallway. Give me something exciting, something that has stakes! Something that makes me want to stay in your class! Draw me into the experience of your course. Do something interactive while still being introductory. The opening minutes of your course shouldn’t be movie credits.
Thou shalt not assume thy students’ gender or pronouns
This is what pre-course surveys are for. Make a Google form—or a wufoo form, whatever you fancy—and ask students what their pronouns and preferred name(s) are along with other questions; Vanderbilt’s CTE gives a ton of examples. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the registrar collected this information ahead of time and put it in the rosters? Well, maybe not, because people change their pronouns. Misgendering a student is one of the worst things you can do.
Thou shalt not grade attendance
Because students’ success in your course should be correlated to how often they show up without you having to grade whether they show up or not, because your synchronous meetings should be giving students experiences that will help them apply the skills you’re aiming to teach them. If students can miss half your classes and still get a B, you have a poorly designed course, which is not the end of the world. One way to fix this is the flipped learning model that I described in the first commandment. The assumption here is that students can consume the content anywhere, and that they should come to class to engage with this unique collection of human beings that in 16 weeks will never all gather in the same classroom again. You gotta’ make your class something that students want to come to (it’s possible). They should come because of the people there, not in spite of them.
Thou shalt not require textbooks of any kind
The only people that textbooks help are the people that work for textbook publishers and the authors who write them. I can’t tell you one thing that I learned from a textbook. But I can tell you what I learned from a podcast, a documentary, a classroom activity, even some academic journal articles. Textbooks are expensive. A textbook is simply content with practice problems sprinkled throughout. You can find the same content in a more accessible medium on the internet, and you can design better practice problems that serve your students’ specific learning goals.
Thou shalt cancel class if you intend for the class to be anything less than 50% of its typical length
Because some students battle traffic after work or walk through dangerous streets or use a wheelchair or don’t have time to eat before your class or have to jump through hoops to find a quite place to join your class if it’s on Zoom (and a place with a not-horrific background if you require video). Some students have an easy 3-minute walk to your class, but others don’t. So if you’re going to rush through all your content or show up to class late or not be fully present because you’re juggling multiple things, just let everyone reclaim their time and come back together in a few days.
Thou shalt not prohibit laptops or phones without pedagogical justification
You can do it. I’m not saying that you can’t prohibit laptops or phones. But like I encourage my students to do, I encourage you to go 3 ‘whys’ deep.
“Laptops are distracting.”
But, why?
“Because my students are all addicted to TikTok, and I need to step in and draw a line about what’s acceptable in my class and what’s not. They’re not going to do it on their own.”
But, why?
Is banning the tech the only solution to this problem? Are there any learning opportunities that your students lose out on because laptops and/or phones are forced to be put away? Aside from reducing distractions, what other benefits does a phone-free or laptop-free classroom offer?
How about presenting these dilemmas to your students—presumably, your concerns about their attention—and see what solutions they come up with. Is your concern evidence-based? Present the research to students, about how a phone/laptop-free classroom leads to more engagement and better learning outcomes. Ask students to do their own evidence-seeking about this. You could even make this one of your first-day-of-class activities; a 2019 study explored how co-creating learning policies with students can deepen their engagement and increase their sense of belonging. Some might agree that putting their technology away is best for them, but others might use their technology as a learning tool. If you see phones and laptops as a barrier to building a sense of community and belonging among your students, share this concern with them, too. You’ll be fascinated by what they come up with. You don’t have to take their suggestions wholesale, but, I believe, you have a duty to include them in the process.
Thou shalt not cold call students
Cold calling is when a professor randomly calls on a student who did not offer to participate. Faculty typically used cold calling as an intimidation tactic when they assume (or have evidence that) their students aren’t coming to class prepared, so students end up reading primarily to avoid public humiliation. What this looks like can vary, ranging from a student simply getting a question wrong in front of their classmates, to now the student is in tears because a professor ambushed them with question after question, after it’s clear that the student didn’t read for class that day. The professor continues to make an example of the student, essentially communicating to the rest of the class, “here’s what happens when you don’t read for my class.”
Don’t cold call students. If your students aren’t participating in class, ask them why and have a genuine, honest discussion about it. Ask for feedback on how to make readings and activities more helpful. If you need help with creating active learning in your classroom, just google “active learning strategies for college professors” (this is the kind of stuff we can use AI for!). Request a consultation with your institution’s teaching and learning center if you have one. Fear-based teaching doesn’t lead to learning, even if it leads to extrinsically-motivated reading.
Thou shalt not put easter eggs in recorded video lectures, and then threaten to grade students on the easter egg, and then just re-lecture the same exact content live in the next class
Because apparently a professor did this. A student was talking about it on TikTok (#badprofessors). The story seemed completely legit. I lost the video and can’t find it. Moral of the story: don’t hide content in your lectures to bait students into watch them!
Thou shalt not ask yes or no questions during lecture
When has there ever been a yes or no question asked in the middle of a lecture where the scenario didn’t play out in one of the following ways:
*awkward silence for 8 seconds*; Professor: “did anyone read _______?”
*awkward silence for 8 seconds*; Professor: “don’t overthink it…..anybody?”; *everyone immediately starts overthinking, as to ensure what they’re thinking about saying won’t turn them into a fool once said*
*awkward silence for 8 seconds*; *professor gives unhelpful hint*; *more awkward silence*
*awkward silence for 8 minutes* *one student mumbles the answer*; *professor asks student to repeat*; *student repeats*, the lecture continues. On occasion, this professor might ask a student a follow up prompt: “Say more about that.”
This is what I would call a “frozen” classroom. The professor in each of these scenarios has failed to cultivate an environment where students feel empowered to participate. This could be a result of multiple things: they didn’t bother to ask students anything until 30 minutes into their lecture, the answer to their question is so obvious that it feels like a trick question, the answer to their question is so obvious that a student's eagerness to answer it would make them look like a try-hard, they asked a question that doesn’t have a straight forward ‘yes or no’ answer, the content that they’re asking students to comment on wasn’t well explained.
The students are frozen, aiming to avoid embarrassment, assuming their role in the natural pecking order that has already formed in the class (the avid participators, the “smart” ones that are quieter, the ones that are quiet because they’re hiding their knowledge gaps, the crowd in the back that’s just getting by). Without swift intervention, this will become that class's default: all but a few students, like an ice sculpture museum, frozen for the rest of the semester.
Most professors spring questions onto students mid-lecture, not because they want to, but because they feel like they need to in order to retain students’ attention. Yes or no questions feel like trick questions to students, even if they’re simple. If the question is so simple that you can reduce it to a yes or no question, then perhaps it shouldn’t be asked at all. Those should be practice problems that students can work on in their own time, and their understanding of those concepts will be applied in whatever larger, hands-on, discussion-based, scenario-based, community-based, project-based, competition-based, product-based, or case-based task you have for them.
Thou shalt not say 'any questions?' and wait only 2 seconds
Because maybe your students need a little extra time to think. Maybe they’re diving deep into their critical thinking bag to formulate a response that they’ve never shared or even thought of before. Maybe they’re trying to remember a detail from a reading. Maybe they’re an introverted students who, finally, in week 7, after they’ve decided that their interest in the topic, their class preparation, and the sunny weather all aligned so perfectly that today is the day they’re going to be the first to participate. And then *splat*…..you kill their confidence with an unnecessary follow up question that confuses everyone, all because you’re standing at the front of the class, or into the Zoom void, in front of what seems like a symphony of blank stares. And it feels like an eternity. If I let silence go on for more than 10 seconds, anarchy might ensue, the professor must think.
We can all get better at embracing silence. Sometimes thinking—and learning—requires silence. Sometimes it can’t happen without it.
Thou shalt not make an awkward joke about the student who’s strolling into class late
I’ve seen this with my own eyes. You don’t have to comment on a student strolling in late. The joke usually doesn’t land. The student walks in embarrassed and very confused. You can say a quick hello and keep class going. We say weird things when things get awkward.
Thou shalt make PowerPoint slides that are more than text on a blank background.
Slides are not necessary to teach well in 2025, though they can help a ton. Lots of professor use slides. If you’re going to use slides to lecture or facilitate class, students deserve more than a 2-colored slide deck, with one being the text color and the other being the background color. Microsoft shares some helpful guidelines for making slides accessible, many of which apply to various presentation builders and align with basic visual design principles.
Please, no more than 30 words on a slide. It takes 10 minutes tops to add a relevant photo to each major slide in your presentation for the coming week. PowerPoint will format the photo within the slide for you, and Canva will give you modern, malleable design templates for your slides so that all you have to do is swap out the text and photos. Do you have to do this? No. But I guarantee it’ll help your students learn.
In summary, we have a strong set of commandments to start with:
Thou shalt not assign high-stakes group projects
Thou shalt not spend the entire first class going over the syllabus
Thou shalt not assume thy students’ gender or pronouns
Thou shalt not grade attendance
Thou shalt not require textbooks of any kind
Thou shalt cancel class if the professor intends for the class to be anything less than 50% of its typical length
Thou shalt not prohibit laptops or phones without pedagogical justification
Thou shalt not cold call students
Thou shalt not put easter eggs in recorded video lectures, and then threaten to grade students on the easter egg, and then just re-lecture the same exact content live in the next class
Thou shalt not ask yes or no questions during lecture
Thou shalt not say 'any questions?' and wait only 2 seconds
Thou shalt not make an awkward joke about the student who’s strolling into class late
Thou shalt make PowerPoint slides that are more than text on a blank background.
Let these commandments be the foundation for all higher ed instruction. Part two is already done. Stay tuned.