The One Word Every Professor Gets Wrong
Rigor.
Rigor is the one word professors shout from their lecterns. Rigor is also the one word every one of them gets wrong.
Academic rigor is a proxy term. It stands for challenging students in their learning. It’s about making sure that what students are learning is not too easy, but also not too hard. I think about rigor as having the right number of toes in the chaos of ignorance. To that end, we can use the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development to describe the technical implementation of the idea.
Rigor, at the atomic level, is lessons, assignments, or projects that make students think deeply. In contrast, memorizing facts is not rigor. Academic rigor also means having high standards. This means not every student earning an A on every assignment. It means students should always be encouraged to do their best work and we should support them in working towards high standards.
Finally, academic rigor is about preparing students for the future. In the world, people need to solve complex problems, think critically, and keep learning new things. Rigorous academic work helps students develop these skills. In some sense, we can say rigor ensures a proper framework exists for students to learn how to actualize knowledge.
