Nebraska professor's unique teaching technique a hit among students

Vanessa Daves | college.usatoday.com

L.J. McElravy has gone from the front lines of a war to the front of a Lincoln, Neb., classroom.

McElravy served in the army for four and a half years. During that time, the now-33-year-old led a 13-month mission to Iraq. He went to a primary leadership development course and then, as a 21-year-old, had 10 soldiers reporting to him while he was deployed with them.

“It’s something I know was impactful in my leadership development,” McElravy says. “It was one of the hardest yet rewarding things I’ve ever done.”

But so is teaching, he says.

McElravy’s class is well-known on campus at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, according to Mark Balschweid, head of the department where McElravy works.



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Throughout the course, McElravy portrays three different leadership styles by using the dramaturgical technique – a term that describes a pedagogical method to teaching. This means the teacher or professor provides the students with an experience to teach them a lesson rather than the traditional lecture hall.

He says he’s a proponent of experiential learning because it makes learning more tangible.

“Novel experiences help everyone reinforce what they know and what they can learn,” McElravy says.

Every five weeks, the class studies a new leadership style and is taught by a different version of McElravy — either authoritative, participatory or team-based.

During the first five weeks, he embodies an authoritative leader — which he says is his most developed character. McElravy says it’s largely a meritocracy.

The first week of class, he sends out an email saying there is a reading posted on Blackboard, the University’s website for student and professor communication.

McElravy can see which students accessed the posted reading first, which influences how he makes the seating chart. He places those who completed the reading first in the front of the room; those who did it last -- or failed to complete it altogether -- are placed in the back. McElravy only calls on students sitting in the front, a system that he says mimics those followed by people in real-world situations.

“Just because it’s merit based doesn’t mean that’s fair or good, but a lot of our organizations use merit-based systems whether or not that actually predicts good performance,” McElravy says.

Linsey Armstrong, 20, says she once sat in an IHOP crying over McElravy’s response to an email she sent him.

Armstrong was snowed in at a debate competition in Kansas in the spring of 2015, and says she emailed McElravy to let him know.

She says that, in the email, she told him that her inability to participate should not affect her grade because she was at a school-sanctioned event.

“He replied saying I do not dictate to him what is and is not allowed and my interpretation of the policy was completely wrong and that the email was disrespectful,” Armstrong says.

Looking back, Armstrong says she sees how the wording of her email likely threatened McElvravy’s authority — something authoritative leaders are defensive of. More importantly, she says the experience helped her grow, despite how difficult it was at the time.

“I now have a very diverse experience in leadership with different settings and environments," Armstrong said.

And after the first day of studying under the participatory leader version of McElravy, Armstrong says she was missing his authoritative style.

When the participatory style section of the semester started, McElravy’s teaching staff showed up to class in sweats and jeans. It’s a stark contrast to the authoritative section, which has a strict dress code, Armstrong says.

Everyone sits in a circle on the first day, and five or 10 minutes after the class starts, McElravy says he will say something like, “If everyone is OK with it, we can get started.”

Then, the class collectively decides how the next five weeks of the course will be structured. From homework to grading policy to attendance policy to the final exam, students have complete control, according to McElravy.

“In that case what we’re simulating is what it’s like to work for someone who refuses to make decisions because they’re so concerned with making it even and including everyone in all decisions for everything,” McElravy says.

Generally, he says, students get frustrated with the slow pace at which they move during this section. Armstrong says her class spent the first two weeks of this section trying to come to a consensus on how they would make decisions.

“I accredit it to being like starting an organization or a business without a damn clue what to do,” Armstrong says.

During the last five weeks of the course, the class follows a team-based leadership style. Groups of approximately five to seven students work together to complete the section. McElravy says this collaborative sections strikes a good balance between the two extreme styles explored in the first ten weeks of the class.

And it’s often the students’ favorite section, he says.

“It’s where I feel I’m being most authentic where I’m trying to demonstrate how effective teams work,” McElravy said.

Balschweid, head of the department of agricultural leadership education, and communication,says McElravy’s class provides unique situations to students that simulate real-world experiences.

“He walks a fine line and is very careful how students experience what it feels like to be in authoritarian setting where they may be marginalized while not being humiliated,” he says. “Unfortunately, in the real world, authoritarian people in real life don’t care about whether or not you are humiliated.”

Some students come to Balscwheid with complaints, mostly during the authoritarian section when they think unfair policy will negatively affect their grade, according to Balschewied.

But Balschweid says he tries to remind them that the role play serves a purpose and will only last a short period of time.

“When class is done, Dr. McElravy hopes what they’ve learned will stick with them so well that when they go to work for someone that has these qualities, they’ll be able to identify it right away,” Balschweid says.

McElravy says it can sometimes be hard to teach the class, but his students’ positive feedback motivates him. He says some have told him the class changed their life, while others told him it’s the most important class they’ve ever taken.

“It feeds the passion for teaching,” McElravy says. “It makes me wish I’d had an experience like this.”



Vanessa Daves is a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a fall 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.