Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 175 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Dave Stachowiak and I answer listener questions.

Production Credit: [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:19] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our personal productivity so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:47] Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed I am joined today by someone who may be familiar to you. He’s been on many past episodes and that is Dave Stachowiak. And Dave, his last name may sound familiar to you. We have the same last name. [joking] It sounds familiar to me. Funny how that sometimes works.

Bonni: [00:01:05] Dave has taught in higher ed as an adjunct and it’s been a while though I know sometimes he feels rusty when he comes on the show but I know that the things we’re going to talk about today. Dave you have a lot to contribute to and I also have a lot to say and so I told you that I was going to really work on my conciseness today because there’s been so many exciting things happening lately.

Bonni: [00:01:27] And then also a lot of people have been writing in and asking questions so I decided even though I hadn’t necessarily planned on a Q&A episode it was time to tackle some of these questions and also share some updates on where I’ve been. We haven’t even seen each other much lately in the last week.

Dave: [00:01:40] I am glad to be back. I listen to every episode. I am learning things all the time. I think I was telling you recently I think of myself as more of a freelance professor these days because so much of what I do is about learning and coaching and facilitation so many things we talk about on the show. And so I’m thrilled to be part of the conversation today and respond to these questions and hearing feedback.

Dave: [00:02:02] In our first comment. It comes actually first question comes in from Breanne. Breanne is was interested in the Choose Your Own Adventure topic. You did a while back Bonni she said “I just found this podcast and I love this idea. I’m wondering what level of class you think would be best for? Would it be too overwhelming for an introductory course as well. I’m wondering whether you teach statistics or methods and if it might work in those kinds of classes Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.”

Bonni: [00:02:29] Thanks for your question and I’m glad that you are excited by the idea as I was just this idea that we can give a more agency to our learners and have them have multiple ways in which they might express their achievement of different learning outcomes has been really powerful for me.

Bonni: [00:02:46] And I talked about how it reminded me just of those choose your own adventure books that I used to read when I was little and just how freeing that can be when we have choice and agency in our lives and in our learning. One parallel between Choose Your Own Adventure learning or choose your own adventure assessment – a more formal way of talking about that is through the practices of Universal Design for Learning and we have had an episode about that that I will link to in the show notes.

Bonni: [00:03:15] But that phrase in the Universal Design for Learning was originally emerged in K through 12 in the 1990s and then got brought up if you will to the context of higher ed and there’s a few resources that are linked to in the show notes one a couple of them from the National Center on Universal Design for Learning.

Bonni: [00:03:35] Because oftentimes when I’m trying to think through how to build and mold some of these learning experiences it really helps me to have examples and you talked about do I teach statistics and no I don’t. But there are others who do teach statistics and have used these practices and they’re teaching it really would work for any topic. It also would really work for any level of learning.

Bonni: [00:04:00] Dave and I have talked about before we have two young children and they are now three and five years old so our daughter’s in her first year of preschool and our son is in his well his first and hopefully only year of kindergarten. I think he’s going to make it. I shouldn’t laugh at such things. I apologize to people for my insensitivities but yes I think he’ll probably…

Dave: [00:04:24] Based on his trajectory for the first month. I think it’s pretty likely he’s going to fly with flying colors.

Bonni: [00:04:29] But the reason I bring that up is that there is of course some of you may be aware of the Montessori method in preschool and that whole methodology. I recently saw an Audrey Watters blog that she had read a book about the history of Montessori and that is the idea where the learners come in and they’re able to just go bring up projects and work on them.

Bonni: [00:04:53] The school that our kids go to is not all the way in the direction of just complete freedom and choice. There are some structured activities that they take all the kids to especially when they get to the level of kindergarten as an example.

Bonni: [00:05:07] But then they have what they call “choice time” or at least our son’s teacher calls choice time and then he really does get to go and decide what he wants to go explore a little bit more.

Bonni: [00:05:18] And that’s really what I would recommend for a more fundamental type courses is that there are sort of these anchors that everyone does experience and that you kind of think of building them through some of the key cornerstones of a class and then giving them agency and other parts to go dive a little bit deeper and explore things that are a little bit more interested then.

Bonni: [00:05:41] But I would go check out these links for Universal Design for Learning there is also one from an organization called Cast. They have UDL resources that will be worth looking at and go check out those examples and would love to hear back from you on what you’re able to implement.

Bonni: [00:05:55] Our next question comes from Annemarie and I was telling Dave this question actually we got some responses already in the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack channel but I thought I would get your take on it. And it’s from Annemarie and she asks about getting things done. Oftentimes abbreviated GTD and they call tasks in that system: next actions. So she asks about how do we handle next actions when it comes to grading.

Bonni: [00:06:23] And she talks about if she’s got this big list of essays that she’s got to do and so is the grading or at least the way she’s doing it the grading of each essays is considered a project because if you’re going to be following GTD to the letter of the law anything that takes more than one step he says is the project now.

Bonni: [00:06:43] Do I follow that entirely? No I don’t. But anyway so she is talking about she’s got this project if you will of grading. How do you break that up or do you break that? So that’s the question for you. How do you handle that and GTD when you’ve got a big pile of grading to do.

Dave: [00:06:58] I suspect we’ve both handled We both hit a little differently Bonni. It’s been a little bit since I’ve taught but what I’ve taught I’ve taught at the master’s level and generally the classes are smaller so there may be 10 people on average I say that in the context of this question because for me to take the time to break down and action on a task list to have everyone’s assignments listed is more time than it’s worth because I’m spending more time doing that then it is just to jump in and get started.

Dave: [00:07:25] The way I tend to handle large batches of needing to do things is block time on my calendar to do it. And when I think of Getting Things Done I mean one of the core concepts from David Allen that I’ve hope I’m going to be quoting him right but he basically says there’s two problems people have as far as planning and productivity are one is deciding what you want to do. And second is what’s the next action?

Dave: [00:07:48] So I’ll answer that question by planning out my weeks in advance. Usually on the on the weekend or first thing Monday morning I’ll plan out my week so I know exactly what I’m going to be doing next. And I block out the amount of time in my calendar that I think is going to take to do that.

Dave: [00:08:03] So for example if I was if I if I was grading a chunk of papers I would block out whatever I think is going to take the time to do that if it’s you know two to three hours I’d block that out and I just power through all of them and within that I might do a little like mental games with myself like OK I get to read you know I’m grading three and after a grade three that I get to get up and walk around for five minutes or go get a snack or whatever.

Dave: [00:08:27] But usually I just block it out you sometimes do a little more do this a little more granularly though I’ve seen when you’re doing great. Right?

Bonni: [00:08:34] Yeah it really does depend on if we’re talking about substantial projects I talked about grading group projects at the end of a semester where each one might take me 30 to 45 minutes. That’s certainly something that I need that little reward of checking off that one got done. I can see my progress that way.

Bonni: [00:08:52] I do also think it’s wise to block time in our calendar. I will say Dave this is an area where I fall down though because I block time in my calendar now and then I don’t honor that time. Something else comes up here or an email is kind of reigning the day for me these days.

Bonni: [00:09:10] And so that’s can be difficult because if you if you rely on that only the blocking of time in your calendar to guide you but you don’t have it as part of your task list as well then you can sometimes have your priorities get a little bit lost or at least I can I mean you have to find what works for you and that’s something that the getting things done practice really reminds us, as we do have to find what works for us.

Bonni: [00:09:32] And so yeah I hope that’s helpful to you Annemarie and I really appreciate you asking the question and engaging so much in the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack channel.

Bonni: [00:09:40] And next we have a question from Robert and his question is about Twitter. He says “I’m a big fan of your podcast and enjoy listening to the great ideas. You’re such an inspiration” and thank you for that Robert. I get so inspired by the people that come on the show like they’ve talked about earlier. Robert says “I heard you and some of your guests mentioning Twitter as a valuable resource for information. For me it has so far been an overwhelming source of noise and just too much often useless information. Do you know an article or something else that could be of use or even better describe it yourself in another episode? Thank you so much.” And he shares that Robert is a physics professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Rosenheim Germany.

Dave: [00:10:24] Well thanks for the question Robert. So I do use Twitter pretty extensively. What I find Twitter is helpful for is being able to find out what are articles and resources that people I care about are sharing online. And it is a very immediate and fast way to find out what are books being talked about what are articles that are valuable Bonni mentioned or we’ve mentioned before I have a podcast on leadership and so I’m always looking for articles and books and things that I can share with my community and with my clients.

Dave: [00:10:56] I would say there’s a couple of principles that I use for Twitter that have really helped me to have it be less overwhelming. First and foremost as I’m pretty I limit the amount of people that I follow on Twitter. I see people who follow thousands of people on Twitter. Sometimes tens of thousands and I just don’t know how people do that I know there’s software you can use to filter out things.

Dave: [00:11:18] I don’t think I’ve ever followed more than about 100 people on Twitter. And so that’s one principle I found that I try to limit the amount of noise that’s coming in. Secondly is I don’t follow organizations for the most part. I follow people. And so I look to individuals and what are individuals who are in my field of interest and what are they sharing and what are they what are they posting online.

Dave: [00:11:43] And I will say before I follow someone I often will look at their Twitter stream and I’ll look at what they’ve posted recently and if they if they post hourly I never follow someone like that because it’s just too much noise. I don’t need that much noise in my Twitter stream so I generally follow people that maybe they post something once or twice or three times a day because I don’t I don’t want to be overwhelmed with too much information.

Dave: [00:12:10] It doesn’t matter how interested I am on someone if they post too much I just don’t follow them on Twitter so that I find that looking on history is helpful. Before I make a decision if I’m going to follow someone and then the other thing that I do is I am I’m very comfortable and happy to go through every once in a while and drop 10 or 15 people off that you know I’ll follow someone temporarily like if I’m going to interview someone for my show or I’m following them for a specific reason or a news event I might follow them for a month or so and then you know I’ll unfollow them once that particular time sensitive thing is done with the interviews done.

Dave: [00:12:43] So I’m very conscious of trying to limit it and I find that if I do those things Twitter can be a very valuable source of information and resources and seen what some of the top thinkers in my field are sharing.

Dave: [00:12:56] And I still I’m kind of surprised actually how much value I still get out to Twitter because it has become very noisy in a lot of ways but I still probably get most of the articles most of the book references I initially find on Twitter because someone is saying something about it so I encourage you to try those three things of limiting the number of people following just people not organizations and just being You’ve been perfectly fine leaving people if they’re they’re tweeting too much. So that helps.

Dave: [00:13:22] And let’s see we have also I think we have a comment here from a caller. So let’s hear that audio.

Caller: [00:13:28] “Hi Bonni. This is the name the other day you retweeted you get to mine. and I felt touched by a star. I listened to a lot of podcasts mainly on the history because I study history like the history ticks or stuff you missed in history class. But I really loved your podcast because not only I get to learn but I get to become a better professional. I’m not a teacher yet. I used to be a teacher before grad school. I love teaching and I love doing research. So I love your podcast because it’s the perfect intersection of education, pedagogy, digital humanities and research. I love the people that you bring, my already have some books in my wishlist. And this message is to thank you for all the work that you do for the research that you do for bringing these people together for the stories that tell and you help people tell. I wanted to thank you. You’re awesome. And I cannot wait to listen to the next episode bye.”

Dave: [00:14:41] Did she say touched by a star?

Bonni: [00:14:43] Yes.

Dave: [00:14:44] That’s awesome. That’s why I married you. I wanted to be touched by a star every day. So sweet. Thank you so much. Well we’ll put a recommendation to those podcasts in the show notes as well.

Bonni: [00:14:55] And I really could relate to when you’re talked about feeling starstruck. I went last week to the DML conference digital media and learning conference and this is actually a conference that while I was there I found out is going away and is actually merging with the connected learning conference so they’ll be now rotating every other year between the East Coast of the United States and the West Coast of the United States and it’s moving to an August timeframe for future years.

Bonni: [00:15:25] But at any rate it was just a wonderful but tremendously surreal experience to have learned so much from these individuals on a digital spaces and then to see some of them in person.

Bonni: [00:15:40] So I also felt that sense of being star struck and learning so much and then just just but also that of like oh my gosh you know this or these are celebrities in my world I don’t really care about the Kardashians or whatever celebrities are up there today. These are the people that I really hold up as worthy of honor for what they do to shape our teaching and to really help our students learn so much more effectively so that I could totally relate to when you said that.

Dave: [00:16:08] You’re not following the Kardashians on Twitter?

Bonni: [00:16:09] No. No I’m not.

Dave: [00:16:10] Me neither.

Bonni: [00:16:11] You’ve got a question coming up from David.

Dave: [00:16:15] David OK so David wrote in that. All right David asked he says “I’m starting a VAP at about two months and will begin immediately after graduation. I will be teaching an intro course that I’ve taught a while a grad student several times. Still most of this course was modeled after the way my advisor taught the course when I was his teacher. When I started teaching the course it did add some. I did add some different assignments and some of my own points here and there. But the structure of the course still follows his model. Now that I’m starting somewhere else I’m thinking more how do I teach the course the way that I would want to teach it. Do you have any advice about finding one’s own teaching voice and how to better design courses that reflect one’s own teaching style rather than modeling someone else’s?”

Bonni: [00:17:01] I’m so glad that you asked this question because I hear so often sadly of people as they reflect on their experience in higher ed that they didn’t have a lot of models to look to for effective teaching and learning.

Bonni: [00:17:15] And so I’m glad you’re reflecting on that. It can be nice to have someone else’s work to at least shape some of our thinking because if they’ve been teaching it for a long time perhaps along the way they’ve been doing that important reflection of what’s really crucial but oftentimes at least in my experience people that have been teaching more traditionally you didn’t say that necessarily but they’re they’re trying to put so much into the class so much content.

Bonni: [00:17:44] I need to cover these topics that they don’t really actually have students experience learning in the class so I would have just a couple of ideas for you. And again you didn’t talk a lot about your experience and what concerns you might have had with the way that other individual taught the course.

Bonni: [00:18:01] But I would be thinking about less is more. So the the the idea that I need to actually pare down into what’s really important to take away from a course and thinking about the most interesting and Ken Baker talks about this a lot the most interesting questions and he even refers to these questions as beautiful questions what sort of things are we going to explore that will just capture the imagination of the students and honing in on that instead of honing in on all the topic and content that needs to get covered.

Bonni: [00:18:34] That’s often a warning sign when someone talks about covering the content so less is more really honing in on the questions that are going to captivate the students mystery and beauty and imagination and challenge their thinking in such important ways. And then the second way in which I would think of wanting to contrast from a more traditional course would be to bring more of the actual learning into the class.

Bonni: [00:19:01] And we’ve talked about on many past episodes the idea of doing some retrieval practice right there in the classroom. And of course retrieval practices the idea instead of trying to get so much information into my students heads what if instead I had them practice retrieving that information from their heads and helping them to build stronger neural connections which will lead to better retention and also deeper learning that’s more able to think critically about that.

Bonni: [00:19:32] So just a couple of ideas for you. I would love to hear how it goes. I know it’s actually been a while since you originally wrote to me so please get back in touch. And as you’re starting to bring more of yourself into your teaching I’d love to hear more about that.

Dave: [00:19:45] I have a thought on that too Bonni. One thing that I was always encouraged to in the business training industry was I’d been an instructor of going to see other instructors and pulling ideas from them.

Dave: [00:19:55] And when you’re early on in your career doing nothing feels like yours because it’s all so new and what you will find I think is that when you talk to people who are doing really innovative things and you ask them about it almost always they’ll say oh that wasn’t my idea I borrowed this from someone else.

Dave: [00:20:14] I mean the quote on quote original idea is would you choose to make your own by putting together ideas of others. And so I’m going in. Sitting in on classes watching lectures watching presentations listen to podcasts like this and pulling ideas from other faculty who are doing innovative things.

Dave: [00:20:34] And then you put them in part of your class and you arrange them in a unique way. Then it becomes yours and it starts to feel like yours after you’ve experimented in your learning and growing with it so I certainly encourage you to do that in finding the people out there who are doing some really innovative things and following up on some of the books and resources we talk about in this podcast. And then as you integrate those in your class then it will become yours.

Dave: [00:20:56] So that leads us to a question or actually a comment from Gary. Gary wrote and said “I’m glad to find the podcast. Thank you for the great presentation on lecturing I heard this morning. I look forward to going through the past sessions I’ve been teaching in higher ed for 20 plus years and love learning how to be a better teacher.

Dave: [00:21:11] Think he was probably talking about the Todd Zakrajsek episode on lecturing.

Bonni: [00:21:14] On dynamic lecturing.

Dave: [00:21:16] It was a really interesting conversation. It was it was fun to listen to. Thank you so much Gary and Rachel in Rochester wrote in says “No question just wanted to say thanks for what you do with the podcast and a great resource. As I’ve transitioned from a professor to a faculty developer I recommend it all the time.

Dave: [00:21:31] Similar transition to what you’re in the midst of doing right now Bonni.

Bonni: [00:21:35] Yeah and I just wanted to say Rachel thank you so much for the comment. It really brightened my day. And I actually met one of your colleagues at the conference I was mentioning that I attended last week the digital media learning conference and that was Liz Lawley.

Bonni: [00:21:50] She gave a session called I love this title Dave, Fork Your Syllabus, You Slackers. And it was a pun of course for slackers. She taught the tool Slack, which we have a community for Teaching in Higher Ed that exists on Slack. And Slack is – I’ve talked about before on the show – like a combination of messaging and email and file sharing and trying to bring out the best of those qualities.

Bonni: [00:22:17] And so she talked about how she’s using that in her teaching. And then the Fork Your Syllabus is a reference to her collaboration and work that she does on a platform called GitHub and GitHub is most often referred to in the programming world. It’s a whole it’s a whole word digital world in which programmers can put their code up online and it was built round OK how do people then suggest new pieces of code.

Bonni: [00:22:49] It’s like a really really sophisticated version of track changes in word so that you as the author of some code could say oh this person suggested that I fix it this way. Do I want to accept those changes or reject them?

Bonni: [00:23:02] And of course it’s tracking all of how these pieces of code are being shaped and if you want to fork something that’s essentially like doing a save as.

Bonni: [00:23:12] So now you’ve taken your document and I’ve saved as a now I’m putting my own thoughts into and remixing it to put my own spin on it back actually to the earlier question about how do I make this my own forking something on GitHub would be creating a copy of it so that you could put your own spin on it.

Bonni: [00:23:31] But it always ties back to that original author and it does that all. So you can tell you know where did this piece of where did this document come from or in her case where did the syllabus originally come from.

Bonni: [00:23:43] And she makes her stuff available so that any faculty member at her institution wants to teach one of her courses and not just a syllabi but it’s all the supporting content for her courses they can for her content it automatically attributes that back to her through that get hub system but she’s able to have students go in and give feedback on her syllabi.

Bonni: [00:24:07] And she – I don’t know if she’s still doing this – but she talked about at some point giving rewards for students who found typos and how weird that was for her at first but actually it turned out to be a really cool thing for her.

Bonni: [00:24:18] And so I just wanted to say I’m so grateful for this session. I could talk a lot more and I’m just conscious of our time together today Dave but I’m going to post a link to her materials which are not surprisingly stored on GitHub. So you could go see what they’re like and then actually she’s got the whole thing documented it’s almost going to be like you were at the session – all of that what we learned there. It’s incredible.

Bonni: [00:24:40] Another really powerful session that I got to attend at the conference was one put on by Remy Kalir. And Actually Dave I’m super excited he is going to be on the show soon. We’re trying to coordinate because he’s going – he went to the conference I was at last week he’s going to be at the conference I’ll be at this week so are we’re going to see a lot of other. I can stop feeling so starstruck when I see him and now he’ll just be like a regular person to me.

Bonni: [00:25:03] But anyway he did this amazing session called Annotating DML. Annotating of course the name of the conference and he drew from five different individuals work and some of the people were there in person and some of the people joined him over a virtual connection and that was really cool.

Bonni: [00:25:24] So we had Jeremy Dean who is the director of education for Hypothesis education and Hypothesis, listeners might remember, is the ability where we can annotate web pages and put almost a layer on top of them and have the ability to highlight and have conversations.

Bonni: [00:25:42] And he also had Alan Levine who talked about his net narratives class which is a digital storytelling class and he’s doing these incredibly innovative things in his teaching including taking his students on virtual bus trips. And it was so fun to get to learn about that.

Bonni: [00:26:00] Another person I was starstruck by getting to here she wasn’t there in person but she joined us virtually was Robin DeRosa. She’s doing amazing work in building connected learning curriculum and is a big voice in the open textbooks movement.

Bonni: [00:26:15] And I’ll put a link in the show notes to her interdisciplinary studies open textbook. This is a textbook that is written by undergraduate interdisciplinary studies and for undergraduate interdisciplinary studies students. So that collaboration with her students and wanting to rethink interdisciplinary education in a digital age.

Bonni: [00:26:39] And I’m not even done I’m just giving the tree tops here you’re going to have to check out the link that Remi posted. But there was a link to an end discussion about the marginal syllabus the marginal syllabus is a free and public educator professional development initiative and Remi convenes these monthly conversations about educational equality and he does that via this kind of web annotation that I’m describing.

Bonni: [00:27:05] And then lastly a former guest on the show someone I admire so greatly was there virtually and that’s Gardner Campbell and he talked about how he thinks about learning outcomes more as cognitive practices. And he shared a little bit about his fall 2017 literature class and how he’s using hypothesis to help them do what he calls zoom in and think more deeply about what they’re reading and what they’re learning.

Bonni: [00:27:32] So I could go on and on Dave but I know we don’t have the time. So I’ve got a question actually we’re going to wrap up our questions for today’s episode with a question for you Dave because I thought you’d be the perfect person to answer this a question from Jill.

Bonni: [00:27:46] “Bonni, I recently found your podcast and as an instructional designer at Xavier University I have been learning a lot. And appreciate what you’re providing to the higher education community. My question is my desire to create a podcast for our community. My goal is to provide faculty and adjuncts with information and updates specific to our university what we offer what colleagues are doing answering questions and things like that. However creating a podcast will be new to me and I was wondering if you could provide any tips suggestions or resources that could help get me started.”

Dave: [00:28:20] Happy to help Jill and I think it’s a really interesting innovative idea. I’ve heard certainly several examples of organizations and individuals starting a podcast for more internally. So few places to start on the technology side. I would go to the website learnhowto podcast.com. That’s from Cliff Ravenscraft who is a leader online and teaching people how to podcast and utilizing the technology well.

Dave: [00:28:44] That page hasn’t been updated in a bit. However really not hardly any of the technology has changed in the last few years so I would check that out there’s a lot of video tutorials there on how to put together the technology to do it and it’s not terribly hard to do.

Dave: [00:28:58] And then on the strategy side there’s a podcast about podcasting. So kind of meta. But it’s it’s called the Showrunner. It’s put out by the folks at the rainmaker network and the Showrunner will give you some tips and ideas on how to actually from a from a content standpoint to have a better show and a better experience in some of the things to be thinking about running a show.

Dave: [00:29:22] And then the other thing I’d suggest is just get started. If you think it’s something that would be helpful to you and others in your community is just a start. Start small. Do a test episode do a couple test episodes see what people say get feedback tweak from there. When I’ve started the coaching leader’s podcast six years ago he had three mantras at the beginning and one was just to do it weekly. The second one was to have good content.

Dave: [00:29:48] And the third one was to have really good audio quality. And I don’t even think you would need to do all of those three necessarily at the beginning. You can start off by not worrying that much about audio quality and just you do it regularly and get some good content from your organization and folks internally and I think that that’s a wonderful starting point you can always you can always invest more both time or finances or resources if it becomes a bigger thing.

Dave: [00:30:15] And then the other thought here and this goes beyond the scope of the question here. But I think there’s also a great opportunity for faculty to be using podcasts more within the curriculum of courses. And I’ve done this with not necessarily creating an entire podcast but I’ve certainly recorded audio up as a podcast episode for courses I’ve taught.

Dave: [00:30:33] So if there’s a particular topic I’m back to work. Our comment earlier on lecturing. There are some things that end to Todd’s point when he was on the show that our best is a lecture. So sometimes it makes sense to talk for 15 or 20 minutes about something.

Dave: [00:30:48] And I have found in places where it makes sense to do that in a class that rather than spending that 15 or 20 minutes within the class time. I’ll record it as an audio and I’ll post it and I’ll ask people to listen or I’ll have it as an assignment to listen or as a or as a writing response. And that way we still get all the benefits from the lecture.

Dave: [00:31:10] But at the same time I don’t need to spend as much class time doing that I can save class time for more interactive experience learning type things.

Dave: [00:31:17] And so I think it’d be a fun thing to do as a class but also another way to integrate and nobody does this as well as within the syllabus of her courses is sometimes finding a podcast episode that’s relevant from NPR or from another provider out there.

Dave: [00:31:30] And and having that be an assignment so you know for this party particular class period it may not be reading it may be listen to this podcast and have that so there’s a lot of ways to integrate this both. I think from the internal faculty development side and staff but also from how we are helping students to learn in a new and exciting way.

Bonni: [00:31:50] If I were going to be thinking about how to reach faculty specifically at my institution I would probably want to schedule synchronous sessions in some kind of a Web platform. Dave and I are both really big fans of zoom which is one of the many platforms out there that will allow you to connect that way.

Bonni: [00:32:08] I would stay away personally from starting out with a podcast only because it’s hard to get the listenership that will justify the effort that it takes to produce these these are. This is not an easy and not an easy task to put together a podcast and have it be consistent. Like Dave just described.

Bonni: [00:32:27] So you might want to think about maybe opportunities like Dave just described of using another entity that already exists and already has the resources to build some content but then draw from it and have discussions within your institution.

Bonni: [00:32:42] And of course you could record those discussions and then have people be able to access them later. My institution often asked me to record everything under the sun that we do.

Bonni: [00:32:51] And I resist that because there is something that when we know we’re being recorded changes the dynamic of the conversation so I build for the audience that will be consuming whatever it is. So if I’m going to create a recording of something it’s going to be I’m speaking to you the person who’s listening to this I’m not trying to meet the needs of multiple audiences.

Bonni: [00:33:13] One which is an audience that’s here live and has questions but they might feel awkward to ask and maybe some people go on a little bit too long and it’s not you know produced for the high value that we’re looking for in a podcast type format. So just a couple of things to think about and I also wanted to mention that Laura Pasquini and others are curating a list a magnificent list of a bunch of different higher ed podcasts which are all linked to in the show notes that might give you some inspiration around what they’ve described as well.

Dave: [00:33:41] And there maybe some semantics here too of using the term podcast. What you’re describing to me is doing something internally. You may choose not to post it up on iTunes or have a feed out there where people can even access it publicly. You know as we all know anytime you record something you put it anywhere on the internet we should assume anyone can listen.

Dave: [00:34:00] But you don’t have to go through all the complexity of thinking about marketing and getting low getting the artwork for the show and all that. You could literally have an audio conversation with someone recorded on an MP 3 player recorded on a computer and post it on Dropbox and send link around to the faculty who would benefit from it and you don’t need to worry about finding an audience and all that because you already have the audience there.

Dave: [00:34:19] So you know start there and then if it turns into something that you want to do something bigger with you can always it’s very easy to upgrade and make it turn it into a bigger thing but just start simply and do it for those 10 people that are going to really benefit from it and you’re off and running.

Bonni: [00:34:35] Dave this is the point in the show where we each get to give our recommendations these are things that have captured our attention in recent weeks and I’m going to have you start us off today.

Dave: [00:34:45] Well I have been. There’s so much going on in the news as we’re recording this but I think this will be helpful whether someone’s listening this a week from now or a year from now. There’s been all this disclosure of credit report. Is it Equifax that I am trying to remember which firm now Equifax that had this huge disclosure of something like half of Americans. I realize people listen to it a broader and different systems but in America we’ve had half of our U.S. population has had all their credit histories exposed from a hacker recently.

Dave: [00:35:19] And so if you haven’t already. One thing that we’ve done with pretty regular practice is we go online once a year and pull our credit reports and you can do that I think it’s freeannualcreditreport.com Bonni will look it up and put the correct URl on the show notes.

Dave: [00:35:34] But you can pull your credit report once a year and check it. I would actually go a step further than that and we are now going a step further than that. You can if you’re here in the States put a free fraud alert on your credit report. If there’s reason to believe that someone may have compromised your credit which pretty much everyone in America has a reason to believe that now.

Bonni: [00:35:55] Look to your left.

Dave: [00:35:56] Look to your left to your right. One of you has been, more than one of you. And so it’s really easy to do. It’s completely free and it takes like two minutes. So go on to one of the three credit agencies you’ll see a link on the front page of how to put in put on a fraud alert and it’s free for 90 days and it prevents it doesn’t prevent someone but it slows down people of being able to get credit because I have to verify it through you.

Dave: [00:36:21] So I think that’s something all of us should do. And also I think it’s probably prudent for a lot of people here in the states to think about either getting a credit monitoring service or doing what we’re doing which is putting a freeze on our credit reports which means that no one can access credit even you which isn’t helpful if you’re going to be getting a loan or a credit card in the near future.

Dave: [00:36:41] But that’s not the situation we’re in so we’re actually going to freeze our credit reports and then you don’t have to worry about anyone with identity theft and all of those things that is things you may need to worry about but certainly not with credit and opening up loans or accounts in your name and I think it’s something that everyone should be aware of.

Dave: [00:36:57] So if you haven’t looked into those options at the very least putting the fraud alert on your account would be a prudent step for all of us. That’s my that’s my good housekeeping financial recommendation for the year maybe.

Bonni: [00:37:11] My recommendation ties back to Annemarie’s question about getting things done and people listening to this show for a while know that I’m a big fan as is Dave of – not all the practices – but I mean a lot of it resonates with me and specifically because I’ve been so fortunate to be able to experience these conferences in recent weeks and I’ve got some more that I’m going to I’m going to be speaking at some conferences coming up here in the next month.

Bonni: [00:37:36] My head feels like it’s exploding. So the stuff that I’ve been able to learn and all the people that I’ve been able to meet and that can really start to be a time where it can become discouraged. Not for me because I have a good solution which is to use what they call a someday-maybe list.

Bonni: [00:37:54] And as we come across these ideas we don’t have to try every tool that comes across our way. We don’t have to read every article that comes our way we can’t we can have just wow that’s amazing. Let me put it on a someday maybe list that I can go and explore. I even have things like.

Bonni: [00:38:11] And then I think this is actually on your list to go apple picking with the kids that might someday maybe. So when I want to go find the place that’s good to go pick up your kids I will have access to that so sometimes it’s fun stuff sometimes a lot of times it’s techie stuff for me or stuff I want to make better about the Teachin in Higher Ed website.

Bonni: [00:38:30] But I have a place where I can put those ideas. That doesn’t clutter up my task list so that my task list can be things that really I am committed to doing and I don’t have to get it all cluttered up and feel overwhelmed so when I open up my someday maybe list. It’s just exciting. It’s exciting to think Oh what can I pick out of here to try today. So I would encourage everyone to have a someday maybe list it doesn’t have to be anywhere fancy just a place where you can go and capture your inspiration.

Dave: [00:39:00] And that’s it for questions and comments. Thanks Bonni, it was fun to play along.

Bonni: [00:39:05] Dave. Thanks for carving out part of your day to be here we’ve been like two ships passing in the night this last week so it was fun to actually catch up with a little bit behind microphones.

Dave: [00:39:15] I wanted to be touched by a star so well here we are here. Hey a Slack was mentioned a few times during this conversation. You have a fabulous community of listeners that are on Slack so if you want to check that out go to where?

Bonni: [00:39:29] Teachinginhighered.com/slack.

Dave: [00:39:33] That’s easy, very good.

Bonni: [00:39:35] Thanks everyone for listening. There’s some great guests coming up. I mentioned Remy is going to be on the show soon and I’m sure we’re going to learn even more from him and so keep listening next week.

Dave: [00:39:44] And if you’re not on the teaching in a higher weekly e-mail go to teachinginhighered.com and hop on there because you’ll get a weekly article from Bonni.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.