Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 164 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Joe Hoyle shares his expertise from forty six years of teaching and reflects how to set students up for success from the start.

Bonni: [00:00:16] Produced by Innovate Learning: maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:25] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. 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: [00:00:53] Hello I am Bonni Stachowiak. And if you’ve been listening for a while you probably know the name James Lang. Perhaps even if you haven’t been listening for a name for a while his name may sound familiar. He – whenever he emails me – He’s been on the show a few times now- and whenever he emails me and recommends a guest I know that it’s time to set down everything I’m doing, go to the email, and get in touch with the person because they’re just bound to be a wonderful guest and such is the case with today’s guest Joe Hoyle.

Bonni: [00:01:24] He is an associate professor of accounting in the Robbins School of Business at the University of Richmond. He’s currently completing his forty six the year of teaching in 2015. He was the first recipient of the Cook Prize for undergraduate teaching and presented by the American Accounting Association in 2006. He was named one of 22 favorite professors in the U.S. by BusinessWeek.

Bonni: [00:01:51] In 2007 he was named the Virginia professor of the year by the council for advancement and support of education. In 2012 he was named one of nine favorite professors in the U.S.. Bloomberg Businessweek in 2013. He was one of several college teachers highlighted in the book Cheating lessons by James Lang. He has co-authored two textbooks advanced accounting now in its 13th edition and financial accounting its in its second edition. He has written a free online book titled tips and thoughts on improving the teaching process in college. A personal diary and has written over 240 entries for his teaching blog which has had over a quarter million page views.

Bonni: [00:02:38] The video of his last lecture at the University of Richmond has been viewed more than 17000 times and he has coauthored an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about his experiences in joining a government accounting course with a course on Victorian literature.

Bonni: [00:02:55] Joe welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Joe: [00:02:58] Hey, Bonni. How are you doing?

Bonni: [00:02:59] It’s a great sunny day in Southern California. I’m doing great. How about you.

Joe: [00:03:03] Well it looks like it may start raining here Richmond Virginia within the next hour or so. So it’s a little cloudy not too bad though.

Bonni: [00:03:11] We were chatting a bit about how many connections I’ve had a chance to make through this great opportunity to do this podcast. And you and I were connected by James Lang who’s been on the show three times now and I’m actually more than that if I count the guest guest call-ins that he’s done. I’m curious Joe how did you and James Lang first get connected.

Joe: [00:03:34] It’s a bit of a long story. About eight years ago I wrote a free teaching tips book that I put a poem on the University of Richmond website and it was just things that I thought were practical guides to helping people become better teachers. And I wanted some way to get the word that it was free I wasn’t going to making money on it. And one day I picked up a Chronicle of Higher Education and I read this column. There was a guy named James Lang and he was so astute in thinking about teaching. I was just impressed by what he had to say. So I was actually eating lunch at the time. So I tore out this column. It came back to my office and I sent him a free copy of my teaching kids book and just said I wrote this it’s on the internet I hope you’ll read it and thought well this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

Joe: [00:04:26] He’s never gonna read this and sent it to him… And about two months later I get this e-mail from him saying I read your book. I thought it was great. I’ve just written a column about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education and it will be out in two or three days.

Joe: [00:04:42] And I was just flabbergasted that he had actually read it and talked about it in the Chronicle. And since then we have e-mail back and forth oh two or three or four or five times a year just talking about teaching and getting the word out and he will often ask how I’d do certain things since since I know I’ve taught for 46 years and so have for better or worse had a lot of experience. That’s how we get to know each other.

Bonni: [00:05:09] Oh I love that. And he it can be so touching to have him write about your work. He wrote an article about the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. And I started weeping when I read his draft he sent it over just to make sure that he had gotten things accurate and I thought not only did to get things accurate but I was so moved by what he had to say of the impact of the podcast so it’s just so wonderful to be connected with you.

Bonni: [00:05:31] Joe, I wonder if you can take us back in time and tell us about maybe what you remember about your first few months of teaching?

Joe: [00:05:40] Well yeah.

Joe: [00:05:41] Having taught for 46 years you know I tell my students that I started teaching 46 years ago and I always tell them that when I first started teaching Richard Nixon was president. And when I tell them that these these kids are all not 10 years old you would think that I had told them that I taught Abraham Lincoln – it’s just like nobody can believe – not these young people – cannot believe that I actually taught when Richard Nixon was.. that I was actually alive when Richard Nixon was president, let alone as a college professor.

Joe: [00:06:13] When I first started teaching I knew from the beginning that I really wanted to teach and teach fairly well. And so what I did for the first year (I taught in grad school and I was teaching at these horrible times that none of the tenured faculty would to teach) and I kept a diary. And I would come home every night after I taught. And I would write what I had done in that class and how well it worked and how I should have fixed it some other way. And I felt that for a person who knew nothing about what they were doing, that was so helpful to me because it forced me to think about what actually happened, and I recommend it to many many people over the years.

Joe: [00:06:55] If you want to become a better teacher, start writing about it. One of the reasons I do a blog is not only do I want to talk with other people about teaching I want to think about teaching for myself and so writing has helped me ever since the very first classes I began – just because it forces you to take vague thoughts and put them into concrete words.

Bonni: [00:07:22] Do you think that the journaling that you’ve done is helpful more so specifically down to that given course session didn’t work well I need to rework it or more broadly speaking about your teaching approaches? Or should I not make this a binary thing and they’re both helpful?

Joe: [00:07:42] You know when I did this at the beginning everything to me was uncertain and maybe everything still is uncertain for that matter. But I would walk out and I wouldn’t even know what could go wrong.

Joe: [00:07:57] I would know that something had not gone right but I wouldn’t know what did not go right or what was happening in class. So what I was trying to do was effectively to find out what I wanted to be as a teacher and who I wanted to be as a teacher by simply analyzing how did this class go today. It was a wonderful exercise. I… to a certain extent I regret that I don’t do it now I become I guess too busy but just the idea of saying, “OK for next 15 minutes I’m going to think about what happened today.” It also helped me to realize that you taught different students different ways. I would have some students that would react positively to certain things and other students that would react not so positively and it forced me to think about why one student would be a very good would wake up and really get interested if I did one thing while another student would have rolled her eyes and start looking at the window. You really have to think about every single thing that’s happening when you’re dealing with a classroom of students.

Joe: [00:09:04] It can be overwhelming. I know because I always feel like my brain is calculating all these different things and looking into their faces and I remember it early on in my teaching I really didn’t read their faces very well. And I think I’ve gotten a little bit better. But I also think I’ve gotten even better at recognizing I have no clue what’s going on in their brains. I can’t really read them that well and that’s why it’s so vital to be thinking about how do we prepare our students for success and I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that. But but first let’s start out with, Joe, why is it important for us to think of ourselves in the role of helping our students succeed?

Joe: [00:09:48] Well you know I’m a big believer that nothing ever happens by accident. You know I used to talk to people who would tell me that they had had careers in business and they wanted to become college professors and they always would say the same thing. I won’t go in there and tell them all war stories. And I always make the point, “Listen. Teaching is a lot more complicated than just telling war stories. Teaching is one of the most complicated things you can do because you are dealing with so many different different individuals with different needs and different wants.”

Joe: [00:10:24] And so I have found and this is just my own personal way of teaching that that I do better if I really plan out virtually every aspect of teaching. And one of the things I always recommended is break teaching down break your teaching or break your classes down into as many component parts as you possibly can and then and I’ll ask each one of them don’t think about yourself as teaching a class think about the individual components of that and trying to figure out how you can do so. You know so you could do better in any one thing you do. And at the end of the day it’s not you. The success is getting prestigious to be successful it’s important and how do you go about doing that.

[00:11:08] I remember one of the things I’ve always said is I really enjoy successful sports coaches. You know people like this Vince Lombardi from years ago or Bill Belichick from today. And how do they go about taking a team of 30 or 40 or 50 fairly young people and getting them to do well. And when I first start teaching probably the most famous coach of the day was getting John Wooden out in your neck of the woods who coached basketball at UCLA and he always said that the very first thing that he told his his players at the beginning of every season – he’d bring them into a locker room – and he would teach them how to put on their socks. And everybody would just kind of go, “What?”

[00:11:55] You’re the most famous basketball coach in the United States. And you start off teaching your players to how to put their socks on. And his comment was I want to show them that every single thing we do has a right way and a wrong way. And if we’re going to be successful we have to learn how to do it the right way and then we have to do it the right way. So when out you know when I work with my students I always tell my students there are right ways and wrong ways to do this. If we’re going to teach you as much as possible we’re going to teach you how to do it the right way and then we’re going to do it that way.

Bonni: [00:12:37] How do you get across to your students – especially early in the semester – the extent to which you care about them?

Joe: [00:12:46] You know if you’re going to be a good teacher and that’s one of the things I want in my life is to be a good teacher. It strikes me that you have to start by knowing what you yourself want to accomplish. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish then I don’t know that you ever get anywhere. You can’t convince the students that what you’re going to do is worth the time, if you don’t know for sure what you want to accomplish and if you don’t tell the students that. So I always start with with what are my object and I have two objectives that I’ve had probably for a decade.

Joe: [00:13:26] One objective is what I call a personal objective. And the other objective is what I call a subject matter objective. So my personal objective is this. At the end of my semester I tell the students when they walk in at the end of the semester at the last day of the class when everything is done I want people to walk into my room and I want them to say the following, basically, four things.

Joe: [00:13:54] I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. I never thought I could work so hard and it was a lot of fun. That’s my personal objective for them and that that proves that stress is what I want. I want them to think I want them to learn. I want them to work and I want to enjoy it.

Joe: [00:14:18] I don’t want then to do it just because I force them to do it I want them to enjoy it and I want to put the stress on the word “I”. It’s not about what I do. Heck I already know the material. It’s about what they come out with… So when I start the semester I already know what I want to hear from them or the last day about work about learning about thinking and about enjoyment. So that’s my personal goal for them.

Joe: [00:14:45] As far as my subject matter ago is concerned. And I tell them this over and over and over and over. And that is that I am not going to tell them anything. I have a I have a saying in class that kind of drives them crazy. I tell them I am paid enough to ask you questions. I am not paid enough to give you any answers. The answers are up to you. You have to figure it out. Now that often makes some kind of ponder what… because they’re not used to that… but they understand the benefit. So then what I tell them is that what I’m trying to do is I’m going to bring them in there every single day usually one class this semester and I’m going to ask them the weirdest oddest most bizarre puzzles I can come up with. And then I want to help them to figure out how to solve those puzzles since the end. They can take their own odd weird bizarre questions and they can figure them out for themselves. So what they do when you start this is that you have objectives that you like that you understand me you know.

Joe: [00:16:02] You talk with a lot of teachers. You know, one of the question is how much does the teachers have is real objectives? Do they know what they want to do? So I think to start with objectives I think then after you have your objectives I think is important to figure out how you communicate with students. There has to be a way to communicate to the students – they can’t read your mind.

Joe: [00:16:27] So when you talk about how the students know that I care about them. Well the students that I care about them because I communicate with them. I always said that’s the secret to a successful marriage. I’ve been married for 46 years and this is the secret to a successful teaching is to be sure that you communicate openly safely and fairly frequently. So one of the things I’d do if you were taking my class you would you would think this was overkill if nothing else. I email my students an awful lot. You and I could probably define what awful lot actually means. Let me give you an example of that I actually use my class my next class will be the end of August in 2017 so that four months from now three and a half months from now something like that the students for that class registered in April registrations in April for next fall. One week after the registration I said all my students the first email for next fall I introduced myself. I talked about the class I talked about why the class is important. I explained to them that I was going to send them only males.

Joe: [00:17:45] And as far as I was concerned if they were going to take my class – they needed to read those e-mails. I wasn’t going to fill up their trash bin. I was just doing stuff I thought was important and probably over the summer I would send them in 10-12 e-mails where I talk about lots and lots of stuff because I want when they walk in the first day of class in August – I want them to be ready to conquer the world.

Joe: [00:18:14] I want them to be ready to just learn all kinds of stuff. And so I will spend a whole lot of communication time this summer getting them ready for that. So you if you ask me how to get students geared up to be successful I always say two things. One is know your objectives know what you want to accomplish. If you don’t know what you want accomplished then you will I will accomplish anything. And secondly figure out for you how you want to communicate to students. It may be as clear as going after you what you want but if you don’t tell them in some way either to a chat room or of private Facebook page or in my case in an e-mail they just won’t understand what you want.

Joe: [00:19:01] And so those are two things that I’ve always started and I won’t even get into the when the semester begins I usually e-mail them about five times a week. So they get sick of that. But you’d be surprised at the end of the semester the end of the semester and they have accomplished that awful lot because they are going to go this way of doing. And they know how to get it done.

Joe: [00:19:26] They’ve learned how to put those folks on the right way and then everything else we do we kind of base it off of that.

Bonni: [00:19:33] Can you talk a little bit about the transformation – because one of the things I do share with faculty – especially as they’re starting to want to experiment with a more active learning approach or try something they haven’t done. I want to always be sure they know it is unlikely to be met with joy initially because what you talked about earlier I want you to say at the end of the semester I never thought I could learn so much things so deeply worked so hard and it was fun. We’re not at the end of the semester yet and so I’m probably not super excited – especially our students today feeling really overwhelmed with how much they’re being communicated to. They have got financial aid and textbooks and all that. I may not find the five times a week joyful now but can you tell me a story about someone who at the end of the semester told you that wow I didn’t think that was going to be as helpful as it actually was?

Joe: [00:20:28] Heck I can tell you went real quickly. I just gave final exam last week and one of my students who I think made a B-minus roll on the bottom my final exam. It wasn’t like I asked her right something she did wrote the bottom of final exam. So I can’t quote this exactly because I don’t have it in front of me. But she said you taught me so very much about accounting and you tell me even more about life. OK. That to me is what I want to hear from a student that I taught in accounting but I taught them more about life.

Joe: [00:21:03] Part of that needs to be you know what role do you want to play as a teacher. Do you want to be a teacher? Or do you want to be a mentor? That’s one of the questions to ask a lot is if you if you want to be a teacher that’s a wonderful profession. If you want to be a mentor that’s a wonderful profession, also. But they’re slightly different and I view my role as a mentor so that the question comes up and I think this is this goes back to the idea of an objective and that is how do you know whether you will be a teacher or whether you want to be a mentor. And what I always tell people is this. And there used to be a pizza commercial they would say it was by tombstone pizza What do you want on your tombstone.

Joe: [00:21:48] So I will go in to a teacher and say, “OK. Let’s assume that your students are ranking your tombstone that they’ve been charged with you know that trying to be on your tombstone. And what would you want them to write?” Do you want them to write, for example, in my case, “He told us a lot of accounting.” Yeah, that’s a great. I had no problem with that but that’s not my goal. I want to be something different than that. And so I always tell people what I would hope the students write oh my tombstone is: “He cared enough about this that he pushed us to be great because that’s really what I want to do.”

Joe: [00:22:33] I want to push the students as hard as I possibly can to be great. But you’ve got to convince them you really do have to convince them of that. For example we’ll give you one thing that I think works fairly well. At the end of every semester I always write a note to every student who made an A in my class and I just say listen you are great. 20 percent of students made an A and you made an A and I’m so proud of you. I think… you… I just want to tell you personally that you were great. And after I tell them that I asked them for a favor I said would you write a paragraph or two about how it how you would about making an A in my class? Be honest… be serious… tell me how you made an A in my class and they will write the most interesting essays.

Joe: [00:23:25] They’re only supposed to write a paragraph or two… some are like pages… I then cut and paste every one of those. The good the bad the ugly out and I send it to my next class before they get there and say, “OK. I want you to make an A. Here’s what last year’s students said about how to make an A in my class.”

Joe: [00:23:47] For one thing.. Your point is very well… when I talk about I want you to work hard and learn. Well sure the students go roll their eyes. Well, when last year’s classes you know if you come in and you do the following you’re going to learn more material than you ever believed possible. That really makes a very big impression.

Joe: [00:24:06] What a student tells a student is very different to what a faculty tells us as far as belief is concerned. And that’s something anybody can do. Just like your students who make it they tell this to write your paragraph on how they might put it in a file send it to your next class and say listen you want to make it. Here’s what the previous class said. And it’s amazing how many students will come back to me and say as soon as I read that that I started getting a feeling that you want something more than just memorization. And I wanted to be the one to write that paragraph the next time.

Bonni: [00:24:42] I love it.

Joe: [00:24:44] …It really does work well. I know. Yeah. And it’s sometimes the things that work the best are really the easiest to do. You not only are you being nice to the former students when they write those things. They really do tell you exactly what it takes. I’m always sayin that some students never figure out what I want. It’s just like they just never exactly see what I want. But the students who do well do recognize what I’m shooting for and they give me that and I pass it along.

Bonni: [00:25:19] One of the things that I am continually intrigued by is what you called bizarre puzzles and what Ken Bain refers to as the big questions. And I just wonder if you would give us one or two examples if I were to take an introductory accounting course with you what are a couple of the bizarre puzzles I’d get it to tackle in that course.

Joe: [00:25:42] OK. Let me think real fast.

Joe: [00:25:46] Let’s assume… companies will spend a lot of money on research and development – and research and development is the money they spend to come up with new ideas. For example last year Apple very very well-known company spent ten billion dollars on research and development and they do this so that they can come up with new iPhones and new ithings and this and that. So they can make more money. That’s pretty clear.

Joe: [00:26:18] So I will set up a scenario and I’ll give it to students one day here and it will be a company has spent three million dollars on research and development a million on one project a million another project a million another project. One doesn’t look very good one looks very very good and one kind of like Goldilocks is in the middle there. And I asked my students to tell me as many different ways as possible that you can report this in accounting and they will automatically want to tell me the rule because the rules in the book and I say I will count points off if you tell me the rule I don’t want to know the rule.

Joe: [00:27:00] I want to know the possibilities and I won’t tell as many possibilities as possible. And so when they come in we’ll been together about six weeks but at time they will usually come up with five or six different possibilities. And so we’ll put them up on the board and say OK here’s six possibilities and then I will say OK these are all possibilities. If you’re going to be king or queen of accounting rules which one of these makes the most sense to you.

Joe: [00:27:33] And sure enough we’ll start you know somebody will say this one somebody will say that one and what I’m trying to do is to get them to come up with their own ideas to take that puzzle come up with their own ideas. Then, eventually I’ll say, “OK. Somebody tell me what the real official rule is.” And they all know the official rule and they all point at this one rule that has gotten no votes because that’s the official route to go.

Joe: [00:28:00] And I say, “That’s right. That’s the official rule but none of you picked it because it doesn’t make any sense.” And they go. Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense. And then also OK. Do the people who make these rules are they dumber than we are. No, no, no, no. We’re a bunch of freshman in college. We’re not. We’re not, but we’re smarter than they are. There must have been some one reason why they picked that rule because we didn’t pick it and they did it. I need for somebody explain to me why they picked that approach.

Joe: [00:28:38] And then we have a fascinating conversation about why would they have done it that way at the end. We come up with some pretty good answers. But to me that’s about a 30 minute conversation. And in that 30 minutes I teach more about accounting that I could teach if I’d just talked nonstop for days because it’s just that you and the students get involved with it even if they don’t care about accounting, the idea that you created that puzzle and you’ve made the puzzle makes sense to them and then you come up with an answer that isn’t right just fascinates them. And so we have such a great – that’s a wonderful 30 minutes of that time and it goes back to what I tell him you know to begin with. You’ve got to figure it out. I’m not going to tell you the answers. It’s not my part to tell you the answer.

Joe: [00:29:28] You have to figure this out but you can’t do that to a student unless you are there to help them. You have to be a guide to them you can’t just throw them out there and go well you figure it out. Go back and take a nap. You have to guide them. It’s an interesting conversation.

Bonni: [00:29:45] I sometimes do a similar thing – in that I’ll have a little puzzle around the different ways that companies decide to price things and I’ll bring in little paper bags and put something inside the paper bag and everybody is going to get something different and they don’t know what there’s is going to be and then they have to get into a group and list all of the possible ways you could decide how much to charge for whatever’s in your bag. And it’s such a better way for them to learn about different pricing strategies.

Bonni: [00:30:15] I find so much of the time they are thinking whatever our pricing strategy should be it should be the be the cheapest and the best. It’s kind of like well [laughter] a little and then just to recognize all the other possibilities and that many companies have a wide range of reasons why they would make a choice and it’s not always to be the cheapest out there in the market but rather than me lecture on that [sure] the little mystery of the bag and what’s in there and we all have different things and I’m I just I’m staggered by the wonderful things that come up with and always stuff I never would have thought of as I was preparing the little mystery.

Joe: [00:30:47] You know one of the things that I always tell myself and other teachers is if possible don’t have the teacher say more than 50 percent of words because as soon as you get pretty far above 50 percent you’re just lecturing. The hard part though is if you you can’t just go OK guys if you’re 40 to 50 percent talking because they don’t know what to say. You have to set up -in my case puzzles and that was what you’re doing there – you have to set up some kind of a situation where they have something they can talk about. And if you give them that opportunity and you have it set up – that’s one of the reasons I have taught for so long. Eventually you start figure out what does work to get them to talk. But if you if you do more than 50 percent the talking you’re going to lose something. But it is so easy. But is the other you have these quiet spaces in you don’t like quiet spaces so you talk. You know you have to learn what how do you get the students to do the talking.

Bonni: [00:31:53] What have I not asked you about preparing our students for success early in the semester that we’ve got to talk about before we get to the recommendations segment?

Joe: [00:32:03] Well, here’s what I did yesterday and in one of my theories about teaching is that most students are fairly bright individuals some of them are very bright individuals but most of them don’t know how to be good students. They’ve they’ve kind of relied on smartness and not own skills. So for my junior level class I wrote them an email yesterday for months ahead and I told them about a book that I would recommend called Make it stick by Brown and Roediger and McDaniel. I think I have those names wrong but Make it Stick is the name of the book. It’s a great book about how to be a great student. And so I write to students and say listen do this or don’t do it. I don’t care. But if you buy this book and if you’re right read it over the summer you have enough time. I will give you three bonus points on the first test in October.

Joe: [00:33:04] Now there’s only three points but I’ve done this now for the past three semesters and about half of the students have read at least 75 percent of the book and I myself think that’s one of the best three points ever given anybody is that I have said listen you’re going to have a summer where you don’t have anything to do. This is a great book to teach you how to be a better student. I’m willing to give you a bonus. The bonus is three points. Read it. By October 1st and I’ll give you the three points. And I think that has made a big change… a big change for some of the students.

Joe: [00:33:44] But, if some of them walked in my office and say I’ve learned things about being a student that I did not understand. I thought it was all about sitting down and just reading the book over and over memorizing things. There’s a case where I’m not teaching them accounting. I’m trying to help them to become better students because they become better students, they can learn accounting on their own. And that’s just an easy way to do it. And I had a way to communicate. I had the email. I sent it out.

Joe: [00:34:15] I ‘ll remind them about July 4th I’ll send them a little reminder that you know if you have read that book you’ve still got another month or two but that’s one thing I think is a way to even help students is to give them suggestions that they can help them become better students and so that’s what I did yesterday so it’s on my mind.

Bonni: [00:34:34] Before I get to the recommendations segment I’ve got to ask one more question because I’m missing my curiosity is piqued. Do you have any advice for us on having more energy in our lives. You are such an energetic person. It is infectious and I wonder what the secret sauce is good DNA.

Joe: [00:34:51] I’ve always had a lot of energy. I just I am just an energetic person. I’m so blessed to have the energy. I will tell you though and we could have another hour long conversation about this.

Joe: [00:35:03] I eat extremely well and I exercise every day now. Well that’s how I have energy in there. I do it or not.

Joe: [00:35:13] But my diet is one that would be surprising to you and I do exercise. I went to the gym this morning. I mean I think you can’t just sit and watch TV too much or you won’t have the energy. I mean I you know I’ve I’ve taught for 46 years. I plan to take for 14 more. I will tell you something that’s helpful. My best friend on campus – and it’s good to have this – because it’s a role model.

Joe: [00:35:39] My best friend on campus is a full time journalism professor. Full time. He just turned 81 – and still teaches. And every time I talk about retiring, he looks at me and calls me a wimp. Having somebody that’s ahead of you like that is… Because if I… if I teach as long as he is taught I literally can teach until… I can literally teach until I’ve taught 60 years. That would be a heck of a heck of a goal, I think.

Bonni: [00:36:07] Wow.

Bonni: [00:36:08] Well the recommendation segment is representative for me this time of that I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours.

Joe: [00:36:17] Why don’t you invite me back?

Bonni: [00:36:17] Oh, I would love to. I would love to. Thank you for saying that, because then I can feel like this was just the beginning, because I just already have so many things I’d love to ask you about.

Bonni: [00:36:27] But, my recommendation is going to be that people go over to your teaching blog which of course I’ll linked to in the show notes which will be at teachinginhighered.com/164 – and just start diving in.

Bonni: [00:36:40] I’ve been following it for a while I can’t recall exactly when I first heard about it but it has to have been from one of James Lang’s books, because that’s been a while, but I remember seeing letters that you’ve written to your students. You post many of them up there so we can see so many examples you give such great teaching advice, advice for your students… I mean it’s just a wonderful rich resource and I’m going to suggest people go over there and start poking around. And my suggestion for myself is now to put on my calendar to get back in touch to have you back on the show so we can talk some more. And now I’m going to pass it over to you, Joe. What do you have to recommend for us today?

Joe: [00:37:15] You know, when you mentioned the recommendations, you said what were you thinking about now. Yeah. OK. You have a lot of people that listen to these podcast – and virtually all of them are teachers. It strikes me that the world has got a lot of problems. I could start listing them right now. Poverty, sickness, clean water, clean air, whatever. I am a big believer that the only way we’re going to solve the world’s problems is if we start educating a whole lot more people. Just think how the world would be different if we if we had twice as many people who were decently well educated that would just change the world completely. We could solve all of these problems we had there.

Joe: [00:38:05] The problem it seems to me is that we don’t have enough teachers to really start making a dent in that goal. So we have so much better technology than we used to have.

Joe: [00:38:25] What I am thinking about what I’d like to recommend for your listeners to think about is how can we create a more teacher-less education. I love being a teacher but I can only teach about 80 people a semester and that’s not making much of a dent in the world’s problems. It seems to me that we should be able to come up with ways to have completely totally featureless education using technology so that if you’re in a Third World country or if you’re in some place the United States just doesn’t have good educational opportunities that you could get a really good education.

Joe: [00:39:09] Hopefully for virtually free and not be stuck without a teacher for example. You know if you take a financial accounting class someplace and you don’t have a very good teacher you probably won’t work very much. The system we have now is very much dependent on teachers. And that just is going to keep us from having a well educated people. I’d love to see some foundation. I’d love to see a group of teachers say we’re going to solve the world’s problems. We’re going to add a billion more educated people to this to this world. They don’t have to have an A-plus education. But can you imagine what a billion more people with a B education would be like. That’s a goal worth having. So my recommendation is think about how technology could be used to create more teacher education at some fairly low affordable price. That’s a way we could all change the world. I think at some we are Altas teachers think about it. That’s my recommendation.

Bonni: [00:40:16] Thank you so much Joe and thanks for investing your time in this community. I’m really excited to air this episode and share your great work with others and I’m even more excited now that you said you’ll come back and have future conversations. Thank you so much for your generosity.

Joe: [00:40:32] Oh, it’s my pleasure. It really is… It has been my pleasure.

Bonni: [00:40:37] Thanks to James Lang one more time for connecting Joe and I – what a wonderful conversation. If you want to access the show notes to today’s episode you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/164. And I just want to close out the show by saying how thankful I am for teaching in higher ed community and thankful to all of you who have been giving at ratings or reviews on whatever service it is you use to listen to the show. It’s really fun to see the community growing and also diversifying. So thanks for listening and thanks for recommending the show to others whether you just pass it along to a colleague or do it more formally through a rating or review. I’ll look forward to see you next time on episode number 165.

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.