Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 163 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Stacy Jacob talks about her experience incorporating games and her classes.

Production Credit: [00:00:12] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:21] 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 productivity so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:48] Thanks for joining me on this episode number 163 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Today’s guest, Stacy Jacob got in touch with me about the conversation we had previously about gaming in the higher ed classroom. And I was so engaged by what she had to talk about of what she is doing that I invited her to be on the show and she said yes.

Bonni: [00:01:10] Stacy Jacob is an assistant professor of student affairs in higher education and the graduate coordinator for the Department of counseling and development at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches graduate classes in organizational behavior and leadership research and assessment and about higher education environments cultures and students. Before Stacy became a faculty member she served in several functional areas of student affairs. Although her career path has taken many twists and turns she has always considered herself a teacher and developer of human potential. Stacy holds a B.A. from Austin College and Communication Arts, an MBA from the University of New Orleans in educational administration and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in higher education and student affairs. Stacy is a creative soul and an enthusiastic learner. Stacey welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Stacy: [00:02:09] Well thank you.

Bonni: [00:02:10] I know that I just of course paraphrased your bio and you have such unique things that we could talk about professionally but I wonder if you could share something that doesn’t come out in your bio that you’ve been working on lately.

Stacy: [00:02:25] Well my husband and I four years ago moved to it’s over a hundred and fifty year old row house in the city of Pittsburgh. And although it was previously apparently this house was vacant at one time and it was sitting kind of on the sidewalk and sort of the foundation and our neighborhood association kind of built that but it had a lot of like old age string.

Stacy: [00:02:51] And so we’re going to put some of it back to its former glory in places that we can find the kind of honors from the old stuff in the house. And then just kind of I’m remodeling in general so we’ve been going up this house for a while and so that’s one of the things that I really enjoy doing and taking on the project is this great old house.

Bonni: [00:03:15] When we were emailing back and forth I admitted to you that I didn’t know what a row house was. And you said from the 1870s some somewhere in there and then you sent some pictures which we will be linking to in the show notes. But just for people that are listening because a lot of people listening in their cars or walking around lakes or walking their dogs. So for people who are listening can you describe what a rowhouse looks like.

Stacy: [00:03:40] Yeah they’re tall and skinny. And so we have a four story house with our basement for basement first second third floor and they’re all stuck together little skinny houses that are all stuck together in a row. People you know they will probably be predecessors the same pattern homes are in a condo kind of strange. And they often have little dormer windows and things like that. And so that’s sort of more houses and in older cities Boston and New York City and Pittsburgh is a very old city as well.

Bonni: [00:04:14] In what ways does your experience working on the rowhouse kind of line up with your experience in teaching?

Stacy: [00:04:23] Yes well so one of the things about remodeling. A very old house. You really have to be willing to fail. And for like five summers ago we remodeled our kitchen I thought oh we’ll think it’s really quick. I’m just going to pull up this war and it’ll be great. And there were five years of war under there.

Stacy: [00:04:48] And so it actually took me almost two months of everyday working to actually pull out the floor. And then there were hundreds and hundreds of screws in the sub floor and it just felt like I was failing like at one point I’m like why did I restart my kitchen. It was workable why did it have to be beautiful sitting in for.

Stacy: [00:05:07] And you’re always finding that like in an old house. Angles to match things you’re not normal. So you’re always going to find a workaround when something doesn’t work the way you think it is and you have. And I think that’s true about teaching. You have to be a life form wanted to do this because I have learned more things than I ever thought I would learned. And remodeling the farmhouse.

Stacy: [00:05:30] So I now know how a tile and drywall and all kinds of things. I didn’t know how to do the work and it you have to have a belief that things can transform and be better. And I think that how you can transform people can transform or ruin teaching them.

Stacy: [00:05:50] I think the final thing that I am I am a lover I don’t know who told me about this but the spaghetti theory of life than what you know when to find spaghetti isn’t just the one that sticks in its turn. So I like trying new things and just seeing what works and what’s exciting to me and I think that works really well in old houses and in teaching. So that’s how I think it relates to teaching.

Bonni: [00:06:15] I have been thinking a lot and it’s been actually coming up a little bit on Twitter I’ve been going back and forth with James Lang who’s been on the show many times in just this idea of experimentation and trying things and then they don’t work and it’s I would say it’s relatively easy for me to do that in my teaching and I do put the emphasis on the word relatively because I still feel the fear and I still feel the failure I mean it’s still it still affects me emotionally in terms of when things don’t go the way that I wish they would have.

Bonni: [00:06:48] But I am willing to take those risks. But one of the things when you’re talking about working on a rowhouse I was thinking as you were sharing. I haven’t ever drywalled and I haven’t done those things that you described of working on a house and so many people out there in higher ed have really been inspiring me that we’ve got to put ourselves more often in positions where we really do feel terribly uncomfortable and where we really aren’t good whatever it is.

Bonni: [00:07:15] And I realize I don’t do that enough. I mean I do it in my teaching but I also know I’m good at teaching. I certainly don’t say that egotistically I say it actually to criticize myself because that doesn’t count. What did I do it and teaching it doesn’t count. Because I have confidence that I am a good teacher and that I could have an effect on the students that I’m attempting to have positive effects on.

Bonni: [00:07:36] But I don’t. In other areas and I don’t put myself out there enough so you’ve really inspired me with that I feel like I should go out and start drywalling something – maybe pick something else? – talk to my husband first.

Stacy: [00:07:48] And it’s really funny that you say that because it really you know you asked me to think of some recommendations that I would share one right now. But one of my recommendations was to learn something new every year because here’s the thing about learning it’s really hard.

Stacy: [00:08:04] And I think as a teacher you need to be connected to the hardness of a lot of things. You know I don’t think hard this is hard to say a word I guess in geology but what I heard some words is you thought about the gardeners were different minerals and rocks but you know you need to be can that just say how hard it is to learn and we can take up learning yourself and learn something it’s out of your comfort zone.

Stacy: [00:08:31] And to me those tend to be physical things like I’m really uncoordinated and you know so like my husband who I took some swing dancing lessons for a couple of summers ago and it was really good because it was very far from me and it gives me a space to like respect and honor the work that my students are doing in the classroom. So I think it’s good to learn something new.

Bonni: [00:08:55] Yeah. That’s so important. Well let’s get to the topic of the day that I so excited to talk to you about. We are talking about using games in the classroom and I’m wondering how you first started getting interested in doing this?

Stacy: [00:09:07] Yeah well it was my husband was watching some YouTube videos and he saw just the shell thing with the game maker. And ironically we we went in we went into it we lived in Texas all the time. But this’s guy’s in Pittsburgh and we now live in Pittsburgh.

Stacy: [00:09:23] And he was a professor at CMU and he was talking about how games have invaded real life. And he talked about weight watchers how it is gameified and gave all these examples of different things like that and Facebook. Back when he did this he was talking about Farmville and those games on there.

Stacy: [00:09:40] And then he talked about a Professor Lee Sheldon who teaches how to – he teaches game design to make like video games and things like that and how he had gameified this class of his and he made the class a game with games… And so my husband sent me this video and sent me this link and said you’re creative I think you could do this.

Stacy: [00:10:03] And I was like, “That’s really interesting.” And here’s the funny thing about this like when we talk about a lot of people talk with a lot of people who are playing with gamification actually gamers and I am not. I wasn’t and I am now. But it wasn’t at the time.

Stacy: [00:10:22] And so I just I just thought it was fascinating because I started my teaching career at a student academic center working with people who were failing out of college. And for me motivation is the most important part of learning. And I thought that well when we played games for them and motivating and I thought wow that would be really interesting.

Stacy: [00:10:44] And I also am a person who loves to have fun like you know there are people who are serious about having fun and when I talk about this I say I’m really fun about serious things or fun about seriousness. You know.

Stacy: [00:10:58] So the things that I teach are serious but just to give it to students in a fun way in a way that creates motivation was really exciting to me. And so I just started talking to gamers and said This is what I want to be. This is the class I want to do this with.

Stacy: [00:11:15] And my first class was a history of higher ed class and it worked out really well because you know you can you can kind of put people in the mindset of back in time. They are history right? And then when I moved from my last university to Slippery Rock, I decided to do it with an organizational theory course after taking it for a year because I one of the things that I realize I’m teaching young masters students about working in higher organization and I realized that they had very little experience of organization.

Stacy: [00:11:51] And so it’s very hard for them to understand anything but bureaucracy. So when we talk about collegiums or political office in organizational behavior it doesn’t make sense to them. And so I thought this was the perfect class to do this because I can put them back in a world where we can create those things and they can see what it is that what they’re learning in class through an experience.

Bonni: [00:12:16] It can sometimes be challenging to teach students who don’t have a context yet to really understand things and it can be wonderful then when you can create a context within a class.

Bonni: [00:12:27] One of the games that I played both when I was a student and then also had my students play when I took on the role of teacher is called the power game. And it shows up from an organizational behavior classes.

Bonni: [00:12:40] But for anybody listening who might not be familiar with the power game it’s relatively simple. People put something some kind of stake into the game. Generally speaking it might be five dollars in cash that they sort of put into a pot in the beginning of the class and then each student selects from slips of paper a roll that they’re going to play in they are either top middle or bottom.

Bonni: [00:13:03] And if I recall correctly something like 10 to 20 percent of the people end up being tops maybe 10 percent and then 10 to 20 percent end up being the bottoms and then everybody else or the middles and then they get physically separated then there’s some sort of rules that are start to start out at the beginning of the class. Like I don’t remember exactly where it is but the ultimate goal is that they have to decide what to do with the money.

Bonni: [00:13:28] Human nature ensues and so many times in this I think I would fall into this category too so I don’t want to completely separate myself from this but there’s a tendency for us to want to say, “Oh well that was just a game that wouldn’t really happen in real life if you really gave someone a title that made them super super powerful that wouldn’t really change human dynamics and it wouldn’t really change how that person attempted to influence other people.”

Bonni: [00:13:55] And you go hmmmm… or like that might happen to other people but that would never happen to me I’m above titles. I’m above having power affect me in any way and so it’s just sort of interesting when you can bring that real world context in.

Bonni: [00:14:11] Can you talk a little bit about your transition in either developing games or using other people’s games from more factually oriented ones like perhaps the history one might have been you know names and dates and theories that kind of thing to organizational theory which is I would imagine a lot more complex and a more sophisticated game design – is that a fair is fair guess?

Stacy: [00:14:35] Yes. Yes. And what I learned in doing this is that you know with the first night of class I always start with games you know like I kind of talk to the students about what games do you like to play. And we talk about them and I realize in that the students had only played most of my students can only play certain kinds of games like video games sometimes like party games like charades or scategories or things like that for like board games. Right. But they hadn’t infighter things like cooperative games or roleplaying games.

Stacy: [00:15:15] And to create those more in depth things you have to be able to think through how to create a world that you can get immersed in a little bit for a little while. And so the first thought of my class. So when I realized this I just went to my local game shop and I said here are the kinds of games I need. And I had about an hour what can I buy? And I’m in my local game shop here in Pittsburgh. The fella gave me some great ideas and so I then – before the first night of class send them out… Wil Wheaton who he was an actor but also a gamer does these tabletop sessions where he and his friends record playing these games because they’re really complex and have lots of rules and some use them are learning the rules.

Stacy: [00:16:06] So I assign the students before the first day of class I assign them to a game and then send them the video of that tabletop game so they see what the rules are and how it’s played. And then the first part of class we play that. And then after that we talk about what they learned from playing. And then we relate it back to how how is higher education like a game in some ways. And we talk about that.

Stacy: [00:16:32] And so that’s how I get to that depth of these are the kinds of games because I ultimately have them for each of the major kinds of theories that we look at in org theory I actually have groups of students create a game that then they present, we talk about the chapter, they create the game, we play the game, and then we debrief after that.

Stacy: [00:16:56] So most I’m model one on the first… not the first night… but the next night, we read about the garbage can theory decision making and higher ed. And I have little garbage cans that have dice in there and the rules and all. So they play a like a game you can buy that kind of you know from these cooperative games people have never played like Pandemic or Forbidden Island, or a couple of examples of that. And then we play one of my games and then they (in groups) and make games.

Stacy: [00:17:30] And they have to consult with me. So I make an appointment where the group comes with me and they tell me what they’re going to do and I start to point out what the issues are with that and how we can improve that game. And so that becomes part of their grade in the class is a game they created for each other’s learning.

Stacy: [00:17:48] And so that’s the way I sort of handle getting – because I couldn’t imagine at the start of this I was like, “How am I ever going to make up like 10 to 12 games in a semester?” I’m creative but not that creative. But that’s all I got.

Stacy: [00:18:03] Well the students can be making these games for their own learning. They are are smart people you know and they they’ve made wonderful games. So of things I had never thought of before. And you know one of the things I do when they make those games is I have – I kind of poll the students that first day and I say who who has played these kinds of games?

Stacy: [00:18:26] And so when I get – and usually I’ll have four or five people who’ve done role playing games – and so I purposely put one of each of those in a group because they understand these like really intense sort of like lots of rules and instructions kind of games.

Bonni: [00:18:43] I’m about 80 percent through with Stephen Brookfield’s book On Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher and one of the many things I mean my gosh my highlights. I pretty much highlight every page.

Bonni: [00:18:56] So when I go to review my highlights it’s just going to read the entire book and highlights but one of the many themes that’s come out to me is that I think that I both had this misnomer about teaching and probably still hold onto the myths sometimes when I met my weaker points and that is that when we get resistance from students it’s by very nature a bad thing and by very nature I’ve done something wrong. I know that that isn’t true.

Bonni: [00:19:25] But my mind still wants to believe that it is true and my weaker dark moments and so one of the things that I’m almost positive – I mean I just – I’m willing to put that money that we talked about from the power game down on the – I’m willing to gamble on this even though I’m not a gambler but I’m willing to do it – to say you have to regularly encounter resistance doing this you just have to. So am I right or am I wrong on this? Do I win the bet even though you didn’t take it?

Stacy: [00:19:48] I do owe you five dollars then. Yeah absolutely. And part of it because I sent you a syllabus and you looked through it, right? I’m guessing and I’m sure that your mind is like, “What the heck?”

Bonni: [00:20:06] So how do you handle it then? Because you know it’s coming and or is how you handle it different every time? Are there any themes with approaches that you take and is there anything you did for self-care to sort of protect yourself from how difficult that can be to sort of have other people want you to carry their baggage around with them.

Stacy: [00:20:25] So. OK so I am really ready for it. And so before I hand out the syllabus I say this course is going to look nothing like you know when we get the syllabusn you’re going to be stressed out. I tell them what they’re going to feel. You’re going to feel anxious you’re going to go. How do I get and A in this class? How do you do this? How do I do that?

Stacy: [00:20:44] And you’re going to feel anxious. I’m going to ask you to just go with me on this. And trust that I know where we’re going and you’re going to be OK. Now the good thing about my position in this class – it’s in my students program is like the fourth class they’ve taken with me. They already do trust me.

Stacy: [00:21:05] I’m in a graduate program so they kind of – you know – they already know me and ask that they’re like ok. Now my very type-A people do not like it. And so we I just keep saying like you’ll get it. And one of the best things that I had last semester I had had a student who said Stacy you know what you need. You need a Quickstart Guide because looking at your 27 page syllabus the kind of freaks you out. Could you make a one pager? And I thought, “Oh, Nick, brilliant.” I had never thought of doing that.

Stacy: [00:21:41] And so that’s something I’m working on this summer because I feel like kind of laying out where it because the whole syllabus is set up as a game like you can level up different points in the class and to get the grade that you want. Kind of like a video game.

Stacy: [00:21:56] There are opportunities like in video games. What happens when you die? You just start the game over. So there are opportunities on major assignments for revision. You get to work. You get to take what you learn like you do in a video game and start over because that is real learning to take your mistakes and kind of redo.

Stacy: [00:22:15] You know it’s hard to do in a college classroom because it takes up a lot of time and your time to re-grade things. So you know what I do remind them that there is this revision in these things. I really thought was a brilliant idea of his to say how about a Quickstart Guide so I can see how I earned my grade rather than read through your you know 27 page syllabus.

Bonni: [00:22:39] Yeah.

Stacy: [00:22:40] Pretty smart. Yeah.

Bonni: [00:22:42] I have a couple of things going on in my head so I’m going to do my best not to get lost in my own train of thought but we’ll see how it goes. One thing I wanted to mention while you were talking I just saw a tweet yesterday from John Stewart not the John Stewart comedian but the John Stewart in higher ed who – he’s been on the show before – he’s an expert in open educational resources and why am I forgetting what institution he’s from? I apologize John for this terrible – oh – Oklahoma.

Stacy: [00:23:07] Oklahoma. Yeah.

Bonni: [00:23:09] There we go. Anyway he had tweeted out about a learning management system from the University of Michigan that the entire learning management system is designed around gameful courses. And your mention of leveling up reminded me of that because they have that and then the freedom to fail the tangible progress the students can see where they are at any time. More autonomy.

Bonni: [00:23:32] And then they can level up they call it earning up I think is how they do it. But I’m going to put a link to that in the show notes just in case anybody else is sort of intrigued by where learning management systems might go in all of this because as you well know they’re not designed to do this at all well now… You just have to really trick things out.

Stacy: [00:23:53] Yeah at one point I talked I think it was a professor that developed it there.

Bonni: [00:23:58] Yes.

Stacy: [00:23:58] I don’t remember that because I talked to some of his graduate assistants because they found out I was doing this through a chapter I did in Lee Sheldon’s book about the multiplayer classroom and they talked to a bunch of people from that book.

Stacy: [00:24:12] And so I talked to them and so I didn’t know it was out yet. That’s really exciting. But what one should know is that in most learning management system you can create badges and you can create little electronic badges for your badging system. Mine are all on paper right now but that’s going to be something that I’m looking into.

Stacy: [00:24:32] I just talked to our person at our university that… I said, “Are there badges.” “Yes. We’ve never had anyone use those.” So I’m messing with that this summer to see if I can take my paper and put it online.

Bonni: [00:24:46] Oh that’s fabulous. So one thing that we can do to learn how to play games or make games is to play games. And I’m curious though I have played games and I have made a couple of games but not many I know that my imagination can be limited by my own lack of experience especially because I haven’t done a lot of the roleplaying games like you’re describing. But what what can help bridge us whether you’re helping your students bridge this or whether you wanted to help faculty bridge are gaps to go from being a player of games to becoming a creator of games.

Stacy: [00:25:21] First I think one you should you should play some role playing games. Try them out, right. For sure but gamers are everywhere. People who love these kinds of games find a gamer gamer in your life and chat with them because the first class I made this way I had really not played that many. I play like one or two roleplaying games. I wasn’t as experienced as I am now.

Stacy: [00:25:46] But I had long conversations with people in my life who were gamers and said you know here’s what I’m trying to do. What do I need to do to make this class a game? And the first piece of advice I got that actually was from my brother in law who has written many many games. He used to run a weekly game for teenagers at his local library and wrote games and playing games for them.

Stacy: [00:26:10] So he’s had experience with this. He’s like you need a story. You need a good metaphor about what this is. And so you know I have a story in my syllabus right now and that’s going to change because that’s one of the things that’s not quite working for me right now about people observing earth, these aliens observing earth and seeing Earth and wanting to replicate systems of higher education and learn about how they work. How do colleges work, right?

Stacy: [00:26:37] And so you know that was that was a really good place to start. What’s your story that you can read to this whole class that you can kind of use to create your game around and I so I think that’s good. And then. Just. Lots of questions to gamers and playing some games. I think it’s a good start and I will say that I haven’t played a lot yet. But the game that your former guest Keegan Long-Wheeler and John Stewart that GOBLIN game. I read through it. I think it’s great. I mean I think that would really help you kind of understand how to do this a little bit better. I am dying to do it with a bunch of people I just have to find someone who wants to play with me because I am sure I would learn from that. That’s another recommendation I would have in terms of sort of thinking that through and where to start.

Bonni: [00:27:28] Thanks for mentioning that resource and you did provide me with a really long list of resources that I’ll be putting in the show notes and that’s just very gracious of you to help people explore a little bit more. But that Keegan was back on Episode 122 and we’ll have a link to that. And then of course Keegan’s link has many links about his own experience with gaming too so it’s just fun to have more conversations about this.

Bonni: [00:27:51] In fact I had that you had talked about coming on the show just to get a little bit of a different glimpse an entirely different discipline and how you’re doing this in team leadership for higher ed. It’s just really fun to talk to you. And before we go to the recommendations segment I’m curious what have been some of the failures that you’ve made along the way and some big lessons that maybe we could take from you and maybe not have to make so badly ourselves.

Stacy: [00:28:18] You probably don’t want to do this half heartedly. You know what a winner was transitioning from one university to the next. I decided to put an element in one of the elements of my class that I really love. And this is of one thing I think you could do kind of outside of this. I do a bunch of stuff based on discussion.

Stacy: [00:28:39] So I have all these different cards and some of them are really funny cards. You know like I have a giraffe card for when you stick your neck out in discussion or good point . Some of them are even related to theorist in our field. So one of the theorists in our field and George Kuh studies student engagement. So I have been engaged that has George Kuh’s face on it and just silly things like that.

Stacy: [00:29:05] And I thought that you know and that works really well because you can start to show students how they’re doing meaningful discussion by handing them their cards when you are a discussion-based class. Well I thought that I could just kind of put that in and just use that to motivate discussion.

Stacy: [00:29:26] But because it wasn’t related to any point – my first year here when I was transitioning I thought let’s just put this in because I don’t have time to gameify the whole thing. Well that didn’t work really well because I hadn’t provided… I didn’t put in any points that turned into a grade. And so they didn’t really care about getting these cards at all.

Stacy: [00:29:46] So you know things like that like you need to develop it more holistically for it to work. One thing that I think he could do that has been the joy of this class is at the beginning of the class I give each student 3 blank classmate cards and they have to use them before the end of the class or they get points taken off for each one.

Stacy: [00:30:10] But anytime like we do awards at the end of the day where I give a special award at the end of the day for something great that a student has done. And then students give awards to each other and like you know Larry when you said blah blah blah that helps further my understanding of French and Raven’s powers – you know sources of a power or something like that.

Stacy: [00:30:33] And so that’s the thing I think you could extract. The only thing. It is the most meaningful thing to see your students tell each other. Why what they said in class was helpful to their learning or what behavior they did in the project they’re working on as is hope for their learning.

Stacy: [00:30:52] Or like last year I remember students who was a very quiet student and she spoke kind of maybe for the first time in a year and a half. Like really talked eloquently. And students were like wow that was the greatest thing I’ve ever heard like where were you hiding that person in discussion all this time so they gave her cards.

Stacy: [00:31:19] And so that’s the thing because they’re giving the cards to each other. I make those make points their points towards their grade in my syllabus and stuff. But I think that’s part of the important part of the other thing. I don’t think you can go half way up because it was a dismal failure when I tried it.

Bonni: [00:31:38] Yeah in the end to really kind of think through what different variations might be and how it integrates back with the object as for your class and your own philosophy and all that I do think that that’s so important when you were describing the levelling up I was realizing I hadn’t made the connection when we were corresponding previously but I experimented a little bit with what I called choose your own. At first I called it choose your own adventure learning.

Bonni: [00:32:03] But then I realized it was actually choose your own adventure assessment what I was truly drawing a better descriptor was choose your own adventure assessment. But it was kind of one of those things where it was a little bit. It was such a culture shock for them to get to have choice in how they were going to demonstrate their own learning like their achievement of the learning outcomes. That was very something that they had not done before.

Bonni: [00:32:27] And then all the variation – oh my gosh – for for every one of those there’s there’s tons of variation. And so if you were teaching a larger class it might not work or you might have to figure out in advance how you’re going to accommodate different variables in that class. But I hadn’t made that connection, though. Oh, I kind of did gamify perhaps was a little bit. But I chose a different descriptor probably for it. But yeah.

Stacy: [00:32:52] I do have a little thing because you know part of my games class is that they get to choose assignments. And one of the ways that you can kind of fix that choose your own adventure thing is think of your you know what. What are the outcomes you want right? What are you assessing and then make sure that you have four or five assignments that do the same thing but assess the same outcome. And then it’s not so crazy because you can build one rubric that hits all four or five assignments.

Bonni: [00:33:24] Yeah. In my experience I’m still struggling but I haven’t given it up either because what what additional struggles that I get even when I attempt to do that are so worth it for the motivation that come. It’s – I mean it’s totally worth it. It’s worth the extra troubles and work and trying to noodle it out.

Bonni: [00:33:43] At any rate this is a point in the show where we each give recommendations and I’m cracking up right now because I had no idea that mine would go so well with some of the things that you shared about on today’s episode sometimes my recommendations are just kind of random and don’t really fit. But this one sort of does.

Bonni: [00:33:59] So this video is from a group called The Piano Guys and my dad sent it to me and that’s always touching whenever my dad sends me music because we both are such lovers of music. And it is in the beginning though before they start playing their version of Can’t Stop the Feeling they introduce a concept of how they’re going to inside of a store ask people to dance like nobody’s watching. So here they’re going to explain it to you better than I will myself. So here’s them explaining their dance like nobody’s watching.

The Piano Guys: [00:34:33] “We’re so excited. We just got our first copy of Uncharted, our new album. So like we’re going to trying out our music on some people. See how they react. Going to test it out. It’s really nice. You leave this note says. Press play. Dance like nobody is watching to capture their reactions.”

Bonni: [00:34:56] So we’re seeing a woman in the grocery store and she opens up a note that says Dance like nobody’s watching. And one woman is like shaking her head there’s no way I’m doing that. And some other people that they’re filming take them up on their invitation and do start dancing in the middle of the grocery store like nobody’s watching .

Bonni: [00:35:14] And it’s really really fun video that gets a lot of people to sort of. Take off those risks of looking foolish in public. And just really go for it. And it’s a great fun video to watch. And just an inspiration. So this is can’t stop the feeling by the piano guys. It’s a great YouTube video where there is a lot of people dancing really well and really poorly. In a grocery store. So I suggest that people go check that out. And that’s my recommendation for today. I’ll pass it over to you. Stacy what do you have to recommend today?

Stacy: [00:35:48] Well that was fun. I like the music. One is back to like I grew up in Texas and so when I was in Pittsburgh. And so I want to recommend you know summer is a time when we have a little more sun time to do some fun things. And so I want to recommend the Homesick Texan cookbooks by Lisa Fain.

Stacy: [00:36:07] They’re brilliant cookbooks and every recipe I’ve tried in them are just wonderful and they just take me back to my childhood and I just really do have a fun summer cooking out of the chefs to recommend that.

Stacy: [00:36:21] And then if anyone is ever in Pittsburgh I have… My husband and I recently went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I did not know this but it has one of the – I think it’s the biggest dinosaur display in the U.S. And so it was a great dinosaur exhibit. And then they had a gem that exhibit there and both of those things are permanent and they’re just wonderful and amazing to look at both of those things. So there’s a little Pittsburgh recommendation.

Bonni: [00:36:50] Oh that’s so fun. And I at first I thought I misunderstood you and you said homesick because I thought I think I just said homesick but she couldn’t have possibly said homesick and sure enough she did the Texan the table the homesick all different kinds of cookbooks I’ll definitely be linking to about in the show notes. And thanks for the Pittsburgh recommendation as well my brother actually lives in Pittsburgh. I’m sure he’ll appreciate getting to hear about it as well as anybody else that is in the area.

Bonni: [00:37:15] Well Stacy thank you so much for coming on the show. And also just for your correspondence with me it’s been a delight to get to know you a little bit and happy listening to the show and now contributing in this really big way to this episode. Thank you so much.

Stacy: [00:37:28] Well I appreciate it. It was it was super fun. I was super honored to be on this because you have some big name guests in the scholarship of teaching and learning. So this was really fun and I hope I’ve inspired people to have a little fun in their classroom and do some interesting things the way that some of your other guests have inspired me to change some of my teaching.

Bonni: [00:37:51] One of the things that Stacy didn’t quite have a chance to mention I didn’t want to miss so I’m going to just say that a second recommendation from Stacy is a service called SuperBetter and Super Better takes our habits and gameifies them and allows us on our smartphones to build new habits but do it through gamification principles so check out super better that will be in the show notes at teachinginhighered.com/163. Thanks to Stacy for being on the show and for introducing all of these wonderful resources to us.

Bonni: [00:38:22] If you want to receive the show notes from today’s episode and every upcoming week’s episode right in your inbox along with an article about teaching our productivity you can subscribe to the weekly update at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. If you have any suggestions for future episodes whether that be a guest or a topic feel free to provide those at teachingginhighered.com/feedback.

Bonni: [00:38:49] I’d love to connect with you on Twitter if we’re not already connected there. I am at Bonni. That’s without an E. B O N N I 2 0 8 and loved to connect with you on Twitter.

Bonni: [00:38:59] And if you go to the Web pages of any episode you can connect with the guest on Twitter if they have a Twitter account which Stacey does. And you can connect with me there too so feel free to stop over there to make whatever social media connections you might want. Thanks for listening and I’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

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.