Bonni [00:00:00] It’s such a crucial part of what we do as professors, getting students involved in discussions and helping to facilitate their learning. Dr. Jay Howard joins me on this episode to talk about how to engage students in the classroom and online.

Production Credit  [00:00:17] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:28] 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 increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:00:54] I’m so pleased today to be able to welcome Dr. Jay Howard on the show. He has served as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of sociology at Butler University. Since 2010 he’s held various leadership positions at Indiana University Purdue University Columbus including Interim Vice Chancellor and Dean and Head of the Division of Liberal Arts.

Bonni [00:01:20] Dr. Howard earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Indiana University’s South Bend and he holds a master’s degree and doctorate in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. My husband noted that you’re a good Midwesterner. Welcome to the show.

Jay [00:01:36] Well as a good Midwestern I’m very happy to be joining you Bonni.

Bonni [00:01:43] And I’m very excited about your book that’s coming out in July of 2015. Kind of don’t want to wait that long. It’s called Discussion in the College Classroom, Engaging Your Students Face-to-Face and online.

Bonni [00:01:55] And that’s being published by Jossey- Bass. So I’m excited about that read and so excited to have you joining me today.

Jay [00:02:03] It’s my pleasure. We’ll talk about some things that are going to be key themes in the book so you’ll get a preview.

Bonni [00:02:08] Oh good I’m so glad. And what have I left out about your background that’s important for us to know about you before we dive into this subject for today.

Jay [00:02:16] Well I guess in my scholarly research on the one hand I’ve done a lot of work in the scholarship of teaching and learning but since becoming a Dean I’ve had trouble keeping most of my research agendas moving forward.

Jay [00:02:30] But I also have done a good bit of work at the intersection of religion and popular culture. John Streck and I authored a book called The Apostles of Rock the splintered world of contemporary Christian music so a couple of different research agenda moving along in my academic career I guess.

Bonni [00:02:51] I’m starting to see such a trend.

Bonni [00:02:53] I’m so glad to see this but so many of the experts that have been on the show have just such amazing academic achievements. But there always seems to be something that kind of gives us a little bit of balance and I would suspect some perspective too. So that’s wonderful to hear.

Jay [00:03:08] Well don’t make the assumption I have any musical talent.

Jay [00:03:11] I mean I only played the [?]  But I play a really loud.

Bonni [00:03:16] You know at our University some years back. They gave us the Garner multiple intelligence. And I scored 100 percent of musical intelligence which was really funny because of course my job.

Bonni [00:03:34] Nothing to do with that. And like you I just listen to music really loudly and I also have a soundtrack playing in my head almost 100 percent of the time.

Bonni [00:03:43] So today you’re going to start out by sharing a little bit I know of how you’d see the classroom as a sociologist so for those listeners who maybe don’t have a background in sociology. Talk to me about that lens that you put on as a sociologist.

Jay [00:04:00] What my favorite definition of sociology comes from a sociologist named Howard Becker who says sociology is the study of people doing things together.

Jay [00:04:12] So any time you have more than one person around there’s probably some nosy sociologist who’s watching trying to figure out what’s going on.

Jay [00:04:21] So in any kind of social context with more than one person and one of the key ideas that you’ll find in any introductory sociology textbook is the concept of norms norms that are sort of taken for granted rules for behavior in a social context when we’re with other people and we take them for granted so much so that we tend to only notice norms when they get violated.

Jay [00:04:48] So a kind of a classic example of that is riding on an elevator. Bonni there’s a list of rules for riding on an elevator that’s as long as your arm but they are posted on the wall at the back of the elevator. And yet we all know these norms and we follow them. So Bonni what’s the first thing you do when you get on the elevator.

Bonni [00:05:08] I walk in. I turn around.

Jay [00:05:10] You turn around. That’s right. Most people would say I push a button. Well you don’t push the button until you turn around. Right. There’s no written rule anywhere that says thou shall face the doors of the elevator but we all do that.

Jay [00:05:23] I mean imagine if you’re waiting for the elevator and the doors open and there I am standing in the middle of the elevator facing the back people who might be a little hesitant to get on the elevator with me. Right. There’s there’s no law that says you must face the front of the elevator.

Jay [00:05:39] But we do so anyway there’s a social expectation a social norm for riding on the elevator that says you must face the front. The same thing is true in the college classroom. There are a whole bunch of norms that guide behavior.

Jay [00:05:55] Both the faculty and students in the college classroom. Take for example seating in the classroom. Most college students will grumble and complain about their elementary and secondary school experiences where they were assigned seats and they had to sit in the same seats every day and didn’t like it wanted the freedom to choose.

Jay [00:06:17] Yet they get to college where we typically don’t assign them seats. And what of those students do they sit in the same seat every day. Right so they’re following that normative assumption that well after the first day of class if I sat there on day one. That is my seat. I’m entitled to that seat and have another student who comes and sits in that seat then then I’m going to be maybe a little bit irritated.

Jay [00:06:42] I’m probably not going to you know try to shove them out of the seat. I’m not going to call security but I’m going to be rather annoyed with my classmates came and sat in my my seat so that the college classroom sociologically speaking is guided by lots of norms that dictate our behavior.

Bonni [00:07:00] Sometimes I like to mess with those norms a bit and on the first day sit in the very back row kind of toward the middle and don’t say and I mean I of course I greet students as they come in but I don’t call attention to that I’m the professor and sometimes they’ll ask although usually the age difference is quite apparent.

Jay [00:07:17] Well you make a good sociologist violating social norms like that is a great way of pointing out the existence of those social norms.

Bonni [00:07:24] Yeah I know there’s a couple of ways that you talk about with regards to discussion specifically that there are these norms that are that are builtin.

Bonni [00:07:32] Tell us a bit about those.

Jay [00:07:34] Starting in the late 1970s when this area of research began a couple of sociologist at Boston College named David Karp and William Yoles did some research on student participation in discussion in the college classroom and what Karp and Yoles contended and I think they’re right.

Jay [00:07:56] Is that in the typical college classroom the real norm is not that students have to pay attention but rather students have to pay civil attention. So what’s the difference. What’s the difference between paying attention and paying little attention.

Jay [00:08:18] Well Karp and Yoles point out that because in the vast majority of college classrooms faculty members won’t call on students unless that students somehow signals a willingness to be called upon.

Jay [00:08:32] You know they raise their hand or they make eye contact and hold your gaze or they somehow shift in their seat to indicate a willingness to be called upon. Most of us don’t call on college students without that we typically assume our students are adults. We want to treat them like adults.

Jay [00:08:51] You know they should have some choice in their participation and so forth. So our lack of willingness to use direct questioning of students who aren’t signaling a willingness to participate leads to the norm of civil attention.

Jay [00:09:04] So students instead of having to pay attention can get away with only creating the appearance of paying attention. How do they do that. Well they do that by looking up once in a while and making occasional eye contact. But it needs to be occasional. It needs to be fleeting because if a student hold your gaze for too long that’s an invitation to call on them.

Jay [00:09:26] So make fleeting eye contact will be writing something down or typing on their pablum or their laptop giving you the impression that they’re taking notes. Now of course they could be typing know Jay is an idiot.

Jay [00:09:42] And how did I get in this very boring class. But I think they’re hanging on every word that I’m saying and nerds are taking very copious notes of everything that I have to say.

Jay [00:09:52] So students can get away with creating that appearance of paying attention and not really having to pay attention. Now of course if they’ve got their phone out and they’re texting if they’ve got the campus newspaper and they’re reading it during class.

Jay [00:10:08] Then they are failing to pay civil attention and that tends to make us angry as faculty members and we very often will intervene in that situation. But generally speaking if they’re paying similar attention making it look like they’re paying attention that’s good enough.

Bonni [00:10:23] And I would think that that would be a reward system for us as professors that we would think oh we must be doing our jobs because look at all this attention that is being paid. But it’s as you say more the art of the seeming like paying attention.

Bonni [00:10:38] We have a two and a half year old and of course we’re teaching him norms to which I think is good. Please and thank you and all those things but we’ll ask him when he when we ask him a question to look at us and to answer. But it’s so funny.

Bonni [00:10:51] He’s so small, he’ll turn his head but he’ll squint tap his little eyes as if.

Jay [00:10:56] He’s learning norms too. And of course this is problematic because in 30 years of research and the scholarship of teaching and learning if there’s one central finding it is that students who are engaged are learning more than students who are passive.

Jay [00:11:12] And students who are paying attention and interacting are engaged in students who are only paying civil attention are not engaged. So they’re not learning as much as they could be some simple attention makes for a peaceful classroom. But it doesn’t make for a lot of learning.

Jay [00:11:29] So the challenge from a sociological perspective is you have to change that norms students come into your classroom assuming that civil attention is good enough. That’s all that you are going to ask of them and they have the right to opt out of being engaged if they want to.

Jay [00:11:47] Well the good news is norms are social creation. So if they are created through interactions they can be changed through interactions. So I think it’s very important to change that norm on the first day of class. What most professors on the first day of class they come to class they take Wolsey who’s there who’s not.

Jay [00:12:07] And then they pretty much walk through the syllabus and the professor is the only one who is doing any talking. Now the entire first day of class. So if that is what you do on the first day of class yes why you just told your students that civil attention is good enough that you’re going to be doing the talking. You’re not expecting them to be engaged.

Bonni [00:12:29] I think you’re absolutely right. And we want to break that Norm from the beginning. I’ve seen professors attempt to break the norm by another norm which is let’s all go around the class and like each one of us say our names say where we’re from say what our meter is and then we start to create another norm and they’ll groan go Oh don’t make me introduce myself again.

Bonni [00:12:50] So how can we keep it fresh in our lives. It actually is a unique norm that’s for that class and kind of creating a setting for what it’s going to be like to learn in that classroom.

Jay [00:13:02] Well I actually think that’s not a bad thing to do. Making students introduce themselves. But what I knew in my classes now typically around 30 but I’ve taught as many as 50. I challenge myself after each student introduces themselves. I go back and say the name of everybody who has introduced themselves.

Jay [00:13:22] So I’m learning everybody’s name as they are introducing themselves and then they have fun because you know typically I screw up somewhere along the way and I’ll say the wrong name and they’ll shake their head and cross their arms and you know make me guess again. And so we kind of have fun with that.

Jay [00:13:39] But it also then enables me to learn your names which makes it much easier for me to call upon them. But I think one important thing to remember is engagement doesn’t have to be a whole class interaction.

Jay [00:13:51] So one strategy that I use and I forget where I pick this up is rather than me walking them through the syllabus I put them in groups of about five or six students and I give them a multiple choice syllabus quiz.

Jay [00:14:05] So they have to work as a group of five or six to answer those questions and it’s all the typical stuff you know when is J. When our JS office hours how many exams are there going to be. What’s the exam format. Watch the policy on assignments that are turned in late. What’s the class attendance policy. So they have to go through the syllabus. As a group and answer those questions.

Jay [00:14:33] Now of course it’s an open syllabus quiz so hopefully everybody gets them all right. You know the group is working through it but it does the same thing as my reading the syllabus to them.

Jay [00:14:44] But it gets them interacting with their classmates which also changes the norm. Not only do you have to interact with me as an instructor you’re going to have to interact with your classmates and it gives them a chance to get to know their classmates.

Jay [00:14:57] I ask them to exchange e-mail or phone number so that if anybody misses class they’ve got at least two people they can call to get notes and find out what went on in class. So by getting them interacting with me and getting them interacting with each other we change that norm on the first day of class.

Bonni [00:15:15] It’s wonderful too that you’re taking that risk of learning the names we actually did an episode awhile back on learning names and I don’t think we emphasize this but you just brought it up where if you’re going to attempt to learn names you’re going to have the occasional time where you get it wrong.

Bonni [00:15:30] So I think sometimes the temptation is well I’ll just hold back until I’m 100 percent confident.

Bonni [00:15:35] Well you’re going to be holding back a long time.

Jay [00:15:37] You’ll be holding back the whole semester.

Jay [00:15:42] And I think it’s good to do that because it humanizes you to your students. And I believe that when students feel you value them enough to try to learn their names they are very forgiving and they recognize you are working at helping to connect with them.

Jay [00:16:02] And I think it’s a great way to improve your course evaluations and try to learn your students names and they will appreciate the effort that you’re making to see them as individuals and as human beings and they’ll be much more forgiving of your screw up says a professor as a result.

Bonni [00:16:18] One thing that’s worked well for me too instead of going around the room in a sort of a predictable nature Roeser or what have you. Then I’ll just seemingly randomly call students to introduce themselves.

Bonni [00:16:29] But they don’t know when they’re going to be next and when will be an old school way of course is to have the roster upfront and you’re just randomly checking them off as you go.

Bonni [00:16:38] But I’ve mentioned before and attendance app that I have on my iPhone that has a random feature too. That’s nice. By the way that attendance app feature also has a setting up random group.

Bonni [00:16:48] So if you wanted then be forced to break out of their norms of just going with their friends. They met during orientation week or what have you that are on their floor you can even use that app. So so talk to us about this tool. Yeah. The second then Norm round discussion.

Jay [00:17:04] All right the second norm also originally identified by Karp and Yoles but this is the one that I’ve done a lot of follow up research on and my career is called the consolidation of responsibility.

Jay [00:17:16] And that’s a reference to the responsibility for students participation in classroom discussion. What Karpen polls have found and others including myself have confirmed is that regardless of class size doesn’t matter whether you’re teaching a class of 10 students.

Jay [00:17:35] Or whether you’re teaching a class of 150 students regardless of class size you’re going to have right about five students that are going to become your dominant talkers who will account for the vast majority of student participation.

Jay [00:17:52] Now if you’re really good you might have a dominant talkers in your classroom but it’s probably going to be between 3 and 8 and averaging around 5 and they’re going to account for 75 95 percent of student comments in the typical college class.

Jay [00:18:08] Now we fool ourselves to live with this. We can have a class where we had a great discussion and you know we’re patting ourselves on our back all the way on a return trip to our office.

Jay [00:18:20] But if you stop and investigate and you actually think about it you probably had five to eight students that were participating in discussion and another say 25 students in your class who observed you having a great discussion with those five to eight students.

Jay [00:18:38] So you engaged by rates and you got 25 that were largely unengaged. That’s the typical norm in the college classroom. So again you’ve got to work at changing that Norm you’ve got to find ways of how am I going to slow down the dominant talkers.

Jay [00:18:55] How am I going to make space for the quieter more shy students. And yet I don’t want to offend those dominant talkers because they’re my friends when I ask a question and nobody wants to speak up. It will eventually be one of those dominant talkers who come to my rescue and help move the discussion along in the classroom.

Jay [00:19:16] So there’s a delicate balance to be struck. Another thing to consider is who are the students that are most likely to accept the role of dominant talker to accept the consolidation of responsibility for student participation.

Jay [00:19:31] While the first variable that most people think of is student gender. Yet the research on student gender is extremely inconclusive it’s all over the place some studies suggest that well male students talk more.

Jay [00:19:45] Other studies have suggests female students talk more. Others have said well males talk more if the instructor is female but not if the instructor is male.

Jay [00:19:54] And so the results in certain gender are all over the place. There is not a consistent finding however there are other variables that come into play.

Jay [00:20:03] So if you teach in a mixed age college classroom say you’re either a commuter campus of a state university with students anywhere from the typical 18 to 22 year olds to students who might be older than you are you might be 50 years old and in the classroom.

Jay [00:20:21] Student age matters. It is the older nontraditional students who are much more likely to become your dominant talker than is the typical 18 year old in your classroom.

Jay [00:20:33] It also varies by instructor gender female instructors seem to do a better job of getting a larger number of students participating in the conversation than do male instructors. You’re talkers are also likely to be seated up near the front of the room which is why it’s really easy to get caught up in a discussion with just them.

Jay [00:20:53] Because they’re right there under your nose and they’re waving their hand in your face. So it’s easy to call on those same five dominant talkers but that will be the norm in your classroom will very likely be the norm in your classroom unless you systematically work at changing it.

Bonni [00:21:10] Both of these norms that you’ve talked about the civil attention and the consolidation of responsibility for student participation I’m seeing a theme here which is that they both are have rewards systems built in for the professor.

Bonni [00:21:25] So we have to be self-aware enough to recognize we need to break those reward systems for ourselves to benefit the students the most because as you have said I mean if I’m getting a lot of attention and I’m getting nods and what have you and I’m getting a lot of what I perceive as a lot of discussion I go home and feel like I did my job today.

Jay [00:21:47] And that’s also the path of least resistance right those those very quiet students who may not want to talk or even to resent it. If you’re trying to pull them in and then engage them. So you’ve got to be careful about how how you do this.

Jay [00:22:00] I mean students actually they may not be consciously aware of that you know they’re expecting the dominant talkers to do the work. But researchers who actually go and do the observation in the classroom will notice things when the professor asks a question.

Jay [00:22:15] Students tend to turn and look at the dominant talkers. You know what what tell the professor what we think. Crites speak up on our behalf. So you’ve got to work at changing that norm and there are a lot of very simple strategies.

Jay [00:22:28] I mean one is simply to say I want to hear from somebody who hasn’t spoken up yet today. So you are ruling out your dominant talkers who have already spoken up or if your dominant talkers are all seated in the front half of the room.

Jay [00:22:41] You can say I want to hear from somebody in the back half of the room or if you’re dominant talkers happened to all be women you can say Come on guys I’ve been here and from you know the women in the classroom what about you men what do you think about this question.

Jay [00:22:57] So you can sort of subtly limit who’s allowed to answer a particular question in the attempt to expand the number of students engaged in discussion. Another good strategy is move around.

Jay [00:23:11] If you’re in the front with those dominant talkers who are waving their hands under your nose moved to the back of the room moved to the side of the room.

Jay [00:23:18] For one thing you’re moving around tends to cause the students you’re moving to to pay a lot more careful attention when you’re standing right beside them. So that’s another way of engaging those quieter students who are along the sides and in the back of the room and not so anxious to speak up.

Jay [00:23:36] And of course you know there’s the issue of being an introvert versus an extrovert what when does an extrovert figure out what they think about your question. Well they they figure out what they think as they’re talking and they might beat around the bush and talk in circles while they’re figuring it out but they’re quite comfortable figuring out what they think out loud in front of everybody.

Jay [00:24:00] The typical introvert is not going to do that. So if you put the typical introvert on the spot and ask them to speak up they are not going to be happy with you.

Jay [00:24:10] So instead you can do things like well I’m going to give you one minute to reflect upon this question and write in response to this question or we’re going to do a think pear share. I’m going to have you partner with the person next to you and you’re going to discuss this question.

Jay [00:24:25] And then after they have something written under their nose or after they’ve had a chance to figure out what they think and rehearse it with a classmate then when you call upon them to speak up in front of the whole class it is a much safer and much less threatening environment for students who are introverts.

Bonni [00:24:44] How does all of this play out in the online class.

Jay [00:24:48] Well I think the online discussion forums have some similarities and yet get some differences you can run into problems that sort of appear to be the same as the consolidation of responsibility most online discussion forums are done in an asynchronous format meaning that students can log on whenever it’s convenient for them and post to the discussion forum.

Jay [00:25:15] If you do it synchronously you have the problem that you’re taking away one of the real perks of an online class that you’re taking away that convenience that I can do the work when it’s helpful for me or it advantageous for me to do it and requiring everybody to be online at the same time.

Jay [00:25:31] And if you’re putting everybody online at the same time well then again you have only one person at a time can speak you can’t read the conversation in the chat room of one person at a time.

Jay [00:25:43] So and discussion gets broken up and gets kind of messy. So what what professors will typically do is say well everybody has to post by thus and such a date.

Jay [00:25:53] And the problem you run into is a large majority of students will wait until right before the deadline to do their posting and then there’s no time to for classmates to respond to this post.

Jay [00:26:07] So a good strategy is to have two deadlines that students have to either make a comment on the reading or respond to a question say by Wednesday night at midnight and then by Sunday at midnight when this segment of the Course closes.

Jay [00:26:24] You have to respond to a classmates post. So there are two deadlines one for posting your comment or question and then a deadline for response to a classmate’s comment or question which again gets them interacting with each other.

Jay [00:26:40] Another problem you run into with online discussion forums is simply the volume of work. Simply trying to read all of those things both for you and for your students if you’re asking all students to read every other students post that takes a lot of time and energy to keep up with that.

Jay [00:26:59] So I suggest that you do the same thing we typically do in face to face classrooms that you divide the class into smaller groups typically six to eight is a good number. And so students are only responsible for reading and responding to six or eight other students rather than 30 or 40 or 50 other students. So the workload is is manageable.

Jay [00:27:22] And then also I think that you as an instructor then can sort of do spot checking of those groups that you don’t have to read every comment by every student.

Jay [00:27:32] And compared to the face to face classroom when we divide students into small discussion groups we walk around and we listen to one group at a time we’re sort of spot checking to make sure they’re on task and that people are participating but we can’t listen to four or five small groups simultaneously in the face to face classroom.

Jay [00:27:52] So I think you relieve some of the workload burden for both yourself and for your students by kind of taking that spot checking approach.

Bonni [00:28:02] I have seen some professors that think not only do I have to read all these but I have to respond and then they start to get into the Oh that’s great answer that that’s not anything substantive.

Bonni [00:28:12] So I think then when you do actually respond it’s more authentic it seems like you as the professor really had something to contribute and or to affirm or what have you about that students and the other students see that and then recognize as long as you at least engage I think with all of them throughout the duration of the course so that they never thought well the professor never wrote anything to me that would be problematic I would think.

Jay [00:28:40] Yes I think so.

Jay [00:28:41] I think you do want to be posting in each group maybe not every week but you know certainly every couple of weeks you want them to know that you are reading you are paying attention to what they’re doing. And also you know you want to watch out for things like you know violations of [?].

Jay [00:28:58] Somebody is being you know rude or something like that. It’s very easy to do in an online format is to treat people much more harshly than you would treat them face to face. So I think professors have a responsibility to monitor that as well.

Bonni [00:29:12] Have you ever had where you set up a group leader for the week in those discussions so that they might do some some adhering to those norms or have you ever tried creating norms together with a class either in person or online.

Jay [00:29:28] Yes I think that most of those are good strategies. Those are good ways of structuring the discussion.

Jay [00:29:34] You can also find there are a number of faculty members who have developed sort of netiquette rules for behavior in online discussion forums and if you simply do a Google search you can find examples of that as well.

Jay [00:29:48] But there are some advantage to developing down the class and that can be the first units. Discussion is what are going to be our rules for participating in an online discussion forum.

Bonni [00:30:01] Especially if they’ve done it before they might have had things that drove them nuts and so it’s fresh on their mind. What might best work for them as the learners for sure.

Bonni [00:30:09] Before we go into the part of the show about recommendations I want to just open it up and say Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that we should make sure and talk about with regard to norms and discussion in the classroom and online.

Jay [00:30:21] I would just reiterate that. While we take norms for granted and students and professors tend to follow them they are not etched in stone norms can be changed because they are a social creation they are created through our patterned interactions with each other.

Jay [00:30:40] And just because students come into your classroom with a certain set of assumptions about what are going to be the norms in this class. No you don’t have to meet the norms and you can change those norms. You can more effectively engage students in interacting in the classroom.

Jay [00:30:57] And we know that when students are more engaged when they’re interacting more they’re going to learn more. And I think that also means you’re shifting the workload toward the students the person who’s going to learn the most in any given class is the person who is doing the most work.

Jay [00:31:16] All too often the person doing the most work is the professor you’re explaining everything you’re telling them all the answers rather than forcing them to engage interact with you interact with classmates interact with the material to find the answers on their own.

Jay [00:31:33] So if you can shift the workload burden on to students so that they’re the ones working the hardest in the classroom they’re going to learn a lot more.

Bonni [00:31:41] Thank you. This is the point in this show where we each share a recommendation or recommendations and mine is around a former CEO of Thomas Nelson the publishing company who now does a lot of blogging and a lot of podcasts.

Bonni [00:31:58] His name is Michael Hyatt and he has a wonderful blog post and template for us to use around creating a ideal week and the first thing that we might think is there is no such thing as an ideal week because every week if mine looks different.

Bonni [00:32:15] But one of the things that’s really helped me do is way back when when I read Stephen Covey’s books early early on in my career he uses this analogy and some of you listening might have seen him do this where he’d have the big glass jar and he’d have all these rocks and he’d have sand and he’d have water and he’d say how do I fit the most into this jar.

Bonni [00:32:35] And the trick is do you put the big rocks in first then you can put the sand and then you can put the water in. But his analogy was if we can’t we don’t put those big rocks in there we put the sand in first.

Bonni [00:32:46] They’re never going to fit in as much as we try to push and shove it’s not going to work so I think this ideal week template what it’s done for me is be able to look at I’m a professor I am a mother I’m a wife and I play all of these different roles and know everything isn’t going to fit into a week.

Bonni [00:33:02] But it’s that point in time where I can step back and reflect and start to say OK well all these things I want to put in here aren’t going to fit. I can be more proactive and be more intentional about what I want life to look like and because as academics many of us have seasons whether we’re on a quarter system or semesters or what have you.

Bonni [00:33:22] We sort of have these rhythms were able to reflect if we take the opportunity and look at how we want our lives to look and one of the things we say and I say in the intro of the show is that helps us be more present for our students.

Bonni [00:33:35] And I think that’s so important that it actually goes back to really your theme J for today if we think about our students who are just going through the motions of acting like they’re present we kind of can do that in our own lives too.

Bonni [00:33:49] And so for me the ideal week template helps me to be a person who is more present in my life because I’ve thought with intentionality about the places that are most important for me to invest my time. So I’ll be doing that in the coming weeks as I look to this semester that I’ll start in January 2015. So what is your recommendation for the listeners.

Jay [00:34:10] Well I would first say I like your recommendation. I think being intentional is always a good idea especially in the lead busy lives that badly lead. My recommendation I think is going to shift back to you know from the scholarship of teaching and learning to my other scholarly agenda.

Jay [00:34:27] The investigation of the intersection of religion and popular culture and my research on the genre of music known as contemporary Christian music in Apostles of Rock. John Streck and I suggest there is a strand of CCM that we call transformational music.

Jay [00:34:46] And it’s music that emphasizes art and the notion that when you create art and beauty you are reflecting the divine image of the Creator. So I want to recommend a band and the music given don’t don’t think gospel music don’t think Sunday school lesson set to music.

Jay [00:35:06] This is simply good music infused with something of a Christian worldview. The band is called The Lost Dogs and you can find out about them half the LostDogs.com think of the Traveling Wilburys. Remember that group Bob Dylan Roy Orbison Tom Petty and Jeff Lynn from Yellow got together and did this Americano kind of music and the Lost Dogs are similar in style to Dabb but definitely their own sound.

Bonni [00:35:36] Well Dr. Howard I love hearing your passion for music and I love hearing your passion for making teaching more effective so we can serve our students better. Thank you so much for being the guest on today’s Teaching in Higher Ed.

Jay [00:35:49] It was my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Bonni [00:35:53] Thanks once again for listening to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. As always if you have suggestions. I would love to hear them at teachinginhighered.com/feedback. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to our newsletter that gets you the podcast notes right into your inbox along with a weekly teach article.

Bonni [00:36:13] And you also the first time you subscribe get the ed tech essentials guide which a lot of people have such positive things to say about. And speaking of positive things to say if you’re a forgiving rading or a review for the show it helps others discover it. You can do that on iTunes on Stitcher Radio or wherever it is you listen to the show. Speaking of listening. Thanks again for listening this time I’ll see 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.