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Balancing Structure and Emergence in Teaching

By Bonni Stachowiak | January 5, 2025 | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

A spiral structure that could be part of playground equipment or an outdoor modern art piece with clouds and blue sky in the background

Throughout my teaching career, I’ve often swung between two extremes when it comes to structure and flow. At times, I’ve been highly structured and organized—a good thing, but one that can become limiting when I miss what’s emerging in the moment. On the other end of the spectrum, if I lose track of the overall goals of a session or workshop, I risk not meeting my commitments or aligning with participants’ expectations. It also creates challenges for the broader structure of the course or event—whether it’s a class within a degree program or a workshop designed to support a university’s teaching and learning goals.

Mia Zamora discusses this tension on Episode 475 of Teaching in Higher Ed: Making Space for Emergence. In the interview, she describes how we can create “buckets” to hold topics that we can explore together, which is especially helpful for the kind of class content that will be responding to what's happening in an internal or external context, for example. In my business ethics class, we analyze news stories weekly, and there's a “bucket” where our reflections and analysis can be placed.

Alan Levine has co-taught with Mia previously and they both talk about courses having “spines” to keep the needed structure. You can see an example of their #NetNarratives class spine mid-way through Alan's blog post: My #NetNar Reflection. On Episode 218, Alan discusses the importance of giving people opportunities to explore, as part of their learning. He shares:

You get better by just practicing. Not rote practicing, but stuff where you’re free to explore.

Speaking of exploring… I just went to visit Alan's CogDogBlog – and discovered a recent post with “one more thing about podcasts” where he talks about a cool podcast directory that I wasn't aware of… and ways of sharing one's podcast feed with others. Now it is taking every ounce of discipline not to go down the rabbit trail of discovering more. But I leave for Louisiana in three days, the semester starts tomorrow, and I have a 5:30 AM keynote on Tuesday morning. All this to say, I had better behave myself and share a few more things about facilitiation I've been thinking about, as I prepare for those adventures.

Two Additional Approaches for Managing the Tension Between Structure and Flow

Over time, I’ve discovered two other helpful strategies for balancing structure and in-the-moment flexibility. These tools and insights have transformed how I prepare for and facilitate learning experiences.

1. SessionLab: Visualizing and Adjusting the Flow

A while back, I discovered a tool called SessionLab, and it’s become a game-changer, especially when preparing workshops. It helps me create a “run of show” document—something Kevin Kelly has discussed both on Episode 406: How to Create Flexibility for Students and Ourselves, as well as in his book on flexibility in teaching: Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities. A run of show outlines the timing, activity titles, descriptions, and any additional information for a session, helping me stay on track while leaving space for flexibility.

SessionLab allows me to break down a workshop or class into blocks of time and activities. Though it includes a library of standard activities, I mostly use it to map out my own. One of my favorite features is the ability to highlight sections in the “additional information” column. This has been a game-changer for virtual facilitation. For example, when sharing resources or instructions during a Zoom session, I pre-highlight key content so I can easily copy and paste it into the chat in real time.

Beyond that, the tool allows you to color-code blocks to visually assess the balance between different types of learning activities—like how much time you’re spending on lecture versus active learning. It even lets you generate a PDF version for offline reference.

This morning, I was preparing for Tuesday morning's keynote and realized (yet again) I’d tried to squeeze too much into my allotted time. SessionLab helped me get realistic about pacing, build in breathing room, and ensure space for those organic moments that make these moments of learning in community so powerful. After all, if everything were going to be rigidly planned, why not just record a video and skip live interaction altogether?

If you’re looking for a tool to help you balance structure with flexibility, I highly recommend giving SessionLab a try.

2. Padlet: Unlocking a Hidden Feature for Better Facilitation

The second resource I want to highlight is in an upcoming book by Tolu Noah on facilitation: Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy, and it felt like every page introduced me to a new tool or a fresh way of thinking.

One of many insights that stood out was a feature I hadn’t realized existed in Padlet, a virtual corkboard I already use often for collaborative activities. Tolu explained that you can create breakout links to share just a single column from a Padlet board rather than the entire board.

This has been incredibly helpful for making my Padlet boards more user-friendly. Before, when I shared an entire board, participants sometimes found it visually overwhelming—unsure where to post their contributions. Now, if I’m running an activity with multiple columns (e.g., ideas related to sustainability in one, corporate social responsibility in another), I can send a direct link to the specific column where I want participants to share. It simplifies the process and improves clarity for everyone.

When Tolu Noah’s book comes out, I can’t recommend it enough—it’s packed with facilitation wisdom and practical strategies for creating more engaging learning environments.

Resources

Here’s a summary of the tools and people mentioned in this post:

  • Episode 475 with Mia Zamora
  • Episode 218 with Alan Levine
  • SessionLab – A tool for creating run-of-show plans, structuring workshops, and balancing structure with flexibility.
  • Kevin Kelly – Educator and author who explores flexibility in teaching and learning; referenced for his insights on “run of show” documents.
  • Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities – Kevin Kelly's book: “Addressing students’ increasing demand for flexibility in how they complete college courses, this book prepares practitioners to create equivalent learning experiences for students in the classroom and those learning from home, synchronously or asynchronously.”
  • Padlet – A virtual corkboard tool for collaborative activities, with a feature for sharing breakout links to individual columns.
  • Tolu Noah – Educator and author of a forthcoming book on facilitation, emphasizing practical strategies for inclusive teaching.
  • Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education – Tolu Noah's forthcoming book: “Workshops are one of the most frequently used forms of professional learning programming in higher education and beyond. However, in order for them to have a meaningful impact, they must be crafted with intentionality. Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality_ offers practical guidance, tools, and resources that can help you create more engaging, enriching, and effective workshops for adult learners.”

 

Filed Under: Resources

Lessons Learned from Intentional Teaching Podcast Episode About AI Across the Curriculum

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 4, 2024 | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Podcast Inspiration: AI across the curriculum Background is blurry technology with a person standing looking out (we see the back of their head)

I drew much inspiration from this morning's listen to Derrick Bruff's interview with Jane Southworth about AI across the curriculum. Derrick Bruff's podcast, Intentional Teaching, gives us bountiful opportunities to learn from the experiences of educators who are transforming educational experiences for students across a wide variety of disciplines and contexts. While the episode did focus on what is obvious from the title, AI Across the Curriculum, I drew a lot of inspiration well beyond just that topic of AI. There are many layers of what they talked about that go well beyond the broad topic of artificial intelligence. Other aspects of leading and teaching within a university context are shared well beyond the particular initiative they discuss.

Jane talks about the difficulty of making such a massive change across a complex institution. She made a few jokes about the difficulties, although she said it was such lightheartedness that I felt such kindness toward her in what must have been such challenging endeavors. Consider what it takes to make something like this happen, and all the committee work that it takes, all the different people that are need to be talked to, all the perspectives to consider. The intricacies, not just to make something work, but to make the fruit of that work visible to students such that they enroll in the program and pursue the educational aims beyond the requirements for their majors. Jane shares examples of them starting an AI certificate program within their curriculum. The mammoth effort that it was to make that technically possible from an operations standpoint, such that someone could take the right classes and that they would go through all the curriculum committees and get that to work within their policies and procedures is one thing. But another layer I found quite fascinating was how do you then make that visible to students such that they're even aware that this certificate exists and that they find it of interest and worthwhile to pursue further learning.

As Sam Cooke sang years ago, I also “don't know much about geography.” There's no doubt in my mind that I have subscribed to some of the myths that Jane described about her discipline of geography. Jane described how in the United Kingdom, when she was in college, that it was the third or fourth most popular degree. Geography graduates found themselves receiving among the highest earnings as they left school, as well as being surprised when they discovered just how much more the field is than studying rocks, like they had initially believed.

In the show notes for the episode, Derek shares a couple of resources that come both from conversations with Jane, as well as from his ongoing collaborations with Flower Darby, co-author of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes and The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. The first article linked by Derek in the show notes is Developing a Model for AI Across the Curriculum: Transforming the Higher Education Landscape via Innovation in AI Literacy by Southworth et al. The second article was Building an AI University: An Administrator's Guide by Joe Glover. I'm grateful, as always, to Derek and all of the opportunities he makes available to those of us interested in teaching with intention.

Resources

  • Intentional Teaching Episode AI Across the Curriculum with Jane Southworth on Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, or the web
  • Developing a model for AI Across the curriculum: Transforming the higher education landscape via innovation in AI literacy, by Southworth, et al
  • Building an AI University: An Administrator's Guide, by Joe Glover from the University of Florida

Filed Under: Resources

Overcast Reports My 2024 Top Podcasts

By Bonni Stachowiak | November 23, 2024 | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

My Top Podcasts 2024 ATP Pod Save America The Ezra Klein Show Mac Power Users Hard Form Sharp Tech Teaching in Higher Ed The Political Gabfest The Talk Show

Dave posted on LinkedIn about a recent podcast catcher app update which has both of us looking at our listening habits for this year so far. I didn’t realize that Marco had put out an Overcast update until Dave tagged me in his post. Like Dave, Overcast is my favorite podcast app. Here are some reasons why:

  • Playlists: I can organize my favorite podcasts and hone in on just what I’m in the mood to listen to at a given time. My categories include: Priority; Business + Economics; News; Politics + Law; Productivity; Teaching, etc.
  • Smart speed: As Dave mentioned in his post, it is a subtle shift that adds up over time.
  • Queue: There are one-off episodes that I’ll want to be sure to listen to, but I may not want to subscribe to all future episodes of a given podcast. That’s easy to accomplish by setting up a queue playlist in Overcast.

Dave highlighted what podcasts he pays for, which means that they can be listened to ad-free. We both like that we can support the makers of the shows in that way. I pay for the following shows: Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP); Mac Power Users; Sharp Tech, The Talk Show; The Political Gabfest (via a Slate subscription); and Hard Fork and The Ezra Klein Show (via our New York Times subscription).Now that the election is over, I imagine that my top podcasts will change and that over the next year will wind up being:

  • ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast): “Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.”
  • Hard Fork: Often humorous exploration of the intersection of technology, culture, and the future.
  • The Ezra Klein Show: A phenomenal interviewer and writer discusses politics, philosophy, and culture. Ezra knows how to have rich conversations with people who agree and disagree with his views.
  • Mac Power Users: They keep me challenged in a good way to get the most out of my Mac and other Apple products and bring joy to my life.
  • Teaching in Higher Ed: Listening to my own podcast makes me seek to continue to get better as an interviewer. Plus, I can deepen the learning from having interviewed someone when I can relax more and consider what actions I may want to take from the conversations.

Some favorites don’t come out as often as other podcasts that I listen to, so won’t show up on my top listens. I also devote time to almost all of Tom Henschel‘s The Look and Sound of Leadership podcast (which only airs once a month), many of Dave’s Coaching for Leaders episodes, and John Biewen‘s Scene on Radio.

It was wild to me to see how many more hours Dave listened to podcasts than me so far in 2024 (and something tells me I’m not going to catch him by the year’s end). Some of that is likely attributable to Dave running 3-4 times per week and always listening to podcasts during his workouts via his Apple Watch (phone free). Me? I mix things up in my exercise practices by often doing walk ’n talks with friends over the phone, or doing Apple Fitness workouts (which are such a great way to infuse music that I love into my exercise).

What podcasts are you listening to most these days?

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

2024 Top Tools for Learning Votes

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 6, 2024 | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

2024 top tools for learning with tv screens in the back filled with colorful imagery

Each year, I look forward to reviewing the results of Jane Hart’s Top 100 Tools for Learning and to submitting my votes for a personal Top Tools for Learning list. I haven’t quite been writing up my list every single year (missed 2020 and 2023), but I did submit a top 10 list in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022. I avoid looking at the prior year’s lists until I have identified my votes for current year.

My 2024 Top Tools for Learning

Below are my top 10 Tools for Learning for 2024. The biggest change in my learning tools involves using social media less, most specifically that service that used to have an association with a blue bird and can most closely be associated with a cesspool these days.

Overcast

This podcast catcher is a daily part of my life and learning. Overcast has key features like smart speed and voice boost, which you can have for free with some non-intrusive ad placements, or pay a small fee for a pro subscription and have them hidden from view. Overcast received a major design overhaul in March of 2022, which led me to reorganize my podcast playlists to take full advantage of the new features.

Unread

While Overcast is for the spoken word, Unread is primarily for written pieces. Powered by real simple syndication (RSS), Unread presents me headlines of unread stories across all sorts of categories, which I can tap (on my iPad) to read, or scroll past to automatically mark as read. I use Unread in conjunction with Inoreader, which is a robust RSS aggregator that can either be used as an RSS reader, as well, or can be used in conjunction with an RSS reader, such as Unread.

LinkedIn

The biggest change from prior year’s surveys has to do with social media. The bird app just isn’t like it used to be. I’ve found most of my professional learning via social media takes place on LinkedIn these days. If you’re on LinkedIn, please follow me and the Teaching in Higher Ed page.

YouTube

Once I found out that I could subscribe to new YouTube videos on my RSS reader, Inoreader, it changed how often I watch YouTube videos. That, plus subscribing to YouTube Premium, which means we get ad-free viewing as a family, makes me spending a lot more time with YouTube. I even have my own YouTube channel, which I occasionally post videos on, most recently about my course redesign and use of LiaScript.

Loom

The expression tells us that it is better to show than tell in many contexts. Loom is a simple screen casting tool. Record what’s on your screen (with or without your face included via your web cam) and as soon as you press stop, there’s a link that automatically gets copied to your computer’s clipboard which is now ready to paste anywhere you want. I use Loom for simple explanations, to have asynchronous conversations with colleagues and students, to record how-to videos, and to invite students to share what they’re learning. If you verify your Loom account as an educator, you get the pro features for free.

Kindle App

I primarily read digitally and find the Kindle iPad app to be the easiest route for reading. I read more, in total, when I am disciplined about using the Kindle hardware, but wind up grabbing my iPad most nights.

Readwise

It is so easy to highlight sections of what I’m reading on the Kindle app and have those highlights sync over to a service called Readwise. The service “makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook and article highlights.

Canva

My use of the graphic design website Canva has evolved over the years. I started by using it to create graphics and printable signs for classes. Now I also use it to create presentations (which can include embedded content, slides, videos, etc.). For some presentations I’m doing in the coming weeks, I’m experimenting with using Beautiful.ai for my presentations. I still think Canva is great, but am having fun trying something new.

Raindrop.io

Probably more than any other app, I use Raindrop on a daily basis. It is a digital bookmarking tool. I wrote about how I use Raindrop in late 2020. I continue to see daily benefits with having such a simple-yet-robust way of making sense of all the information coming at me on a daily basis.

Craft

I don’t change my core productivity apps very often. In the case of Craft, once I made the switch, I never looked back. This app has both date-based and topic-based note-taking, as well as individual and collaborative features. From their website: “Craft is where people go to ideate, organize, and share their best work.”

Those are my top ten for the year, not in any particular order. The first draft of this post had eleven items, since I lost count as I was going. I wind up using Zoom as so much a part of almost every day, it winds up getting forgotten, given its ubiquity in my life. I'm leaving it on this post, even though it takes me over my count of ten.

Zoom

I use Zoom so often that one of the years, I entirely left it off of my top ten listing, because it is just always there. Recent enhancements I have grown to appreciate are the built-in timer app, the AI transcripts and summaries, and that you can present slides while people are in breakout rooms.

Your Turn

Would you like to submit a vote with your Top Tools for Learning? You can fill out a form, write a blog post, or even share your picks on Twitter. The 2024 voting will continue through Friday, August 30, 2024 and the results will be posted by Monday, September 2, 2024.

Filed Under: Educational Technology

Achieving work-life balance (or is that even possible?)

By Bonni Stachowiak | April 13, 2024 | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

A friend and colleague asked me about how to achieve work-life balance and what tools are best for doing that. Let's just say I got a bit energized by her question that I recorded a video for her and sent her some key points from what I shared. If you're wondering about these same questions, check out the comments for a link to the video I sent to her, which is now on my YouTube channel.

RESPONSE

I appreciate you reaching out with your concerns about achieving a more effective work-life balance and integrating tools like Microsoft Planner with your team. Here are some insights and recommendations based on what you've shared, which I share in more detail in the video:

View Work-Life Balance as a Journey: Rather than seeing work-life balance as a fixed destination, it's more helpful to view it as an ongoing journey. This perspective allows for flexibility and adaptation, acknowledging that some days or weeks might be more challenging than others.

Incorporate Consistent Tools and Habits: To achieve effective work-life integration, it's crucial to not only have the right tools but also to establish consistent habits that make the use of these tools part of your daily routine. Just as I shared in my video, using apps like Calm for meditation has helped me manage stress and maintain productivity through structured breaks like the Pomodoro technique.

Maintaining Flexibility in Tool Usage: It's okay to step away from certain tools occasionally. What's important is returning to them when you realize they bring balance and peace to your life. This adaptability is key in managing not just tasks but also your mental well-being.

Implement Practical, Routine-Based Strategies: Strategies such as a weekly review can dramatically reduce feelings of being overwhelmed and improve your organizational habits. Scheduling regular check-ins on your progress can guide you in managing your workload without feeling inundated.

Choose and Stick to Appropriate Technologies: The effectiveness of any tool depends on it being integrated thoughtfully into your day-to-day activities. My experience with tools like Raindrop for bookmarking and Zotero for academic references emphasizes choosing technologies that fit seamlessly with your workflow. Also, avoiding frequent changes in your toolset helps in building a routine that you and your team can rely on.

Continuous Commitment to Your Tools: Commit to your tools unless there's a compelling reason to change. This consistency will help not only you but also your team in becoming more proficient with the technologies adopted and ultimately, more cohesive and functional as a unit.

VIDEO

Remember, the key to integrating any new tool or process effectively into your work-life system relies heavily on consistent usage and the development of supportive habits around it.

Filed Under: Productivity

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