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2022 Top Tools for Learning Votes

By Bonni Stachowiak | August 13, 2022 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Tools4Learning with gold tools like a wrench, nails, etc.

Each year, I look forward to reviewing the results of Jane Hart’s Top 300 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), but I did submit a top 10 list in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. I haven’t come across too many others’ 2022 Top Tools for Learning votes, yet, but did enjoy reviewing Mike Taylor’s list.

I avoid looking at the prior year’s lists until I have identified my votes for current year. Once my list was finished for 2022, however, I did compare and realize that I had left Zoom off for this year. Given that I use Zoom pretty much daily for meetings, teaching, speaking engagements, and podcast interviews, I suspect this is one of those things where Zoom has become so integral to my life that it’s become like water that I can’t see because I’m swimming in it.

Something that I am still looking forward to getting more practice with is a technique shared by Kevin Kelly on Episode 406 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Kevin shared about how to turn a Zoom chat into a useful summary and included a sample summary from an AAEEBL Meetup in the show notes for the episode.

Another thing I realize as I reflect back on the current and prior years of voting is how much every single tool I use fits into a personal knowledge mastery system, which I have learned so much about from Harold Jarche over decades now. Harold Jarche writes:

Personal knowledge mastery is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. PKM keeps us afloat in a sea of information – guided by professional communities and buoyed by social networks.

PKM is the number one skill set for each of us to make sense of our world, work more effectively, and contribute to society. The PKM framework – Seek > Sense > Share – helps professionals become knowledge catalysts. Today, the best leaders are constant learners.

Harold was on Episode 213 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, if you would like to learn more about PKM. There is also an entire collection of PKM episodes.

My 2022 Top Tools for Learning

Below are my top 10 Tools for Learning for 2022. Jane Hart’s survey methodology has shifted over the years. She now asks us to list each tool and then identify which of three categories we most often use it for: personal learning, workplace learning, or education. Mine overlap quite a bit, within those categories, but I’ve done my best to pick the context in which I use it most often.

1. Overcast | Personal Learning | PKM-Seek

This podcast “catcher” app is a daily part of my life and learning. 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. In October of 2021, I wrote up my podcast favorites, in case you’re interested.

2. Unread | Personal Learning | PKM-Seek

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.

On a related note, if you like the idea of information flowing to you (via RSS) versus you having to go find it – and you like to cook – check out the app Mela. I switched to it in the past year and haven’t looked back.

3. Twitter | Personal Learning | PKM-Seek

I continue to benefit from a strong personal learning network (PLN), which for me is at its most vibrant on Twitter. Whether it’s for something as simple as getting some good tv/movie recommendations when I am under the weather, or for a deeper and more significant purpose of learning from those in the disability community, I find a tangible benefit with almost every visit. Yes, there are also major problems on social media platforms, including Twitter. But for me, the key has been all in who I follow and how I engage in community with others on Twitter.

4. Raindrop | Workplace Learning | PKM-Sense

While the first three tools I mentioned were all about seeking information, Raindrop is all about sense making (in the present and future) for me. 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. Raindrop recently added the ability to highlight text on a page you have bookmarked, but I haven’t experimented with that feature much yet. If I want to do something with annotations and highlighting, I tend to gravitate toward Hypothes.is, a social annotation tool.

5. PollEverywhere | Education | PKM-Sense

When I started in a professional career in the early 1990s, I used to work for a computer training company. One regular thing that would happen with less-experienced instructors would be them standing at the front of the class, asking if everyone “got it” or was “with them.” As you can imagine, many times people either didn’t realize that they were lost, or they were too embarrassed to admit it.

Polling tools like PollEverywhere remove the barrier of people not realizing that they don’t understand something, or for those are reluctant to share their confusion publicly. PollEverywhere also has features to support team collaboration, asynchronous and/or synchronous polling, and can integrate with a learning management system (LMS). I primarily use PollEverywhere for formative assessment, allowing people to respond anonymously to the questions being posed. I subscribe to the Present plan, which allows me to have up to 700 people responding at one time on a given poll question. People in an education context who needed to create reports and access archived poll responses would likely need to go with an Individual Instructor premium account, or department/university-wide plan.

6. Padlet | Education | PKM-Sense

One of many collaborative tools I enjoy using is Padlet, a virtual cork board. I use Padlet to create a shared vision for a class or a team, to create a crowd-sourced music playlist for an event or class, as a parking lot, and to collectively come up with ways to extend learning. This year for our faculty gathering, we have Padlet boards for virtual collaboration and have also printed out posters (with QR codes that point back to the Padlet boards) that people can respond in person to using sticky notes. I love the blend of the analog and the digital that is possible using this approach.

7. Loom | Education | PKM-Share

The past couple of years, Loom has become a part of my daily computing life. It 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.

8. Canva | Workplace Learning | PKM-Share

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.). As I just revisited Canva features in writing this past, I discovered even more things I wasn’t even aware that Canva can do.

I find the pro version worthwhile for both work and for Teaching in Higher Ed, as having the ability to include an entire team of people and have everyone be able to access a brand kit(s) to achieve consistent colors, logos, and other brand assets is a game-changer. We haven’t experimented as much with branded templates or comments and sharing, but there’s so much to benefit from with Canva working collaboratively. The free plan is also quite generous and worth signing up for, even if you don’t wind up upgrading to Pro or Canva for Teams.

9. WordPress | Workplace Learning | PKM-Share

The Teaching in Higher Ed website has been on a hosted WordPress site for so long, I can’t even remember where it resided prior to WordPress. My friend and web developer, Naomi Kasa, has helped keep the site beautiful and functional. One of my favorite features of the site is the page Naomi created with all my upcoming and past speaking engagements. It is great having all that information in one place and to see the collection of resources keep growing over time. Take a look at my resources page for a recent speaking engagement and how I embedded a Canva presentation, which includes use of embedded content and video.

10. Blubrry | Workplace Learning | PKM-Share

If you are going to have a podcast and you want to efficiently and effectively get it released to the majority of the various podcast players, you are going to need a podcast hosting company. We have used Blubrry for years now and appreciate its reliability, ease of use, and integration with WordPress.

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 2022 voting will continue through Thursday, August 25 and the results will be posted by Tuesday, August 30, 2022.

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

21 Top Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episodes

By Bonni Stachowiak | October 2, 2021 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Top 2019-2021 Top Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast downloads

I started producing weekly Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episodes in June of 2014. Since that time, a new episode has aired each week. This is something that I’m both proud of – yet a little horrified that I have got a streak going that may not be sustainable (or make sense) in the long run. As of today (October 2), I also have another streak going… I’ve closed my Apple Watch rings for 334 days straight. That means I’ve done at least 30 minutes of cardio, stood for at least a minute for 12 hours, and burned at least 440 calories during the day. I’m thinking it might be healthy if I were to not focus as much as I have been on maintaining either of these streaks and give myself a bit of a break. But I plan on sticking with them both (if I can) at least until the end of 2021.

A few years ago, Dave and I switched hosting companies for our podcasts. That’s why, instead of this being a list of the top 21 episodes of all time, I’m sticking with the top 21 since 2019. Someday, I might go back and combine the data from before the switch and now. However, for now, I’m keeping it simple.

Top 21 of the Most Listened to Episodes since 2019

  1. Episode 324 – Teaching Effectively with Zoom with Dan Levy (2020)
  2. Episode 309 – Hyflex Learning with David Rhoads (2020)
  3. Episode 263 – Recipes for Effective Teaching with Elizabeth Barkley (2019)
  4. Episode 320 – How to Be Together in Learning Online with Jesse Stommel (2020)
  5. Episode 258 – Paying the Price with Sara Goldrick-Rab (2019)
  6. Episode 316 – Designing for the Uncertain Fall with Maria Andersen (2020)
  7. Episode 254 – Stop Talking, Start Influencing with Jared Horvath (2019)
  8. Episode 291 – Learning Myths and Realities with Michelle Miller (2020)
  9. Episode 314 – Culturally Responsive Online Teaching with Courtney Plotts (2020)
  10. Episode 295 – Online Engagement Through Digital PowerUps with Travis Thurston (2020)
  11. Episode 256 – Creating Wicked Students with Paul Hanstedt (2019)
  12. Episode 296 – Toward Cruelty-Free Syllabi with Matthew Cheney (2020)
  13. Episode 273 – Engaging Learners in Large Classes with Bonni Stachowiak (2019)
  14. Episode 264 – Serving Hispanic Students with Melissa Salazar (2019)
  15. Episode 271 – The Missing Course with David Gooblar (2019)
  16. Episode 269 – Removing Learning Barriers with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with Jennifer Pusateri (2019)
  17. Episode 290 – The Productive Online and Offline Professor with Bonni Stachowiak (2020)
  18. Episode 282 – Using Challenges to Motivate Learners with Mike Wesch (2019)
  19. Episode 277 – Intentional Tech with Derek Bruff (2019)
  20. Episode 253 – Spaces and Places (and Nudges) with José Bowen (2019)
  21. Episode 259 – Intentional and Transparent Assessment with Natasha Jankowski (2019)

Other Popular More Recent Episodes

Here are some other more recent popular episodes from 2021:

  • How to Use a Course Workload Estimator, with Betsy Barre
  • Small Teaching Reprised, with James Lang
  • On Improving Our Teaching, with Dan Levy
  • Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, with Alex Shevrin Venet
  • The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health, with Sarah Lipson and Laura Horne
  • Equity-Enhancing Data Tools, with Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan
  • Online Culture, with Courtney Plotts

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

2021 Podcast Favorites

By Bonni Stachowiak | October 2, 2021 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

2021 Favorite Podcasts (collection of podcast logos)

The first person to inspire me to list out annually which podcasts are taking up my “ear share” was Bryan Alexander. In January of 2021, he wrote up his most recent list of what podcasts he’s listening to, while admitting he hadn’t done this in a while. I have also missed keeping up with what I sometimes think of as an annual list. I wrote up favorite podcast lists in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2014, and also published an article about podcasting in the University of Austin's Flow Journal in 2017.

Here’s my 2021 list of favorite podcasts, organized by category. At the end of the list, for the first time, I select ten shows that if I was only allowed that many to listen to each week, I would choose. Note to self: Why did you do that to yourself? Note to readers: Because I listen to a podcast, doesn't mean I agree with what is said in episodes… I appreciate having my mind-expanded, yet do find that I sometimes wish some of the people I listen to would do a bit more of the same, which you will read about a little toward the end of this post. 

Teaching and Higher Education

  • Tea for Teaching – “…a series of informal discussions of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning. Hosted by John and Rebecca, who run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.” I’ve learned so much from John, Rebecca, and their guests over many years now.
  • Gettin' Air with Terry Greene – Terry prepares for each interview with care and asks authentic questions about open education.
  • The EdSurge Podcast – I tend to listen more often to the higher education focused episodes. Jeff Young is an excellent interviewer who understands the higher education context well.
  • Lecture Breakers with Barbi Honeycutt – “…a place where college professors… share innovative teaching strategies, practical ideas, teaching tips, and resources to help you break up your lecture, energize your classroom, increase student engagement, and improve learning.”
  • Think UDL – thoughtfully hosted by Lillian Nave. Each episode leaves me knowing more about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and ways to support learning more effectively.
  • Teacher of the Ear – Formerly named HybridPod, this show is hosted by Chris Friend, who now teaches at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, U.S.A. We can look forward to a new episode about podcasting as pedagogy later in October.

News and Politics

  • Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly – “Each weekday, Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood make today make sense…. Break down happenings in tech, the economy and culture.” I listen to Make Me Smart almost every weekday.
  • Pantsuit Politics – “…a podcast for real conversations that help us understand politics, democracy, & the news – while still treating each other like thoughtful human beings.”
  • Political Gabfest – Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the week's politics in an entertaining and informative way.
  • The Ezra Klein Show – Weekly conversations about “something that matters.” Ezra is a phenomenal interviewer and I find myself waking away from each episode with an issue that will capture my thoughts for some time to come.
  • The Daily – “Twenty minutes a day, five days a week, hosted by Michael Barbaro and powered by New York Times journalism.”
  • Post Reports – “The Post’s premier daily podcast, featuring unparalleled reporting, expert insight and clear analysis, every weekday afternoon.”
  • This Land – “The award-winning documentary podcast This Land is back for season 2. Host Rebecca Nagle reports on how the far right is using Native children to attack American Indian tribes to advance a conservative agenda.”
  • What a Day – “Big news. Short podcast. Can’t keep up with the flood of news every morning? We’ve got you covered.”
  • Amicus, with Dalia Lithwick – smart conversation about the law.
  • Pod Save America – “A no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor that breaks down the week's news and helps people figure out what matters and how to help.”
  • On the Media – “WNYC's weekly investigation into how the media shapes our worldview.”
  • The Dig – “… goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and the political-economy to imperialism and immigration.”

Technology

  • Mac Power Users – “Learn about getting the most from your Apple technology with focused topics and workflow guests. Creating Mac Power Users, one geek at a time since 2009.”
  • Connected – “Weekly panel discussion on Apple and the impact of technology on our lives.”
  • Accidental Tech Podcast – “Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely-related matters.”
  • The Talk Show with John Gruber – “The director’s commentary for Daring Fireball,” an Apple-oriented technology blog by John Gruber.
  • Upgrade – Upgrade looks at how technology shapes our lives, from the devices in our hands and pockets to the streaming services that keep us entertained.
  • Automators – “Automation makes your life easier and everyone can do it. We tell you how.” The show is Mac-centric, though it also covers web services that enable automation.

See more technology-oriented podcasts that I listen to under the: Podcasts I Pay For section.

Mind-expanding Shows

  • Scene on Radio – “…two-time Peabody-nominated podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.” This is not one of those shows where you have to go back to the first session to understand what’s going on now. However, earlier seasons were breathtaking and life-changing. I still regularly think about Season 2: Seeing White and Season 3: Men and highly recommend them, in addition to the current season of Scene on Radio.
  • Strong Songs – “Music: It’s good. On each episode, host Kirk Hamilton takes listeners inside a piece of music, breaking it down and figuring out what makes it work.” Some of my favorite episodes include: “September” by Earth, Wind, & Fire, “Babylon Sisters” by Steely Dan, and “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton.
  • Hidden Brain – “Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.” Thanks for recommending it such a long time ago, Isabeau Iqbal.
  • This American Life – “This American Life is a weekly public radio program and podcast. Each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme.” (One of the all-time greatest podcasts!)
  • Code Switch – “What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story.” Thanks to Rob Parke for recommending this show on Episode 126 of Teaching in Higher Ed.

Business, Economics, and Leadership

  • Planet Money – “The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, “Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy.” Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.”
  • Marketplace – “…helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. “
  • Coaching for Leaders – “Leaders Aren't Born, They're Made. It's a myth that leadership skills can't be learned. Almost nobody is a born leader. Most leaders I know learned how to lead through the school of hard knocks, good training, years of hard work, effective coaching, and great mentors.” (Hosted by this guy I know – who I happen to be married to – Dave Stachowiak.)
  • The Look & Sound of Leadership – Candidly, if I hadn’t have had this podcast recommended to me by Dave (my husband), I may not have listened. Given that we both have doctoral degrees in organizational leadership, let’s just say that one of us (that would be me) doesn’t always gravitate to doing a bunch of listening on the topic in my “free” time. Tom is a fantastic storyteller and coach, however, and I've learned a great deal from him over the years. “Using an uncommon blend of storytelling and coaching, Tom Henschel created a unique and influential podcast. Eavesdrop on a monthly coaching conversation and get practical tools you can apply the minute the episode ends.”
  • Women at Work – Produced by Harvard Business Review. It sometimes goes on hiatus for a while – but it is well worth browsing prior episodes. Excellent interviews to helps us all fulfill our potential with excellence and joy!
  • Worklife, with Adam Grant – “Organizational psychologist Adam Grant takes you inside the minds of some of the world's most unusual professionals to explore the science of making work not suck. From learning how to love criticism to harnessing the power of frustration, one thing's for sure: You'll never see your job the same way again.”

Work/Productivity

  • Nested Folders with Rosemary Orchard & Scotty Jackson – “…ways of thinking, working, and using technology salutations to achieve more and feel good about doing their best work.”
  • GTD – “Our GTD podcasts are here to support you at every stage of your GTD practice. … The podcasts include personal and professional stories, as well as practical tips about GTD systems for desktop and mobile, using apps and paper. Start listening now and you'll be well on your way to stress-free productivity.”
  • Focused – Great productivity show, hosted by David Sparks and Mike Schmitz.
  • The Productivity Show – The team from Asian Efficiency helps us up our game on this practical podcast.

Life and Faith

  • Unlocking Us with Brené Brown – When this podcast moved to Spotify, I dropped my listening frequency way down. But each time I consume anything by Brené Brown, my life gets better.
  • On Being – “A Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast. What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other? Each week a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by Krista Tippett.”
  • Everything Happens with Kate Bowler – “Life isn’t always bright and shiny, as Kate Bowler knows. Kate is a young mother, writer and professor who, at age 35, was suddenly diagnosed with State IV cancer. In was, insightful, often funny conversations, Kate talks with people about what they’ve learned in dark times. Kate teaches at Duke Divinity School and is author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved).
  • Kelly Corrigan Wonders – “…a place for people who like to laugh while they think and find it useful to look closely at ourselves and our weird ways in the hopes that knowing more and feeling more will help us do more and be better.” Her episode with Anne Lamott nourished my soul right down to my core. Another vital episode was her conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom, which explored Tressie’s “thoughts, emotions and deeply ingrained habits when it comes to money… both new and old.”
  • Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr – Despite the podcast ending in March of 2021, I still go back and listen (or re-listen) to older episodes. “Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr is a conversational podcast series on the deep connections between action and contemplation. Richard is joined by two students of the Christian contemplative path, Brie Stoner and Paul Swanson, who seek to integrate the wisdom amidst diapers, disruptions, and the shifting state of our world.”
  • The Evolving Faith Podcast – Despite having ended in late October, 2020, this is another show I go back to revisit regularly. These are timeless conversations about faith, belonging, identity, disability, embodiment, wonder, politics, empathy, injustice, and courage.
  • The Holy Post – I did not think I would like this podcast at all. Multiple friends recommended it. Still, I resisted. When I finally listened, it quickly went up near the top of my listening queue, each time a new episode was released. “Conversations about culture, theology, politics, and living a thoughtful Christian life.” Each episode starts with a few news-related items, including occasional bits about “news of the butt.” Then, Skye Jethani interviews a guest, including a recent interview with one of my all-time favorite Christian authors – Philip Yancey.

Podcasts I Pay For

The overwhelming majority of podcasts remain free in 2021. However, some podcasts have ad-free options, while others use some form of a subscription model. I pay for two podcasts (one directly; the other, as a part of a broader, content subscription).

  • Dithering – A podcast hosted by Ben Thompson and John Gruber, two technology experts. They air episodes twice per week that are exactly 15 minutes in length.
  • MacStories – I subscribe to Club MacStories Premier, which includes a number of subscriber-only podcasts, as well a a number of other geeky benefits for Mac and iOS users.

Attempt at a Top 10

Narrowing down all of the wonderful podcasts, above, to just ten is incredibly hard to do. The world of podcasting is rich with compelling content. Additionally, I enjoy some shows because they are “easy” to listen to – in that I don’t have to think very hard while taking them in. I'm trying to be realistic about which ones I tend to move to the top of my listening queue versus ones I “think” I should be listening to more. I suspect I would change my mind on this attempt at narrowing my favorites down to an arbitrary number of them, were I to compile such a list tomorrow.

In no particular order:

  1. Make Me Smart
  2. Kelly Corrigan Wonders
  3. Scene on Radio
  4. Everything Happens with Kate Bowler
  5. Dithering
  6. The Ezra Klein Show
  7. Mac Power Users
  8. MacStories – I’m cheating here, a little, since there are multiple MacStories shows under this umbrella.
  9. The Holy Post – While I continue to hold out hope that the hosts will continue to experience an evolving faith in their lives (perhaps even by listening to the Evolving Faith podcast back catalog?), the combination of lighthearted conversation in the beginning, along with humor and humbleness has me moving this one to the top of my queue more often than I might like to admit.
  10. Automators
  11. Teaching in Higher Ed – Kidding about this one. But I do listen back to every episode, always trying to get better at what I do. It’s hard to listen, often, but I force myself to do it, in the interest of continuing to grow my ability to have these conversations about teaching.

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

2021 Top Tools for Learning: My Vote

By Bonni Stachowiak | July 6, 2021 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Tools4Learning - Jane Hart's annual survey

I’m excited to participate this year, once again, in Jane Hart’s Top Tools 4 Learning. It is the 15th time she has conducted the survey. In more recent years, Jane asked us to separate our list of ten tools into the following three contexts:

  • Personal Learning
  • Workplace Learning
  • Education

She then lists the top 200 results across all of the categories, as well as listing a top 100 for each category.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t participate last year. But I do have blog posts for the following years:

  • 2019 Top Tools for Learning
  • 2018 Top Tools for Learning
  • 2017 Top Tools for Learning
  • 2016 Top Tools for Learning
  • 2015 Top Tools for Learning

As a person who enjoys it when I have a long streak of something going, I also want to be gentle with myself regarding what it has been like to attempt to keep even the simplest of things going during a pandemic. I avoid looking back at my own Top Tools for Learning prior posts, as well as Jane Hart’s listings, until after I have written the current year’s post. That way, I avoid biasing myself, given all the great tools there are to support our learning.

Top Ten Tools for Learning

Below, I present to you my 2021 list (which hopefully can make up for my lack of a list in 2020). In no particular order, the following are my Top Ten Tools for Learning:

Raindrop.io | Personal Learning | Digital bookmarking tool | Having the ability to save links and be able to easily resurface them later on is essential to my Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) system.

Overcast | Personal Learning | Podcast catcher | Despite not having as much time during the pandemic for podcast listening, I still treasure those episodes that I am able to consume. The reason I use Overcast is due to it’s smart speed function (set how fast you want to listen to particular podcasts and it keeps that setting saved) and the ability to share clips of episodes easily.

Twitter | Personal Learning | Microblogging + social media network | On Episode 53 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Peter Newbury explained his method for who to follow on Twitter in that he connects with people who are like him, along with people who are not like him. I have carried that advice with me since that conversation in 2015 and have benefitted richly from it.

Readwise | Personal Learning | Digital reading highlights manager | Have you ever gone to purchase a book, only to have the book seller’s website tell you that you had already bought it? Have you ever went to read a book, only to discover you read it years ago? Readwise helps resurface the highlights that you have saved from a number of digital sources. You can save highlights from Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, PDF documents, Inoreader, Evernote, and a whole lot of other services. Their tagline explains the functionality well: “Readwise helps thousands of readers get the most out of their digital highlights.”

Inoreader | Personal Learning | RSS feed aggregator | Rather than trying to remember to visit every website that might have information that is relevant to me, I use RSS (real simple syndication) to subscribe to various feeds, so all the information comes into one place. Inoreader is an RSS aggregator (meaning it “collects” all the things I want to subscribe to and keeps track of what I have read and what remains unread). To read my RSS feeds, I prefer to use Unread. When reading RSS feeds using the Unread app on my iPad, I can browse articles and mark things as read using only my thumb.

Zoom | Education | Web conferencing | While there are other web conferencing tools that attempt to ‘catch up’ with Zoom on a sustained basis, I still have found no other tool that comes even close. Zoom is easy to get started with, handles lower bandwidth situations with ease, and continues to innovate without allowing their usability to diminish.

Canva | Workplace Learning | Graphic design creator | I have two different Canva Pro accounts (personal and work), because it has that much benefit. For each context, I can have our various logos, color scheme(s), and photos/graphics uploaded and saved.

Blubrry | Workplace Learning | Podcast hosting | If you want to have a podcast that goes out to be listed among the various platforms/services, you will need a podcast hosting company. Teaching in Higher Ed has been a part of my life since June of 2014 and has contributed more to my learning than any single other effort I’ve undertaken since then.

Google Jamboard | Education | Collaborative sticky notes and simple drawings/text | Whenever I’m with a group of people, I can invite them to “join” me on Google Jamboard to collaborate by adding sticky notes, text, and simple shapes to a shared canvas.

Loom | Education | Screencasting | I use Loom in my teaching, work, and personal lives multiple times a day. When I have a quick thing I want to “show” someone, I can record my screen quickly and copy a link to the resulting video with a single click. I can also include my web cam and do a video with something on my screen, or just the camera, alone.

 

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 2021 voting will continue through Thursday, August 26 and the results will be posted by Wednesday, September 1.

Filed Under: Resources

Standing Presenting Set-Up

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 26, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

I gave a couple of talks this month that I wanted to share a bit with you. First, David Rhoads and I joined Bryan Beatty to discuss the myths and truths of Hyflex Learning. I also shared at the Lilly Conference about igniting our collective imagination. Each of those two links has the associated resources on them and more information. However, during the Lilly Conference one, I got asked a fair amount of questions about my standing set up in the chatbox, which I didn't anticipate.

When I saw the question, I joked that I was not going to be held up as a model for standing setups. I had used this bendable tripod thingy with a screw sticking out of the top of it and tried to balance my webcam on top of the screw. I'm not sure if the camera was straight at any point in my presentation. Two of the three legs of the tripod blocked my already-poor view of the Zoom window and the other application I was using to run my slide-deck and polling. I used one of our kids' upholstered chairs to raise my keyboard up a bit and had my trackpad resting in the seat of the chair.

Let's just say it wasn't ideal.

Trent Tucker came to the rescue on Twitter. He tweeted: “…as luck would have it, I ran into a colleague at #myTRU who has the stand-up teaching set-up I was looking for! Cranks the desk up, rolls the whiteboard into place, webcam on… stand-up teaching!”

Hey @NeuroscienceUT @marklipton @bonni208 … as luck would have it, I ran into a colleague at #myTRU who has the stand-up teaching set-up I was looking for! Cranks the desk up, rolls the whiteboard into place, webcam on… stand-up teaching! #EdTech #TeachFromHome #cdnpse pic.twitter.com/MjVJbQx5UX

— Dr. Trent “I wear a mask” Tucker, PhD (@ProfTucker) December 4, 2020

Trent later described what things look like before John Ofee transforms the desk to the standing setup:

“Hi Bonni — I have permission from @john_ofee to share this. It's his office and set-up, I took the photo and doctored it up. Here is the “before” picture — it's a regular office then it transforms into super stand-up teaching space from the other photo. Happy blogging.”

A friend from work said his wife was really liking her stand that converts her desk to a standing desk, so I bought a similar one. I like it a lot, from a functionality standpoint. However, it was too wide to fit the part of my desk where my monitor sits. I'm thinking it will head to work with me when I one day return and will likely work better there.

Now Dave and I are thinking that I should look for an independent tripod that would raise my webcam up high enough to not give me the appearance of having four chins (my words, not his). My goal is to have things up and running well by the time I speak at the Musical Theatre Educators Alliance's conference in early January 2021. Standing for that one seems most important… I'm working hard at keeping the bad musical theatre puns to myself for the event, as well. “Ya Got Trouble – Right Here in River City…” In all seriousness, I couldn't be more excited and honored to join them for the conference.

One purchase that has worked out well in my setup is this light that sits atop my monitor. It's LED can be adjusted in two ways: brightness and tone (warm/cool). It has a dimmer on it and a power button (that unfortunately I keep forgetting to turn off when I leave my computer for the day; I'm thinking of seeing if there is some kind of automation I can use for this situation).

It needs to be shut off when I'm on any kind of web conference tool, or it makes my webcam adjust awkwardly and put me in the shadows. But it works great for when I tuck my computer and keyboard away and work on analog tasks. Speaking of pen and paper tools, I recently received an early Christmas gift, which I initially heard about from Katie Linder. Here's Katie's recent answer to the question: Will I Use PowerSheets in 2021? I've gotten as far as putting my name in the front and looking through everything that came in the PowerSheets bundle I received.

 

Filed Under: Productivity

No Magic Required

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 20, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

More than ever before, I witnessed this semester testing the limits of our espoused descriptions of what it means to be a teacher. Is it about us fostering and cultivating learning communities, or is it really more about misguided attempts to control others' behavior? Is deep learning a complex process that takes place across unpredictable spans of time, or is what we do able to be planner out in a linear way toward a rigid destination?

I received an email from Marjorie Feld (Babson College) that shares the story of her last day of class this semester. She gave me permission to share her story here with the other Teaching in Higher Ed blog posts:


November 20, 2020

On the last day of class for the semester, standing there in my mask, I talked about Harry Potter.

I was co-teaching a course with 50 students, split into two groups: a few in-person in the de-densified physical classroom; most of them online, linking into class from campus and from places across the U.S. and across the world. On this last day, only my co-teacher and I were masked in the classroom, and all of our students were on screen in tiny boxes, learning remotely. I know my colleagues drew from more classic literary works about plagues and other crises when talking to students about our present moment in the pandemic; I used Harry Potter as a way to communicate my gratitude to them.

In all honesty, I told our students, in August I hesitated before entering the classroom. Even with the masks (worn faithfully by all) and the regular testing (completed faithfully by all), there was anxiety about what it would mean to be in a room, on campus, learning together. The anxiety, though, wasn’t just about the virus, I pointed out. It was also about how we could create a learning community in the midst of all of this. Never had I taught online, I told them, and I have always relied on students’ being together in one space, seeing and hearing each other’s responses to texts and to each other.

At our best, I said, we teachers hope to help you learn from each other, to help move you a bit further on your journey toward a good job, a fulfilling life, and good global citizenship. We strive to keep our classrooms safe for you to try on, and try out, new ways of thinking. In here, I said, gesturing around the classroom, I try my best to try to accommodate everyone’s learning preferences, to shield everyone from negative forces during our moments together so that we can all feel heard and visible.

In the final book and film of the Harry Potter series, the forces of evil try to enter Hogwarts, the school where young people learn the magic they need to become witches and wizards. The teachers know that these forces are on their way, and they do the only thing they can: they summon their own magical powers as older, more experienced witches and wizards, and they cast a spell on the school to protect the young people, however temporarily, from evil.

Brimming with emotion, I told my students that this semester, though many of us wanted to protect our students from the negative forces of our moment—namely, of course, the virus—we knew we could not. I thanked them for wearing masks, for getting tested, for keeping themselves safe; I thanked them for tuning into the class, for learning and laughing and trying on, and trying out, new ways of thinking. They could not see that I was smiling under my mask when I said that we managed to create a learning community. To me, that felt like both a victory and a bit of an antidote to the bleak news of 2020. Soon after I finished saying this, they logged off of our last class together.

Ultimately, in the Harry Potter narrative, good prevails. There is incalculable loss, to be sure. But the students who remained in the protected school: they learn how to fight the bad forces together. They grow up to recognize the essential importance of communities, not only in learning, but in taking action to protect what is important. Now that my teaching is done, I hang onto my hope that this is what we are teaching all of our young people right now, wherever they are learning. No magic is required; just hope and the will and actions to protect and heal the world.

Marjorie N. Feld, Babson College


Thank you, Marjorie, for sharing your story about your final day of class with us and for getting in touch. The ways in which you remained true to your teaching philosophy and navigated these challenging circumstances is admirable and inspiring.

Filed Under: Teaching

Recommended Digital Bookmarking Tool: Raindrop.io

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 3, 2020 | 4 Comments | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Raindrop.io screenshot

Dave and I don’t change our tools very often. Instead, we try to use as few of them as possible and continually work to learn new ways to leverage these systems and applications in our learning and work. However, in recent months, we both switched our Digital bookmarking service from Pinboard.in over to Raindrop.io.

Pinboard.in served us well for years. I had over 30,000 bookmarks stored since I joined in 2014. I moved over from the Del.icio.us bookmarking service, when it’s long-term future looked questionable. Pinboard.in is a simple way of collecting and categorizing bookmarks in one place. It had recently become rather slow when running in the browser, as well as not always reliably saving my bookmarks when I was on a mobile device and using a third-party app.

raindrop-io-interface

When I first looked at Raindrop.io, I was blown away by its gorgeous user interface. Instead of categorizing purely by applying tags to bookmarks (like Pinboard.in does), Raindrop.io also makes use of Collections, which are like folders. When I initially saw the organization by Collection, I thought that this would be a limitation for me, given that I save items that would apply across various categories. However, I soon discovered that searching can be done across all manner of filters, so I wasn’t going to lose the functionality I had grown so accustomed to when using Pinboard.in.

Getting Started

The first step for me in getting started with Raindrop.io was to experiment with it for a bit. I installed the Mac app and iOS app. They also have a Windows app and an app on Google Play. I created an account and signed in on the apps.

I set up a couple of Collections to see how that worked. I like how you can use their extensive collection of icons to visually distinguish your categories from one another. Even better, I appreciate how I can upload custom icons. Our university has some design elements that I instantly associate with that entity, which I used for my work-related Collections. I later added my Bitmoji for personal bookmarks.

browser options

The next step in getting started was to add the Raindrop.io extension to my browser, so I could easily add bookmarks when browsing the web. They have support for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge, and a Raindrop.io Bookmarklet that may be used for unsupported browsers.

Once I signed into the Raindrop.io extension, I was ready to start adding bookmarks. I instantly noticed how much faster Raindrop.io was, as well as offering more features to access within the single browser extension. I could select the Collection to place the bookmark within, as well as add any associated tags. It was very intuitive to use from the very beginning.

The last part of getting started was to connect Raindrop.io within my preferred RSS Reader – Unread. That way, while I was reading articles from all my various RSS feeds on Unread, I could quickly save items within a category and apply tags. I do this by long-pressing on the title of an article and accessing Raindrop.io via the share sheet. I could do it even faster by setting up the double-tap to automatically save to Raindrop.io, but it doesn’t appear to allow me to enter a tag as I’m saving it. I have found that if I don’t add the tags at the same time as I’m saving an item, I can get a serious backlog of bookmarks when I finally sit down to tag everything.

Collections

Another nice feature of Raindrop.io’s Collections is the ability to collaborate with others. I’ve set up a Collection for our Institute for Faculty Development. Now, whenever any of us comes across bookmarks related to our work, we can save them in one place and have others automatically have access to them, as well.

We are only getting started with this practice, so I don’t know yet how tags are going to work. I would assume that whatever tags my colleagues add here will then get added into mine. If we want to really be able to future-proof our bookmarking efforts, it is going to make sense to come up with some naming conventions for our tags.

If you don’t want to have someone to be able to add to your bookmarks, but want them to be able to view an entire Collection, there’s an option for that, as well. You can either invite specific individuals to view a Collection, or can create a shareable link.

I see on the Raindrop.io planned improvements that there are (as of 11/29/20) 493 upvotes to “Pin one bookmark into multiple collections,” which to me would be a great enhancement to Raindrop.io. I was the 493rd upvote. The developer is very responsive to user feedback and continually improves the service, from everything I can tell so far.

Tags

The power in really being able to organize information comes from tags, since they can carry across multiple categories and contexts. A single bookmark may belong in the following collections: Reference, technology, classes, teaching, and higher education. I wind up picking the most logical Collection and add in the tags that will help me find the item in the future.

This morning, I listened to an episode of The Productivity Show: 5 GTD Tips to Become a Power User and Get Things Done Consistently (TPS322).

Here are the tags I applied to it, along with the rationale for each one.

  • #audio – When adding media to my bookmarks, I like to indicate the type of item I’m saving, whether it is audio content or video.
  • #AsianEfficiency – They are the creators of this podcast and also have a great blog. I like to be able to search by the content creator, whether it be a person, or an organization.
  • #GTD – Getting Things Done, a productivity system articulated by David Allen in the book by the same name
  • #mgmt470 – I teach a management elective class called: Personal Leadership and Productivity. When I find items related to any class, I like to add a tag with the class name to help me be able to surface new content to add to the course over time.

Dave thinks I may have gotten carried away with tags across my years of digital bookmarking. He may be onto something. As of today, I have 4,265 tags. In listening to another podcast episode this morning, one of the co-hosts said, “Tags don’t cost anything,” which helped me feel a bit more vindicated.

If I were starting over, again, though, I would be more purposeful in deciding on whether to use singular vs plural for tag naming conventions. In some cases, I have done that.

For example:

  • #podcasts – are the actual shows I have saved
  • #podcasting – is the creation of podcasts
  • #podcast – is a hashtag I use on Twitter when sharing quotes from the Teaching in Higher Ed #podcast. I have it set up to automatically bookmark tweets that I like or retweet, so adding this to Raindrop.io happens automatically.

If you have gone down the path of sometimes tagging an item with a tag expressed in the singular, while other times adding a tag as a plural, you can combine the two tags together. I see on the Raindrop.io website that it is possible to merge tags, but I haven’t figured that piece out just yet.

Perfectionism and ongoing personal knowledge management don’t go together very well. I can always search a couple of ways to find what I’m looking for, until such a non-existent time when I clean everything up perfectly.

Next Steps

If you don’t already use a digital bookmarking system, I highly suggest you check out Raindrop.io. As stated on the Raindrop.io home page:

“Raindrop.io is the best place to keep all your favorite books, songs, articles or whatever else you come across while browsing.”

And if you would like to learn more about personal knowledge management, there's an entire section of my book devoted to it. Check out The Productive Online and Offline Professor on the Stylus Publishing website. Part Three explores finding, curating, and sharing knowledge and there's a chapter dedicated to Three Steps to Social Bookmarking. 

Also: Productivity Tools List on the Teaching in Higher Ed Website

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

Most-Downloaded Teaching in Higher Ed Episodes in 2020

By Bonni Stachowiak | November 25, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

most downloaded episodes 2020

Terry Greene, host of the Gettin’ Air podcast, asked some of us on Twitter to guess what was the all-time most downloaded episode of his show. I thought perhaps the episode with Chris Gilliard or the one with Audrey Watters. Terry finally satisfied our curiosity by sharing that it was in fact John Stewart who held that honor.

Blog Post: Gettin’ Air Top Ten

In the tweet where I presented my guess, I mentioned that the time of the year when a Teaching in Higher Ed episode airs seems to contribute greatly to the total number of downloads that a given episode will receive. Yes, having recognizable names matters. But so does airing episodes at times when faculty are coming back from a break and are ready to dive back into ways to develop our teaching even further.

Terry’s post got me wondering about Teaching in Higher Ed’s most downloaded episodes. Around the million downloads mark, Dave and I switched podcast hosts (from Libsyn over to Blubrry), so it is just way to cumbersome to do analysis across the entire history of the show.

Before we moved podcast hosts in early 2019, episodes with the following people were always among the most downloaded:

  • Stephen Brookfield
  • James Lang
  • Cathy Davidson
  • Clint Smith
  • José Bowen
  • Ken Bain
  • Todd Zakrajsek
  • Sean Michael Morris
  • Betsy Barre
  • Jesse Stommel
  • Gardner Campbell
  • Sara Rose Cavanagh
  • Kevin Gannon

Speaking of downloads, I noticed the other day that Teaching in Higher Ed had crossed over another one-million downloads mark – meaning that the podcast has now been downloaded over two million times, in total.

It is staggering for me to think about all that has transpired since the first show back in June of 2014. I’m eternally grateful to all the people who have come on the show to share with the Teaching in Higher Ed community.

After reading Terry’s blog post about his downloads this morning, I thought I would take a look at Teaching in Higher Ed’s downloads (totals started being counted in February of 2019 since that’s the month when we switched hosting companies).

  1. Episode 263 with Elizabeth Barkley | Recipes for Effective Teaching
  2. Episode 258 with Sara Goldrick-Rab | Paying the Price
  3. Episode 254 with Jared Cooney Horvath | Stop Talking, Start Influencing
  4. Episode 256 with Paul Hanstedt | Creating Wicked Students
  5. Episode 309 with David Rhoads | Hyflex Learning
  6. Episode 324 with Dan Levy | Teaching Effectively with Zoom
  7. Episode 273 with Bonni Stachowiak | Engaging Learners in Large Classes
  8. Episode 253 with José Bowen | Spaces and Places (and Nudges)
  9. Episode 291 with Michelle Miller | Learning Myths and Realities
  10. Episode 271 with David Gooblar | The Missing Course
  11. Episode 269 with Jennifer Pusateri | Removing Learning Barriers with Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
  12. Episode 282 with Michael Wesch | Using Challenges to Motivate Learners
  13. Episode 252 with Maha Bali + Autumm Caines | Ownership, Equity, and Agency in Faculty Development
  14. Episode 277 with Derek Bruff | Intentional Tech
  15. Episode 320 with Jesse Stommel | How to Be Together in Learning
  16. Episode 295 with Travis N. Thurston | Online Engagement Through Digital PowerUps
  17. Episode 290 with Bonni Stachowiak | The Productive Online and Offline Professor
  18. Episode 272 with Viji Sathy + Kelly Hogan | Inclusified Teaching Evaluation
  19. Episode 259 with Natasha Jankowski | Intentional + Transparent Assessment
  20. Episode 279 with Brian Laduca | Applied Creativity for Transformation

It is always somewhat hard for me to make a list like this because there are so many incredible episodes that wind up being missed. But it is also fun at the same time to reflect on what I learned from these conversations. Thanks, Terry, for giving me the inspiration to go through this exercise today.

Filed Under: Resources

Structuring Synchronous Classes for Engagement

By Bonni Stachowiak | October 25, 2020 | 1 Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Structuring Synchronous Classes for Engagement

I still feel a bit wobbly in my teaching this semester. Students’ facial expressions typically provide me with so many cues in my teaching. It leaves me wondering if I’m reaching them during our synchronous sessions since I have to rely on other gauges for assessing their engagement.

It has also been a tender time. Many of the students are graduating in December and wondering what life after college, during a pandemic, will be like… Some have been told that they need to leave home, not knowing where to go. Others have faced losses of loved ones or told there are only a few months left, at best.

Despite feeling like my class is less engaging than in other seasons of my teaching, the students have shared that they feel like the time we are together passes so quickly and that they are learning a lot. Here’s a look at how most of my synchronous classes are structured, in case it is helpful.

Before Class (10 minutes)

I start playing music about ten minutes before class. There will always be 3-4 people who join, but who typically leave themselves muted and have their cameras off. Sometimes, one of them will have a question, and that’s why they came on early. But it is mostly quiet, except for the music.

I run my class off of a web browser, for the most part, with the occasional .jpg graphic or short slide deck. I’m teaching a Hyflex class, which means that these synchronous classes are not required. Students have the flexibility to participate in an asynchronous activity that is not identical to the synchronous one, but addresses the same learning goals. Before class, I open all the tabs I will need during the class and place them in the chronological order they will be used. 

I have found that if I build all the asynchronous activities, first, and then adjust them to be more suitable for a synchronous class session, it becomes a lot easier. I’ll write more about how I am developing asynchronous activities in future posts, but for now, the important thing is that there needs to be alignment in learning goals. Thinking that we can have identical experiences between asynchronous and synchronous experiences is not realistic and not a helpful aim.

Examen (5-10 minutes)

Each class starts with everyone answering two questions. They can answer aloud, though most choose to answer in chat (either publicly or privately). Each question starts the same way: Since we last met… Then, the second half varies:

  1. What brought you life?
  2. What took life away?

I share my answers to those questions, as well, and comment on some of the answers that were shared with the entire group. This has helped us bring community into our learning, during a time when it is harder than usual to get to know each other in this context.

One thing I already know I need to improve for next term is to incorporate this practice into the part of our learning community that engages asynchronously. I would ideally like it to be something that could be perceived as not taking a lot of time, but would give them the opportunity to share either privately or to the entire class. I tend to move away from discussion boards, since most learners have had such awful experiences with them that there’s so much unlearning to do in order to get going with them that I often consider other options, first.

Some kind of ongoing way of documenting our collective answers to these two questions might be interesting, using maybe Padlet or some other kind of more visual tool.

Review (10 – 15 minutes)

This class has a fair amount of new vocabulary for the students. We often begin by doing retrieval practice. I have flashcard decks in Quizlet that we will work through to review by playing some of their solo games, or by doing a few rounds of their Quizlet Live game.

A listener recently recommended Quizizz, recently, and our daughter has loved getting to experiment with it (she’s playing a game right now, in fact). I have been reluctant to try it in my current class, though, since we are in a groove with Quizlet and there’s no need to change things up at this point.

Dave recorded some short videos that teach them how to memorize the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They can list them 1-7, or descend from 7-1. They instead can have a number listed off and they can tell you the corresponding habit. Or, if you state one of the habits to them, they know the associated number. Dave learned about peg words from when he worked at Dale Carnegie, though mnemonic peg systems come up in other contexts, as well. Sometimes, we get started in the larger group and then go into breakout rooms for further practice.

Main Activity (20 minutes)

The vast majority of the time, the main activity for the session is building upon something they have already learned a little bit about. For example, they recently read the chapter in the Getting Things Done book about reviews, which emphasizes a process called the weekly review. All reading assignments in this class are expressed in the form of a quiz in Canvas (our LMS). By this point, they will have uploaded their notes on the chapter inside the quiz, along with some questions that test for understanding and some reflection prompts.

I mentioned no longer being able to get as many cues from facial expressions. Instead, I structure exercises to make their learning more transparent, often through some kind of a collaborative document they work on with others, or an editable document they work through on their own. In the case of the collaborative document, I can see their work as they engage in it. When they work independently, I have them export their work as a PDF and upload it to our LMS, partially as a means for taking attendance – but mostly to be able to see their learning process more clearly. 

Most weeks, I set up a set of Google slides that have permission for edits to be made. Then, I share the entire document to the class and have them work in breakout groups on some portion of the slide deck. Alternatively, I edit the link to the document to say copy instead of edit at the end, which means that anyone who clicks the link will be given the option to create a copy of the document (instead of messing with my original).

Link with edit at the very end of it
Remove the edit at the end (including anything after the word, such as this pound sign) and add the word copy.

In this case, students started building their weekly review process in class. They are accustomed by now that any text that is highlighted should be deleted and replaced with their information. They also are used to the fact that I will often have sample screenshots of what my process looks like, which can then be replaced with screenshots of their weekly review, as they build it.

Sample weekly review

If you want to try this kind of activity, you can learn more about it from Teaching Effectively with Zoom, by Dan Levy. We talk about this approach in episode 324 of Teaching in Higher Ed and he also shares about it on the Teaching Effectively with Zoom book resources website. The most common mistake I have made so far is sharing the file with students without first changing the settings to allow for others to edit. It’s an easy fix, of course, but I would always still rather have it set up correctly to begin with…

Change permissions to allow for editing

I write more about this process in my post: How Do You Make Zoom Breakout Rooms Less Boring, if you want to learn more.

Class is officially over at this point. I only have about 20 students in the class, so taking attendance at some point along the way is relatively easy. I let them know that their participation points will be recorded and that the official part of class has concluded. I let them know what chapters we will be covering in the next segment and ask students to give some kind of indication if they’re planning on coming back after the ten-minute break, so I know about how many to expect.

The After-Party (45 – 60 minutes)

I was intrigued by Mike Wesch’s mentions of how he creates a single .MP3 of all the reading for his classes each week. Given that he is the author of his textbook (The Art of Being Human), I suspected he didn’t have as much of a challenge trying to navigate copyright issues the way some of the rest of us might. Still, I knew that especially since the context surrounding the Getting Things Done book was likely so unfamiliar to many of the students, it would be good to help them through that.

I decided to do an abridged version of the assigned reading, with stories from my life of how the concepts have impacted me. We go through the questions from the quiz, together, though in a couple of cases I ask them to still provide answers, if it turns out to be essential that I get their personal reflections on a particular topic.

The feedback from students on “the after-party” sessions has been edifying. They tell me that blocking off this optional time helps them to get a jump start on the week’s assignments. They like learning in community and appreciate the way in which I make the reading more personal by sharing additional stories.

The After-After-Party

There is almost always someone who would like to stay after the after-party to talk one-on-one. These are some of the most life-giving conversations I have had in recent months. 

Next Steps

I’m reasonably happy with the structure as I have it. I wish I had more polls populated in advance, but there hasn’t been enough time for everything I would like to try. I’m also intrigued by streaming platforms that take the possibilities beyond Zoom. One I have been experimenting with is called OBS Studio.

I also would like more times to bring the students’ stories into our learning community, from the pre-work they did prior to class. If I were going to do that, I would need a streamlined way of determining, in advance, if I had the person’s permission to share their example. When I have done things like that in the past, I would either ask via email, or one-on-one – just prior to the start of class. These days, I would need something more automated, perhaps by asking within the quiz (a question that the “right” answer could be either yes or no, potentially).

What about you? What's working for you with how you're structuring your synchronous class sessions? What challenges are you experiencing? 

Filed Under: Teaching

How Do You Make Zoom Breakout Rooms Less Boring?

By Bonni Stachowiak | October 2, 2020 | 6 Comments | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

 

How Do You Make Zoom Breakout Rooms Less Boring?

This article is part of the guide Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak. on EdSurge. It is reposted on Teaching in Higher Ed with permission. It is the latest installment of the Toward Better Teaching advice column. You can pose a question for a future column here.


A conversation broke out on Twitter last week. How do you make Zoom breakout groups less boring? Robin DeRosa, director of Plymouth State University’s Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative, posed the question and committed to sharing her findings via a presentation soon.

My first recommendation was to keep the breakout room time-frames short. If we allocate too much time, some groups will be done with the exercise with lots of time left, which can lead to social awkwardness. My preference is to have a few, shorter breakouts instead of one long one.

The second recommendation I had was around making the students’ work more visible when they are in the breakout rooms—through the use of an editable, shared document of some kind. I have seen a number of faculty recommend this approach in the past, but it has been most visible to me, lately, in Dan Levy’s “Teaching Effectively with Zoom.”

Levy teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and his book offers a resource packed with practical ways to facilitate student interaction, to be engaging as a presenter, and to combine synchronous and asynchronous online material. Levy writes of his aspirations in releasing the book and its associated online resources:

“Whether you are new to online learning or a veteran, I hope you will find something of value in the book. If you are new to teaching online, my hope is that you will find a few ideas, try them out, and then experiment with additional ideas later in your journey. I also hope that this book will help you focus on what is important and provide a roadmap in your efforts to learn how to teach online. Hint: Spending 15 hours arranging monitors on your desk, wondering how to set up the various Zoom windows, and experimenting where to put your microphone is not an efficient use of your time. I learned this the hard way! If you are an online teaching veteran, I hope that some of the meta-advice here will be helpful and that you will pick up a few tips to improve your already well-developed practices.”

One of the people engaging with us on Twitter asked me a follow up question in response to my second recommendation about making students work more visible:


“How do you give them a link to the Google document where they share answers? I’m not really clear on how that would work.”


We first need to identify a good activity to have students do in breakout sessions. Do we want them to discuss their responses to three questions about what was just shared? Are we asking them to predict what they think will happen in a given scenario? Is this a good time for them to practice solving a problem using a specific model we have shown for them a couple of times now?

At a recent faculty gathering at my university, I had our faculty read an article by James M. Lang offering a guide to how to teach a first day of class. He has four key areas of focus: curiosity, community, learning and expectations. I planned to have four breakout groups discuss these recommendations and record what else they would add to the list of ideas.

Then, it is time to set up a shared document for each group to use to make their collaboration visible. Levy recommends using Google Docs or Google Slides, because of their ease of use and ability to create a public link that does not require contributors to log into Google while typing right into the document.

Once the document is set the way you want it, go to Share-Get link and change the setting to allow anyone with the link to edit the file. As soon as I provided the link, people clicked on it in the Zoom chat box and could instantly type into the shared file.

Share Google link with students

Levy emphasizes the importance of having a title slide with instructions for students on what they are expected to do in the breakout groups. On the book’s website, he offers these sample slides to show you how you might approach giving instructions and providing separate slides for each breakout group to discuss the various topics.

When working with our faculty, I thought I would be all fancy-pants and skip the part about having a slide devoted to instructions. Then, I promptly proceeded to send them into the breakout rooms without ever telling them what group they were in and where in the Google Slides they would find their group’s topic. I am not even sure I gave them a time frame, though at this point I have tried to put it a bit out of my mind. Let’s just say that Levy is right to stress having a slide for breakout room instructions.

Once students are in the shared document, you can see icons representing them on the screen. Since they aren’t required to login with Google, they are assigned different fictitious identities in place of their real ones. I always find this part amusing, as names like the following come up in rapid succession when you sent them over to the collaborative document: Anonymous hedgehog, anonymous tiger, anonymous giraffe, etc.

Anonymous person typing in shared document

As individuals navigate within your slide deck, you can see their fictitious identities appear hovering below the thumbnail of the slide they are viewing. Using this approach, you are able to see what is emerging from all the groups’ collaboration in one place. That gives the instructor more visibility into what groups are working on than might be possible for you to observe in a face-to-face class.

screen shot
Animal icons showing up on the slides to which each person has navigated.

As the exercise concludes, you now have an artifact representing the groups’ collaboration. Students can also save the file to contribute to their own collection of notes for the class. I did a version of Levy’s recommendation this week in my class, though I had a separate slide for each student.

It is a relatively small class, so going into breakout rooms seemed a bit much for this particular activity. There are so many variations to this technique, though, that I recommend starting with something similar to what Levy suggests (as well as being sure you have an instructions slide).

Episode 324 of my Teaching in Higher Ed podcast spotlight’s Levy’s Teaching Effectively with Zoom. I also highly recommend visiting the Teaching Effectively with Zoom website to discover more resources.

Filed Under: Educational Technology

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Curation?

By Bonni Stachowiak | September 23, 2020 | 1 Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Curation: Is there such a thing as too much?

This article is part of the guide Sustaining Higher Education in the Coronavirus Crisis. on EdSurge and is reposted here with permission.


Dear Bonni,

I have heard you recommend that we think more about being content curators, instead of creators. I am excited about the possibilities. Do you have a recommendation for how much should be curated in online classes vs. how much should be original and created by the instructor? In other words, is there such a thing as too much curation of existing content?

—New to online teaching and thinking like a curator


As universities around the world attempted to move in-person classes into the online environment at the start of the pandemic, faculty quickly became overwhelmed at all the tasks that needed to be done. One mistake all too many make is to think that we have to create all the content for our online courses when there is an abundance of material already available.

Content creation takes considerable time and resources. While I typically post an informal video each week in my classes (recorded the day prior to the start of the week), I do a tremendous amount of curation for the majority of the class content—meaning I’m recommending articles, podcasts, videos and sites elsewhere on the internet. Here are just three examples of how professors might curate podcast episodes to use in different disciplines.

  1. I teach business classes, and I find the Planet Money podcast to offer engaging episodes that heighten the listener’s curiosity. Episode 216: How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil recounts a currency crisis the country experienced where the value of items fluctuated radically on a daily basis. The government brought in four economists to advise them on how to solve the problem. I usually have students share how they think Brazil resolved the lack of confidence in the country’s currency and get the students thinking about the challenges involved.
  2. Podcasts extend well beyond the business realm. The producers of RadioLab state that the show’s mission is to explore a strange world. These masterful storytellers have taught me so much about science over the years, as well as encouraged me to have more of a childlike curiosity coming into a topic I know less about. The episode titled Patient Zero begins with the story of Typhoid Mary and explores other public health crises, such as AIDs. This is just one of many of RadioLab’s rich podcast catalog that would apply in nursing, anthropology, public health and other programs.
  3. The humanities also have a deep well to draw from in podcast back-catalogs. NPR’s More Perfect podcast began by exploring interesting supreme court cases and their relevance today. Then, the show launched into an incredible project. They partnered with an eclectic set of musicians to produce an album with songs written for the 27 amendments to the U.S. constitution. The “liner notes” were the podcast episodes, where they shared the history of each amendment’s formation, as well as music from More Perfect: The Album. Dolly Parton belts out about the 19th amendment: “We had to fight for womens’ rights; They said we couldn’t vote.” Flor de Toloache, an all-female mariachi band, sings in English and Spanish about the 2nd amendment. The entire podcast series and the accompanying album would be excellent content in law schools, history courses and political science seminars.

You asked if I thought there was such a thing as too much content creation for someone teaching a class, and you may already be predicting my answer: No. The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning, not “deliver” content. So I like to think of myself as co-designing experiences—much of which will draw inspiration from sources outside of my own creative capabilities.

The first step to becoming a content curator is to use a digital bookmarking service. I like Pinboard.in, but there are plenty of options out there. Once I find information that may relate to one of my classes, I save it to my bookmarks and enter tags to help me retrieve the information later on. The Planet Money episode I mentioned earlier about the Brazilian currency crisis got tagged with: #economics (topic), #BUSN114 (a class with at least one learning outcome related to the topic of the episode), #audio (format), and #planetmoney.

Once you build up different types of content (videos, articles, podcasts, exercises, activities, case studies and so on), you can start bringing them into your classes. I like to ask myself what I want students to do with whatever content I am bringing into the class. Do I want them to reflect on what they heard? Differentiate between two things (perhaps the United States’ price stability versus Brazil’s at that time)? Use the concepts learned in a different context? My role as a teacher becomes one of a translator. How do I help students take what was shared in the content and apply it in some way?

Well before COVID-19 entered the world, I was doing extensive curating on a daily basis. Some of what I save has nothing to do with teaching. Our family just got a bread machine, so there are a lot of recipes being saved these days. I enjoy learning about politics, so there are many bookmarks saved on that topic even though I don’t directly teach it. When it comes to my teaching, however, I always have a set of resources that I can search for by type of content, topic, person and class number.

There’s no such thing as too much content curation, as far as I am concerned. We just need to take it to the next step and determine how to facilitate learning from those wonderful resources we have collected.

Filed Under: Personal knowledge mastery

Care, Voices, Screen Time, and Zoom Settings

By Bonni Stachowiak | September 16, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Computer screen with blog title

I have been treasuring the opportunity to read about other educators’ lives during this time, as they share with such rawness and candor. It helps to feel less alone.

Here are just some of the posts that have touched my heart and ignited my imagination in some way.

Care Is a Practice; Care is Pedagogical, by Jesse Stommel

Jesse shares about his Mom’s health challenges that drew their family to move across the country and their daughter’s early understandings of the permanence of death. He also describes the ways in which the Open Online Office Hours have brought educators from around the world together in solidarity.

During one of the office hours sessions, they learned that Jesse's husband was being laid off, news which is normally delivered in person, but came via a webcam this time. Finally, he recommends we carefully read our institutions reopening plans and attempt to discern the values being expressed and enacted.

Voices First, Faces Second: Beyond the Tweet, by Maha Bali

I used to require my students to have their camera on during classes. This was in the context of teaching doctoral classes and I packed all kinds of privilege in my choice to establish those rules. Now, I can see things in a lot more nuanced of a way, though I always allow students to make that choice for themselves.

Maha reveals her own desire to be able to see the students she is teaching, but she also knows some of the reasons they may prefer leaving their cameras off. She describes other approaches we can use to have those more human connections beyond a stringent requirement. She asserts that we should first center students' voices, then attempt to get to see their faces. “Voices first, faces second.”

Flipping the Screen Time Conversation into a Meaningful Activity Exploration, by Maha Bali

Dave and I used to have very different approaches to our kids’ screen time than we do now. It was a maximum of one hour per day, with some days not having any time in front of screens at all. Now? Let’s just say they are engaging in school remotely right now – and have what we call “choice time” around here in the afternoons, which usually results in playing Minecraft. A lot of Minecraft.

Maha changed the conversation for me around screen time by thinking through it in the context of what is being done with those screens. Our kids have had the opportunity to play Minecraft with Maha’s daughter (“O”) probably ten times by now. We were able to connect them right as “O” was just starting Minecraft. At first, I was concerned about the many cultural differences I knew would pop up in there. But Maha’s humor and direct communication style made me less afraid and more excited about the tremendous opportunities before us all.

I think about context pretty much every day of my life.

We create way too many dichotomous choices in our lives and the lives of others. Context seems to always be the road toward better-discerned decisions and greater opportunities for connections with people who view things differently than we do.

Video: Recommended Zoom Settings, by Teddy Svornos

I almost didn’t watch this video, thinking that I have settings pretty figured out on Zoom and so do my students. However, I was in for a treat. In two minutes, Teddy shares how he recommends his students set up their Zoom settings within the context of using a smallish laptop so that they can actively learn while participating in class.

Here’s a taste of what he recommends, but I totally think it is better to watch it.

  • “Keep video on, if your circumstances allow.”
  • “Each class revolves around a handout” (and how to not have it take over your entire screen, when he is sharing it)
  • Make these non-full screen settings permanently, in settings
  • Use gallery view, while he is sharing the handout, and side-by-side mode (change the size of that portion of the window, using the slider bar)
  • Merge to meeting window – chat and/or participants (only works if you’re not in full screen, which I didn’t realize)
  • Change to speaker view when he has a camera on his whiteboard

I recommend you subscribe to Teddy’s Tech Notes in your RSS reader of choice, as he is excellent at providing guidance on teaching, educational technology, and productivity.

If you aren’t yet using an RSS reader/aggregator, check out Inoreader. Laura Gibbs is the person who first told me about Inoreader. She has this post from 2015, which still reads as very relevant (in terms of Inoreader tips) today, about how she organizes things in Inoreader. I use folders, subscribe to all “email newsletters” now via Inoreader, so they come into my RSS reader vs into my email, and read/unread.

These are just a few articles (and one video) that have stood out to me in recent weeks. I'm grateful for the generous ways educators are acting in solidarity with one another during this awful time. I can see so much life and beauty amidst the pain and devastation. 

Filed Under: Resources

What Homeschooling During COVID-19 Taught Me About My College Teaching

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 1, 2020 | 1 Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

homeschooling graphic

This article is part of the EdSurge guide Sustaining Higher Education in the Coronavirus Crisis and is reposted here with permission.


While I have always wanted to be a parent, I've never wanted to homeschool my kids. At the university where I teach, a number of our students come from a homeschooling environment. This educational context, so different from my own growing up, has always intrigued me. As students would share their experiences, I often realized that the home schools in my imagination were vastly different from what these young people described.

My husband, Dave, and I have now been thrust into the role of teachers for our two kids—one in kindergarten and the other in second grade—for the past couple of months. Their actual teachers are amazing. They have been working incredibly hard to make the switch to an online environment. The best thing about the experience for us has been getting to overhear their teachers referring to our kids by name and addressing their unique challenges and passions.

What has been less fun has been trying to come up with a set of systems that work for us. As we near the end date of this school year, I have been reflecting on the lessons that these experiences can provide for how to improve my own teaching going forward.

Less Is More

I don’t like to admit this, but at first in the homeschooling experience, I was too concerned about what the kids’ teachers would think about us, as parents. I wanted to ensure that each of the boxes got checked on the kids’ schoolwork, including the optional ones for music, the library and social/emotional content. The pressure to perform to some imagined level concerned me on a daily basis.

Finally, I reached a place where there just wasn’t any room to reflect on this as much anymore. I’m on our university’s COVID-19 leadership team, which means I’m in daily meetings and making recommendations to the executive team regularly. This role also has me reading around 20 articles a day and attempting to synthesize what I learned in some meaningful way. Additionally, I am responsible for leading our faculty development team and teaching classes of my own. Increasingly, the pressures of my work overshadowed my desire to ‘perform’ as an excellent homeschooling teacher.

The kids’ teachers did a good job of telling us what assignments or activities were most important, from their perspective. There are a couple of apps that gear the lessons to the kids’ knowledge and skills and prescribe interactive content based on their performance. I eventually got to the point where I would prioritize those activities over others. And I grew to understand that If we didn’t get to everything, it wasn’t going to cause irreparable harm to the kids’ learning.

As soon as I changed my perspective on quality over quantity, everything shifted. If the kids asked if they could go outside, my answer was always yes. I would take a lawn chair out front and enjoy grading in the shade of one of our trees. The kids were always able to focus more once we returned inside for more of the formal learning. Every Thursday, we have decided as a family to do themed school days. Their most recent theme was Minecraft day. Dave, my husband, shared that when the kids asked if they could record a Minecraft podcast that morning, he quickly agreed, even though that wasn’t anywhere on the calendar. He said to me later, “I threw out the planned curriculum the moment I saw how excited they were to create something together.”

This less-is-more approach has been cascading into my teaching more in recent years. I taught a business ethics course this semester in which I had honed the learning outcomes down into the most essential ones. This meant that when the pandemic struck, the current events were able to flow much more regularly into our class discussions. I modified the final assignment to be a manifesto. The ways in which students synthesized their learning was phenomenal. Many of them mentioned feeling equipped to continue learning about what they had discovered in the class much more than in other courses they have taken.

One of the students who just wrapped up my business ethics class, Hannah Clark, really exemplified these opportunities for deeper learning. Hannah and I discovered our shared love for the television show The Good Place during the first week of class. Each time I would see her after our initial meeting, I would ask if she had seen the latest episode, and we would talk about our favorite plot developments and characters. In Hannah’s manifesto project, she shared about five people she learned about in class who influenced her. Number one on her list was Immanuel Kant, who showed up both in our class content and in The Good Place TV show. Hannah was able to take what she was learning in the class into her entertainment choices, her work and her life. She regularly shared memes with me during the semester that related to the topics from our class, as well as articles and even songs.

It’s Harder Than It Looks to Avoid Transactional Approaches

When it comes to homeschooling, our kids want more than anything else to play Minecraft, Mario Kart or to watch television. When they were at their normal school, “choice time” meant they could choose from a number of activities within their classrooms. Their options always seemed to fit into something school-related. At home, it translates one hundred percent of the time to “screen time.”

I find myself slipping into transactional thinking on a regular basis throughout the day. “Once you finish your 30-minutes of iReady Reading, then you can take a break for a bit.” “Watch the video from your teacher and then come back and show me what you practiced. Then you can do something else for a while.” My ultimate desire is for them to be enjoying learning for learning’s sake. We most often get there these days on things that have nothing to do with school.

Most of us who teach yearn to have students who engage in the class well beyond the point of earning grades and checking boxes. Proponents of the ungrading approach argue that they can get there much more effectively because they remove grades from the equation all together. Jesse Stommel, digital learning fellow and senior lecturer of Digital Studies at University of Mary Washington, shares his rationale for ungrading on his blog:

“In short, the act of grading does harm to students and causes teachers unnecessary stress. Research shows grades don’t help learning and actually distract from other feedback/assessment.”

Other proponents of ungrading are make a case that grades can be, in many ways, arbitrary. The cutoff between a B and a B-, for example, seems so subjective, they assert. In her book, The New Education, Cathy Davidson describes how people in the meatpacking industry found that letter grades didn’t even adequately satisfy their needs to differentiate one cut from another, let alone trying to have grades measure something as complex as humans’ learning. While I haven’t fully adopted an ungrading approach in my teaching, I do often create assignments in which students either met the criteria, or they didn’t (known as specifications grading). This approach tends to contribute to less transactional relationships between me and my students, though I know there is still room for me to grow in this area.

Structure Matters

The most frustrating part of homeschooling for me is how hard it is to organize everything. The teachers have done a good job sending PDF documents that lay out most of the kids’ school activities. However, each of the sites they are directed to navigate to have separate logins and passwords. Our firewall that is intended to protect against any of us inadvertently visiting inappropriate sites often generates false positives for the kids’ schoolwork. This translates to them not being able to view the web pages where assignments are stored.

The school my kids attend stresses the importance of the social-emotional growth, so it sets up one-on-one meetings between kids on a weekly basis. After some parents expressed concerns about their kids spending too much time on screens, the school added some screen-free exercises to its website, which parents can print out to let kids complete them by hand.

My husband and I both work remotely, and we trade off leading remote schooling and focusing on our own job duties. So we try to set up a schedule for the kids so that they can move through a few school tasks at a time without us needing to guide them. We do our best to schedule related tasks together in the hopes that they can move from one activity to the next without us always needing to stop what we are working on to guide them. Our attempts work less than 20 percent of the time.

That means that Dave and my professional work contains constant interruptions. At least we have each other working from home, which allows us to rotate homeschool teacher duty between each other. We keep trying to tweak what we are doing to provide for less of a need for radical context shifting. I also realize part of this is the very nature of six-year-olds and eight-year-olds. Try not to laugh at me too much here.

Reflecting on the challenges my kids face in their remote schooling, I realize the students in the university classes I teach face similar challenges. The learning management system (LMS) I use allows the instructor to see the course from a student’s view. And I used to spend a great deal of time considering how to set up pages, assignments and other content from within my course, only to discover that the vast majority of students never saw the fruits of my labor. Instead, they looked at the centralized due dates from all of their courses, consolidated on the main login page. They rarely clicked sequentially through the items the way I had constructed them. I found it was more helpful to think about the cadence of due dates and breaking larger assignments into smaller tasks whenever possible.

I have also learned to think carefully about how I label each assignment in the LMS. The goal is to indicate whether what I am posting is something they should take a look at, or something that requires some kind of action on their part. I use names like: “SUBMIT: Paper” and “READ: Chapter 4,” in an attempt to make it was clear as possible what is required.

My goal is to have as much contained within the LMS as possible, too. Most LMSs can be set up to integrate with external tools, making it easy to make use of preferred educational technologies without students having to remember another login and learn an entirely different system. Quizlet, a tool for creating digital flashcards, is an example of an external tool that is also available within our LMS. Students never have to leave the LMS to review the flashcards for our class, or to play the associated review games.

Minecraft shirts - brother and sister

I mentioned our kids’ love of Minecraft and how that’s often the reward at the end of their time spent on schoolwork. This week, on the themed Minecraft day, our son decided to loan his sister a Minecraft shirt so she could better celebrate the day with him. They read Minecraft books and played a Minecraft tag game outside. When it came time to do his assigned poetry lesson, he decided to write it on—you guessed it—Minecraft. I share his poem, below, with his permission.

Minecraft day
At school
I loan
My sister
Creeper
Shirt
For Minecraft day
The best
Day.

It has been quite an experience navigating homeschooling along with helping our entire university transition to remote teaching. It has caused me to reflect on much about teaching and learning these past few months. I have felt like a failure some of the time. In other cases, I have been elated at catching glimpses of the power of learning—and its messiness.

Filed Under: Teaching

Three Things I’m Curious About

By Bonni Stachowiak | February 23, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Cat looking into a window

I recently picked up Josh Eyler’s How Humans Learn, again, to prepare for a talk I gave this past week at Tarleton State University for their Center for Instructional Innovation. It did not disappoint. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I highly suggest you pick up a copy. Also, my thanks goes out to all the people I met at Tarleton State University this week. The stories you shared about how Teaching in Higher Ed has impacted your teaching were edifying to me and I'm honored to have had the opportunity to come to visit and share about curiosity with you in person at the conference. 

With curiosity on my mind in recent weeks, I decided to blog about things that have come up that sparked my interest and made me want to learn more. Below, you will hear about a new feature in Canva that I am enjoying experimenting with… You will also discover the ways I am pursuing habits more than goals these days. Finally, I will share about my exploration of Notion – a website that seeks to be an all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, calendars, and more.

Incorporating Background Video in a Slide Deck

The theme of the talk was on curiosity and I found this short video clip of a cat looking around in a slightly inquisitive way to use as one of the slides. Canva must have recently added stock video to their service, which got me to thinking about how to experiment with it for this talk. I like that the cat isn’t doing anything too dramatic, or I think it could be too much of a drag on people’s cognitive load.

Then, I realized that it probably wasn’t going to work for me, since I would likely be working from Glisser and the video looked like it was only playable if I presented the slide deck from within Canva. That’s when things got truly exciting.

Cat looking curious

I discovered that there’s a way to export the video as a .mp4 (video file), which I will be able to add to YouTube, in order to have it play within Glisser. It says that it is still in beta, but it worked perfectly for me when I tried it.

Habits vs Goals

Many of the productivity experts I follow have been asserting that habits are far greater than goals. Episode 90 of the Focused podcast, for example, was titled Habits > Goals and looked at how establishing habits can help us achieve our goals better than just having identified them and trying to take individual steps toward them.

I continue to love the Full Focus Planner from Michael Hyatt. It has a section dedicated to two types of goals. Achievement goals are the kinds we are used to hearing about. Write a book. Hire a new faculty member. Finish a promotion and tenure portfolio.

Habit goals are less-often discussed. I already had an achievement goal that I keep track of on Goodreads. I was able to read 24 books during 2019, but in the end, it was unclear to me if I was actually going to be able to achieve the goal. I barely made it. However, for 2020, I have emphasized a habit goal related to reading and am going to fly past that 24 books count by the end of March, it’s looking like…

Goodreads reading challenge

The habit I am emphasizing is taking my Kindle to bed to do my nightly reading, instead of using the iPad. My goal is to do that at least four nights per week. However, it has been so enjoyable that I find I am practicing the new habit a lot more often than that.

The app I’m using to track the habits I have established for 2020 is called Streaks. It automatically tracks my goal of closing my rings on my Apple Watch. It is also able to track a four-day-a-week goal, like my Kindle vs iPad one. And a whole bunch of other types of habit goals.

Two books related to this curiosity of mine that I purchased but haven’t quite started reading are:

  • Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
  • Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, by James Clear

I know that many of you who are reading these words have read them, as they come highly recommended. I am looking forward to discovering even further how habits can help me achieve my goals. I am also prepared to learn a thing or two about the importance of rest and how to get more of it in my life. 

Notion

Finally, I have been playing around with Notion quite a bit. The first time I was able to use Notion was when I copied Mike Caufield’s Check, Please! Starter Course over to my new Notion account. In case you’re interested in his course, too, here’s a description of it:

“In this course, we show you how to fact and source-check in five easy lessons, taking about 30 minutes apiece. The entire online curriculum is two and a half to three hours and is suitable homework for the first week of a college-level module on disinformation or online information literacy, or the first few weeks of a course if assigned with other discipline-focused homework.”

Mike Caulfield made it such that people can copy it over to our own Notion accounts and customize it to meet our individual needs. He just asks that any instances of it link back to his original course, so people are able to find their way back to where it all started.

Notion screenshot sample

The more I kept hearing people talk about Notion, the more I thought it might be a good idea to check it out for myself. I started to put some workflows up there to teach people how to edit stuff on my departmental website. It is really easy to learn and can be used in a myriad of ways.

Here’s an example from Thomas Frank on YouTube how he uses Notion to track all of the production steps for his online videos. And below are a few more Notion resources:

  • 23 Notion Tips, Hacks & Tricks
  • Top 15 Notion Tips for Beginners
  • A Beginner’s Guide to Notion

Dave and I are starting to talk about putting the workflows for our respective podcasts on Notion and seeing what else it can do for us.

Your Turn

What has ignited your curiosity in recent weeks?

Filed Under: Resources

How to Keep Class Sessions from Running Short (Or Going Too Long)

By Bonni Stachowiak | February 17, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Person looking at Apple Watch display

This article on How to Keep Class Sessions from Running Short (Or Going Too Long) was originally posted on the EdSurge website and is reposted here with permission. It is part of the guide Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak. You can pose a question for a future column here.


Dear Bonni,

How can I design my class sessions to fit the available time? I never see this discussed in resources for effective teaching, but it has been a big challenge for me for many years. I'm always concerned about having too much or too little material.

With any interactive or active form of learning, so much of how a class goes depends on the students. So it's not like presenting a speech where you are in complete control of the time. Any error causes problems that ripple through the semester, especially when I'm teaching multiple sections that need to stay in sync. And any change in the course coverage or how I construct the classes makes prior years' experience largely irrelevant.

—Kevin Werbach, professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania


The fears about not having enough material to fill a class, or in getting behind with what you planned, are common. Peter Newbury, director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at University of British Columbia Okanagan, recalls such a time for him.

“A memorable teaching experience for me was the day I ‘lost control.’ The students were so engaged in discussions, I had no authority. It was awkward. And awesome. In hindsight, I created a safe environment, posed good questions, and gave them agency. I prepared to do nothing.”

Below are five approaches to use regarding the time-based aspects of class planning. I recommend making use of a timer, having an established end in mind for each class session, erring on the side of student engagement versus “covering the material,” having plans for extending the learning if activities are shorter than planned and leaving room for metacognition, meaning, leave time to talk about the learning process.

Begin with the End in Mind

Before we get to the details about what will be explored in a given class session, it is time to stay broad. The leadership author and speaker Stephen R. Covey always stressed the importance of beginning with the end in mind. In his case, his advice helps us to formulate personal mission and vision statements. In the case of teaching, the axiom helps us to be intentional about the most important things learners will walk away with as a class finishes.

In the book What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain describes how sustaining students’ attention helps to facilitate learning. He describes how a longitudinal study explored the ways in which expert teachers keep their focus narrow. Bain writes, “Teachers succeed in grabbing students’ attention by beginning a lecture with a provocative question or problem that raises issues in ways that students had never thought about before, or by using stimulating case studies or goal-based scenarios.”

In an hour-long class, I seek a way to gain the students’ attention in the beginning. Can I make them laugh? Feel some other kind of emotion? Draw them into a mystery we will be unraveling for the rest of the class?

When we begin with the end in mind in our teaching, our class planning becomes more flexible. We have a core question to explore, or a goal to pursue. The emphasis becomes on putting on different lenses in viewing the same set of ideas. What does this concept look like in different contexts? Where might there be confusion on the students’ part?

Use a Timer

There are many good reasons to use a timer while teaching, and one is simply maintaining awareness. When I am teaching a class for the first couple of times, I print out a copy of my slide deck with nine slides per page. I write on the printout how much time I plan to take for each section of content and for each interactive exercise. Then, I set a timer on my Apple Watch, which gives me nudges throughout the class to keep me on track of when I need to be moving on.

Of course, an Apple Watch is not required for this purpose. There are plenty of smartphone apps that work just fine. Microsoft PowerPoint has a timer built into the presenter’s view. There are also physical time clocks that some faculty like to have separate and apart from their computer setup.

Another reason to keep a timer handy during class is to facilitate exercises with students. I sometimes use a timer that has numbers large enough for students to see. I give them periodic reminders regarding how much time is left in the exercise and visit with those groups that have finished early. I ask them if they had any surprises as they went through the exercises, and how confident they are in their answers.

Err on the Side of Engagement

Whenever I hear faculty say, “I am just having so much trouble covering all of the material in this class,” I know that it is quite likely that they are spending an overabundance of time strictly lecturing and not enough time assessing the students’ understanding and retention of the learning.

In an hour-long class, I seek a way to gain the students’ attention in the beginning. Can I make them laugh? Feel some other kind of emotion? Draw them into a mystery we will be unraveling for the rest of the class?

Then, I often do something to get them talking and potentially moving around the class. Sticky notes are a favorite way of mine to accomplish both of these aims at once. I describe more ways of using sticky notes in teaching over on my blog, if you’re interested. I then might lecture for around 15 to 20 minutes. But throughout that time, I am asking the students for examples and posing other questions to them about how what we are talking about fits with prior learning from past weeks. The last third of the class is spent getting students talking with each other, reinforcing what they’ve learned, and seeing where there might be misunderstandings.

One resource I have found particularly useful in dissecting the questions around what topics need to be covered comes from Maria Anderson, CEO and Cofounder of Coursetune. She has proposed what she calls a learning lens for the digital age: ESIL. As we work through examining our goals for a given course, we can ask ourselves how deep the students’ learning needs to be around a given concept. Do they just need to know that it exists (E)? Or should they be able to perform a given task or provide an answer with some support (S)? Perhaps the learners need to be able to demonstrate something independently (I), or even have a deeper understanding of the concept that will persist for a lifetime (L). The ESIL lens can be useful when thinking through how much time to spend on each part of a class session.

Determine a Way to Extend the Learning

Even if we are making use of active-learning approaches, the interactive exercises we plan can take less time than we planned. Judith Dutill, a communication educator and instructional designer, recalls a time when a lesson she had planned about words and meaning went far faster than she had anticipated. She had brought in words from different decades and had the students match the word to the decade of the dictionary entry.

“We flew through it,” Dutill admits. She then had them get into groups and asked them to create a list of dictionary entries that could be added. In her case, she did this exercise more on an impromptu basis. However, now she has it to use the next time she teaches the class, if the same thing happens.

When I am teaching foundational courses with terms that are likely new to students, I tend to make use of Quizlet, a flashcards app. Quizlet has a test feature that generates a collection of matching, true/false, and fill in the blank questions. I will often have print outs of a couple of the tests from Quizlet, for when a quick opportunity for review emerges. I also highly recommend the Quizlet Live feature, which I have written about previously on my blog. I have only played Quizlet Live games with groups of up to 40. However, the makers of Quizlet say that they have seen it played with groups as big as 150 people.

Leave Time for Metacognition

Instead of just covering material, we need to get our students to be thinking about their learning. Metacognition is thinking about our thinking. As we have our students engage in metacognition, they are more readily able to take what they have learned and apply it in different contexts. As a result, they are able to determine their strengths and weaknesses and use strategies to figure out how to adapt their learning strategies accordingly.

Having students share the muddiest, or most confusing, point at the end of a class is an opportunity for metacognition. So is having students keep reflective journals to gauge their own learning.

The author of Creating Wicked Students, Paul Hanstedt, reminds us of the importance of structuring opportunities for reflection and metacognition. He suggests that we ask our students what seems most important to them from what was addressed in class. Among the specific prompts Hanstedt proposes: “What did you struggle with and why? How does this connect to X, Y, or Z? How would you explain this to someone not in this field?”

I recently taught my first class of the semester. It was a three-hour class, which gave me plenty of time to work through a number of interactive exercises to grow the students’ curiosity. The good news is that the students were far more vocal than I am accustomed to having undergraduates be that early in the semester. I did an exercise with sticky notes and then picked a couple of students to go stand next to each sign and recap the themes that emerged. It all went well.

However, I ran out of time to do the case study I had planned. Since I am not teaching multiple sections of the class, it easy to decide to let the class out about 15 minutes early, leaving time for a handful of the students to stay back to share some connection they had made during our time together.

One of them mentioned growing up in the same town I did – and noting how much that place reminds him of his grandmother, who has since passed away. Another mentioned his love of podcasts and asked if I had any other recommendations for him, beyond the ones I mentioned in class. I asked another young woman to stay after a bit, so I could thank her for the contributions she made during class and saying how much I was looking forward to getting to know her this semester.

If I had been teaching a class session that was closer to an hour in length, it would have been more important to use a timer and to keep things more structured during the interactive exercises.

We want to be able to leave enough room in our teaching for what might emerge, but without leaving behind the essential opportunities for our students to practice what they are learning.

Photo: Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Filed Under: Teaching

Why I Broke My Self-Imposed Open-Textbook Writing Ban

By Bonni Stachowiak | February 7, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

stack of books

I told Dave that I was done with open textbooks. Well, at least the part of my experience with them that means I work with a group of 15-20 educational leadership doctoral students to write one in an eight week period.

When Robin DeRosa had been on Teaching in Higher Ed (episode 183), she shared about her student’s open textbook. Not to diminish the tremendous effort that it takes her to continue the work on it, but they build upon past students’ contributions over time. They haven’t written a new book each time.

I have been completely unsuccessful at convincing any of the cohorts I have worked with to go about revising and adding to the prior cohort’s books. Each group had a vision for something completely different. When I left our house to teach that Saturday morning, I mentioned to Dave that things were going to be different this term. Well, they are now definitely different.

Just not in the ways that I expected.

Cohort 11 is writing a book during our eight-week class. Tessa had a fantastic idea to take the features that you would typically find in an instapot and to create a book of essays that illustrated leadership lessons using those functions. For example, the instapot has a pressure cooker setting. Most of us have had to lead under pressure and could easily write 40 essays on the topic without running out of ideas.

The book will have leadership essays in it that all have some kind of an instapot reference. The conclusion of each chapter will contain a recap entitled: Leadership Recipe, along with an instapot recipe.

My Instapot Recipes on Pinterest

Two of the project leads from prior cohorts came on Teaching in Higher Ed (episode 225) to share about their experiences writing a book with their colleagues. Our conversation reveals some of the challenges we experienced. Yet, they each said they would do it all over again, given the choice. They also mentioned some of the digital tools that we used in creating the books.

Google docs

Google Team Drives

Pressbooks

Zoom

Canva

Why did I decide to go against my self-imposed prohibition against writing a book in eight weeks?

There are two reasons, really. First, Tessa’s vision for the book was compelling. She was ready to dive in and the rest of the cohort was, as well. Second, I removed another major assignment in the class that I predicted would enable us to have adequate time to see their ideas become reality.Book cover: Nourishing leadership

I am continually reminded of how less can be so much more in teaching. The learning deepens when we stop trying to cram so much into our classes.

We had our second synchronous video conference session the other evening. The group has been collaborating using Google docs and some members of the cohort were confused how to find things and also how to provide and receive feedback on their writing.

Immediately, Robert started reorganizing the documents so they were easier to find. We could all see him doing it via Zoom as he revamped everything. Tessa brought up Google drive and showed people how to create a new document, upload a document, and to make suggested edits.

I had removed a major assignment, which freed up the time to really dive even more into the book project. The students shared how their confidence was building using the tools they are using for their personal knowledge management (PLT) systems.

There has been plenty of time for self-directed and cohort-directed learning to occur. I made some book cover ideas in Canva and some of the people on the session got to experiment a bit with using Canva. Robert found some recipe card graphics and showed everyone how they could be placed in PowerPoint. He showed how to add text boxes over the top of where the recipe instructions and ingredients would go. The rest of the cohort was passionate about which recipe card design to select and how to display them within the book.

I enjoyed seeing what a high-performing team Cohort 11 is… At one point, Annette asked Silvia if she wanted to chime in. Silvia had been awfully quiet and Annette wanted to be sure everything was ok. It turned out that her screen name in Zoom had been inadvertently set to “user”. She had been chatting things up in the chatbox, but none of us realized that she was the face behind the person named “user”.

It was apparent, too, that they haven't allowed themselves to fall into bad habits of always going with the first idea that someone mentions. Teresa is adept at sharing her perspectives, even if they are different from what others have had to share. They all use humor well and collaborate tremendously well together.

You may not decide to write a book during one of your classes and I totally understand that sentiment. However, let me challenge you to take a different lesson away from this post. Take a look at your classes and find ways to do less. You may just find there's a whole lot more learning waiting on the other side. And some delectable recipes, too.

 

Filed Under: Teaching

Let’s Take This Show on the Road: All the Way to Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020

By Bonni Stachowiak | February 1, 2020 | 2 Comments | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Aerial photo of Denver, Colorado

For the first time in Teaching in Higher Ed history, we are taking the show on the road.

We have been invited to partner with Digital Pedagogy Lab at their new location in Denver, Colorado. Many of this year’s 2020 Lab faculty have also been guests on Teaching in Higher Ed.

That includes people like:

  • Robin DeRosa
  • Amy Collier
  • Bonnie Stewart
  • Kevin Gannon
  • Kris Shaffer

There are also plenty of individuals who have long been on my list of people I would love to interview for the podcast. What a tremendous opportunity to get to connect with individuals who have shaped my teaching in such powerful ways for all these years.

Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020 Graphic

Sean Michael Morris explains the formation of our partnership as follows:

“Because Digital Pedagogy Lab offers courses and conversations about similar topics and as the Lab has also featured many of the same speakers as Teaching in Higher Ed–we feel this partnership is a perfect fit, and will give Lab participants even more to enjoy.”

We will also be providing a lens into the event for those who are unable to attend in person. I am going to be experimenting a bit with audio storytelling and attempting to capture a less linear version of the DPL conversations than how the podcast interviews are typically structured. I also plan on holding more traditional conversations with some of the teachers and fellows.

Finally, I am very excited to announce that will be broadcasting Teaching in Higher Ed live from Digital Pedagogy Lab on July 28, 2020 at 4:30pm Mountain / 6:30pm Eastern. More information on the broadcast, once we have figured out what we are doing.

View Time/Date on World Time Buddy – and add to your calendar

Note: Anyone who is reading this with advice on what tools to use for live podcast recordings is encouraged to share your recommendations with us. We would appreciate your guidance, especially on the recording a podcast live part of this adventure.

As Sean Michael Morris shared on the DPL website:

“We believe this is an exciting partnership for everyone who attends or has wanted to attend Digital Pedagogy Lab. Stay tuned for more information about Teaching in Higher Ed at DPL 2020.”

We hope to see some of you in person at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020.

And by we, I do mean we. Dave and the kids will be there with me. Since this is the first time I'm attempting to do something like this, it will be nice to have some backup. The kids' podcasting skills aren't quite matched with Dave's, but no doubt they will keep us entertained.

Photo cred:  Cassie Gallegos on Unsplash

Filed Under: Resources

Daily Practice – Tools of the Trade

By Bonni Stachowiak | January 13, 2020 | 1 Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Tools

I was inspired by Bryan Alexander’s post on his Daily Practice: Tools of the Trade. If you aren't already familiar with Bryan, he is a higher education futurist who has quite an influence in our industry. He also wrote a kind post at the start of the new year about his recent visit on Teaching in Higher Ed:

Discussing the Future of Higher Ed with Bonni Stachowiak, A Podcaster Who Knows the Web

I enjoyed reading his appreciation for all the aspects of producing the show, such as taking the time creating show notes for each episode, transcripts, quote graphics, and then some. I had no idea that the transcript of his episode wound up being 17 pages. Amazing!

Back to Bryan's post about the tools he uses in his work. Here’s a treetop view of what I use to get my work done and facilitate other aspects of my life.

Writing

Two forms of writing require two different sets of tools:

  1. Longer-form writing (books, book chapters) – Microsoft Word. Despite all the bad-mouthing people do about Word, it is still the most fully-featured tool I know of for longer-form writing. A close second would be Scrivener on the Mac, but I just haven’t wanted to commit to the learning curve, since I know Microsoft Word like the back of my hand.
  2. Shorter-form writing (articles, blogs, etc.) – I often start writing in plain text using Ulysses. I write using a style called Markdown, which has text-based symbols to indicate where formatting belongs. 

Speaking

When I speak at a conference or am hired for a keynote or workshop, the following combination of tools helps me streamline the tasks – to free me up for the creative thinking end of things:

  1. Recent episodes, topics I present on, and how to get in touch – WordPress – Beaver Builder.
  2. List of all past and upcoming speaking engagements – WordPress, Beaver Builder, and a wonderful web designer. Naomi completely streamlined how I curate all my speaking resources.
  3. Cover slide in various sizes – Canva (pro version allows for magic resizing)
  4. Slide design – inspired regularly by Nancy Duarte, use a combination of Microsoft PowerPoint and Canva for slide designs
  5. Brainstorming and open loops for upcoming talks – Evernote
  6. Planned interaction (polling) for during talks – Glisser
  7. Resources page (sample) – WordPress page with Pretty Link (easier/shorter link for people to type in)
  8. Travel coordination – I’ve outlined my approaches on episode 261 with Dave Stachowiak and in a blog post.

Teaching

I had better be careful with this one, or I could write a few books on the topic. I’ll narrow myself down to the first nine tools of the trade that come to mind:

  1. PollEverywhere – One of my favorite tools for in-class retrieval practice. I poll students with questions that either have a correct answer, or ask for their perceptions/opinions. They answer on their smart phones. We get to interact far more than times when I lecture without some kind of approach like this. I typically have them be anonymous to invite even more participation.
  2. Quizlet Live – Once you have a set of flashcards on Quizlet – you can play a game in class with students where they have to collaborate together to come up with the right matches/answers. It is lively and engaging. Here’s a post where I talk about my experiences with Quizlet Live more.
  3. Canvas – This is the LMS we use at my institution. It is the best one I’ve ever used, coming from having used Blackboard (still do, sometimes), Moodle, and WebCT in the past. I like how easy it is to integrate other tools inside of Canvas. For example, if I want to connect Quizlet with Canvas, that’s something I can do without having to possess admin rights in Canvas. There are a lot of conversations happening regarding who owns student data within Canvas right now that are outside the scope of this list of tools.
  4. Canvas Studio – This service makes videos interactive, while still offering the “protection” that the walls of the LMS can provide. For example, if I want to add a YouTube video within studio, students can interact with me and with each other, without having to deal with all the messiness that online commenting invites. You can also upload your own videos and essentially have your own YouTube-like channel with videos you can use across the LMS (and beyond).
  5. PowerPoint – As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been inspired for years by Nancy Duarte – especially her book Slideology. Another person who has made an impact on my design approaches most recently is Oliver Caviglioli.
  6. Pinboard – having a place to store digital bookmarks is essential to me for keeping examples I use current in my classes and continually engaging with my personal knowledge management system (PKM). Here’s an example of all the bookmarks I have tagged (categorized) related to my technology and leadership doctoral class I teach as an adjunct a couple of times a year: EDD 703. I also keep track of things I want to share with the Teaching in Higher Ed community. Topics like ungrading that I continue to want to learn more about are saved on Pinboard, as well.
  7. AcuityScheduling – I’ve written for EdSurge about how we can get people to join us for office hours. One approach is to make it super easy for students, using an automated scheduling tool like AcuityScheduling. I especially like it because I can use it for “regular” office hours, but it also integrates with Zoom and I can have people book online appointments using Acuity, too.
  8. Zoom – speaking of Zoom – it is the absolute best online meeting service I have ever used. And I’ve been using them since the 1990s… It’s not even a close competition with the rest of these kinds of online conferencing tools.
  9. Meeting Owl Pro – Integrating flawlessly with Zoom (plug and play) is the Meeting Owl Pro. It is a 360 degree, smart video conference camera that allows virtual guests to see everyone in the meeting room who is with you. And hear everyone in the room. The Meeting Owl Pro is definitely my best find of 2019.

Collaborating

I tend to mostly meet people where they are, when it comes to collaboration. Here are a few of the ways I collaborate on projects with others:

  1. Microsoft Teams – I set up a Team for each major project and department I lead. We can track who has committed to what actions using Microsoft Planner (within Teams). Sharepoint lets us sync the files we share with our local computers. If I put a file in that folder on my computer, it automatically syncs it back over to SharePoint/Teams.
  2. Dropbox Paper – This collaborative writing space is the best I have ever used. I can share a link to a Dropbox Paper file and others can collaborate – without needing to have a Dropbox or other account.
  3. Google Docs – My monthly EdSurge Office Hours advice column gets edited using Google Docs, thanks to the wonderful Jeff Young.

Getting Stuff Done

I not only could write an entire book about this topic – I have. Consider pre-ordering your copy of The Productive Online and Offline Professor to learn more about how I set goals, manage my tasks and calendar, keep track of projects and items I have delegated, and how I avoid crashing and burning (by not having backups of my computer data, or having secure passwords).

Learning

I follow the practice of Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) in my commitment to lifelong learning. Harold Jarche is the person I’ve learned the most about PKM from… He was a guest on episode 213 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Here are some posts where I share more about PKM:

  1. My updated PKM system
  2. Practicing curation
  3. Cataloging course resources using PKM

Link: All of the podcast episodes on the topic of PKM

Communicating

I focus on enabling communication tools to work for me, instead of me working for them. That means I keep as few of notifications as I can (while still being accessible to our kids’ school, for example).

Email

  1. SaneBox – This service helps me keep my email from taking up more time than it deserves. It works on Gmail, Office 365, iCloud, or any email address.
  2. Mail – I use the regular mail client on my Mac.
  3. I avoid using email as a task manager and commit to achieving inbox zero once a day. Learn more about my approach way back on Episode 56. Discover even more about email management in my forthcoming book.

More email advice from an email emergency I experienced (how to organize folders, etc.)

Other communication tools

  1. Remind – An easy way to stay connected with my students, even when class isn’t in session. I can preschedule reminders about offsite visits, connect one-on-one with students – without sharing my personal cell number, and easily send photos, files, and other messages to an entire class.
  2. Disconnecting from the attention economy – Episode with Mike Truong – Teaching in the digital age.
  3. The kind of faculty to communicate with most often via my column on EdSurge.

I just finished reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. He recommends tangible practices we can use to help us get the most out of what digital tools have to offer, while leaving the rest behind. I highly recommend this book.

Your Turn

I would enjoy hearing what tools of the trade you are finding most essential these days…

 

Photo cred: Philip Swinburn on Unsplash

Filed Under: Productivity

Answers to 11 Questions

By Bonni Stachowiak | January 6, 2020 | Leave a Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Question mark spray painted

Recently, Katie Linder recommended on her blog that we answer 11 questions, which were inspired by Tim Ferris. They come from his book Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World*. Here are Katie’s answers to the 11 questions, which I found so fun to read.

My Answers to 11 Questions

I thought I would try to tackle the questions for this week’s blog.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

The book I’ve given most as a gift is Richard N. Bolles’s What Color is Your Parachute?* The reason I find it to be a valuable gift is that it gives graduating seniors a structure to use to stay focused on job hunting. While they are in school, we tell them when papers are due and when the exams are scheduled.

As they look toward graduating, they often lack a system to carry them through the transition. It also helps them gain the most leverage with the time they spend in the various job-hunting activities. Spoiler alert – sending out unsolicited resumes won’t produce much fruit, as compared to relying on relationships.

The book that has influenced my leadership approach is Peter Block’s The Empowered Manager*. It also happens to be in second place for the book I have given as a gift most often. I view The Empowered Manager as an anecdote for burnout. Block proposes we have an inter-dependent relationship with our employers and transition from traditional hierarchical models.

I talk about this shift in my work life on Episode 208. I also share about it often on Dave’s (my husband’s) podcast: Coaching for Leaders.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? 

I purchased an annual subscription for the Full Focus Planner from Michael Hyatt*. I bought it prior to recommending it on Teaching in Higher Ed episode 290 and before Dave and I entered into an affiliate relationship sharing about the planners with our podcast communities.

Full Focus PlannerOne of the many practices recommended in the planner is to identify a big three for each day. What are the three things I will focus on completing, beyond everything else that comes up? This has seriously helped me focus, in addition to making sure I am realistic about what a day may entail. For example, when I teach (once a week for three hours) – that is entered as one of my big three. I try to keep the other two wins as smaller items since teaching really does take up a big part of my Mondays.

Here’s another thing I really like about the Full Focus Planner* (well, it is really four planners, since the subscription gets you one planner for each quarter of the year). It is made with care and is such high quality. It has two bookmarks that can be used to save places you want to access frequently. It has an elastic band to keep it closed when you’re not using it. Unlike every other planner, it stays wide open on my desk when I am using it, which I didn’t realize I would appreciate so much until I was able to contrast it to other planners I’ve used.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

It is a story that I don’t like to talk about very much. The transition was such an awful time in my life. I was laid off after 11 years working for the same company. I had earned a steady-and-growing paycheck for more than a decade. Living with unpredictable streams of revenue was challenging for me (it still is).

The reason I decide to talk about it, despite it not always being my favorite story to tell, is that these seasons can bring about shifts in our lives that we eventually find to be even more suited to our strengths and passions. William Bridges wrote a book called Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes*, that is very good on this topic.

For those of you who have read it – let’s just say it was a ride of a lifetime in the neutral zone.

Bridges also has a wonderful leadership book on the topic of change called: Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change*. I have been revisiting it recently, after having been promoted to dean at my institution.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it — metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions — what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)

One message I would love to see get out to millions of people would have to do with worry. Dale Carnegie prescribed a method for this in his book: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living*.

It begins with a counter-intuitive step of imagining what the worst thing that could happen is… Once that beast has a name, it is easier to put it into perspective and begin to move to step two.

Next, we prepare to accept that worst thing. When I bought my first house, I was troubled by doing this alone. I thought you were supposed to be married when you made that kind of a purchase. My husband is glad I took the risk back then and also realized how empowering it can be to own your own property as a single person.

My Mom had me brainstorm what the worst thing that could happen if I took the plunge. The big fear was that I might lose my job and wind up needing to live with them for a few years, until I was back on my feet. I never wound up needing to do that, but it truly didn’t seem like such an awful outcome, all things being equal. Preparing to accept the worst allowed me to feel more confident in making the decision to purchase the home.

Finally, Carnegie recommends taking steps to avoid needing to accept that worst outcome. In my case, I could have an emergency fund, which would allow me to carry through difficult financial times, should they come along after committing to a 30-year mortgage.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living* has a lot of other practical approaches we can use to put worry on the back burner. Even though it was written all those decades ago, Carnegie’s advice still rings true.

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)

The Productive Online and Offline ProfessorI invested a lot of time and money in setting up a productivity system that I can trust.

By that, I mean that I know that things won’t fall through the cracks, unless I am aware of them and decide to renegotiate my commitments and focus on them at a later time.

If you are interested in my approach and the tools I use, consider pre-ordering my forthcoming book:

The Productive Online and Offline Professor*

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I don’t think I have any unusual habits. One thing that amuses people is that I do enjoy the smell of manure. It reminds me of getting to go to horse camp as a young person.

I stayed for two weeks and was able to take care of “my own” horse during that time. I have such fond memories of those experiences and am reminded of them whenever I come across that scent.

They built some new houses near where we live that backed up to a horse ranch recently. We do not, by any means, live in a rural area, but there just happen to be some equestrian properties in the town we drive through often to take our kids to school.

I thought it would be so cool to get to take in that smell every day. Fortunately, more practical minds prevailed and we still live in the same place we did before. It was better for a whole host of reasons, not to mention that no one else that I know has that same fondness for manure smells.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

One of the practices we have really had to hone these past five years around here is having a place for everything. With two kids, ages five and seven, there are always a lot of “things” coming and going. It seems like every weekend, there’s a kids’ birthday party, resulting in some kind of goody bag coming home.

My work generates a lot of paperwork and I strive to convert all of it to electronic form. Whenever I find things getting cluttered, it is almost always because whatever things are sitting out don’t have a place where they belong.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

I try to avoid using the phrase “real world” when talking to smart, driven college students. I used to say that, but found that it could come across as patronizing, as they tend to perceive that they already are living in the “real world” and for me to think otherwise is insulting.

In general, I find that many recent alums have challenges managing their time and their money upon graduation. Jane Bryant Quinn’s book on Making the Most of Your Money Now* is more than ten years old, but still contains the best advice I’ve ever received about money. As for managing their time, I recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done*.

Advice they should ignore is to do something they love. Yes, find meaning in your work. But early in our careers, we can have unrealistic expectations about the first few years and what that experience will be like, that it can actually hold us back from experiencing authentic joy in our lives.

More on this can be found on episode 54 in my conversation with Jonathan Malesic (who is far more eloquent on this topic than I’ll ever be).

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

A lot of bad recommendations stem from not trusting students. When we focus our pedagogy and systems on catching people who might be cheating, or may not be working to their fullest extent or capabilities, we lose the greatest things teaching has to offer.

Here are some reflections on trusting our students on Hybrid Pedagogy by Amy Hasinoff.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

My biggest advice on saying no is recognizing that with every no answer you give, you are freeing yourself up to say yes to something more directly related to your priorities, dreams, and sense of meaning.

Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less*, provides lots of practical approaches to use in saying no. I don’t take it quite as far as what he recommends, but have heard his words echoing in my years for long enough to affirm what a difference reading his book made for me in my life.

I would also recommend reading some of Michael Hyatt’s posts on saying no, as they are quite helpful.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

I have an app I have been using over the last couple of months called Focus I use to block applications and websites that have the potential to distract me while I’m working. I set it for a certain amount of time (usually 50 minutes) and it redirects me, if my mind starts to wander and so do my mouse and keyboard.

I am also such a big fan of walks. My friend and colleague, Shannon, and I walk together on almost a daily basis. This time helps us have greater energy and focus when we return. Also, it is almost like having short meetings together, daily, to catch up on work stuff. We are in the same department and always have lots to talk about and strategize on.

Your Turn

If you wind up answering the 11 questions, I would love to see your post. Alternatively, feel free to share your answer to just one of the questions with me.

Photo cred: Evan Dennis on Unsplash

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Filed Under: Productivity

Top 19 Episodes in 2019

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 30, 2019 | 1 Comment | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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It’s been quite a year for Teaching in Higher Ed. We celebrated one million downloads of the podcast with episode 250 and a profile in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In May, EdTech named the podcast (and me) in their list of 30 Higher Education IT Influencers. I was able to share about podcasting in higher education in an interview with PUPN Magazine’s Rachel James Clevenger.

2019 brought another set of expert guests to the podcast. I have learned so much from each person who has joined me on the show and have enjoyed such rich interactions with many members of the listening community throughout the year.

Top downloaded 19 episodes in 2019

19 | Episode 250 | One in a Million | Bonni and Dave Stachowiak

18 | Episode 244 | Create Online Mashups that Ignite Curiosity | Michael Britt

17 | Episode 248 | Surveying Social and Open Learning | Debbie Baff

16 | Episode 245 | The Fullness of Our Humanity as Teaching and Student | Terri Jett

15 | Episode 259 | Intentional and Transparent Assessment | Natasha Jankowski

14 | Episode 272 | Inclusified Teaching Evaluation | Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan

13 | Episode 247 | Reclaiming the Narrative on the Value of Higher Education | Eddie Watson

12 | Episode 255 | AHSIE Conference Reflections | Bonni Stachowiak

11 | Episode 269 | Removing Learning Barriers with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) | Jennifer Pusateri

10 | Episode 249 | Mindset, Metacognition, and Math | Silvia Heubach

09 | Episode 271 | The Missing Course | David Gooblar

08 | Episode 273 | Engaging Learners in Large Classes | Bonni Stachowiak

07 | Episode 251 | Annotating the Marginal Syllabus | Remi Kalir

06 | Episode 252 | Ownership, Equity, and Agency in Faculty Development | Maha Bali and Autumm Caines

05 | Episode 253 | Spaces and Places (and Nudges) | José Bowen

04 | Episode 256 | Creating Wicked Students | Paul Hanstedt

03 | Episode 263 | Recipes for Effective Teaching | Elizabeth Barkley

02 | Episode 254 | Stop Talking, Start Influencing | Jared Horvath

01 | Episode 258 | Paying the Price | Sara Goldrick-Rab

2020 Focus

As I think about what to focus on for Teaching in Higher Ed in 2020, here are three top-of-mind ideas:

Experiment with ways to extend the reach of the podcast

I can’t write too much about this yet, as we are in the early stages of planning. Let’s just say that 2020 will mean that Teaching in Higher Ed goes on the road at least once – to join an event I have always wanted to attend.

I received an invitation I just couldn’t pass up, so we are starting to make plans for how to record remotely and capture some powerful stories and pedagogies. I will share more as we finalize our plans.

Continue to connect with a diverse group of expert guests

In 2019, we had two significant partnerships that helped us do this even more than in past years:

  1. The California State University partnered with us on a series of episodes on faculty innovation and leadership.
  2. ACUE continued providing us with recommended guests on a monthly basis, as they had done in prior years.
  3. Members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community used the online form to recommend guests, and also provided suggestions via the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack Group. We also have a Trello board which I open up to completionists – who have listened to every episode of the podcast – for them to make more targeted suggestions. 

As I look through the back catalog of episodes, it is exciting to see that we addressed a rich array of topics throughout the year and contributed to the broader conversation about pedagogy in a higher education context. 

Continue to find ways to defer the cost of producing the podcast

Producing Teaching in Higher Ed has proven to be a costly endeavor. We now own professional podcasting equipment both for our home studio, as well as the one I've set up at my work – so I have more flexibility in when I can conduct interviews. There are web hosting fees, podcast editing, podcast production, and transcript costs. We work on finding creative ways to defer some of these costs, to make the podcast more sustainable over the long haul. 

These methods currently include:

  1. Doing paid speaking events to the tune of around 4-5 times per year – find out more on my speaking page. You can also check out the resource pages for all my prior speaking events via the all-speaking page. 
  2. Taking on paid sponsorships that align with products and services I would otherwise recommend word-of-mouth – find out more on the sponsorships page. I am projecting that we will have 2-3 sponsorships per month in 2020, though I would love to increase this even more to have a sponsor for each episode that airs.
  3. Using affiliate links for the books and other products that get recommended on the various episodes. If you’re interested in seeing some of these items, they are consolidated on the recommendations page.
  4. ACUE has started sponsoring the transcripts for each episode, which has helped us be able to continue to provide these resources without having to take the costs on, ourselves.

I have been considering starting a Patreon page for a couple of years now, but haven’t ever taken the plunge. I have enjoyed supporting two people who use Patreon to support their work: Alan Levine and Audrey Watters. Even though my donations are quite minimal, it feels good to know I’m contributing to the larger picture of them being able to continue doing what they do. I may launch a Patreon page in 2020, but am going to hold off for a bit to focus more on the bigger priorities for the start of the year.

Thanks for reading down to the end of this post. If you have a favorite episode from 2019 (or any year, really), I would love to hear about it.

Photo cred: Jamie Street on Unsplash

Filed Under: Resources

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