Teaching in Higher Ed

Keeping Content Up to Date in the LMS

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Keeping content current photo

This article was first published on EdSurge as part of my column – Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak. You can pose a question for a future column here. While the following question was posed about working within two LMSs, the advice applies even to those who only teach within one LMS platform.

This semester—at the same institution—I will be teaching 2 online graduate courses: a brand new one on Canvas, and an existing one on Blackboard. Any tips on keeping my eye on the teaching/learning objectives while having two major LMS’s in play simultaneously? —Adjunct at a tier 1 research university in the mid-Atlantic

Even a little bit of effort toward streamlining content that could be moved to multiple learning management systems (LMSs) can have a big payoff. There are approaches that can help even when only working within a single LMS, particularly given the changing nature of some course content.

I, too, teach between Canvas and Blackboard. I know Canvas much better since I use it both as a professor and in coaching faculty. There is nothing that helps me learn faster than to hear how other people are trying to use an LMS.

Embed Often

Instead of trying to learn the creation tools for each learning management system, I suggest turning to mainstream platforms, like video for Youtube or Soundcloud for audio, and then embedding video or sound clips into any LMS you use.

Examples of this in approach abound, from embedding a form or signup sheet within a page on the LMS, to embedding a Kahoot game for your students to play from within their familiar course environment.

The Embed Responsively website can make this process easier for sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps or Getty Images, though I find that I can fine-tune most content to display just the way I want it within Blackboard or Canvas without needing to use the help from Embed Responsively.

A Canvas-specific resource I have found helpful in thinking more creatively about embedding is a CanvasLIVE video featuring Laura Gibbs, an online instructor at the University of Oklahoma: Beautiful Curation: Flickr & Pinterest (+Diigo & Padlet).

Subscribe to Class Calendars

Both Canvas and Blackboard allow you to subscribe to your course calendars and have them display within your primary calendar application on your computer or mobile device. On my laptop, phone and tablet, I am able to see all the calendars for courses I teach across both Canvas and Blackboard within my other appointments.

I like being able to see when assignments are due, as it helps me recognize the need to block off time in my calendar for grading. It’s especially helpful for me to be able to see what week in the semester or term we are in, especially as what I have previously called “the dip” starts to take its toll on a class.

Link Smart

I first started down this path of wanting to make my life easier solely when it came to course syllabi. I grew tired of uploading the syllabus as a file within our LMS, only to need to upload a new version every single semester. It also seemed like every time I would send my document off to the department’s administrative assistant, I would find an error, or something else would change. I then found myself needing to send out a revised syllabus to her and once again having to upload a revision to the LMS.

I then found a much better way. Dropbox (a cloud-based storage service) became the place where I would store my syllabi, and then I could just link to the files in the LMS. In Microsoft Word, I would do a file save-as each semester and name the file something time-based, like 2020f-syllabus-BUSN114.docx. However, instead of uploading the Word document in the LMS, as most people do, I would save the file on Dropbox as a PDF. The file name was crucial in eventually saving me time. I would name it something like syllabus-BUSN114.pdf with no indication of what semester’s syllabus the file contained.

Each time a new semester would come around, all I had to do was perform a save-as on the syllabus Word file to have an archive of date-specific syllabi from past semesters and then make modifications to the Word file for the new semester. When all the changes were done, I would save a PDF copy with the non-date-specific name (e.g. syllabus-BUSN114.pdf) that would take the place of the previous semester’s file on Dropbox. The link to the syllabus remained unchanged and therefore did not need to be updated on the LMS.

Here’s a screencast that shows this process of having a syllabus live in Cloud-based storage (like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, or Google Drive).

A walkthrough of how to “link smart.”

Another option is to maintain syllabi within cloud-based document systems and to embed these documents inside the LMS. Google Docs and Dropbox Paper are two examples of these types of tools. As updates occur throughout the semester, they can be made within the cloud service and those changes are instantly reflected within the LMS.

Leverage Other Cloud Services

Once I saw how easy this process for managing syllabi was, I became intrigued by what other possibilities existed. Scott Self, assistant professor of organizational leadership for Abilene Christian University, joined me on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to share how he uses Evernote to minimize the time he needs to fumble around with different versions of documents.

Self uses Evernote notes to convey assignment information and to provide resources related to the course. He links to Evernote notes within the LMS, so whenever he makes changes within Evernote, he can rest assured those changes are instantly reflected in the LMS. Changes can be made to his Evernote notes on his computer, or even via his mobile devices.

Microsoft OneNote has a way to set up a class notebook that you can use in a similar way that Self uses Evernote. However, Microsoft’s OneNote takes it a step further and let you create interactive course content from within OneNote and give each student their own copy of the shared notebook that they can use to complete assignments, take notes, and receive feedback within their own notebook from their teacher.

Next Steps

It is not necessary to try to implement all these recommendations at once. Colleagues who have minimized the need to update their syllabi within the LMS by “linking smart” have said that the one idea saved them a great deal of time.

You can start small, and begin to see what works best within your classes.

How to Get Students Engaging with Each Other in Online or Blended Classes

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how to engage student to student graphic

This article originally appeared in Bonni Stachowiak's Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours Column on EdSurge. It is reposted here with permission. You can pose a question for a future column here.

Dear Bonni: How can we make student-to-student interaction more personable and engaging in online learning? —Andrea Fuentes, Director of Online Learning, Doral College

Cultivating an engaging environment can be a challenge when teaching online. Having the interaction occur among students, instead of solely with the professor, can be even more difficult.

Make it Easy for Students to Interact

It can be a delicate balance to try to not overwhelm students by the quantity of educational technology we use in a class, while still keeping things interesting through the element of surprise. The easier a tool is to use, the more likely students will feel comfortable engaging with each other.

As an example of the kind of tool that is easy to use, I was recently introduced to a brainstorming tool called Tricider (thank you Michelle Pacansky-Brock, faculty mentor for digital innovation at California Community Colleges). Tricider has us identify what crowdsourced decision we want to make, or what type of brainstorming we’d like to spark, and we are up and running.

Students can add ideas, pros and cons, and vote on items. The instructor can decide if you want to let anyone who has the link be able to collaborate, protect your ideas with a password, or require people to set up accounts before they can engage.

This is just one example of a tool that makes it easy for student-to-student interaction without requiring much effort from instructors to set it up. A few others that are simple to use include:

  •  Padlet: a virtual corkboard that students and instructors can use to post text, photos, and links
  •  Dropbox Paper or Google Docs: these mainstream collaborative word-processing tools let instructors invite students to collaborate on assignments or group work.
  •  Trello: a virtual stack of index cards where students can add their ideas. All of these tools can be embedded into the learning management system your school uses, so students never have to leave their familiar environment in order to participate.

Rethink Discussion Boards

We need to rethink discussion boards if they are ever going to be worthwhile. I am afraid that students’ experiences in classes they have taken in the past may be ruining the format for everyone.

Students tell me that when they encounter a discussion board, they expect to see a long discussion prompt from the instructor with some questions they are supposed to answer in 300 to 400 words. Then, like clockwork, they will be required to respond to three other students’ posts within the same thread.

They learn to check the box—but they do not find themselves engaging in beneficial interactions with others in the class. Instead of reminding students of these past experiences, try rethinking discussion boards and having students be surprised by the richness of the dialog.

One way I have been experimenting with a different approach involves using the peer grading function in the Canvas LMS and setting up student-to-student interactions that way.

This past semester, each student submitted reading notes as an assignment in the LMS. I asked every participant to include in their responses:

  • five takeaways from the chapter
  • three specific ways they could apply the learning in their lives
  • one question they had for others who read the same chapter

Then, I designated two peer reviewers for each submitted reading assignment and asked that reviewers respond to the takeaways and ways the learning could be applied, and to provide an answer to the question that was posed by each of the two people they were connected with via the peer review feature.

The students said they far preferred this method of interaction over discussion boards. They liked that the system automatically linked them to different people they might not have otherwise shared ideas with. The ease with which these pairs were established was appreciated by all—including me as the professor.

The only thing that was cumbersome on my end was grading student participation since there wasn’t a way to include scores within the peer review framework on Canvas. However, the slight increase in manual processes made it totally worth it as I observed their virtual conversations with each other.

Discuss via Video

Another way to get students talking with each other in different ways is to have them use video or audio to interact.

FlipGrid is an easy way to pose a question and have people respond via videos. It can be used within many of the most widely used LMSs, so students do not have to set up a separate account on FlipGrid or navigate to a different place.

Another tool to engage with video is a video platform from Arc Media, which can be integrated into the Canvas LMS. Instructors can upload a video or post a YouTube link within Canvas to your Arc library. Then, they can include that video in a Canvas course and have students interact with the video, by typing comments in real time as they are watching it.

My students watched some of Michael Sandel’s videos from his Harvard University course: Justice. I posted the YouTube link into Arc and it allowed us to have a private conversation on Canvas about the questions he posed. What made it different was that as Sandel posed a question to his class, I had my students respond at the moment he asked the question using Arc.

VoiceThread is another tool that allows for the kind of real-time interaction that Arc Media affords, except that you can post more than just video for annotations from others. A student could comment that he was confused about a concept at the precise moment that the idea was being discussed. Other students could help out by explaining how they understood the topic and possibly by providing an example.

Those are just a few tools I have found helpful for facilitating student-to-student interaction using video. Each time I have, students have noted how much more they prefer this kind of interaction over traditional text-based discussion boards.

Introduce Social Annotation as a Means to Engage

Writer, teacher, and Harvard Ph.D. candidate, Clint Smith III, recently professed his love for purchasing used books on Twitter. “I really enjoy buying used books because you get some small insight into how someone else experienced that book before you. Every highlighted sentence, underlined passage, circled word, & dogeared page is like being part of a book club with a stranger you'll never meet.”

As I read Smith’s words, I imagined the power of discussions taking place in the margins of books across generations. As a person who primarily engages in reading via digital devices, I get to participate in a version of this kind of history showing up in the margins when I am reading a digital book. I can set the Kindle app on my iPad to indicate what passages many others have highlighted in their books and know what portions of the text have resonated with other people.

Hypothes.is is a social annotating tool that takes these reading practices to a whole new level. When reading on the internet, you can select text and annotate it. These notes may be shared publicly or saved privately.

The Marginal Syllabus project is just one example of the power of this type of collaboration. The project’s aim is to gather teachers together to discuss equity in educational contexts. As they describe on their website, “The Marginal Syllabus hosts and curates publicly accessible conversations among educators that occur in the margins of online texts via open web annotation.”

Here’s an example of Hypothes.is in action.

On the left is an article that the group participating in the 2018-2019 Marginal Syllabus have read. On the right are individuals’ comments and notes. Hypothes.is stays running in my web browser all the time, and I can see an indication of how many annotations there are on any page that I might want to browse.

Hypothes.is is not as easy to use as the tools I mentioned earlier. However, the service offers a Quick Start Guide for Teachers and have plenty of ideas for how to make use of Hypothes.is on their educators page.

The role of a teacher is more than presenting concepts and having students present those same ideas back to us at some future time. By having students engage with each other in classes, the richness of the interactions increase and the learning deepens. Make student-to-student interaction more personable by making it easy for them to engage with each other, rethinking discussion boards, and using video for conversations.

Podcast Episodes and Blog Posts Worth Revisiting

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I was just reading a Twitter thread from #TenureTrackHustle (Meredith D. Clark) as she re-read her handwritten notes from more than a decade ago and reflected on how far she’s come.

I haven’t been podcasting Teaching in Higher Ed episodes for quite as long as that. However, it has been quite a wild ride these past five years and I’ve learned so much.

Below represents just some of what happened in 2018 – or was revisited.

Most Listened to Podcast Episodes in 2018

Below are the top 18 episodes that were downloaded in 2018. This doesn’t necessarily mean they were recorded during the 2018 year, but that they were downloaded during that time.

18. Episode #187 | Laptops: Friend or Foe? | Todd Zakrajsek

17. Episode #197 | Interactivity and Inclusivity Can Help Close the Achievement Gap | Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan

16. Episode #178 | Igniting Our Imagination in Digital Learning and Pedagogy | Remi Kalir

15. Episode #179 | Active Learning in STEM Courses | Paul Blowers

14. Episode #191 | Creating Immersive Learning Experiences in Online Classes | Ric Montelongo

13. Episode #205 | The College Classroom Assessment Compendium | Jay Parkes and Dawn Zimmaro

12. Episode #184 | The Science of Retrieval Practice | Pooja Agarwal

11. Episode #200 | Changing Our Minds About Teaching | Robin DeRosa, Mike Truong, and Maha Bali

10. Episode #207 | Rethinking Higher Education | Wendy Purcell

9. Episode #219 | Agile Faculty | Rebecca Pope-Ruark

8. Episode #189 | Designing Online Experiences for Learners | Judith Boettcher

7. Episode #218 | Courses as Stories | Alan Levine

6. Episode #211 | Reflecting on Our Teaching | Catherine Haras

5. Episode #177 | Learning is Not a Spectator Sport | Maria Andersen

4. Episode #217 | How to Ungrade | Jesse Stommel

3. Episode #206 | Inquiry-based Learning | Jeffery Galle

2. Episode #203 | My Flipped Classroom | Jan H. Jensen

1. Episode #216 | Research on Engaging Learners | Peter Felten

If you want to learn more from Pooja Agarwal, check out her new book: Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning, coauthored with Patrice Bain.

Most Listened to Episodes of All Time

Some of these episodes go back years now, but still have a strong draw with listeners new and old. These are the top 18 downloaded episodes of all time.

18. Episode #135 | The Spark of Learning | Sarah Rose Cavanagh

17. Episode #171 | Why Students Resist Learning | Anton Tolman

16. Episode #106 | The Undercover Professor | Mike Cross

15. Episode #087 | What the Best Digital Teachers Do | Sean Michael Morris

14. Episode #105 | Professional Online Portfolios | McClain Watson

13. Episode #164 | Setting Students Up for Success from the Start | Joe Hoyle

12. Episode #089 | The Research on Course Evaluations | Betsy Barre

11. Episode #088 | Top Five Gadgets for Teaching | Dave + Bonni Stachowiak

10. Episode #159 | Dynamic Lecturing | Todd Zakrajsek

9. Episode #096 | The Clinical Coach | Jeffrey Wiese

8. Episode #114 | Engage the Heart and Mind Through the Connected Classroom | Ken Bauer

7. Episode #112 | Radical Hope – A Teaching Manifesto | Kevin Gannon

6. Episode #110 | Self-Regulated Learning and the Flipped Classroom | Robert Talbert

5. Episode #092 | Small Teaching | James Lang

4. Episode #107 | Engaging Learners | Gardner Campbell

3. Episode #137 | Teaching Naked Techniques | C. Edward Watson

2. Episode #132 | Teach Students How to Learn | Saundra McGuire

1. Episode #098 | The Skillful Teacher | Stephen Brookfield

Most Read Blog Posts During 2018

These posts weren’t all written during 2018, but they were accessed during that year. I get surprised by the ones that pop up from more than four years ago, but must have really struck a cord (at least in terms of the title, or metadata).

During 2018, these blog posts were accessed most frequently.

18. The Best Kind of Feedback You’ll Ever Receive | 12/05/18

17. Getting the Most From Screencasting | 04/19/18

16. My Updated Personal Knowledge Management System | 12/14/16

15. How to Increase Our Digital Literacy Literacy | 02/07/17

14. How to Apologize as a Professor | 03/31/15

13. How to Create a Pencast | 01/24/17

12. More on Blind Grading | 11/17/15

11. Ways to Use Screencasting in Your Teaching | 03/13/18

10. Making the Most of Mistakes | 12/11/18

9. Top Tools 2018 | 07/13/18

8. How to Make a Seemingly Boring Topic Come Alive | 10/07/14

7. How to Create a Video For a Class | 08/10/16

6. How to Respond When Students Give Wrong Answers | 07/22/14

5. Digital Reading | 09/11/17

4. Listener Question: Essential Reading on Pedagogy | 01/30/18

3. HeadsUp Game Is A Lively Edtech Tool | 09/23/14

2. Hosting or Participating in Video Conferencing Sessions | 06/13/17

1. Engaging Students Using Quizlet Live | 10/18/16

Phew. It’s been such a learning journey. Thanks for being on it with me.

5 Tips for Teaching Live Online

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5 tips for teaching live online classes

This article was originally published on the EdSurge website. 

The following is the latest installment of the Toward Better Teaching advice column. You can pose a question for a future column here.

Dear Bonni: I'm wanting to learn about best practices for virtual courses that are “live” (e.g., using a platform like Zoom). It differs both from face-to-face classroom learning and traditional (asynchronous) online courses. I'd love to know about resources addressing this learning format. —Keith Johnson. director of theological development at Cru. My team facilitates and teaches graduate-level theological courses for a non-profit.

Teaching a class by live video conference is quite different than being in person with a room full of students. But there are some approaches we can draw from traditional classrooms that work quite well in a live, online environment.

Here are some recommendations for virtual teaching:

Prepare Your Environment

I have witnessed some cringe-worthy moments when other professors try video conference sessions without thinking through their set-up in advance.

One rookie mistake is to have the light source behind the professor’s head, which makes it look like the person is having some kind of out-of-body experience. Being sure that the light source in your room is originating from somewhere in the room that is behind your webcam and shining light on your face is essential.

Another common error is for a person to sit in front of the camera in a way that makes it look like the top of their head is cut off—which can look distractingly comic to students.

It often helps to raise your laptop or webcam up high enough that it is at least eye-level, if not slightly above that. I have a picture on one of my Teaching in Higher Ed blog posts that illustrates the difference it makes when you get the camera at an appropriate level, versus how much chin and nostrils are exposed when you don’t.

It turns out that eye contact is important, even in an online setting. So it must be simulated by looking directly at the camera on your device, or at least somewhere close-by.

This video has a bit more information about how I prepare my environment to hold an online class.

Get Good Equipment

Until I invested in some high-quality equipment for online sessions, I didn’t realize it made that much of a difference. The essential items for hosting sessions include a webcam with at least 1080p resolution, an external microphone and a headset.

Alternatively, a more-sophisticated headset might include both a microphone and a headset. Below are the products I typically use when facilitating live classes:

My absolute most preferred (and adored) video conference tool is Zoom. When I am leading a Zoom session, I can indicate which webcam, microphone, and audio output source to use. The camera that is integrated with my monitor doesn’t have as nice of video output as the Logitech does, so I hook that hardware device onto the monitor and it actually winds up covering the other camera up completely. All sorts of headsets would work in terms of being able to hear what others have to say on the session. Since I carry my Apple AirPods with me pretty much wherever I go, they make the most sense to use for that part of my set up.

Even though your computer likely already has speakers and a microphone, having other hardware to accomplish those feats make it that much less likely that you will have any issues with feedback noises during the session (at least coming from your end of things). When sound comes out of a speaker and is then fed straight back into a nearby microphone, you get that awful feedback noise that for most of us is like giant fingernails scratching across a chalkboard.

A headset that has both sound input (coming in your ears) and output (a microphone included on the headset) will mean you do not require two separate devices (a microphone and headphones). Since my BlueYeti is also always sitting on my desk and has superior sound input to the Apple AirPods, I typically select it as my microphone during a Zoom session.

Set Norms

One of the norms I used to set for all my synchronous classes was to ask everyone to leave their webcam on the entire time and to not mute themselves. In a conversation with Maha Bali, associate professor of practice at the Center for Learning and teaching at the American University in Cairo, I discovered that I was being pretty culturally inflexible with that requirement. She shared about how sometimes people in her classes might not want to show their faces at all, or may even prefer to engage purely through the chat function.

Since receiving Bali’s cautions, I now talk through the downsides to keeping ourselves muted while we are participating in these online sessions. It is so easy to forget to unmute yourself when you have something to share. I suggest that we may be able to best simulate an in-person conversation if we leave our webcams on and avoid muting our microphones, but I do not insist on everyone adopting these norms.

Another norm I attempt to instill in all my synchronous sessions is to regularly encourage people to share their screens. Zoom has a setting where you can allow attendees to share their screen during a session and that is the option I use. If someone were to inadvertently share their screen, or if I ever had some renegade screen sharer, it is easy enough to take control back from anyone who is currently sharing their screen. I have never had any issues with allowing for quick sharing of screens from attendees and it becomes an established norm with most of my classes that people will be prepared for a little “show and tell” at any moment during the session.

Mix it Up

The most important way I have found to engage learners during online sessions is to regularly be changing what we are doing. One minute, I might have them in breakout rooms discussing a topic. After that, I may have individuals post on a virtual whiteboard one takeaway from their dialog.

I hardly ever have student presentations take place with the entire class. Instead, I ask each group to designate a timekeeper and have short presentations take place in breakout groups of three to four people, maximum. Then, when people rejoin the full class, I ask what surprises came out in their conversations, or what we should be sure gets shared with the larger group.

Online polls are another way to break things up. If I do wind up doing a short, five-minute lecture during an online class, I still break up that duration with at least one or two polls, asking students to answer either a fact-based or opinion-based question about what I have shared.

Practice Interacting Online

If you really want to get good at leading online sessions, it helps to be a participant in them regularly. I find great benefits to engaging online at conferences that I am unable to attend in person through Virtually Connecting.

I am also finding more and more that people enjoy even one-on-one meetings to be held over Zoom, in order for us to easily be able to share our screens and see each other’s non-verbal cues.

Ultimately, I find people get more out of our online sessions when we talk less and get the participants to engage more.

Making the Most of Mistakes

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Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash

This blog post was originally posted on ACUE's website. Thanks to Geoff Decker for getting me to reflect on these questions. 

When it comes to producing podcasts, a quick audio cut or fade can help polish over mistakes. When it comes to Dr. Bonni Stachowiak’s popular Teaching in Higher Ed, mistakes are worthy of celebration.

Stachowiak’s willingness to grapple with gaffes was on display a few years ago when she turned an on-air blunder into an opportunity to highlight the importance of embracing failure as part of the learning process. The memory stands out as Stachowiak reflects on more than four years—and 230 episodes—of Teaching in Higher Ed (TiHE), which features weekly expert guests on a range of teaching and learning topics, from instructional practices and digital pedagogy to the faculty profession. A common thread through them all is the sense that each conversation is part of a “learning journey” that she’s on with her listeners and guests.

ACUE is thrilled to be along for the ride. Since 2016, we’ve been connecting TiHE to some of the inspiring experts and educators with whom we’ve partnered, from Saundra McGuire, to Catherine Haras, to Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan. As the TiHE-ACUE partnership kicks off its third year, we sat down with Stachowiak to hear her reflections on podcasting and teaching.

Q: What’s a favorite memory or funny story from the podcast?

A: It was my first interview with Ken Bain, and I was so excited—and nervous—because his book, What the Best College Teachers Do, was the very first book that I read about teaching in higher ed. When we finished, he mentioned off air that there was one more thing he wanted to share, but before I could hit record again, he had already started talking. I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt him, so I started taking notes because he was mentioning some people I was unfamiliar with at the time, including Eric Mazur, who’d just become the first-ever winner of the Minerva Prize, a half-million dollar prize for teaching excellence.

When he was through, I looked back over my notes and said, “Tell me again about the Manure Prize.” I said it three times before he very gently said, “Bonni, it’s actually the Minerva Prize.”

Yes, my autocorrect had changed ‘Minerva’ to ‘manure.’ It was one of those things I initially wanted to edit out of the show, but if this podcast is about going on a learning journey, then how would I have known who Eric Mazur was without these kinds of experiences?

Not only did we keep it in, but we ended up doing an episode that celebrates failure and how we learn from it. Episode 100—The Failure Episode— is one of my favorites because it featured people sharing their failure stories. We gave the ‘Manure Prize’ to the person with the greatest failure. (The winner was Maha Bali, a professor and faculty developer at the American University in Cairo.)

Q: How does the craft of interviewing apply to the craft of teaching?

A: Asking simple questions applies to both worlds of teaching and interviewing. A lot of people ask a question like “How do you approach this?” and then begin to answer it with multiple choices: “Do you do it this way? Do you try it this way?” There’s no need for that. Ask a simple question and then stop talking. It’s in the silence that the richest answers will come.

Also, Alex Blumberg, an amazing podcaster, has a formula for how to think about storytelling: “I’m telling a story about X. It’s interesting because Y.” That could be applied more in our teaching. For so many of my classes now, I think, “What is the story? What is really the overarching question I’m hoping to ignite my students’ curiosity around? What makes it interesting?” To me, you could build your entire teaching philosophy on that.

Q: What advice would you give to yourself in your first year of teaching?

A: I would tell myself to slow down and mellow out, both for the sake of my students and for my own sake. It isn’t about covering all the material, it isn’t about ensuring everything goes according to the plan, it isn’t about trying so hard to make sure everyone is riveted at all times by what’s going on in the classroom. I’d tell myself that part of the process for slowing down is to listen a lot more and ask a lot more questions.

Q: If you could interview anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

A: Brené Brown. She is such a wonderful researcher, thinker, writer, and speaker who has written so many compelling things. Her TED Talk on vulnerability is the most powerful TED Talk I’ve ever seen, and I’d just love the opportunity to talk to her about how vulnerability could—and should—inform our work in teaching. I’m curious about how she handles her classes and brings her life’s work into the classroom. She’s written about this somewhat, but it would be wonderful to speak to her and ask what specifically can be integrated into teaching. I also have a sense from watching so many interviews with her that she’d be so warm and engaging, and that would probably shave off at least some of my nervousness.