Author: Bonni Stachowiak – Page 18 – Teaching in Higher Ed

Question Regarding Organizational Systems for Courses

By Bonni Stachowiak | January 9, 2018 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

I received the following question from a listener and had more than a quick response…

I’m coming back to teaching after a semester off, and even though I’m teaching courses I’ve done before, just finding all the right documents is a challenge.

I have to check the LMS, supporting websites, my lesson plans, my post-class reflections, the syllabus, assignment documents, and potential readings in Evernote, just to figure out where I need to update dates and materials.

I inevitably make mistakes or have things out of sync. I’ve made life harder on myself by adopting different tools over the years. Are there models for managing everything, and for building courses in more modular ways, so I don’t feel like I’m always rebuilding them each semester.”

– Teaching in Higher Ed Listener

I have done this the hard way and I have done this the easy way.

The hard way, as you describe, winds up being a hodgepodge of information. I can sometimes navigate around my own “systems,” but if I ever want to share with another colleague, they often can’t make heads or tails of what I have done when teaching a class.

The easy way sometimes takes a bit more thought from the start, but pays off in spades over many years… Here is my advice on how to stay organized.

Think in Terms of Course Assets

In my 15 years of teaching in higher ed, I have gone through many-a-learning management system (LMS). That has made me tend to want to consider my computer’s data (or, in my case, the stuff I save on my preferred cloud service – Dropbox) as the primary assets for all my courses.

Then, I think of just linking to these assets from the LMS. Then, when things inevitably change, the LMS files don’t need to be updated. Since the LMS only links to the files, when the files change on my computer – anyone accessing them from the LMS from that point forward always has the latest version.

Having a mindset of course assets also helps when the duration of a course changes, as can sometimes happen at my institution. Colleagues who have to modify a 15-week course to an 8-week course have a lot easier time, if they are looking at it through a lens of re-arranging a series of course assets instead of completely reinventing the wheel.

Syllabus Example

A basic example of a course asset involves how I handle syllabi. Instead of uploading each semester’s syllabi on the LMS, I have links that go to a PDF file that is always the most current syllabus for a given course.

I explain this practice on a blog post and short video from 2013 – and am still using this approach today. This technique means that when a former student emails me to ask for a syllabus from the Spring of 2014, I can easily send the exact syllabus that I used on a specific semester, but when I copy a course shell over on our LMS into a new semester, I never have to spend time updating the syllabus file for that semester in the LMS.

PowerPoint Example

When a colleague was going to be teaching Consumer Behavior this semester and wanted to know if he could use my PowerPoint slides, I happily sent him a single link to my Dropbox folder that contains all the PPTs. To produce that link, I only had to right-click on that folder on my computer and choose copy-dropbox-link. I don’t have to go to the web or otherwise be logged into Dropbox. That option of right-clicking is always available for sharing.

I will often use the same approach for students. Depending on the class, I will either have all the PowerPoints linked to in one folder, as described in the last paragraph, or I will individually link to specific PowerPoints.

In our LMS (Canvas), I create calendar items for each of our class meeting times. There’s an option to create repeating calendar items in Canvas. Once I create all the repeating calendar items with our class meeting times, I can then go in and customize each class meeting time.

Here’s an example of a portion of the first night's schedule of this semester’s Business Ethics class in the Canvas calendar.

I can link to PPTs, or handouts, or other course assets, using this right-click Dropbox feature.

Other cloud-based services like Office 365 – OneDrive have the option to link to files and folders, but they don’t always make it as easy as Dropbox has for me.

Digital Notebook Example

Many of us also make use of some kind of a digital notebook in our teaching. Scott Self was on episode 48 and really got me thinking about how to use Evernote (but the same is true for Google Keep (which Robert Talbert is a fan of), OneNote, Bear (which Doug McKee recently raved about on Twitter), etc.) in my teaching.

Scott Self really turns Evernote into his LMS, using the actual LMS primarily for linking to Evernote and then for grading. I haven’t gone that far, but do sometimes wonder if it isn’t better than my structure.

I do use Evernote for assignment instructions often, however. Especially when I am teaching a class for the first time, or doing a significant rewrite to a class, I wind up having a lot to think about in terms of assignments. Having the instructions for an assignment in Evernote means I can keep tweaking them, without always having to login to the LMS and changing them there. Inside the assignment description on the LMS, I link over to the Evernote note that has the assignment instructions in it.

Keep Folder Structures Organized

The other approach I take that has really helped me is staying consistent with my folder structure and file name conventions. I share about this technique in the post: Keep Course Files Organized.

Simplify Your Tools

As you mentioned in your question, it is also good practice to minimize the number of educational technology tools that we have in our rotation. While that is better for students, it is also a way that we can somewhat minimize the number of possible places that our course content might reside.

I suspect this is somewhat of a relative thing, though. My idea of keeping it simple may prove to be way too many possibilities for others.

The services that I have been using quite often include:

Quizlet – Flashcards service that is a perfect way to do some retrieval practice
FlipGrid – Video service – the edtech world's answer to everything that's wrong with traditional discussion boards
Remind – For when I really need to quickly text everyone in my class, but don't necessarily want them replying to everyone, or having my cell number
Glisser – Mostly use for keynote talks, not as much in class. Wonderful polling service and then some.
PollEverywhere – Free account has a max of 40, so I only use in classes under 40. Terrific for peer instruction.
Kahoot – Mostly use for large faculty development events, not as much in class. Playful, game show format.

Avoid Mentioning Specific Dates

Whenever possible, avoid mentioning specific dates within the LMS. This may be obvious to most of you, but I encounter enough faculty who will create a quiz, for example, and have in the name or description of the quiz that it is due on November 1. The next time they go to teach the class, they have to rename their quizzes and wherever else they mentioned dates or times in the class.

The two LMS that I use with any regularity (Canvas and Blackboard) both have options for adjusting course dates to fit a new time period. When the new semester comes around, when importing the old course, you have the option to have all due dates adjusted, relatively. If something happened during week 2 of the class, it will adjust to week 2 of the new semester. It is well worth exploring this option with whoever helps you learn your LMS, as it really saves a bunch of time.

Your Turn

What advice do you have for keeping all the “stuff” for our courses more organized?

My First Experience Co-Writing an Open Textbook

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 31, 2017 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

We met together for the last time on December 16th.

The way the course is structured, we gather in person for a half day at the start and end of the term and then have three web conferences every other week throughout the eight-week class. The weeks in between the web meetings, we have asynchronous learning experiences and connect on Twitter. We were concluding the term, after having created something that would last well beyond our class’ end date.

This class is now the hardest one that I teach with any regularity. I struggle with trying to have us all unlearn some of the ways that we think about the role of technology in our teaching and more broadly in our lives. I also fail regularly at trying to redefine what it means to be a teacher of a course like this.

The individuals in the class have always fit the description of what is known as “teaching to the tails.” I wind up having many learners who are uncomfortable experimenting with technology and seeing how it might enhance their teaching or learning in some way. There are also always at least a few who have regularly embraced educational technology in their pedagogy.

For the Fall of 2017, I took the radical step (at least to me) of doing away with a textbook for the class. The ones we had used in the past had too great an emphasis on K-12 when not everyone in the program worked within that educational context. They also got out of date too quickly and were somewhat cost-prohibitive.

Open Textbooks

This first recollection I have of hearing the phrase “open textbook” was from Kris Shaffer, who spoke about his Open Music Theory Textbook project on episode 74 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t think I got it at the time.

I understood that he had written an online textbook with another guy. At the time, I suspect that I hadn’t yet realized (and probably still am lacking in understanding) how much textbook costs factor into college students’ financial difficulties. Since music is not my discipline, I didn’t really have an appreciation for how this text compared to others published in a more traditional way.

After speaking with Kris for the podcast, I discovered his post for Hybrid Pedagogy: The Critical Textbook. He writes:

“Textbooks as fixed expressions limit academic freedom and arbitrate student success/failure to a non-trivial degree.” – Kris Shaffer (@krisshaffer), April 2, 2014

Getting Started

By the time I decided to have our class write an open textbook together, I had many sources of inspiration, but still felt unsure on much of the process.

Orientation

During our class orientation, I spoke at length about the problem with what are often referred to as throw-away assignments. Contrasting writing a research paper for our class that would only be read by me with co-writing a book together generated quite a bit of excitement. Alan Levine’ story about his first experience competing a renewable assignment in 1984 is inspiring. I was excited to create something more meaningful for and with this group of individuals.

What I wish I would have done during the orientation was to have students read through some clarifying text and asked them to digitally fill in their understanding of some core ways we would approach this endeavor together:

Authorship. The book would be authored by them, but did not need to have their name listed as an author in the book. They could use a pen name, or be an anonymous author. While I stated this multiple times during the orientation and during our first online meeting together, there was at least one person who had enough of a concern about this to send a note to the person I report to as an adjunct at this institution.
Book sales. The book would be sold on Amazon, both as an ebook and as a printed book. While I would receive some portion of money on each sale, these monies would likely only help me get closer to breaking even on the expenses I had already incurred to purchase a license from Pressbooks to publish in these formats.
Roles. They would take on various roles throughout the writing process, some of which would involve coaching each other and more intense collaboration than they would have grown accustomed to in the program so far. I was fortunate in that I had a wonderful project lead for this eight-week adventure. There were many hard workers without whom the project would not have succeeded. In some cases, they were misaligned in the roles that they took, or there was some misunderstanding about the extent to which I would be able to individually coach each person on their writing, versus having a role of editor include peer coaching.

The Finished Open Textbook

By the time our final meeting rolled around, we had written an 80-page open textbook entitled:

Igniting Your Teaching with Educational Technology: A Resource for New Teachers

We also had the following assets to “show” for our work:

Digital version of the open textbook, free to anyone with internet access
Print version and an ebook that could be purchased through Amazon
Electronic versions of the book that could be “forked” (a fancy way of saying saved-as, to start a new version for someone else’s purposes) – ours is available by request, but here’s a look at what this can look like via the Research Methods in Psychology textbook by Paul C. Price, Rajiv S. Jhangiani, and I-Chant A. Chiang – I also like that they included a dedication, about this book, acknowledgements, and preface before diving into their first chapter
Book cover graphic that could be used on the various editions of the book
Supporting website where people could go for links and other resources

The process was ridiculously hard and exquisitely invigorating. What made it hard was partially because anytime you try to get a group of 16 people together to accomplish anything worthwhile, it is going to get messy. There were also a whole bunch of things that came up along the way that I did not anticipate. Most of these were small (wait times for the book, once it was uploaded to Create Space, for example), but made the need for flexibility in our planning that much more important. It was completely worth it, however, and I am grateful to each person who was involved in the journey.

Tools

Thank goodness that I was aware of most of the tools that were essential in us reaching our goals for this project. The Individuals working on the project had done some blogging on WordPress and worked on the Google platforms, which helped.

Google Team Drive – The doctoral cohort had already established a Google Team Drive that they had used to coordinate some of the logistics of their recent trip to Washington DC. I had only ever created shared folders on Google Drive in the past and now see the huge benefits of having a shared Team Drive for projects like this. That way, each time you create a new folder or add new information, you don’t have to worry about reinventing your group to the newly created content.
Google Docs – The bulk of the writing took place on Google Docs. We could make comments that people could then later address and mark as resolved. All edits took place in real-time, as we were typing. We could see a detailed revision history and even know who else was working on the book on a particular evening.
Pressbooks – The bulk of the book formatting and cover design took place on Pressbooks. If you have ever used WordPress, you will be comfortable using Pressbooks, as it is build off WordPress. Pressbooks is a freemium service, meaning that it is free to create a book using their tool, and have that book available online in a digital format for free. However, if you want to have an ebook that could be read on an ebook reader, such as a Kindle or the Kindle app, or you want it to be available to be printed on demand, you need to purchase a paid license for that one book title.
PowerPoint – I was originally going to use a graphics editor to design the background art for the book cover, but due to an uninteresting rabbit trail, I wound up just using PowerPoint (exported the individual slide as a .jpg graphic). Pressbooks has a cover generator that adds the title, authors, ISBN number, and other information onto the cover. However, if you want some kind of a background, as well, you need to upload a graphic.

Probably the two technical skills most essential in writing an open textbook would be having to do with text formatting. Word Processors can have formatting that shows up “behind the scenes” that make some of the beautiful template you select in Pressbooks not shine through. It is essential to copy and paste text into Pressbooks that doesn’t contain any unseen formatting that could potentially mess things up.

I recommend highlighting one chapter or section at a time and pressing command or control – c on your keyboard to copy the text. Then, find the standard text editor that is on your preferred operating system (notepad on Windows; textedit on Mac) and choose edit- paste to match destination formatting or paste unformatted text. The goal is to paste only the text and not any of the formatting from the word processor.

Then, copy and paste the text from the text editor into Pressbooks. Finally, apply the formatting from the predefined styles within the Pressbooks text editor. That way, you can leverage the way that the various themes within Pressbooks make headings and subheadings stand out and also have these items appear in your table of contents.

There is much more I could write about what I learned from this experience. However, it is new year’s eve and is time to get ready for our early celebration this afternoon. We will be celebrating with you New Yorkers, as the kids and adults attending our get together need our sleep.

Other Resources

Below are a few more resources to help you get started writing your own open text book, if you are interested.

I welcome any questions you have about the process, as I have a feeling I will be revisiting this topic, again, in the future. I would also love to hear about your experiences working with or writing open textbooks.

Top 17 Teaching in Higher Ed Blog Posts in 2017

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 23, 2017 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

I recently shared the most downloaded Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episodes that were recorded in 2017. I decided to take a look at which blog posts had the most reads in 2017 and share those in my final post for the year. Some of these posts go back all the way to 2014 but keep showing up in the analytics.

2017 blog posts that did not make the list – but that I think are worth a look include:

There is much to look forward to in 2018: My first book (through Stylus Publishing), teaching experiences, rewarding partnerships (grateful for the collaboration opportunities with ACUE), and being in community with all of you. Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year.

The Beginning and the End of Learning

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 18, 2017 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

“Mommy. I don’t ever want to die,” our three year-old said to me as we were eating a picnic lunch in our backyard today.

This may seem like a heavy topic for a Monday afternoon, especially for one so young. I understood the context of her question, though. The night before, she had been as close to death as she ever had been, in her short life.

Last night, we were finishing dinner and our son had found the glow stick bracelets that Dave had bought for the Fourth of July a couple years ago. When our son went out into our atrium to see the brightest possible glow, a small bird flew into the house. The bird flew all around our downstairs, as we frantically opened all the doors and attempted to shoo it out to freedom.

During our scurrying about (as the bird eventually made it up to the third story of the house: my loft home office), I kept coming up with a list of people who probably would know how to get a bird out of a house:

My Mom
Sandie’s husband
Maha Bali (I have no idea why she came to my mind in this instant – our minds are mysterious things)
And (eventually) – the internet

I wanted to call them (or, in Maha’s case, send a Twitter DM), but it seemed a ridiculous thing to do in the middle of the chaos.

Thinking back now, I wish I would have consulted at least the internet, as it would appear that maybe the fate of the bird could have been different. I don’t want to say exactly what happened in the flurry, lest I share parts of the story that others would rather I not share.

Let’s just say that my office is now covered in tiny bird feathers and our kids are asking a lot of questions about death.

The whole experience reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books from my childhood: About Dying, by Sara Bonnett Stein. Our kids got to share how they felt about the bird dying in their own unique ways, including our son’s deep desire to reincarnate the bird and both kids’ description of what they think it is like when people (and animals) die.

Why am I writing about this experience on a blog about teaching?

Because I keep going back to my conversation with Robin DeRosa and my experience writing an open textbook with a class for the first time. Talking with Robin, I was sharing how often I still wrestle with wanting teaching and learning to be more predictable, even though I no longer believe that to be possible in my intellectual mind.

Robin spoke about not thinking that learning is ever happening until things get messy (my word; not hers). She celebrated the sense of agency that comes when students begin to advocate for their own needs and go against what may be prescribed for them within a given learning context. Robin said, “Push back against a teacher is a win for open [education].” Later on, she emphasized that all of this unlearning of the traditional means of “learning” helps students become:

…shapers of knowledge, not consumers of it.”

Open Textbook – Beginnings and Endings

This past weekend, I just finished my doctoral class in which we “threw away” the traditional textbook for a class like this and wrote our own. I cannot tell you that it wasn’t anything but messy throughout the eight weeks of collaboration. Miscommunication happened. Mistakes happened. Misalignment of strengths happened. I invested more time in this class/project than I ever have in all the times I have taught it before, sometimes to my detriment.

You know what else happened?

Tremendous learning. For every single one of us.
A book that is the start of a conversation that I hope continues for many cohorts to come after this one.
Something that everyone who was a part of this project can be proud of (and is proud of) – knowing that they made a contribution to a book that turned out great.
While the book isn’t perfect, it is more than any one of us could have created in that amount of time (75 pages strong) and is the combination of over 100 years of collective teaching experience being expressed in written form.
Multiple reports of individuals who recognized through this process how much their voices matter and that they are capable of doing something that they didn’t realize they could do.
Plenty of dreams and goals being expressed about how individuals can now take these skills and use them in other contexts.

I plan on writing more about the specific learning I am taking away (What tools we used? Suggestions for others who want to attempt this, etc.).

In the meantime, I hope you will mourn with our family that sometimes things happen that you really wish wouldn’t have occurred. But, also celebrate that they give us opportunities to talk about hard topics and be open to what we can learn from our children’s perspectives.

I also hope you will celebrate with a group of doctoral students who gave so much of their time and talents to create a resource for preservice and new teachers, looking to use technology in their teaching. I am especially grateful to the project lead for the book: Matt Rhoads. He was such a gift to me – as well as to the entire cohort.

I will share links to the book in future posts, so you can check it out online, as well as on its own Amazon listing for buying hard copies or Kindle editions. I want to give the ~~students~~ authors a chance to go check it out and share it with their friends, first, and will pass it on to you soon, too. If you want to read more about others' experiences writing open textbooks, Robin's post: My Open Textbook – Pedagogy and Practice is the best resource I have found.

Your Turn

What unexpected things happened for you this term/semester that you are celebrating now, or mourning over and learning through?

Top Podcast Episodes and Recommended Resources in 2017

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 11, 2017 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

As I round out the year in Teaching in Higher Ed podcasting, I am excited to share a few more conversations with you in the coming weeks. The podcast has aired every single week since June of 2014. It invigorates me to consider that in April of 2018, I will air the 200th episode of Teaching in Higher Ed.

The next few weeks have some serious sources of inspiration for me. Robin DeRosa and I talk about open education on episode 183. Pooja Agarwal comes back on the show to share retrieval practice research on episode 184. Finally, we look toward a new year with another visit with Christian Friedrich. He and I talk about privacy and safety in online learning on episode 185, the last week in December.

I am grateful to each of the guests who came on the podcast in 2017 and shared their expertise. If you have yet to visit the episodes page and browse through the taxonomy, it can be a helpful way to revisit older episodes that best meet your needs.

Top 13 Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episodes in 2017

Below are the top thirteen downloaded episodes of 2017:

I was probably most challenged by the conversations about race that I had with Clint Smith and Stephen Brookfield. Mike Caulfield inspired me to continue to work to improve my own digital literacy and made me laugh harder than any other guest in 2017 (which is saying a lot).

I aspire to identify even more puzzles for my students to explore, through the modeling provided by Joe Hoyle. James Lang helped me try out a new format for the show. He took over the interviewing role and asked Ken Bain questions throughout the episode, while I sat back and enjoyed listening intently. Each one of these individuals have shaped my teaching in profound ways.

Top 13 Recommended Resources

Some of you have used the referral links I provide in the show notes to the books and other resources recommended by guests. Below are some of the most-purchased items from our Amazon affiliate links in 2017:

It may be worth noting that when you use an affiliate link, if you purchase other items during that visit to Amazon, we often receive some kind of commission. That must explain why the Audible recording of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck” wound up showing up on our affiliates links. Someone will have to tell me more about this one at some point…

Many of you also continued to enjoy Julie Schumacher’s sense of humor. Her coloring book landed at #2 (Doodling for Academics), but her novel, Dear Committee Members, was very close to making it on the list, as well. If you haven’t read it yet; it is hysterical.

I suspect that I am not going to become a YouTube sensation. However, my How to Pencast video generated almost 800 views. I won't plan on living off my YouTube advertising fees anytime soon. First off, I don't show advertisements with my videos. Even if I did, I would be a long ways off from any serious income…

Your Turn

What has been a Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode that has transformed your teaching in some way? What has been a favorite recommendation you heard about on Teaching in Higher Ed?

Question Regarding Organizational Systems for Courses