Teaching in Higher Ed

A taste of agency

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A taste of agency

I didn't formally know what agency was when I started teaching, yet somehow found ways to foster it in some aspects of my pedagogy. I also failed at it in other ways.

In my first couple of years teaching Introduction to Business, I let students choose from a set of “development opportunities” to learn more about business and demonstrate learning. More recently, I have been teaching a business ethics course using what I've informally started referring to on this blog as ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Assessment.'  There's a podcast episode about this approach, in addition to a two-part blog post (part 1, part 2).

Agency isn't only about giving learners choice, but that is the aspect that I'm touching on with this post. If you want more of a holistic appreciation for what is involved with agency, look no further than Larry Ferlazzo's site. While his resources speak to high school teachers, there is much to glean from his student agency collection for higher education. There's also a wonderful description of how agency fits in with critical digital pedagogy from Jesse Stommel.

First impressions

When students walk into a class of mine on the first day, I like to set the stage that something is going to be different about this class. I have historically found it harder to do an effective job at that with online classes (or, the online portion of a hybrid course), because I think I have valued consistency over the power of the unexpected.

Our university is switching learning management systems (LMSs) this summer: from Moodle to Canvas. The change has challenged me to rethink my course design. As I've learned more about Canvas and started to experiment a bit, I have found a way to create a way of giving choice to learners from the very beginning of the online portion of the class.

Choose your movie trailer

I've written before about being inspired to make a movie trailer for my classes. I finally took action and wound up creating two different course trailers. I circulated them on the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack channel and among some friends at work, asking which one people preferred.

One person suggested, “Give them a choice. Let them watch the one they would rather watch, or let them see both.” And so…

Workflow

Students taking my Introduction to Business course will now start with an instruction to click on whatever tv show / movie they would rather watch. Below is just a screenshot of what they will see and isn't formatted to work on this particular blog post. 

1-choose-your-movie

Trailers

Then, if students choose one of the more action-oriented options, they will be shown this page, on which they can view the action-themed trailer.

2-action-adventure

Those who watched the action-themed trailer can then either watch the romantic comedy-themed trailer, or return back to the getting started section of the course.

Of course, the same approach happens if students choose a romantic comedy genre of entertainment. They get a similar-but-different movie trailer.

You can click on the graphics of each of the trailers (action and romantic) and see the videos that my students will see, if you're interested. 

3-romantic-comedy

Next steps

The next logical step after this might be to have students create their own course trailers to demonstrate what they learned by taking the class. Then, I could use some of those in future courses and have an even bigger collection of potential trailers for the students to navigate to…

What are some small steps you take in the beginning of your online courses to give students agency?

Tools for better presentations

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Tools for better presentations

My imagination has been captured for what's possible through presentations, after attending the Podcast Movement Conference in Chicago last week.

The conference brought together such masterful storytellers as Glynn Washington, Alex Blumberg, and Anna Sale. There were a few other presenters who showed themselves to be more adept at podcasting than they were with an in-person audience.

Better presentations

The whole experience got me thinking about what approaches may be used to help create better presentations. Here are a few that I have found particularly helpful:

Make your slides interactive

One of the biggest flaws I noticed in a few of the presentations at the conference was the excessive use of the “raise your hand if you _____” technique. You can get away with that once, maybe twice. But, I counted over 20 uses of it in one presentation and that's over the top.

You can engage using audience response systems, most of which are available for use on mobile phones these days. Google slides recently was updated to include ways for audiences to engage with their phones and Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has this tutorial to get you started.

I use PollEverywhere and Sli.do currently. I am intrigued, though, by the way that Google is integrating the interaction within their service, vs having to embed outside services the way that it is when you use the other two services.

Know the difference between slides and handouts

Whenever I'm asked to provide my slides in advance of a talk, I usually start politely asking questions about the reason for the request. Often, the person asking wants to make photocopies of the slides for the attendees, since people are used to slides being really just the presenter's notes, which are shown on the screen during their talk.

What they are really asking for is a handout, a tool that can be used as reference after the presentation with additional ways to reinforce the learning from the session. Mark Hofer wrote about the importance of using slides for their intended purpose and creating handouts, when necessary, on the Luminaris blog.

Sometimes, the presentation part of the entire picture isn't even necessary. Check out this gorgeous example of how much can be communicated within a slide program from Nancy Duarte. She refers to this method of communicating via this medium as Slidedocs.

Communicate visually

Slides aren't designed to be handouts. They also weren't intended to display your notes on the projector screen for everyone to see.

There's a place for you to type notes that you want to see on the computer you're using to present on, but it reduces your learners' cognitive load if you use a relevant image to convey your idea, instead of a bunch of bullets that you'll attempt to “talk over.”

Better yet, with some practice and guidance on how to approach it, you can learn to present without any notes at all. That way, the focus can be on your message, and not on you losing credibility by needing to be lost in your notes throughout your presentation.

This design guide from Canva has bunch of phenomenal examples of visual slides throughout the article. Even if you don't have time to read all of their advice, just flip through some of the slide decks and prepare to be inspired.

HaikuDeck is a great place to get started creating visual slides, if you don't have as much experience at it. The way their service is designed is to “force” you into not putting too much on a slide.

Here's an example of HaikuDeck in action. I never actually got to give this presentation, since it was planned at our faculty gathering last year and I got super sick on the day I was supposed to give the talk.


USING TECHNOLOGY TO BE – Created with Haiku Deck

Resources

My presentation approaches have been profoundly shaped by two resources:

You can see some of their influences in this slide deck I designed for the Lilly Conference earlier this year.

What resources have you found particularly helpful in your ability to create better presentations?

Creating memories as teaching

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Creating memories through teaching

I had the honor of interviewing Gardner Campbell this week: twice. The first episode with him airs on June 30, while the second one posts on July 28.

[Spoiler alert] One of the things he spoke about during the recommendations segment was his recent purchase of the quadrophonic albums of the group, Chicago.

Ever since our conversation, I've had Chicago playing almost non-stop in the soundtrack in my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxarwzuFEug

Chicago always reminds me of my Dad and the many trips my family would take out to Joshua Tree when I was little. It was touching for me to discover that Gardner and I share such a deep connection with the music of Chicago.

Music almost always evokes deep memories for me. When students recommend music to me, the memory of them introducing me to a phenomenal musician or musical group is forever etched in my mind.

Before streaming music services existed, my students used to be amazed that I had over 10,000 songs in my digital music collection. I've always enjoyed playing music before class and often invited students to take the role as DJ to find songs that they liked to play.

My favorite memory of those early days of teaching was the student who asked if he could find a song from my collection to play and came up with this little number:

To be clear, this was not done in any sort of flirtatious way, but rather as an attempt to embarrass me for owning the song. I think it was also a “test” to see what kind of professor I was going to be, since it was early in the semester.

I must have passed the test, since this took place ten years ago and I'm still in touch with about half of the students who were in the class.

Creating memories as teaching

I promise not to give the entire episode #107 with Gardner away in this post, but he also shares about listening to Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill with his study abroad students and the lasting memory that it is for him of his teaching experiences.

While any study abroad experience is going to be an extreme example, I keep reflecting on the aspect of our role as teachers of creating memories.

I teach a sales and sales management course once per year that I've taught for 11 years now. I've stayed in touch better with the students who have taken that class more than any other that I teach. I also hear from more of them, years later, as they share some way that the course is still having an impact on them.

I attribute much of that to the way that the students take risks in the course and are able to demonstrate their skills in a powerful (public) way at the end of the semester.

The final experience of the course is called Sales Challenge #3 (as in there are a couple of lessor challenges that come before it, to build up their skills and help prepare them for the experience.

Sales challenge 3

The students dress in professional attire and role play a sales scenario with a business professional they have never met before. It is typically a nerve-wracking experience for them. However, even years later, they tell me what an impact it had on their confidence that they now have the skills needed to influence others and help people solve business-related problems.

We create a memory together, through the experience. It is one that lasts for years down the line and helps them reflect even further on the skills that began to develop, during their college years.

How do you see creating memories as an aspect of your teaching?

Let’s agree to agree and disagree

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Critical pedagogy and data

One of my least favorite sayings is, “Let’s agree to disagree.” What does that even mean? When I read those words in written form, the voice in my head says them dripping with sarcasm and without kindness.

Yet, a slightly-altered version of it was the first thing that came into my head as a potential title for this post, when I sat down to write today.

Sean Michael Morris’ thoughts on Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Learning Management resonated with me. So much so that we had a whole conversation around it on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast…

Where Sean Michael Morris and I might part ways is in the complete lack of interest in student metrics. He writes:

I can safely say that I have no interest in student metrics. They tell me nothing.

… and I find myself wanting to agree to agree and disagree on this point.

First, a little context. I teach at a small, private, liberal arts university. My course load is 4/4, with an average of 30-35 students in each of my courses. That translates to well over 100 individuals per semester that I feel a big responsibility to serve in the best ways I know how.

There are those students who take me up on my offers to meet for coffee, or to go for walks at the beautiful Newport Beach Back Bay… These relationships represent what I consider to be the most important aspects of my teaching and of my sense of vocation.

jamie

Then, there are those students who do not initiate any form of relationship. Our connection could wind up consisting of the minimum common denominator of me learning their name and knowing one thing about them (where they’re from, what year in school they are, if they have served in the military, whether they work full time, or if they’re involved in some sort of extra curricular activity such as athletics or the choir). I’m ashamed to admit that there ever were those courses in which my association with some of the students never progressed beyond that point, but it has happened.

Sean ends his post by stressing the importance of helping students form relationships with him and with each other and that data does nothing to inform any of that. He then writes:

All the rest is up to them.

Here’s where we differ.

To me, those metrics and data do help me see where I may be able to be some small part in helping a student re-engage at a critical part of the semester. In the classroom, we can observe the behaviors of a person whose only presence is in physical form. Over time, we might learn how to better engage people and challenge ourselves to find ways to bring the learners back into the conversation.

Online, with 120 students, I don’t have the luxury of the in-person cues that I might otherwise rely on to improve my own teaching.

The data helps me see whether perhaps the video I posted just wasn’t that interesting, or whether I could have made the course navigation better to guide people through the introduction of the topic better. Over time, I can get better at finding ways to engage students in the dialog in the online portions of the course in the same, or different, ways I might in the classroom. I can expand my thinking about what it means to engage in an online environment, with the particular challenge of finding ways to help students connect with each other.

The data also helps me see where particular students may be struggling. If I can send a text message to a student who hasn’t logged in for a couple of weeks, it could potentially mean the difference between them passing or failing the course. I can try to catch a student for a few minutes after class, after noticing that she's failed the last few online quizzes, or not turned in the small assignments that were meant as scaffolding for an upcoming major assignment.

This doesn’t mean that our students aren’t ultimately responsible for their own learning in a course, but I’m sensitive to the fact that I teach many first generation students who may not have had the luxury of having mentors to teach them how to manage schedules and multiple priorities.

Transitioning from high school to college can be so difficult. If I allow the data to give me lenses to see what I may otherwise miss, I could be some small part in helping them build new habits and disciplines for their learning.

When I’m in a classroom with 30 students, I can usually assess in-the-moment how people may be experiencing the learning. I also know I have the capacity of being completely wrong in my perceptions…

When I’m going in-and-out of the online portions of my courses, I no longer seem to possess this same capacity. If an aspect of my course is poorly designed, I may not notice until the data brings the weakness to light. If someone is being left out of the learning process in some way, I don’t always notice, unless the data brings some aspect of that to my attention.

As I end this post, I realize that this may very well not be a case of disagreement, but more of a weakness on my part and a strength on Sean Michael Morris' part (see Jesse Stommel's tweet, embedded, below).

It also may be a cultural difference between where Sean has taught and where I currently teach.

When a student has failed one of my courses, there are questions that occasionally get asked like, “Did you talk to him/her about how they were doing in the class at some point? Did you ever reach out to check in with him/her?” While that never changed the outcome for the student, it did change me. I didn't ever want to have an answer in the future that indicated that I hadn't ever done anything to try to bring them back in to the learning community in some way.

Data has helped me be true to that promise in the past, though I know it isn't without its dangers.

Let's agree to agree and disagree

By | | | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Critical pedagogy and data

One of my least favorite sayings is, “Let’s agree to disagree.” What does that even mean? When I read those words in written form, the voice in my head says them dripping with sarcasm and without kindness.

Yet, a slightly-altered version of it was the first thing that came into my head as a potential title for this post, when I sat down to write today.

Sean Michael Morris’ thoughts on Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Learning Management resonated with me. So much so that we had a whole conversation around it on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast…

Where Sean Michael Morris and I might part ways is in the complete lack of interest in student metrics. He writes:

I can safely say that I have no interest in student metrics. They tell me nothing.

… and I find myself wanting to agree to agree and disagree on this point.

First, a little context. I teach at a small, private, liberal arts university. My course load is 4/4, with an average of 30-35 students in each of my courses. That translates to well over 100 individuals per semester that I feel a big responsibility to serve in the best ways I know how.

There are those students who take me up on my offers to meet for coffee, or to go for walks at the beautiful Newport Beach Back Bay… These relationships represent what I consider to be the most important aspects of my teaching and of my sense of vocation.

jamie

Then, there are those students who do not initiate any form of relationship. Our connection could wind up consisting of the minimum common denominator of me learning their name and knowing one thing about them (where they’re from, what year in school they are, if they have served in the military, whether they work full time, or if they’re involved in some sort of extra curricular activity such as athletics or the choir). I’m ashamed to admit that there ever were those courses in which my association with some of the students never progressed beyond that point, but it has happened.

Sean ends his post by stressing the importance of helping students form relationships with him and with each other and that data does nothing to inform any of that. He then writes:

All the rest is up to them.

Here’s where we differ.

To me, those metrics and data do help me see where I may be able to be some small part in helping a student re-engage at a critical part of the semester. In the classroom, we can observe the behaviors of a person whose only presence is in physical form. Over time, we might learn how to better engage people and challenge ourselves to find ways to bring the learners back into the conversation.

Online, with 120 students, I don’t have the luxury of the in-person cues that I might otherwise rely on to improve my own teaching.

The data helps me see whether perhaps the video I posted just wasn’t that interesting, or whether I could have made the course navigation better to guide people through the introduction of the topic better. Over time, I can get better at finding ways to engage students in the dialog in the online portions of the course in the same, or different, ways I might in the classroom. I can expand my thinking about what it means to engage in an online environment, with the particular challenge of finding ways to help students connect with each other.

The data also helps me see where particular students may be struggling. If I can send a text message to a student who hasn’t logged in for a couple of weeks, it could potentially mean the difference between them passing or failing the course. I can try to catch a student for a few minutes after class, after noticing that she's failed the last few online quizzes, or not turned in the small assignments that were meant as scaffolding for an upcoming major assignment.

This doesn’t mean that our students aren’t ultimately responsible for their own learning in a course, but I’m sensitive to the fact that I teach many first generation students who may not have had the luxury of having mentors to teach them how to manage schedules and multiple priorities.

Transitioning from high school to college can be so difficult. If I allow the data to give me lenses to see what I may otherwise miss, I could be some small part in helping them build new habits and disciplines for their learning.

When I’m in a classroom with 30 students, I can usually assess in-the-moment how people may be experiencing the learning. I also know I have the capacity of being completely wrong in my perceptions…

When I’m going in-and-out of the online portions of my courses, I no longer seem to possess this same capacity. If an aspect of my course is poorly designed, I may not notice until the data brings the weakness to light. If someone is being left out of the learning process in some way, I don’t always notice, unless the data brings some aspect of that to my attention.

As I end this post, I realize that this may very well not be a case of disagreement, but more of a weakness on my part and a strength on Sean Michael Morris' part (see Jesse Stommel's tweet, embedded, below).

It also may be a cultural difference between where Sean has taught and where I currently teach.

When a student has failed one of my courses, there are questions that occasionally get asked like, “Did you talk to him/her about how they were doing in the class at some point? Did you ever reach out to check in with him/her?” While that never changed the outcome for the student, it did change me. I didn't ever want to have an answer in the future that indicated that I hadn't ever done anything to try to bring them back in to the learning community in some way.

Data has helped me be true to that promise in the past, though I know it isn't without its dangers.