Author: Bonni Stachowiak – Page 33 – Teaching in Higher Ed

Top 10 DownloadedTeaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episodes

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 21, 2016 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

Those of us who podcast are regularly told to not get too hung up on our metrics. I started 2016 with a goal to grow the Teaching in Higher Ed community by 50% by October. Once I hit that goal, I stopped going back to review the results quite as often. However, I still know that I am sometimes overly focused on quantity of downloads, over quality of the connections we have been able to build through this community.

Still, it is nice to see more people are listening to podcast episodes each week. Well, to be clear, I don't actually know who listens. I'm only able to tell how many people download each of the shows.

List-making is quite popular this time of year. There's Oprah's Favorite Things of 2016, Wired's 2016 Wish List, Slate P!cks, and both The Sweet Home and The Wire Cutter gift guides.

I've decided to participate in the trend by making a list of the most downloaded episodes of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. I know that each week, new listeners continue to join the community and may have missed some good shows along the way.

Top 10 Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episodes

This list of the ten most downloaded episodes of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast is not in any particular order. It's been interesting to see how the most popular episodes have fluctuated during the course of the year. I get so curious when a particular geographic region downloads a significant amount of a particular episode, but have yet to unravel any of those mysteries.

Episode #092 – Small Teaching with James Lang

This was Jim's second visit to the podcast. Our first conversation (on episode #019) was about his book, Cheating Lessons. In the most recent episode (#092), Jim shared about the small changes we can make in our teaching that will provide the biggest leverage toward improved learning.

While I have treasured each opportunity I've had to interview Jim for the podcast, he has also contributed to the community in other ways. He regularly recommends guests (including some that you'll get to hear in early 2017). He also has written the most edifying words that anyone has ever shared about the podcast in Improving My Teaching Via Podcast in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Episode #096 – The Clinical Coach with Dr. Jeffrey Wiese

While listening to an episode of the Teach Better Podcast, I heard Geoff Connors (from the Yale School of Medicine) speak about his mentor, Jeff Wiese. I found Dr. Wiese's teaching portfolio and was instantly captivated. Jeff agreed to come on the show for episode #096 and ever since airing, it has remained popular.

Episode #107 – Engaging Learners with Gardner Campbell

The connection I feel when talking with Gardner is hard to describe. As he described standing with his students listening to Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill, I instantly traveled to a place I have never been, yet somehow felt like home. He reminded us that “great ideas of all kinds come from all kinds of people at all stages of their knowledge.”

Somehow, he can mention authors who I have never heard of before, yet not leave me feeling closed off from the learning. He challenges us to regularly gauge how our students are experiencing their learning.

Episode #089 – The Research on Course Evaluations with Betsy Barry

Our institution switched over to online evaluations this semester. A few times, I found myself wanting to stop the process and ask those leading the effort to first listen to this conversation with Betsy. She provides an overview of six surprising insights about course evaluations, all in a clear, concise, and engaging way.

Episode #087 – What the Best Digital Teachers Do with Sean Michael Morris

Sean has been on the podcast twice now. Each time, he has challenged me to release some of my desire to quantify learning, and to recognize it for the complex process that it is… He reminds us to regularly revisit our courses, as he asserts: “Every time we step into a classroom or design a new course … we have to step back and realize we don’t know anything, that each time it is new.”

After we spoke, Sean sent me such a thoughtful gift. It was an autographed copy of Savvy, a wonderful book that transported me to a wonderful place and taught me about agency and teaching.

Episode #110 – Self-regulated Learning and the Flipped Classroom with Robert Talbert

Getting to know Robert through two podcast interviews and the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack Channel has been rewarding. I have a feeling that after a few more months, Robert's most recent interview on the Getting Things Done methodology will continue to garner multitudes of downloads.

On episode #110, Robert shares about self-regulated learning and the flipped classroom. He states: “You can’t say that you are interested in teaching students how to learn and then spoon-feed them everything.” Robert has already agreed to come back in 2017 to share about his new book on the flipped classroom.

Episode #114 – Engage the Heart and Mind Through the Connected Classroom with Ken Bauer

Like Robert, Ken Bauer has engaged through both being interviewed on the show, but also on the Slack channel. I'm grateful to be in community with him and for his generosity as a teacher of us all. He encourages us to connect with our students and consider how our fear keeps us back from innovating in our teaching.

The number one difficulty for faculty in innovating in their practice is … fear.” – Ken Bauer

Episode #098 – The Skillful Teacher with Stephen Brookfield

Like many of the other guests who have been on the show more than once, Stephen Brookfield's episodes continue to be popular among listeners. I was excited to read Stephen's revised edition of The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom this past year. It is now among my top recommendations for new and experienced faculty, alike.

Stephen is transparent in his writing and his interviews as he shares about his own struggles with imposter syndrome and working toward talking less. He also reminds us to continually take risks in our teaching and recognize that there's no magic formula for teaching effectiveness.

Skillful teaching is whatever helps students learn.” – Stephen Brookfield

Episode #088 – Top Five Gadgets for Teaching with Bonni & Dave Stachowiak

Lest we think that our community is above the click-bait nature of numbered posts and podcasts, this episode about the top five gadgets for teaching has continued to top the charts, since it was first released. Dave and I enjoyed talking about the gadgets we get the most value from in our teaching.

There was a complaint in the comments section that the episode was too Apple-centric, given that three of the five recommendations were specific to that ecosystem. However, given the number of downloads, at least we know there is an interest in this kind of information. We'll continue to work at being considerate of all computer / smartphone / device users in future episodes, while still recognizing that Apple has a commanding market share in some of these spaces.

Episode #112 – Radical Hope – A Teaching Manifesto with Kevin Gannon

As I mentioned at the top of this post, this list is not in any particular order. However, this episode is turning out to regularly being among the top three episodes, depending on the time I look. This is likely since so many of us in this community need the hope that what we are working toward makes a difference.

Kevin reminds us of the vulnerability required to teach effectively:

If I want my students to take risks and not be afraid to fail, then I need to take risks and not be afraid to fail.” – Kevin Gannon

Contribute to the Upcoming 2017 Episodes

Your ideas about show topics and guests are always welcome. As I looked back at the list of the top ten, I found it somewhat concerning that 80% of the episodes that have been downloaded the most were with male guests. I did a quick count and found that 59 episodes of the podcast have been with male guests, while 53 of them have been with women. I didn't count the episodes when it was both Dave and I together. Also, I counted each episode guest's gender, meaning that people (including solo episodes with me) who have been on multiple times were tallied more than once.

My head hurts from speculating about why more downloads occurred with male guests… Perhaps it is as simple an explanation as that more than half of the guests represented on this list have been on the show multiple times?

I welcome any ideas you have about amplifying some of the more diverse voices of former guests. I started this particular post, thinking that I would link to the top ten and also list some that I think are not listened to as frequently, but are worth hearing. However, now that I'm at a much longer post than I thought this would be, I think I'll hold off on that idea for future blog posts.

Thanks to all of you for listening to the podcasts and giving potential guests even more of a reason to accept the invitations to be on the show.

My Updated Personal Knowledge Management System

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 14, 2016 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

This Saturday, I begin a doctoral class that I teach a couple of times each year. One of the topics we explore is personal knowledge management (PKM).

Over the eight weeks we'll learn together, the doctoral students will create and refine their own PKM processes. They will then be able to regularly seek out new knowledge, make sense of that knowledge, and then share their own perspectives on it in community.

As I prepare for the course to start, I realize that some of my own PKM system has changed, since I first started teaching the course back in 2014. This post provides a current description of my approach and tools and hopefully gives anyone reading this post some inspiration for getting started with your own PKM system.

Personal Knowledge Management Defined

Instead of being at the mercy of all the information that flies at us on a given day, we can take charge of the process, and discover ways to seek our credible and relevant information, transform it into knowledge (information that serves a purpose), and share it with others in our networked communities. Harold Jarche defines PKM as:

… a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively.”

This graphic illustrates the tools that work in concert to make my PKM system efficient and effective.

Seek

Kris Shaffer emphasizes the need to combat misinformation in Truthy Lies and Surreal Truths: A Plea for Critical Digital Literacies. Where we go looking for information will certainly impact whether what we find is trustworthy and also if it is connected with our individual learning pursuits.

I try to keep the tools I use for seeking to a bare minimum (primarily Twitter, Feedly, and my podcast client – Overcast). I also regularly consider whether the people and sources I follow are worthy of my attention. To avoid being a information hoarder, I design a system that feeds me regularly and keeps me in a continual state of learning.

Twitter (Microblogging service)

Twitter is the most timely of my seek tools. My list for getting started on twitter for education doctoral students provides a small list of possibilities. Generally speaking, I advise following more individuals than you do organizations (there are exceptions to that guidance). Twitter is about relationship, for me. Peter Newbury also gave my Teaching in Higher Ed podcast listeners such good advice when he advocated that we follow people who are like us, and follow people who are not like us on Twitter.

Feedly (RSS reader)

Feedly connects me with articles, blogs, and other information from all sorts of areas of interest. Whether Seth Godin is filling my mind with wisdom, or I'm finding out about the latest geeky Apple news from Daring Fireball, I can be assured that valuable information is at the ready, each time I visit.

There's an option to mark-all-as-read on Feedly, too, which I can't recommend highly enough. Being able to press the reset buttons on our PKM systems is a vital option to keep in mind. We'll never be able to “keep up” with everything that is going on in our various social networks, but we can “tap in” when we're ready to engage.

Overcast (Podcast app)

Probably the easiest component for me to get behind in with my PKM system is with podcasting. There are so many phenomenal podcasts out there and not enough hours in the day to enjoy each of them. Malcolm Gladwell is doing some innovative storytelling with his Revisionist History podcast. Mike Wesch gives a tremendous look into college students' lives in the first episode of his Life101 podcast. This American Life tells stories about what happens when school kids from two very different contexts come together.

Sense

When people are first introduced to PKM, they usually get super energized and excited by the seek part. It's like getting to eat at a magnificent information buffet, with so many options to choose from… It's the sense part that is harder to digest.

Information in isolation does us no good. We must, instead, make sense of what we are taking in…

Social Bookmarking

We can use social bookmarking tools to keep our information categorized (through tagging) and make it easier to draw from it in the future.

I use a bookmarking service called Pinboard.in. As I view my tags, I can see which ones have the most bookmarks within them, because they show up as larger in my tag cloud. My three most popular tags are:

EDD703 (relevant information for the class I've been referring to in this post)
EdTech (lots of duplicates from EDD703 and EdTech, since they both address similar topics)
HigherEd (the industry I work in)

This is the part of the process that often makes people the most nervous. There's a feeling of inadequacy that arises. What we share doesn't have to be an original creation. In fact, it is often through networked learning that we are able to discover places we might not have ventured on our own…

Curation

One way we can provide value to our networks is through curation. Curators are becoming increasingly popular in our knowledge-hungry society. This video talks about the benefits of curation and presents some popular curators from different disciplines.

We can also recognize the value of “working out loud.” As we document our failures, we're not the only ones who get to learn from those mistakes.

Original Content

I share original content weekly through releasing a podcast episode, a blog post, and tweeting out links to content I've created, as well as curated.

Scheduled Sharing

I use a service called Buffer that lets me tweet on whatever schedule best serves my network's needs, instead of whenever I happen to be in front of a computer.

Getting Started

While this post articulates my PKM system in its entirety, I suggest you don't try to follow it like it was a recipe. Instead, just dive in and start setting up a system to help you seek, sense, and share.

Find 4-5 people to follow on Twitter and start checking in on what they have to say daily. Set up a bookmarking service (EDD 703 students will be using Diigo, so we can share our bookmarks, together). And start retweeting some of the great things you read about on Twitter, with a few words of why you found what they had to say so important.

For more information on setting up a PKM, check out my Introduction to Personal Knowledge Management module.

The invitation

By Bonni Stachowiak | December 1, 2016 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

Yesterday, a colleague emailed me with a query:

We are so frustrated with the mis-use of electronics in class by students and feel they ultimately take away from learning and discussion. Texting, messaging, on line, etc. We have considered putting a ban on all electronics (laptops included) and see what happens.

Our occasional bans have certainly increased student involvement in class! On-line we find articles regarding such a ban, but wondered if you have any helpful information for us.

So can you speak to the other side of this coin?

PS – I so wish we were all where you are in regards to electronics in the classroom, but we are not…

Her message coincided with me not knowing what to blog about this week. A match made in blogger heaven…

The Dynamite Device Debate

Distractions abound in our classrooms and in our lives. The device debate has been raging for as long as I've been teaching. Often times, the debate produces a false dichotomy: Should we “allow” laptops/phones/etc., or should we “ban” them?

The “yes” side says we should ban laptops/phones because:

Using one's smart phone too often could result in decreased academic performance
Taking notes by hand will prove to be more effective for their learning
Avoiding their use helps us focus better (though, as this study explores, it's far more complex than that)

The “no” side says we should avoid banning laptops/phones because:

It takes away the option our students are most familiar with (they grew up taking notes this way)
We may inadvertently discriminate against students with learning and cognitive disabilities
“…unilateral bans on technology in the classroom accomplish nothing but demonstrating an off-putting rigidity and an adversarial view of students“

Then, there are some who advocate for giving students the choice of whether or not to use devices. Some faculty create a laptop-friendly zone where students can choose to sit, if they prefer to use a device. It can be vital to explain these choices to our students, to properly equip them to make decisions about how they will engage in the classroom. There's also the option to cooperate with the inevitable and allow for tech breaks during an otherwise gadget-free class.

The Invitation

If you visited one of my classes, what you would observe (in terms of device usage) would vary greatly. On some days, the students wouldn't use any technology at all. In fact, I wouldn't use any, either, preferring to teach with sticky notes or engage in a more serendipitous dialog than linear slide structures provide.

Jose Bowen advocates that we “teach naked” – as in not use technology while in a classroom environment. He stresses that we consider what we are doing in our pedagogy and whether or not laptops and other technology tools serve our purposes. When he was a guest on Teaching in Higher Ed, he said:

Nobody uses a laptop while doing yoga or playing tennis. – Jose Bowen

After learning from Jose's model, I started to frame my requests to put the tech away in more of a need-based argument. That might sounds something like:

We aren't going to be needing laptops or phones today, so you can put them away and get ready for today's case.

However, on other days, I make use of retrieval practice tools and invite students to take their devices out.

Today, we're going to review about the four types of competition in a capitalistic economic system. I invite you to take out your phones as we use PollEverywhere. If you don't have a phone or other device with you, let me know and you're free to borrow mine.

I continue to be challenged and encouraged by people who have questioned outright laptop bans like James Lang and Kevin Gannon. I'm finding that the whole idea of banning really sets the wrong tone for my teaching aspirations. I don't want to treat my students as adversaries. I want to engage them with the possibilities that learning offers.

However, I also recognize that our students have established norms in many of the educational experiences they have had before meeting me that engagement is not welcomed. Many of them have only known learning as a passive experience. For that kind of pedagogy, give your students the choice of how to take in what you have to say.

If you are committed to a different type of teaching style than lecture, invite your students to experience deeper learning through the power of dialog. Instead of imposing restrictions about what they can't use, invite them to have an experience that can't be had through the use of technology.

One of my professors in my doctoral classes would allow us to use our laptops during about half of the course time, but had a dedicated time where we invited to rearrange our chairs into a circle and put all our gadgets away. Each of us would share our reflections on that week's reading.

I remember grumbling (to myself) a bit about the “hassle” of moving furniture. I now recognize the symbolism that the actions represented. After a couple of weeks, he no longer had to instruct us on what to do, we had adopted new norms for having a deeper dialog than we typically had when our noses were behind our laptops.

Don't ban; invite.

Be sure that the first time you extend an invitation to put the technology away that you have something planned that will demonstrate something different is happening. Surprise them. Engage them. Get them up and moving around.

Build their trust that when they accept your invitation to put the potentially distracting devices away, that you'll be welcoming them in to a learning experience worthy of the sacrifice.

10 People I’m Thankful Are on Twitter

By Bonni Stachowiak | November 18, 2016 | | X Facebook LinkedIn Email

I participated for a few years in the daily thankfulness posts on social media, during the November months.

Then, I read A People's History of The United States.

Now, I would probably skip Thanksgiving, all together, if it wouldn't upset certain members of our family so much. Still, every time Columbus Day rolls around, I can't stop from joining John Oliver in asking, “How is this still a thing?“.

Nevertheless, I'm writing today's words of thanks about people I'm grateful are on Twitter. These individuals regularly challenge my ways of thinking and contribute to my ongoing learning.

In no particular order, I'm thankful for:

Maha Bali – who shares about diversity and intercultural learning. She's also the co-founder of Virtually Connecting, one way of getting to be at a conference you otherwise couldn't be at…

Kevin Gannon – a history professor and faculty development professional who regularly speaks out against injustice. He is a self-professed “talking head” on the documentary 13th (as in the 13th amendment).

Kris Shaffer – is on the amazing team of faculty developers at the University of Mary Washington. He tweets about indy edtech, politics, music, and data science.

Jesse Stommel – leads faculty development at the University of Mary Washington. He wants us to be courageously kind to our students and frequently causes me to look words that are new to me up in the dictionary. He's a generous teacher and never leaves any of us behind, though.

Audrey Watters – is often referred to as “edtech's Cassandra.” She wants us to be vigilant about asking critical questions about the technology we attempt to use in teaching and learning. She's a magnificent speaker and a brilliant writer. Her blog is also a must-read.

Tressie McMillan Cottom – advocates for those who have been victims of for-profit higher ed. She is a sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and wants us to know about the $20 principle.

James Lang – has been a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community since his first guest interview on episode #19 about his book, Cheating Lessons. He is a fantastic curator on Twitter and regularly shares what he's learning as he researches for future writing projects and for his role in leading faculty development at Assumption College. Check out his pinned tweet about his amazing book: Small Teaching.

Ken Bauer – is an expert in connected learning and the flipped classroom. He's a generous educator and is well worth following, if not just for all the people he will connect you with on Twitter.

Josh Eyler – leads the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University. He fights against ableism, strives to help us see the nuance in perspectives on teaching effectiveness, and passes on insightful political posts.

Rachel Held Evans – is a “doubt-filled believer, author of Searching for Sunday, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Faith Unraveled.” She's a grace-filled writer who is challenging the Christian church in important ways.

***

Who are you following on Twitter who is challenging you to think differently about your teaching and your values?