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.

Last one. If you’ve ever heard me talk about my career path, you know about my initial dream career, and why/how it changed… pic.twitter.com/Qgf4DpPuek

— #TenureTrackHustle (@meredithdclark) January 5, 2019

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.

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.

 

Last year, Dave and I did a shared episode between our two podcasts (Coaching for Leaders and Teaching in Higher Ed) on:

Episode 181: Gifts for Teaching and Productivity

Somewhere along the line, we decided not to do that, again, this year. However, I do have some ideas to pass along.

Educational Technology Gifts

I still think the episode that Dave and I did even earlier on top five gadgets for teaching is still relevant, though some of the versions of things have advanced (like the iPad). Last year’s shared episode with Dave also still has some good stuff worth exploring. In the meantime, two educational technology gifts that are standing out to me today are a presentation remote (on the lower end of the cost spectrum) and the iPad (on the upper end, in terms of cost).

Presentation Remote

Standing behind a podium while teaching opens up the possibility for a lack of connection with our students. A presentation remote frees us up to move around a classroom and really engage with people. This one is the one I used for many years, until I moved to a laptop without USB-a – so now I have one that connects via Bluetooth. If you have USB-a on your laptop, there are plenty of choices that won’t break the bank.

iPad

The prices on iPads have come down considerably, at least for the entry-level ones. The Pro versions have gone in the opposite direction – but are packed with power. My iPad is used primarily for consumption, though I can certainly get work done from coffee shops with my Smart Keyboard folio.

The Apple Pencil remains the best stylus I’ve ever used on a tablet. And the new one now magnetically attaches to the side of the iPad and charges as it sits there. Remarkable and functional design.

Lifelong Learning Gifts

I recently took the Strengths Finder assessment, again, after taking it more than ten years ago during my doctoral program. Not surprisingly, one of my top five strengths is learner – which really helps me see why my chosen profession is so rewarding to me. Below are just some of the gifts you could buy a learner in your life to get them even better at what they do.

The Academic Book Promotion Toolkit

Katie Linder has put together a phenomenal toolkit to help academic writers get your work discovered by more people. She shares over 30 ways to boost your book sales and get more people reading what you spent all that time putting out into the world.

MacSparky Field Guides

If you have a Mac user in your life, the MacSparky Field Guides are a wonderful way to discover how to get even more out of your technology. I’m working my way through the Hazel Field Guide right now and am really enjoying it.

Andy Traub’s Master Zoom Course

If you know anyone who uses Zoom in their teaching, I can almost guarantee you that they aren’t getting all that they could out of this powerful video conferencing platform. Andy Traub shares in his Mastering Zoom Course with clarity how to set up your equipment (and what kind to buy, if you don’t have any equipment right now), how to set up Zoom, and how to coach and consult (which applies to teaching).

Master Mobile Photography Course from The Sweet Setup

There’s a saying among photographers. The best camera is the one you have with you. For many of us, that’s the camera on our phone. This course on mobile photography from The Sweet Setup shares how to take betters photos, manage your collection, and their recommended photo apps.

Unlock 1Password from The Sweet Setup

The 1Password service has been recommended multiple times on Teaching in Higher Ed. If what has been stopping one of your loved ones is that they don’t know how to use it – that barrier can be broken through the Unlock 1Password course from The Sweet Setup.

Your Turn

What is something new that you’re learning, lately, and what is supporting you in that learning?

It’s been more than three weeks since I blogged (and the last post was a re-post of an article I had written on EdSurge, so I’m not sure it counts).

A lot has been going on…

Can Innovate Conference from The Online Network of Educators (@ONE)

On October 26, 2018, I had the pleasure of attending the Can*Innovate Online Conference, put on by the Online Network of Educators. While the event was created for community college faculty, it was equally relevant to those of us teaching in other contexts.

Here are just a few of the resources I recommend checking out:

• Main Can*Innovate Schedule Page with Video Playback of All Sessions
• Canva (Graphic Design Site) for Canvas Session Page
• Surprise! Good Things Can Happen When Students Get Creative, with Laura Gibbs
• Promoting Equity with EdPuzzle and Canvas Mastery Paths (Marvin Patton finally helped me comprehend mastery paths in Canvas)

I'm honored to have been invited to be the keynote speaker for the CCC Digital Learning day in 2019, which is also put on by the Online Network of Educators (@ONE). Please consider joining in on the learning with us on 2/28/19.

Creating Healthy Organizations Conference

On October 12-13, I presented at my institution’s Creating Healthy Organizations conference. Here are some resources and more information about each session I collaborated on.

Leverage Positive Politics to Influence Change in Your Organization, with April Akinloye, PhD

Before transitioning to academia, I used to get asked to talk about organizational politics more than any other topic in my consulting work. I enjoyed collaborating with my colleague, April Akinloye, on this workshop. She’s our Chief Diversity Officer and was able to share the ways in which we might approach various people in our organizations when seeking to influence change.

Tools and Approaches to Maximize Your Productivity, with Dave Stachowiak, EdD

If that last name sounds familiar, it is because I’m married to that guy! It was great to present together – after not having joined forces for many years in this capacity.

On the resources page, the left side holds our ideas for how to be more productive, while the attendees contributed to the ideas on the right-hand side of the post.

University of Houston’s Learning, Design, and Technology Program

I was grateful to have been invited to facilitate at the University of Houston’s Learning, Design, and Technology Program. I gave two sessions:

CREATE: Practical Tools for Course Content Creation

I have got a resources page with the slide deck I used at the session, along with tools that I mentioned or demonstrated during the talk. One thing I didn’t share about publicly (as it was unlikely to be all that interesting), was how I attempted to be more playful in partially hand-drawing some of my slides. My intention in doing this was to show that we all have the capacity to create and it is most often our mindset that holds us back from achieving our potential.

The images below are representative of the kind of experimentation I was using while creating the deck.

HANDS ON: Practical Tools for Course Content Creation

My second session was smaller, as they limited it to no more than 25 people who had registered in advance. I used an approach that the teachers use at our kids’ school called “planned possibilities.”

I had some ideas of the kinds of things we could experiment with during the session, which I displayed in a visual way on a slide.

Then, I invited them to add to the list with ideas that emerged out of some early discussions we had during the session. Then, I showed them how I would take this visual slide, turn it into a PollEverywhere image selection poll. Finally, they voted on the possibilities that were of most interest to them for our time together.

Laura Pasquini’s Keynote: What’s Your Story

It was already an honor to get to join the University of Houston for their event. However, it was even more of a bonus that I got to meet Laura Pasquini in person.

I know Laura from Twitter. We have done some collaboration via online meeting spaces. But this was my first chance to meet her in “real life” (that’s supposed to be a joke – as what happens online is also a part of our lives).

I enjoyed Laura's cadence of presenting. She would present a flurry of thought-provoking ideas – but then would pause and give us room for reflection. One of my favorite tools she used was this one:

Table Topics

Laura hand-selected questions from the Table Topics deck that would most apply to our conversations. Between that interaction and the tremendous ITLD Breakout Game that the University of Houston team put on – I found such authentic opportunities to connect with the people who had gathered for the conference.

It's been a whirlwind couple of months, though I'm grateful for all of these opportunities to learn and teach. Thanks for reading through a little bit on what I've been up to…

 

 

“Bonni! Bonni! Bonni!” I heard echoing across the parking lot as I walked into work this morning. My friend stopped me in my tracks to share how much she got out of the recent Teaching in Higher Ed episode with Rajiv Jhangiani on Critical Open Pedagogy.

Like her, I was also incredibly inspired by the conversation with Rajiv. He can both spell out the magnificent vision of open education, while also still increasing our collective capacity to take practical steps to move closer to that set of ideals.

I sometimes feel like I am fumbling toward more of an open education approach in my teaching. However, people like Rajiv help me believe I’m at least moving in the right direction and that I possess some markers to guide my path.

The Critical Open Pedagogy episode with Rajiv aired while the 2018 Open Education Conference was occurring (#OpenEd18). While I couldn’t be there in person this year, I sure did get a lot out of the interactions that were happening on Twitter.

Below are just a few of the resources that were shared on the #OpenEd18 hashtag:

• OER Training, by Billy Meinke: “A three-part training guide for bringing higher education instructors up to speed with Open Educational Resources (OER).”
• OER: From Vision to Action, by Rajiv Jhangiani: “Keynote address at #OERVisionAction18 in Denver on August 2, 2018”
• CADET – Caption and Description Editing Tool: “CADET is a free, downloadable caption-authoring software that enables anyone to produce high-quality caption files that are compatible with any media player that supports the display of captions. CADET does not require an internet connection in order to operate: it runs locally in any Web browser, so users do not need to upload private videos or proprietary content to servers or video-hosting sites in order to create captions.”
• Accessibility, Diversity, and Inclusion: (part of the BCcampus’ open textbook self publishing guide) “For a textbook to be truly accessible, people of all abilities need to be able to access the content. This means designing a textbook that accommodates people with diverse learning styles and ensuring the content can be accessed by all, regardless of disability. It also means creating materials that include diverse viewpoints and voices. As you plan your textbook, contemplate how to design it so it is accessible, diverse, and inclusive.”

I have also been gathering open education bookmarks for over a year now. Other notable resources include:

• Textbooks, OER, and the Need for Open Pedagogy, by Jesse Stommel: “Textbooks are a social justice issue.”
• An Open Education Reader, edited by David Wiley: “A collection of readings on open education with commentary.”
• 7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Practices: “Building on open educational resources (OER), open educational practices seek to fully use the potential inherent in OER to support learning and to help students both contribute to knowledge and construct their own learning pathways. Such open practices provide the architecture and philosophical underpinning for fulfilling the promise of using OER to expand collaborative, inclusive, accessible, and active learning and related pedagogy. Open educational practices also give agency to students by giving them more control over the structure, content, and outcomes of their learning and by creating opportunities for them to create learning materials.”
• What Makes an Open Lab ‘Open’?, by Robin DeRosa and Dan Blickensderfer: “As public universities divert resources into new kinds of learning spaces, they should promote collaborative and mutually enriching connections among students and institutions, write Robin DeRosa and Dan Blickensderfer.”
• The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics, by Nicholas B Colvard, C. Edward Watson, and Hyojin Park: “This article reports the results of a large-scale study (21,822 students) regarding the impact of course-level faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Results indicate that OER adoption does much more than simply save students money and address student debt concerns. OER improve end-of-course grades and decrease DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal letter grades) rates for all students. They also improve course grades at greater rates and decrease DFW rates at greater rates for Pell recipient students, part-time students, and populations historically underserved by higher education.”

Your Turn

What open education resources have you found particularly useful?

We need to grab every opportunity to celebrate these days. September 30 has been deemed International Podcast Day by whoever it is that determines such things.

I have written before about the transformative power of podcasts and am excited to share more about how to do International Podcast Day right.

Here are five ways to celebrate.

Listen to Podcasts

What better way to enjoy International Podcast Day than to listen to an episode or two, or three, or 40?

• My 2018 list of favorite podcasts
• My 2017 list of favorite podcasts
• Bryan Alexander’s 2017 list of favorite podcasts
• Top 13 Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episodes in 2017

Laura Pasquini has been curating quite a list of higher education podcasts since 2017. Learn more about her project and how to contribute a podcast to the list on the Higher Ed Podcasts site.

Help a Friend Discover Podcasts

There are still people who don’t realize how easy it is to listen to a podcast. People who use iOS (have an iPhone) likely already have a built-in podcast app on their phone without even knowing it is there. For Android users, finding a podcast app is just a couple of taps away.

Ira Glass and his late friend, Mary Ahearn demonstrate the simplicity of podcast listening in this delightful video.

Yes, you can listen to a podcast right from your computer via your web browser, but I find it so freeing to know I can take them with me wherever I go.

Instead of using the built-in Apple Podcast app, my preferred podcast catcher for years now has been Overcast, on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Support a Podcaster

I’ve gathered a few different ways you can support Teaching in Higher Ed, which would apply to really almost any podcast you might want to support. We make a small amount on purchases you make from Amazon of books that are recommended on the podcast. It isn’t going to fund our retirement anytime soon but does sometimes take care of our podcast hosting costs on a given month.

Use Podcasts in Your Teaching

I get asked often about how to start a podcast. Much of the time, I try to talk people out of this step. Instead, I suggest starting by using already-created podcasts in one’s teaching and leveraging the broader podcasting community’s collective content.

If you are going to play a podcast in a class, I suggest finding one that is around 15 minutes or less. In those cases when I am unsuccessful at that, I typically schedule to have my class outside on that day and encourage us to get moving while we listen. We are fortunate to have our campus located right by Newport’s Back Bay, where there are beautiful flora and fauna to take in as we listen.

If you are able to locate an episode that is 15 minutes or less, see if there’s a spot within the audio where you can pause it and ask the students to respond in some way.

I like to use episodes of Planet Money, which always have such engaging story arcs to them. About halfway through, I pause the recording and ask my students to predict what happened next, or talk about what advice they would have for the individuals being discussed in the episode.

Your Turn

How will you be celebrating International Podcast Day? In what ways do you use podcasts in your teaching?

I received a question from a listener regarding making more engaging slide decks that I thought I would answer here on the blog.

“On one episode I listened to last year, I think you mentioned someone who has a website with suggestions for making better powerpoint presentations? Does this ring a bell? I've had a search on your website, but can't find it. I wanted to improve my approach to slide-making before the term starts shortly.”

Here are some ideas for you to take your slide-making to the next level. Thanks for writing in to inquire.

Podcast Episodes

• Episode 33 – The Slide Heard ‘Round the World – Bonni and Dave Stachowiak talk about how to make your presentation slides more effective.

Blog Posts

• Tools for Better Presentations, by Bonni Stachowiak
• Top Presentation Slide Decks, by Mike Taylor
• iPad Unleashed: My New Wireless Lecture Setup, by Doug McKee
• Present at Work; Storytelling at Work, by Tomas Bay

Books

• Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, by Nancy Duarte
• Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds
• Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations, by Garr Reynolds

Resources

• Nancy Duarte’s site
• Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Tips
• 4 Tips and 1 Tool That Will Help You Perfect Your Slide Design, by Catrinel Bartolomeu

Your Turn

What advice do you have for creating more effective slide decks? 

Dave and I met while getting our master’s degrees in organizational leadership. Later on down the road, we both pursued our doctorates together. Our marriage is stronger, in part, because we speak a similar language when it comes to leadership.

Our similarities go beyond our common discipline. We are also both pretty geeky (the Apple Keynotes used to be considered a romantic date around here), enjoy learning right along with our children, and we each have the privilege of getting to host our own podcasts.

Dave’s podcast is: Coaching for Leaders

Over the years, he has been able to interview some of the big names from our respective educations and lifelong learning pursuits:

• Peter Block (episode 328), author of The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work (one of my all-time favorite reads from our graduate education, which recently had an update)
• Susan Cane (episode 44), author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won’t Stop Talking
• John Kotter (episode 249), author of Leading Change
• Adam Grant (episode 238), author of Give and Take
• David Allen (episode 184), author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity

Dave isn’t the only one in our family who gets to talk with authors we admire. I have been able to talk with many of the well-known writers in the higher education context for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, including:

• Stephen Brookfield (episodes 147, 98, & 15), author of The Skillful Teacher (and a gazillion other books)
• Ken Bain (episodes 146 & 36), author of What the Best College Teachers Do
• Cathy Davidson (episodes 169 & 28), author of The New Education
• Cathy O’Neil (episode 170), author of Weapons of Math Destruction
• James Lang (episodes 92, 210, & 19), author of Small Teaching

Last week, I had the absolute honor of getting to speak to another author, but someone writing in a different context. My conversation for this episode had me talking with the civil rights activist DeRay McKesson about his new book:

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope*

Usually, when I have interviewed authors in the past, friends and colleagues have shared in the dialog about the person’s work, before I get to speak to the author. This time, I finished reading On the Other Side of Freedom at around 9:30 pm the night before I was scheduled to speak with DeRay and wasn’t able to bounce ideas and thoughts with anyone, in advance.

He was gracious in the few minutes we spent talking before the interview started. I had seen on Twitter that it was Aretha Franklin’s funeral, but it did take me a minute to decipher what he was saying about being in a rush to check out of his hotel and get over to Aretha’s coming home.

I try not to write too much on this blog about all the times I get nervous to interview someone for the podcast. If I considered myself to be a magnificent writer, maybe I would perceive that these kinds of stories would be fascinating to people. However, I can’t really continue with this story without mentioning that my entire body was bursting with adrenaline at this point. I kept giving myself all these instructions about what to say and what not to say to DeRay with every passing moment.

When he brought up Franklin’s passing, I instantly flashed to my college days. A friend had been talking about how much she liked her music, only she pronounced her name “urethra.”

I seriously think we have been getting decades’ worth of laughs over this moment in time by now. In my brief, introductory conversation with DeRay, I kept telling myself, “Don’t say her name. Don’t say her name. You know you’re going to get it wrong and he’s going to have the worst first impression of you. Don’t say her name.”

This was all happening in the context of me knowing that I can get confused over words. I once stood in front of over 100 human resources leaders and asserted that “It was a speculum.” What I had intended to say was “spectrum,” but that wasn't what came out of my mouth. After my awkward pause when I tried to determine if I had just said what I thought I had said, my reaction generated more laughter than I may have ever experienced when speaking. I think everyone was relieved that I could have a sense of humor about my mistake. I may also have endeared myself to them with my brief mention of our many visits to see specialists in our quest to try to have children. I do still avoid ever using the words spectrum or Aretha in my talks…

Knowing DeRay was in a hurry, I quickly started the interview. Fortunately, there are no significant blunders to share with you. Andrew, our podcast editor, did what he always does – and gracefully wove together the conversation into a glimpse into just a few of the stories from DeRay’s magnificent book*. I’m so glad to get to share our conversation with this community and hope you will take a listen if you haven’t already. DeRay's assertion that we “can't fight for people [we] don't know,” is another reminder of the importance of understanding the context in which our students enter their educational experiences.

Another Source for Pursuing Equity

Maha Bali, Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC), shared on Twitter this week about another source for pursuing greater equity in our teaching.

Maha and her collaborators (Catherine Cronin and Mia Zamora) have welcomed their respective students and the world into their course entitled:

Equity Unbound: Making Borders Meaningless

They describe Equity Unbound as:

“…an emergent, collaborative curriculum which aims to create equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning experiences across classes, countries and contexts.”

The themes they are exploring include:

• Empathy and bias
• Equity
• Fake news
• Privacy
• Algorithms and data policies
• Digital wellbeing

Even if you don’t have time to participate, I highly suggest browsing the overview of each theme and check out the site resources.

As DeRay asserted in the interview I had with him, gaining knowledge about an issue is just the beginning. Whether it is reading On the Other Side of Freedom, or diving into some of the topics explored on Equity Unbound, I look forward to hearing what you are doing to take those next steps into action.

It has been a whirlwind of a month. I have some exciting updates to share with you, along with a few useful tools.

New Role

My role at my institution is being expanded in the coming academic year. The person who I have reported to this past couple of years has been named as our interim provost. Given the immense amount of respect I have for him, I welcomed the conversations about potentially taking on his prior role and continuing to report to him, at least until such time as a longer-term decision on the provost role gets filled.

I now have three titles. I’m not sure that they will fit on the business cards, but they do need to at least need to remain in place, particularly because one of them fulfills some of our obligations articulated in our Title V grant.

• Director of the Institute for Faculty Development
• Director of Teaching Excellence and Digital Pedagogy
• Associate Professor of Business and Management

It all became official on 8/15/18.

Things have been pretty nutty ever since. This past week, we had our new faculty orientation, adjunct training, and our resident faculty gathering. That, plus we welcomed 85 new business students into our department. I was responsible for leading that event, since the person who normally would have facilitated it was with our undeclared majors.

My kids loved the opportunity to visit campus all day on Saturday – and the new students enjoyed watching them take pictures of me with their iPads, as I was presenting. Let’s just say there was an over-emphasis on the nostrils.

New Advice Column

Another exciting thing that happened is that EdSurge invited me to become a columnist for them. Through conversation, we landed on me writing a monthly advice column for people who have questions about teaching within a higher education context.

You can learn more about the column and how to submit a question on the EdSurge website. I have enjoyed seeing the first handful of questions come in and the kinds of things we all tend to struggle with at one time or another.

New Tools

It wouldn’t be back to school season if we didn’t get our hands on at least a few new tools.

• S3STAT – As most of you are aware, we have been plugging away at getting the transcripts up for each episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. We are 67% of the way through them, with each episode after 200 being transcribed as it was published. The transcripts are being hosted on Amazon’s S3 service. I am able to get analytics of the data using S3STAT, which translates the S3 data into “human readable statistics, reports and graphs.” If you use Cloudfront or Amazon S3, check out S3STAT for all your analytics needs: beautiful reports, simple setup, serious visibility.

• Robert Talbert’s GTD posts – I am a huge believer in the power of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. So much so that the course I’m teaching this Fall uses it as one of our two textbooks… Robert Talbert provides an overview of the GTD system and how he uses it in an academic context on his blog. Many of his 14 GTD posts also include videos, so you can see GTD in action in Robert’s life.

• Timing App – I also started using the Timing App again (Mac). It tracks what I do on the computer and helps me identify and analyze how I am using my time. It is a great application, though I did forget to quit it before presenting in front of our full faculty and it started pestering me to tell it what I had been doing the last hour. I need to remember to add Timing to the AppleScript that I was able to set up for when I start/end presentations, thanks to the wonderful Work Smart and Be Remarkable: Productivity in Academia Blog by Helmut Hauser.

I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment, but also have enough of a sound mind to know that naps are a healthy way of keeping one's perspective. I completed my weekly review today and know that my most important priority in the next few weeks is related to hiring an administrative assistant to support our Institute for Faculty Development.

I also have a couple more columns I am drafting for the new EdSurge column,  along with a Personal Leadership and Productivity class to kick off tomorrow. If you haven't kicked off your class yet, this Faculty Focus article about Opening Intentions is well worth a read.

Your Turn

What new resource have you discovered lately?

Looking at the Teaching in Higher Ed website analytics recently got easier for me for some reasons I won’t write much about here, lest I bore you. Since I can look at the data without as much friction, I check it more often and am often surprised by which posts from both long ago and recently got the most traction from readers.

Below are the posts that you may have missed that were particularly popular with Teaching in Higher Ed blog readers (in order):

1. Heads Up Game is a Lively EdTech Tool – it still continues to be the case, four years later. And is the most accessed blog post I have ever written. If only I had known that would be the case, in advance, I would have taken more time with it.
2. Active Learning Resources – A colleague is trying to build more of a culture of active learning so I curated some resources for her from the Teaching in Higher Ed site. Anyone interested in pursuing this aim should also read Josh Eyler’s post: Active Learning Has Become a Buzzword (and Why That Matters)
3. How to Make a Seemingly Boring Topic Come Alive – Like the post I wrote on the Heads Up Game (#1), this 2014 post keeps coming up at the top of the analytics. If only the marshmallow study had held up as well. Sigh.
4. How to Respond When Students Give Wrong Answers – I have regularly been told I do this well. I’ll take it, since there are so many other aspects of my teaching that I’m continually hard on myself about.
5. Ways to Use Screencasting in Your Teaching – It has been fun to see the posts about creating content get some traction. We need to continually be working on doing this better.
6. Surprises in the Classroom – This one sat on my blog post ideas for a long, long while. We don’t all have to be extroverted in our teaching or feel the pressure to be entertainers. However, regularly seeking ways to ignite curiosity in ourselves and our students is a vital practice, from my perspective.
7. Listener Question: Essential Reading on Pedagogy – It is hard for me to ever write lists, for fear of all that I will leave out. But, this was my best attempt at the time to capture books that have transformed my teaching.
8. Digital Reading – I continue to become more and more of a digital reader and have such a hard time ever committing the time to reading a physical copy of a book. This post outlines why that is…
9. How to Create a Pencast – I haven’t been creating quite as many pencasts these days, but when I do – my workflow is still the same as what is described in this post and video.
10. How to Create a Video for a Class – Speaking of videos, this post with advice on how to create these elements for our students attempted to break the process down into practical steps.

The most popular pages on the site, as a whole, continue to be:

• Episodes – the searchable, browsable list of all the past podcast episodes
• About – a newly redesigned about page with my bio, info about the podcast and my speaking, FAQs, and pictures.
• Blog – The browsable blog page with all the posts I have ever written for Teaching in Higher Ed.
• Recommendations – a recent website redesign has us working on pulling out all the recommendations that have ever been made at the end of each episode into a browsable list with categories such as music, books, ideas, and technology. We aren’t finished yet, but what is there does make for some good inspiration.

I'm honored to get to be part of your professional development through the Teaching in Higher Ed community. I trust this post has given you an opportunity to catch up on some of the blog posts and web pages you may have missed.

Each year, Jane Hart compiles her Top Tools for Learning. You’re invited to participate in the voting either by filling out a form, blogging about your choices or sharing via Twitter.

My votes are not in order of priority, though most people who write about this topic do a ranked list. Recently, Jane Hart started having us categorize how we use the tools:

• For our own personal and professional learning
• In the workplace
• In education

I will include how I use each tool, along with each vote. Also, I will share those tools that have been on my list for many years at this point.

Twitter (personal/professional learning)

This social network has been on my list for four years now. I’m able to connect with people who are (as Peter Newbury recommended on episode #53) “like me and who are not like me.” Twitter is a microblogging service, which means people share short thoughts and interact with each other by replying to others’ messages. For something that won’t fit as a short message a lot of people link to other resources on the internet, like articles, videos, or websites.

Overcast (personal/professional learning)

This is the best iOS app I have found for listening to podcasts (which have been on my list for all four years now. I can subscribe to podcasts and have them all come into one app for me to listen to them when I’m ready. I listen to podcasts at double speed and Overcast takes care of removing silence. More learning in less time… My 2018 Podcast Greats post gives an idea of what I am listening to these days.

Feedly (personal/professional learning)

I was thinking about how much I dislike Apple News the other day. The reason why is directly related to why Feedly is on my top ten list. With a service like Apple News, you get what they generally think you might like, based on some not very intelligent algorithms. Using an RSS reader like Feedly, you pick exactly what websites you want to “feed” into your news feed and don’t have to rely on what technology thinks you may like. I’m seriously considering switching to Inoreader, which Laura Gibbs regularly shares ab out how to get it to integrate with the LMS my institution uses: Canvas.

Unread (personal/professional learning)

Think of Feedly as working behind the scenes to pull together all the stuff I might want to read into one place and to mark things as read, once I have either decided I don’t want to check them out, or once I have read them. Feedly also has a website and apps that can be used for actually consuming the content. However, my absolute favorite tool to use for reading my Feedly content is Unread (on the iPad). I do most of my RSS reading in bed. Unread allows me to easily mark a bunch of articles as read without having to move my hand around the screen hardly at all. It is hard to explain until you try it, but they definitely live up to their claim that, “Reading should not feel like work.”

WordPress (personal/professional learning)

I had the opportunity to interview Harold Jarche for the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast recently (episode 213). It was like talking to one of my learning heroes. He’s an expert in personal knowledge mastery and emphasizes the value of “working out loud.” As I blog, I am sense-making. WordPress is the most widely used blogging tool in the world and it helps me both make sense of what I am learning and share it with anyone who visits my website. There’s a free version of WordPress that lets people get started with it. Those who want to extend its use a self-hosted WordPress site, which allows for greater customization. Reclaim Hosting is a company that offers self-hosted WordPress sites (among other things) for primarily an educational audience. Their website explains that they help people: “Take control of your digital identify. Reclaim Hosting provides educators and institutions with an easy way to offer their students domains and web hosting that they own and control.”

Poll Everywhere (education)

This polling system has been on my list for all four years now and shows no sign of stopping. I am a big fan of using retrieval practice in my teaching to help students retain more and achieve deeper learning in my classes. Poll Everywhere helps me do that and encourage students to pull their phones out, instead of telling them to put them away. I can use Poll Everywhere within PowerPoint on my Mac and never have to leave PowerPoint when I am using it. On the other end of the spectrum, I can use Poll Everywhere on my iPad and never involve a computer or projector at all.

Quizlet (education)

I mentioned making use of retrieval practice in much of my teaching when describing why I use PollEverywhere. That tool is used more in my teaching, but when I want to encourage students to take the learning with them, I highly recommend Quizlet. Flash cards have been shown to be great study tools. They are a form of retrieval practice. Quizlet takes flashcards to the digital world. I can create flashcards in Quizlet and share them with my students, or they can create them and share them with the rest of the class. In the classroom, I love using their Quizlet Live game. I’ve written about this experience on my blog and also Sierra Smith talked about how it helped her get to know other students in a class in a more authentic way on episode 199.

Glisser (workplace)

I use Glisser almost exclusively in my keynote speaking and workshops these days. Glisser is an audience response system. It lets me: Present my slides on the web (so I don’t have to worry about whether or not a computer is going to have the font I need or my slides might be formatted differently when I present them on someone else’s computer), poll an audience, share videos during a presentation, have people ask questions while I’m presenting and queue them up when I’m ready to address them, and even let people tweet out my slides as I’m presenting them.

Kindle app (personal/professional learning)

I enjoy reading on my iPad via the Kindle app and have documented my reasons for doing digital with my reading in the past. Being able to save my highlights and have them in one place well after finishing a book is wonderful. I also appreciate the integration with Goodreads, so I can keep track of what I have read and connect with friends who also use the service and provide good recommendations for what other books I might want to check out.

Zoom (education)

I have been using web conferencing systems of one kind oranother for decades. Sadly, they have mostly become bloated systems that make it difficult to share with an audience, but easy to bore that audience to tears. Zoom is different. If I want to share something. Anything. A slide deck, a video, an application, a picture, even my entire computer screen… I can do that in just a couple of clicks. It is seamless. That’s nice. What’s even nicer is that any person who is with me on Zoom may also do the same (unless I have a need to restrict that capability for some reason – I usually don’t, but there are certainly instances like with larger groups of people coming together where it does make sense to turn that setting off). Doug McKee has written about how he uses Zoom with Duet Display and PDF Expert in his econometrics classes. That actually represents another thing I love about Zoom. You can use just a few of its features and get started simply. But there’s a lot of additional features you can make use of to make it do some amazing things. I really enjoyed Andy Traub’s Master Zoom class which made me see more of what is possible using Zoom.

Past Top Ten Tools for Learning Votes

Here are my Top Tools for Learning blog posts from recent years:

• Top Tools 2017
• Top Tools 2016
• Top Tools 2015

This year, I was inspired by Harold Jarche’s Top Ten Tools for Learning post to create a graphic of my year-by-year votes.

Here are a few items of note I found when looking through the lists:

• I am still a huge fan of Canvas LMS, even though it didn’t make it on to this year’s list. There have been a lot of conversations going on about teaching outside the LMS. Yet, there are also reasons whey remaining inside the “walls” of an LMS are preferred. I have never seen an LMS as mobile-friendly, easy to use, and then easy to grow with as you learn more as Canvas LMS. They also have a wonderful community online that contributes to my learning about Canvas on a weekly basis.
• I’m surprised Pinboard didn’t make it on my list this time, since I use it daily. It is still the best bookmarking tool I have used and integrates well with Unread, which did make it on the list this year.
• I also still use SnagIt on a daily basis. Probably on an hourly basis, anytime I’m sitting in front of my computer. I think I probably think of it less as a learning tool than maybe I used to, but it is integral to all the kinds of work I do and I’m grateful for its continued improvement year after year for decades now.
• Clarify sadly went out of business. I haven’t found anything affordable that is anything remotely as good as it was. Planbook (Helmansoft) also stopped being supported / actively developed and I haven’t found anything remotely as good, especially given that I can do most of my class planning within Canvas.
• iTunes podcasts is now called Apple Podcasts. There’s a free app that comes on iOS devices called Podcasts that is a good place to get started with podcasts, but I still find Overcast to be superior. Google recently announced their new app: Google Podcasts for Android devices that looks like it is worth a look.
• I left my LiveScribe smartpens back in 2015. I do all my pencasting now using an Apple Pencil and my iPad Pro.
• Attendance 2 is still going strong and is my preferred method for taking attendance. However, other tools pushed it down a bit to have it make the top ten tools specifically for learning.
• I chuckled a bit at my mentions of Plickers and GoAnimate, as they really turned out to be more aspirational than ones I actually used on a regular basis.

Your Turn

Consider voting on Jane Hart’s 2018 Top Ten Tools, or commenting below if there’s a tool you think should have been on my list that I may want to know about.

As I mentioned on episode #210 with James Lang, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy reading Teaching the Literature Survey Course as much as I was some of the other books in the West Virginia University Press Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series. Teaching the Literature Survey Course was thought of  as “eating my veggies” and as part of my obligation as part of West Virginia University Press' overall sponsorship of the Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts project.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Teaching the Literature Survey Course addresses two key challenges, which are often characteristics of general survey courses:

• “Too much” to adequately “cover” in a single course
• Lack of opportunities for deeper learning

In each of the classes I've taught in my career, I can’t ever recall a time when I didn’t feel at least some tension around wishing I could “cover” more. At the same time, my greatest desire in my teaching is that students would experience learning that would stay with them for the long haul and would be of great relevance in their lives.

If you also find yourself feeling like you have too much to cover in a given class, or you want to find ways to have your students experience deeper learning, it is worth picking up a copy of:

Teaching the Literature Survey Course, Edited by Gwynn Dujardin, James M. Lang, and John A. Staunton

While the examples they provide are specific to literature classes, they are wide-ranging enough to have it be likely that you might find inspiration for teaching in a different discipline.

Leveraging Maps in Your Teaching

One area that really inspired me was involving using maps in our teaching. This is an approach I have never experimented with before, but have found myself regularly thinking about since I read Teaching the Literature Survey Course.

Two related tools that I regularly see people reference when talking about using maps in their teaching are Google Maps and Google Earth. I was confused about the difference between them, but found this explanation on Quora that cleared it up for me:

“Google Maps contains all of the navigation, lightweight mapping power and points of interest with just a small hint of satellite imagery, while Google Earth has complete 3D satellite data and just a small subset of information on places, without any point-to-point navigation.”

Todd Gardiner described them as related products. He advised that we think of them as a suite of products, like we would Microsoft Office.

Within that suite of products is Tour Builder (a Google Earth experiment), where you can “put your story on the map.” Instead of only seeing a map that was composed by others, we can add to an existing map points of interest, the way we might give someone a tour of our neighborhood. Google suggests that you:

“See how people are using Tour Builder on the site – From a nonprofit documenting its global missions, to a teacher transforming American history.”

While maps might at first seem primarily useful to those who teach history or other social sciences, Tom Barrett decided to use Google Maps to teach math. While his example comes from K-12, it provides us with enough inspiration to get us started thinking…

If you do teach history, there are plenty of sites that are great examples of ways to leverage Google maps in your teaching. Other disciplines will find inspiration on how to: “Pin point a book’s setting, use detective skills, measure distances” and more from Jessica Sanders. The Google Earth example categories are: history, science, space science, math, and geography, yet Teaching the Literature Survey Course is a perfect illustration of how to extend beyond those disciplines and into literature.

Doing something for one of my classes at this exact moment feels out of reach for me, until I become more familiar with the tools and what’s possible. However, I was thinking that I could start small and tackle the sixth suggestion from The Thinking Stick and to:

Create a Map for My Community

They gave an example of creating a map for friends who were visiting China with their favorite restaurants, places to visit, etc.

 

I could see making one for our local community and getting some practice with the tools. My colleague studies homeless populations and I imagine that maps like this could be very useful for his research (even if it started solely as a means for delegating the student researcher observations).

Even book publishers are starting to make use of Google maps in their creations. We ordered The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home from Wonderbly for our son a couple of years ago. When he gets to the pages of the book that mean that he’s almost home, it is a picture of our neighborhood that is shown from Google maps. The book is customized much more than just the maps, but also throughout the book.

But Wait, There’s More

It is hard for me to stop writing at this point, because I have so many more notes I am reflecting back on after having read Teaching the Literature Survey Course. I started to think to myself that I should write ten posts about some of my take-aways, but then I thought I was getting a little ahead of myself with all of that.

Part of our work as educators is discovering new possibilities. But, there’s also the important step of beginning to experiment and increasing our tolerance for (or perhaps even delight with):

Not Yet-ness

As Amy Collier said all the way back on episode #70:

“When you embrace not yet-ness, you are creating space for things to continue to evolve.” – Amy Collier

Thank you to the editors and authors of Teaching the Literature Survey Course. You have given us so many ways to embrace not yet-ness in our teaching and contribute to deeper learning for our students. 

I recently have had the opportunity to revisit my reading of Sarah Rose Cavanagh’s The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion.

The book is part of a series of books:

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series from West Virginia University Press, edited by James M. Lang

West Virginia University Press has sponsored the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast transcripts project. As a result, I get the honor of interviewing the series’ authors and the chance to read their books.

Sarah’s book is the first in the series and has much to say about how we can better facilitate learning for our students by considering the element of emotions. In this post, I share some of the ways that her book has stayed with me since reading it more than a year ago. Here are just a couple of practices that are still with me after my first read of The Spark of Learning.

Generate Curiosity

“When you burn to know what comes next, you are feeling curious” (Cavanagh, 2016, p. 121).

Dave (my husband) shared on a prior episode about his chemistry teacher who ended class on the first day by taking the lit candle that had been sitting on his desk, putting it in his mouth, and proceeding to swallow it.

You can bet that the class was wondering what was going to happen next for the rest of the semester. No, we don’t have to put our lives at stake by attempting the eating of a candle in our particular discipline. But, we can work to find ways to create a healthy tension between students’ current knowledge and what might be possible with further learning.

This might be something as simple as a puzzle, an activity more resembling a mystery, or even introducing a debate that explores two different viewpoints or options.

Encourage Mindfulness

We got to hear about some of Sarah’s and her colleagues’ forthcoming research on the effects of teaching students about mindfulness on episode #204. In The Spark of Learning, she reminds us of the detrimental impact of test anxiety and how the practice of transparency can assist our students in reducing stress and enhancing learning.

Sarah describes Brunye’s research on how learners with math anxiety experienced more of a sense of calm and better results on a math exam when engaging in breathing exercises as compared to other variables.

I’ve been finding big benefits when following a simple mindfulness practice introduced by Asao B. Inoue on episode #209 (airs 6/14/18). I’ll let you hear about it straight from him, but I hope this mention of it causes you to listen extra careful to episode 209’s recommendations segment.

Your Turn

What ways are you discovering to leverage The Spark of Learning in your pedagogy?

I have spent most of my week in Louisiana. My primary objective was to facilitate two workshops for Louisiana State University’s Communication Across the Curriculum Summer Institute (#CxCsi). However, I also was able to attend the event as a participant. What a learning opportunity and a wonderful community…

Workshops

My hosts were interested in me sharing in two areas. First, they wanted me to talk about the ever elusive work-life balance. Finally, they asked me to share about educational technologies that support communication across the curriculum.

In this post, I’ll share some resources from my two workshops. I will also give some glimpses into some of my take-aways from the CxC summer institute.

Tips & Tricks

Balancing the work-life load as a teaching professor

You can view my slides from the workshop and also the responses from participants during the session on my CxC Summer Institute workshop resources page.

On part of the experience I really appreciated was how transparent some people were about their struggles and successes. I asked participants how well they would rate their own work-life balance and received responses that almost approximated a bell curve.

I encourage you to visit the section of the resources page for that session to see the ideas that people had around how we can: capture the commitments we have made, plan for how to execute on those plans, surrender to those inevitable times when things won’t go as we had planned, and how to unite with our partners in our lives when we need help.

My favorite part of this session came as a response to the question: What advice do you have about uniting?

Earlier in the session, I had shared about a poet that Maha Bali had recommended on episode 200. She suggested that we read the poems of Najwa Zebian, who also regularly shares her wisdom on Twitter.

I had a screenshot of her Twitter profile on the slide, including her words:

“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only meant to climb.”

One of the participant’s response to the question: What advice do you have about uniting didn’t miss a beat:

“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to admire from a distance.”

Did I mention that this is a terrific group of people? As of the time of me composing this blog post, we are still trying to discern who the witty poet among us is… 

Tech Tools for Teaching:

Communicating to Learn, Learning to Communicate

One of the areas of emphasis in the institute is that there are activities we can have our students do that will help them learn through their communication efforts (communicating to learn) and there are activities we can have our students do to demonstrate their learning through their communication (learning to communicate).

In the Tech Tools for Teaching session, I shared more tools that provide students with a means for demonstrating their learning, though many of them could be used on either end of the continuum.

The participants' ideas for tools to help support students’ learning in spoken, written, technological, and visual communication are included on the Tech Tools for Teaching section of the CxCsi resources page.

Other CxCsi Fun

I really enjoyed the opportunities to engage with people one-on-one during the institute the most. The planning team for the event put forth such great effort in making our learning environment comfortable and welcoming.

A few times a day, they did a raffle and gave away some of my favorite teaching and learning books and some that I wasn’t familiar with before attending.

A few books I was excited would be getting in the hands of these faculty included:

• Stephen Brookfield’s The Skillful Teacher
• Robert Talbert’s Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty
• Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do

A couple of books that I hadn’t heard of before the conference and am now interested in reading include:

• John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom
• Megan Poore’s Using Social Media in the Classroom: A Best Practice Guide

I have had a wonderful trip and am grateful for the opportunity to facilitate these workshop for LSU's CxC Summer Institute. I am also thankful for such fantastic hosts and getting to be a part of this community.

On the way out to Louisiana, I watched The King's Speech for the first time. If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. On the way home, I will probably try to restrict myself to reading, as I am a bit behind on the books I'm working on finishing.

My mind is mush. But for all good reasons.

Your Turn

Have you watched any good movies recently? Anything good you're reading? I look forward to hearing from you and adding to my list of things to watch/read. 

Three things changed recently that seemed worth telling you about. In this post, I share about Todays Meet closing down, my hesitation to recommend Airmail anymore, and a bit about the Teaching in Higher Ed website redesign. 

Todays Meet Shut Down

Occasionally, I find one of my blog posts getting out of date sooner than I had hoped. About a day after I finished writing about open-ended poll questions, I saw a post by Richard Byrne announcing that Todays Meet is shutting down. Each time Stephen Brookfield has come on the podcast, he has mentioned his use of Todays Meet, whether that is to: 

• Give introverts a chance to engage more in his classes
• Avoid various types of bias
• Afford students the opportunity to pose anonymous responses
• Bring in a fictional character that is Stephen's alter-ego

Fortunately, Richard Byrne provided some alternatives that we can use, if we want to have a backchannel in our teaching: 

TodaysMeet Is Shutting Down – Six Alternatives to Try

I don't typically use a dedicated backchannel tool in my teaching, opting instead to use a polling service (like PollEverywhere) that has a backchannel as just many of the ways to engage. I also make use of presentation tools (like Glisser) to present slides, engage with polls, and use Twitter as a backchannel from within their web app. 

I Stopped Recommending Airmail

In episode #201 on Frictionless Systems, I recommended Airmail as an alternative email client on the Mac. I suppose to be more specific, I recommended that people look into what's available as an alternate to the standard email client on their computers and then mentioned that I had been using Airmail. 

I had too many problems with emails that I would delete in Airmail that then would immediately come back into the inbox. I thought it was just me, but then I saw on the Mac Power Users Facebook group that others were experiencing the same issue. I decided to go back to the built in email client on the Mac. However, quite a few people on the Mac Power Users group said that they have had none of those same issues with Airmail using an application called Postbox. 

I haven't had the opportunity to try Postbox just yet, as I'm wrapping up my doctoral class today and just had all the graduation-related events for my undergraduates this week. It's like my new toy, waiting on my desktop for me to have some time to play with it. I absolutely miss being able to read, reply to, and move emails without ever having my fingers leave the keyboard. Hopefully I will have more to report on future episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed. 

The Teaching in Higher Ed Website Redesign Rolled Out

The website redesign went live in April. The goal had been to have a home for the new episode transcripts, but it turned into much more than that. Some parts of the site you may want to visit include: 

• Recommendations engine, where you can browse past recommendations by type
• Redesigned home page, with information about my forthcoming book, curated content by topic, what podcast listeners are saying, and featured podcast episodes
• Browse past podcast episodes by broad theme, specific topics, or by guest name
• Episodes with transcripts include an option to read on-screen, or download a PDF

We are working on completing all the transcripts from the first 200 episodes and then keeping up-to-date from there. Thanks, once again, to the West Virginia University Press Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series (edited by James M. Lang) for the financial support to get those first 200 transcripts produced. 

Your Turn

What's new with you?

There’s a lot on the horizon for Teaching in Higher Ed.

Episode 200

Episode #200 airs on 04/12/18 with Maha Bali, Robin DeRosa, and Mike Truong sharing what they have changed their mind about regarding their teaching in recent years. I am thankful to each of them for telling such powerful stories.

Transcripts

We are busily producing transcripts for the first 200 episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed to coincide with that milestone. What started as a small update to the Teaching in Higher Ed website to accommodate transcripts has turned into a much-expanded project (as often happens during such seasons).

Our web developer, Anchor Design, is amazing and I can’t wait for you to see what they have come up with for the site.

To give you a taste of what's in store, here are a couple of episode transcripts:

• Episode #92 with James M. Lang on Small Teaching
• Episode #98 with Stephen Brookfield on The Skillful Teacher

Gratitude abounds around here for the financial contribution made by the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series from West Virginia University Press: Edited by James M. Lang to support the first 200 episodes’ transcripts.

Recommendations

If you have been listening to the show for a while, you know that each episode ends with the recommendations segment. We each recommend something that has had our attention in recent weeks. A book, a movie, an app, or even just some advice.

The site redesign will have a browsable view of all the past recommendations, to make it easier to go back and discover resources that were provided in past episodes.

The Productive Online Professor

My first book is coming out in September, which I am really excited about. Robert Talbert wrote the forward and really captures the essence of the book.

This book by my friend Bonni Stachowiak is a splendid, useful guide for all of us in higher education — especially but not exclusively those who teach online — for getting our acts together and gaining control over our work that makes us fully present and therefore fully trustworthy.

In it, you’ll encounter many big ideas, such as the Getting Things Done or “GTD” system of productivity, which permeates the chapters and whose importance for educators cannot be overstated.

But part of the genius of this book is that while the big ideas are clearly and coherently laid out, they are also broken down into simple, practical, incremental steps that anyone can take, today. (If you are one of those people with hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox and despair of ever regaining control, you are in for a game-changing experience.)

Then, you can use the book as a field manual — perhaps using some of the numerous digital and analog tools for productivity that the book details — to make those small steps habitual and aggregate more good habits as you journey towards being a truly productive, fully present professor.”

The Productive Online Professor book flyer has a discount code for 20% off,  if you preorder through the Stylus Publishing website before August 30, 2018.

Canvas LMS Conference

I’m excited that my institution is once again providing me with financial support to be able to attend Instructure’s Annual conference July 24-27, 2018. Most of their focus is on Canvas (their LMS), but with the addition of Arc Media and other products, there are always a few other resources to explore while you’re there.

If you are planning on being in Keystone Colorado for the conference, let me know and let’s see if we can find a time to connect.

Your Turn

What’s on the horizon for you in the next few months?

I'm reading a book for an upcoming episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast that has me reflecting on the choices I make in my pedagogy, particularly with regards to assessment.

The College Classroom Assessment Compendium: A Practical Guide to the College Instructor’s Daily Assessment Life, by Jay Parkes and Dawn Zimmaro

It's written from a highly prescriptive perspective. Each section starts out with the authors' recommendation regarding various aspects of assessment.

• Should we give points for attendance?
• Is extra credit a good practice?
• Should late assignments be accepted?

Reflecting on Needed Changes

I have found myself agreeing with about 90% of their recommendations and wrestling with about 10% of their proposals. Each time I find myself mentally debating with them, I am able to revisit the rationale they give for their advice. Then, I discover that I am either more aligned with what they suggested than I originally realized, or I admit that I have some work to do in how I approach a given means of assessment.

Resources for Teaching Transformations

I was interviewed for the EdSurge podcast recently about how my teaching has changed since I first started the podcast back in June of 2014. I tried to discipline myself not to be too verbose regarding this particular set of questions. It would have been easier to answer how my teaching hasn't been changed from almost 200 conversations with such phenomenal educators.

I came across a number of articles in recent weeks that encompass a few of those transformational areas in my teaching that I wanted to share with you.

• Open Education Resources Applications from around the world
• Ten Key Points About Active Learning
• Another Terrible Idea from Turn it In
• Literature Review of Teaching

The more I learn about teaching, the more I discover the importance of being adaptable in our practice. Our collective humility is essential for becoming better able to serve our students.

Teaching in Higher Ed Transcripts

Episode 200 is coming in April. I'm excited to share a conversation with fellow educators about what we have changed our minds about regarding our teaching in recent years.

I was going to keep it a surprise until episode 200 airs, but have received such valuable feedback when I shared the news with others that I have decided to start spreading the news. The Teaching in Higher Ed podcast is going to have transcripts of every past episode and the ones going forward.

We are still working out the precise user interface that will be available to access the transcripts, but hope that it will make the podcast more accessible, as well as having it be easier to discover. Here's a couple of transcripts to whet your appetite for what is to come:

• Episode 92 with James Lang
• Episode 98 with Stephen Brookfield.

If you have any input in terms of making the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast transcripts as beneficial for faculty as possible, please get in touch with me.

My husband and I had already begun to invest our own money in this important endeavor. However, when I recently asked for input on the transcripts on the POD Network listserv, we were able to discover an unexpected partner to support us on the financial end of things.

The West Virginia University Press Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series’ editor, James M. Lang, has been a regular guest on Teaching in Higher Ed since the beginning. Jim was on episode 19, episode 92, and episode 146 (with Ken Bain).

Many of the other WVU Press’s Teaching and Learning in Higher Education authors have also been on the podcast in the past. The series is providing financial support to make the first 200 episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed available in transcript form.

As a part of our partnership, other authors will be visiting the podcast throughout the rest of 2018, about once every other month. I am looking forward to making the transcripts available to all of you and to share about the wonderful resources on how to make our teaching more effective with the books in the WVU Press’s Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series.

Discount Code for Preorders of My Forthcoming Book

As I shared recently, my new book is now available for preorder. Use the code TPOP20 to receive a 20% discount at checkout for:

The Productive Online Professor: A Practical Guide

Bonni Stachowiak

Forward by Robert Talbert

Thrive Online Series

I will be doing some type of giveaway to those who preorder using the Stylus website, though I haven't quite figured out what that is going to be just yet.

Let's just say that Katie Linder's Academic Book Promotion Toolkit has given me plenty of ideas and resources to spark my imagination and then some.