I’m excited to participate this year, once again, in Jane Hart’s Top Tools 4 Learning. It is the 15th time she has conducted the survey. In more recent years, Jane asked us to separate our list of ten tools into the following three contexts:

• Personal Learning
• Workplace Learning
• Education

She then lists the top 200 results across all of the categories, as well as listing a top 100 for each category.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t participate last year. But I do have blog posts for the following years:

• 2019 Top Tools for Learning
• 2018 Top Tools for Learning
• 2017 Top Tools for Learning
• 2016 Top Tools for Learning
• 2015 Top Tools for Learning

As a person who enjoys it when I have a long streak of something going, I also want to be gentle with myself regarding what it has been like to attempt to keep even the simplest of things going during a pandemic. I avoid looking back at my own Top Tools for Learning prior posts, as well as Jane Hart’s listings, until after I have written the current year’s post. That way, I avoid biasing myself, given all the great tools there are to support our learning.

Top Ten Tools for Learning

Below, I present to you my 2021 list (which hopefully can make up for my lack of a list in 2020). In no particular order, the following are my Top Ten Tools for Learning:

Raindrop.io | Personal Learning | Digital bookmarking tool | Having the ability to save links and be able to easily resurface them later on is essential to my Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) system.

Overcast | Personal Learning | Podcast catcher | Despite not having as much time during the pandemic for podcast listening, I still treasure those episodes that I am able to consume. The reason I use Overcast is due to it’s smart speed function (set how fast you want to listen to particular podcasts and it keeps that setting saved) and the ability to share clips of episodes easily.

Twitter | Personal Learning | Microblogging + social media network | On Episode 53 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Peter Newbury explained his method for who to follow on Twitter in that he connects with people who are like him, along with people who are not like him. I have carried that advice with me since that conversation in 2015 and have benefitted richly from it.

Readwise | Personal Learning | Digital reading highlights manager | Have you ever gone to purchase a book, only to have the book seller’s website tell you that you had already bought it? Have you ever went to read a book, only to discover you read it years ago? Readwise helps resurface the highlights that you have saved from a number of digital sources. You can save highlights from Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, PDF documents, Inoreader, Evernote, and a whole lot of other services. Their tagline explains the functionality well: “Readwise helps thousands of readers get the most out of their digital highlights.”

Inoreader | Personal Learning | RSS feed aggregator | Rather than trying to remember to visit every website that might have information that is relevant to me, I use RSS (real simple syndication) to subscribe to various feeds, so all the information comes into one place. Inoreader is an RSS aggregator (meaning it “collects” all the things I want to subscribe to and keeps track of what I have read and what remains unread). To read my RSS feeds, I prefer to use Unread. When reading RSS feeds using the Unread app on my iPad, I can browse articles and mark things as read using only my thumb.

Zoom | Education | Web conferencing | While there are other web conferencing tools that attempt to ‘catch up’ with Zoom on a sustained basis, I still have found no other tool that comes even close. Zoom is easy to get started with, handles lower bandwidth situations with ease, and continues to innovate without allowing their usability to diminish.

Canva | Workplace Learning | Graphic design creator | I have two different Canva Pro accounts (personal and work), because it has that much benefit. For each context, I can have our various logos, color scheme(s), and photos/graphics uploaded and saved.

Blubrry | Workplace Learning | Podcast hosting | If you want to have a podcast that goes out to be listed among the various platforms/services, you will need a podcast hosting company. Teaching in Higher Ed has been a part of my life since June of 2014 and has contributed more to my learning than any single other effort I’ve undertaken since then.

Google Jamboard | Education | Collaborative sticky notes and simple drawings/text | Whenever I’m with a group of people, I can invite them to “join” me on Google Jamboard to collaborate by adding sticky notes, text, and simple shapes to a shared canvas.

Loom | Education | Screencasting | I use Loom in my teaching, work, and personal lives multiple times a day. When I have a quick thing I want to “show” someone, I can record my screen quickly and copy a link to the resulting video with a single click. I can also include my web cam and do a video with something on my screen, or just the camera, alone.

 

Would you like to submit a vote with your Top Tools for Learning? You can fill out a form, write a blog post, or even share your picks on Twitter. The 2021 voting will continue through Thursday, August 26 and the results will be posted by Wednesday, September 1.

Terry Greene, host of the Gettin’ Air podcast, asked some of us on Twitter to guess what was the all-time most downloaded episode of his show. I thought perhaps the episode with Chris Gilliard or the one with Audrey Watters. Terry finally satisfied our curiosity by sharing that it was in fact John Stewart who held that honor.

Blog Post: Gettin’ Air Top Ten

In the tweet where I presented my guess, I mentioned that the time of the year when a Teaching in Higher Ed episode airs seems to contribute greatly to the total number of downloads that a given episode will receive. Yes, having recognizable names matters. But so does airing episodes at times when faculty are coming back from a break and are ready to dive back into ways to develop our teaching even further.

Terry’s post got me wondering about Teaching in Higher Ed’s most downloaded episodes. Around the million downloads mark, Dave and I switched podcast hosts (from Libsyn over to Blubrry), so it is just way to cumbersome to do analysis across the entire history of the show.

Before we moved podcast hosts in early 2019, episodes with the following people were always among the most downloaded:

• Stephen Brookfield
• James Lang
• Cathy Davidson
• Clint Smith
• José Bowen
• Ken Bain
• Todd Zakrajsek
• Sean Michael Morris
• Betsy Barre
• Jesse Stommel
• Gardner Campbell
• Sara Rose Cavanagh
• Kevin Gannon

Speaking of downloads, I noticed the other day that Teaching in Higher Ed had crossed over another one-million downloads mark – meaning that the podcast has now been downloaded over two million times, in total.

It is staggering for me to think about all that has transpired since the first show back in June of 2014. I’m eternally grateful to all the people who have come on the show to share with the Teaching in Higher Ed community.

After reading Terry’s blog post about his downloads this morning, I thought I would take a look at Teaching in Higher Ed’s downloads (totals started being counted in February of 2019 since that’s the month when we switched hosting companies).

1. Episode 263 with Elizabeth Barkley | Recipes for Effective Teaching
2. Episode 258 with Sara Goldrick-Rab | Paying the Price
3. Episode 254 with Jared Cooney Horvath | Stop Talking, Start Influencing
4. Episode 256 with Paul Hanstedt | Creating Wicked Students
5. Episode 309 with David Rhoads | Hyflex Learning
6. Episode 324 with Dan Levy | Teaching Effectively with Zoom
7. Episode 273 with Bonni Stachowiak | Engaging Learners in Large Classes
8. Episode 253 with José Bowen | Spaces and Places (and Nudges)
9. Episode 291 with Michelle Miller | Learning Myths and Realities
10. Episode 271 with David Gooblar | The Missing Course
11. Episode 269 with Jennifer Pusateri | Removing Learning Barriers with Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
12. Episode 282 with Michael Wesch | Using Challenges to Motivate Learners
13. Episode 252 with Maha Bali + Autumm Caines | Ownership, Equity, and Agency in Faculty Development
14. Episode 277 with Derek Bruff | Intentional Tech
15. Episode 320 with Jesse Stommel | How to Be Together in Learning
16. Episode 295 with Travis N. Thurston | Online Engagement Through Digital PowerUps
17. Episode 290 with Bonni Stachowiak | The Productive Online and Offline Professor
18. Episode 272 with Viji Sathy + Kelly Hogan | Inclusified Teaching Evaluation
19. Episode 259 with Natasha Jankowski | Intentional + Transparent Assessment
20. Episode 279 with Brian Laduca | Applied Creativity for Transformation

It is always somewhat hard for me to make a list like this because there are so many incredible episodes that wind up being missed. But it is also fun at the same time to reflect on what I learned from these conversations. Thanks, Terry, for giving me the inspiration to go through this exercise today.

I have been treasuring the opportunity to read about other educators’ lives during this time, as they share with such rawness and candor. It helps to feel less alone.

Here are just some of the posts that have touched my heart and ignited my imagination in some way.

Care Is a Practice; Care is Pedagogical, by Jesse Stommel

Jesse shares about his Mom’s health challenges that drew their family to move across the country and their daughter’s early understandings of the permanence of death. He also describes the ways in which the Open Online Office Hours have brought educators from around the world together in solidarity.

During one of the office hours sessions, they learned that Jesse's husband was being laid off, news which is normally delivered in person, but came via a webcam this time. Finally, he recommends we carefully read our institutions reopening plans and attempt to discern the values being expressed and enacted.

Voices First, Faces Second: Beyond the Tweet, by Maha Bali

I used to require my students to have their camera on during classes. This was in the context of teaching doctoral classes and I packed all kinds of privilege in my choice to establish those rules. Now, I can see things in a lot more nuanced of a way, though I always allow students to make that choice for themselves.

Maha reveals her own desire to be able to see the students she is teaching, but she also knows some of the reasons they may prefer leaving their cameras off. She describes other approaches we can use to have those more human connections beyond a stringent requirement. She asserts that we should first center students' voices, then attempt to get to see their faces. “Voices first, faces second.”

Flipping the Screen Time Conversation into a Meaningful Activity Exploration, by Maha Bali

Dave and I used to have very different approaches to our kids’ screen time than we do now. It was a maximum of one hour per day, with some days not having any time in front of screens at all. Now? Let’s just say they are engaging in school remotely right now – and have what we call “choice time” around here in the afternoons, which usually results in playing Minecraft. A lot of Minecraft.

Maha changed the conversation for me around screen time by thinking through it in the context of what is being done with those screens. Our kids have had the opportunity to play Minecraft with Maha’s daughter (“O”) probably ten times by now. We were able to connect them right as “O” was just starting Minecraft. At first, I was concerned about the many cultural differences I knew would pop up in there. But Maha’s humor and direct communication style made me less afraid and more excited about the tremendous opportunities before us all.

I think about context pretty much every day of my life.

We create way too many dichotomous choices in our lives and the lives of others. Context seems to always be the road toward better-discerned decisions and greater opportunities for connections with people who view things differently than we do.

Video: Recommended Zoom Settings, by Teddy Svornos

I almost didn’t watch this video, thinking that I have settings pretty figured out on Zoom and so do my students. However, I was in for a treat. In two minutes, Teddy shares how he recommends his students set up their Zoom settings within the context of using a smallish laptop so that they can actively learn while participating in class.

Here’s a taste of what he recommends, but I totally think it is better to watch it.

• “Keep video on, if your circumstances allow.”
• “Each class revolves around a handout” (and how to not have it take over your entire screen, when he is sharing it)
• Make these non-full screen settings permanently, in settings
• Use gallery view, while he is sharing the handout, and side-by-side mode (change the size of that portion of the window, using the slider bar)
• Merge to meeting window – chat and/or participants (only works if you’re not in full screen, which I didn’t realize)
• Change to speaker view when he has a camera on his whiteboard

I recommend you subscribe to Teddy’s Tech Notes in your RSS reader of choice, as he is excellent at providing guidance on teaching, educational technology, and productivity.

If you aren’t yet using an RSS reader/aggregator, check out Inoreader. Laura Gibbs is the person who first told me about Inoreader. She has this post from 2015, which still reads as very relevant (in terms of Inoreader tips) today, about how she organizes things in Inoreader. I use folders, subscribe to all “email newsletters” now via Inoreader, so they come into my RSS reader vs into my email, and read/unread.

These are just a few articles (and one video) that have stood out to me in recent weeks. I'm grateful for the generous ways educators are acting in solidarity with one another during this awful time. I can see so much life and beauty amidst the pain and devastation. 

I recently picked up Josh Eyler’s How Humans Learn, again, to prepare for a talk I gave this past week at Tarleton State University for their Center for Instructional Innovation. It did not disappoint. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I highly suggest you pick up a copy. Also, my thanks goes out to all the people I met at Tarleton State University this week. The stories you shared about how Teaching in Higher Ed has impacted your teaching were edifying to me and I'm honored to have had the opportunity to come to visit and share about curiosity with you in person at the conference. 

With curiosity on my mind in recent weeks, I decided to blog about things that have come up that sparked my interest and made me want to learn more. Below, you will hear about a new feature in Canva that I am enjoying experimenting with… You will also discover the ways I am pursuing habits more than goals these days. Finally, I will share about my exploration of Notion – a website that seeks to be an all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, calendars, and more.

Incorporating Background Video in a Slide Deck

The theme of the talk was on curiosity and I found this short video clip of a cat looking around in a slightly inquisitive way to use as one of the slides. Canva must have recently added stock video to their service, which got me to thinking about how to experiment with it for this talk. I like that the cat isn’t doing anything too dramatic, or I think it could be too much of a drag on people’s cognitive load.

Then, I realized that it probably wasn’t going to work for me, since I would likely be working from Glisser and the video looked like it was only playable if I presented the slide deck from within Canva. That’s when things got truly exciting.

I discovered that there’s a way to export the video as a .mp4 (video file), which I will be able to add to YouTube, in order to have it play within Glisser. It says that it is still in beta, but it worked perfectly for me when I tried it.

Habits vs Goals

Many of the productivity experts I follow have been asserting that habits are far greater than goals. Episode 90 of the Focused podcast, for example, was titled Habits > Goals and looked at how establishing habits can help us achieve our goals better than just having identified them and trying to take individual steps toward them.

I continue to love the Full Focus Planner from Michael Hyatt. It has a section dedicated to two types of goals. Achievement goals are the kinds we are used to hearing about. Write a book. Hire a new faculty member. Finish a promotion and tenure portfolio.

Habit goals are less-often discussed. I already had an achievement goal that I keep track of on Goodreads. I was able to read 24 books during 2019, but in the end, it was unclear to me if I was actually going to be able to achieve the goal. I barely made it. However, for 2020, I have emphasized a habit goal related to reading and am going to fly past that 24 books count by the end of March, it’s looking like…

The habit I am emphasizing is taking my Kindle to bed to do my nightly reading, instead of using the iPad. My goal is to do that at least four nights per week. However, it has been so enjoyable that I find I am practicing the new habit a lot more often than that.

The app I’m using to track the habits I have established for 2020 is called Streaks. It automatically tracks my goal of closing my rings on my Apple Watch. It is also able to track a four-day-a-week goal, like my Kindle vs iPad one. And a whole bunch of other types of habit goals.

Two books related to this curiosity of mine that I purchased but haven’t quite started reading are:

• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, by James Clear

I know that many of you who are reading these words have read them, as they come highly recommended. I am looking forward to discovering even further how habits can help me achieve my goals. I am also prepared to learn a thing or two about the importance of rest and how to get more of it in my life. 

Notion

Finally, I have been playing around with Notion quite a bit. The first time I was able to use Notion was when I copied Mike Caufield’s Check, Please! Starter Course over to my new Notion account. In case you’re interested in his course, too, here’s a description of it:

“In this course, we show you how to fact and source-check in five easy lessons, taking about 30 minutes apiece. The entire online curriculum is two and a half to three hours and is suitable homework for the first week of a college-level module on disinformation or online information literacy, or the first few weeks of a course if assigned with other discipline-focused homework.”

Mike Caulfield made it such that people can copy it over to our own Notion accounts and customize it to meet our individual needs. He just asks that any instances of it link back to his original course, so people are able to find their way back to where it all started.

The more I kept hearing people talk about Notion, the more I thought it might be a good idea to check it out for myself. I started to put some workflows up there to teach people how to edit stuff on my departmental website. It is really easy to learn and can be used in a myriad of ways.

Here’s an example from Thomas Frank on YouTube how he uses Notion to track all of the production steps for his online videos. And below are a few more Notion resources:

• 23 Notion Tips, Hacks & Tricks
• Top 15 Notion Tips for Beginners
• A Beginner’s Guide to Notion

Dave and I are starting to talk about putting the workflows for our respective podcasts on Notion and seeing what else it can do for us.

Your Turn

What has ignited your curiosity in recent weeks?

For the first time in Teaching in Higher Ed history, we are taking the show on the road.

We have been invited to partner with Digital Pedagogy Lab at their new location in Denver, Colorado. Many of this year’s 2020 Lab faculty have also been guests on Teaching in Higher Ed.

That includes people like:

• Robin DeRosa
• Amy Collier
• Bonnie Stewart
• Kevin Gannon
• Kris Shaffer

There are also plenty of individuals who have long been on my list of people I would love to interview for the podcast. What a tremendous opportunity to get to connect with individuals who have shaped my teaching in such powerful ways for all these years.

Sean Michael Morris explains the formation of our partnership as follows:

“Because Digital Pedagogy Lab offers courses and conversations about similar topics and as the Lab has also featured many of the same speakers as Teaching in Higher Ed–we feel this partnership is a perfect fit, and will give Lab participants even more to enjoy.”

We will also be providing a lens into the event for those who are unable to attend in person. I am going to be experimenting a bit with audio storytelling and attempting to capture a less linear version of the DPL conversations than how the podcast interviews are typically structured. I also plan on holding more traditional conversations with some of the teachers and fellows.

Finally, I am very excited to announce that will be broadcasting Teaching in Higher Ed live from Digital Pedagogy Lab on July 28, 2020 at 4:30pm Mountain / 6:30pm Eastern. More information on the broadcast, once we have figured out what we are doing.

View Time/Date on World Time Buddy – and add to your calendar

Note: Anyone who is reading this with advice on what tools to use for live podcast recordings is encouraged to share your recommendations with us. We would appreciate your guidance, especially on the recording a podcast live part of this adventure.

As Sean Michael Morris shared on the DPL website:

“We believe this is an exciting partnership for everyone who attends or has wanted to attend Digital Pedagogy Lab. Stay tuned for more information about Teaching in Higher Ed at DPL 2020.”

We hope to see some of you in person at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020.

And by we, I do mean we. Dave and the kids will be there with me. Since this is the first time I'm attempting to do something like this, it will be nice to have some backup. The kids' podcasting skills aren't quite matched with Dave's, but no doubt they will keep us entertained.

Photo cred:  Cassie Gallegos on Unsplash

It’s been quite a year for Teaching in Higher Ed. We celebrated one million downloads of the podcast with episode 250 and a profile in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In May, EdTech named the podcast (and me) in their list of 30 Higher Education IT Influencers. I was able to share about podcasting in higher education in an interview with PUPN Magazine’s Rachel James Clevenger.

2019 brought another set of expert guests to the podcast. I have learned so much from each person who has joined me on the show and have enjoyed such rich interactions with many members of the listening community throughout the year.

Top downloaded 19 episodes in 2019

19 | Episode 250 | One in a Million | Bonni and Dave Stachowiak

18 | Episode 244 | Create Online Mashups that Ignite Curiosity | Michael Britt

17 | Episode 248 | Surveying Social and Open Learning | Debbie Baff

16 | Episode 245 | The Fullness of Our Humanity as Teaching and Student | Terri Jett

15 | Episode 259 | Intentional and Transparent Assessment | Natasha Jankowski

14 | Episode 272 | Inclusified Teaching Evaluation | Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan

13 | Episode 247 | Reclaiming the Narrative on the Value of Higher Education | Eddie Watson

12 | Episode 255 | AHSIE Conference Reflections | Bonni Stachowiak

11 | Episode 269 | Removing Learning Barriers with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) | Jennifer Pusateri

10 | Episode 249 | Mindset, Metacognition, and Math | Silvia Heubach

09 | Episode 271 | The Missing Course | David Gooblar

08 | Episode 273 | Engaging Learners in Large Classes | Bonni Stachowiak

07 | Episode 251 | Annotating the Marginal Syllabus | Remi Kalir

06 | Episode 252 | Ownership, Equity, and Agency in Faculty Development | Maha Bali and Autumm Caines

05 | Episode 253 | Spaces and Places (and Nudges) | José Bowen

04 | Episode 256 | Creating Wicked Students | Paul Hanstedt

03 | Episode 263 | Recipes for Effective Teaching | Elizabeth Barkley

02 | Episode 254 | Stop Talking, Start Influencing | Jared Horvath

01 | Episode 258 | Paying the Price | Sara Goldrick-Rab

2020 Focus

As I think about what to focus on for Teaching in Higher Ed in 2020, here are three top-of-mind ideas:

Experiment with ways to extend the reach of the podcast

I can’t write too much about this yet, as we are in the early stages of planning. Let’s just say that 2020 will mean that Teaching in Higher Ed goes on the road at least once – to join an event I have always wanted to attend.

I received an invitation I just couldn’t pass up, so we are starting to make plans for how to record remotely and capture some powerful stories and pedagogies. I will share more as we finalize our plans.

Continue to connect with a diverse group of expert guests

In 2019, we had two significant partnerships that helped us do this even more than in past years:

1. The California State University partnered with us on a series of episodes on faculty innovation and leadership.
2. ACUE continued providing us with recommended guests on a monthly basis, as they had done in prior years.
3. Members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community used the online form to recommend guests, and also provided suggestions via the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack Group. We also have a Trello board which I open up to completionists – who have listened to every episode of the podcast – for them to make more targeted suggestions. 

As I look through the back catalog of episodes, it is exciting to see that we addressed a rich array of topics throughout the year and contributed to the broader conversation about pedagogy in a higher education context. 

Continue to find ways to defer the cost of producing the podcast

Producing Teaching in Higher Ed has proven to be a costly endeavor. We now own professional podcasting equipment both for our home studio, as well as the one I've set up at my work – so I have more flexibility in when I can conduct interviews. There are web hosting fees, podcast editing, podcast production, and transcript costs. We work on finding creative ways to defer some of these costs, to make the podcast more sustainable over the long haul. 

These methods currently include:

1. Doing paid speaking events to the tune of around 4-5 times per year – find out more on my speaking page. You can also check out the resource pages for all my prior speaking events via the all-speaking page. 
2. Taking on paid sponsorships that align with products and services I would otherwise recommend word-of-mouth – find out more on the sponsorships page. I am projecting that we will have 2-3 sponsorships per month in 2020, though I would love to increase this even more to have a sponsor for each episode that airs.
3. Using affiliate links for the books and other products that get recommended on the various episodes. If you’re interested in seeing some of these items, they are consolidated on the recommendations page.
4. ACUE has started sponsoring the transcripts for each episode, which has helped us be able to continue to provide these resources without having to take the costs on, ourselves.

I have been considering starting a Patreon page for a couple of years now, but haven’t ever taken the plunge. I have enjoyed supporting two people who use Patreon to support their work: Alan Levine and Audrey Watters. Even though my donations are quite minimal, it feels good to know I’m contributing to the larger picture of them being able to continue doing what they do. I may launch a Patreon page in 2020, but am going to hold off for a bit to focus more on the bigger priorities for the start of the year.

Thanks for reading down to the end of this post. If you have a favorite episode from 2019 (or any year, really), I would love to hear about it.

Photo cred: Jamie Street on Unsplash

It is hard to believe that we are back around, again, to another year’s vote for Jane Hart’s Top Tools for Learning. I voted back in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. I also created an infographic of my Modern Professional Learner’s Toolkit. Consider voting in the 2019 survey, which closes Friday, September 13, 2019.

2019 Votes

Each year that I vote, I don’t allow myself to look at past year’s blog posts. That way, I can be sure to avoid any unintended influence on the current year’s selections. First, I narrow down my top ten. Then, I determine which of the three categories they fit within: Personal and professional learning, supporting workplace learning, or within an educational context.

In no particular order, here are my 2019 Top 10 Tools:

Twitter (Personal/professional)

My personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter is vibrant and full of generous, knowledgable people who contribute to my growth daily.

Inoreader (Personal/professional)

This RSS (real simple syndication) keeps track of all of my sources of information. They come through what is called a “feed” into one place. I can browse headlines and read more, or mark items as read. I still haven’t capitalized on all the cool stuff I can do with Inoreader, but is has been great so far.

Unread (Personal/professional)

Once Inoreader contains the feeds I want to read, Unread is my favorite way to actually consume content. I find it works great on the iPad to be able to navigate through headings, quickly mark things as read that aren’t of interest, and bookmark those articles I want to see later on (using Pinboard, which is mentioned next). Unread also has a great dark mode, which saves my eyes while reading at night before bed.

Pinboard (Personal/professional)

When I find something I want to save for future reference, Pinboard is my tool of choice. I save bookmarks to videos, blogs, articles, and more to Pinboard. Each bookmark on Pinboard includes tags, so I can easily go back to topics of interest or resources that might be helpful to my students.

PollEverywhere (Education)

This polling system is a wonderful way to engage an audience, using their smartphones or other devices. PollEverywhere has lots of question types and ways I can present those questions to students.

Glisser (Workplace learning)

My keynote talks are supported with Glisser. I can share slides without having to worry about what device will actually display them (as in if I’ll be able to use my laptop, or will need to use one being provided by the event venue). Glisser also has great tools for engagement, such as polling and social media sharing.

Quizlet (Education)

This flashcard app is highly flexible and offers all sorts of ways to do retrieval practice. Quizlet works great for individuals who want to review materials, but also in a classroom context. My favorite is their game called Quizlet Live that is the most fun I ever see my students having when reviewing for an exam.

Canvas (Education)

I have used many learning management systems (LMSs) in my day. Canvas is by far the best I have ever used. As the name suggests, it can be a blank canvas for an educator to create a dynamic environment for students to engage in. But it also has enough built-in structure to be easy to use and maintain consistency between classes. It also has an app center that lets you bring in other applications to use within Canvas (like Quizlet, mentioned above).

Acuity Scheduling (Workplace learning)

All of my office hours and podcast interview scheduling is done through Acuity Scheduing. We also take registrations for all of our faculty development workshops using this tool. Acuity Scheduling is incredibly flexible and has all kinds of options for making the work of gathering together for all kinds of purposes seamless.

Zoom (Education)

While Zoom is being listed last, it may just mean I saved the best for last! Zoom makes it incredibly easy to connect via web conference with people from all over the world. It does all the heavy lifting with working out the bandwidth issues, to give us the smoothest and clearest connection possible. Zoom also has all kinds of additional features to help participants stay engaged, like breakout rooms, chat (that carries over from session to session), and polls.

Your Turn

Now it is your turn. Consider voting in the 2019 survey, either by submitting your votes via their form, or by writing a blog post like this one.

For many of us, things have shifted a bit with the end of an academic year. My contract doesn’t end with the end of our Spring semester, but my work days have evolved a bit to allow more time for creative endeavors and fixing broken systems.

As we concluded our academic year, the Institute for Faculty Development received some recommended summer reads and we were able to give away the titles to our faculty at our end-of-year meeting. It was fun to see which books various people selected and to see their smiles of delight as they found the perfect one to match their interests.

2019 Recommended Summer Reads from Vanguard University Faculty

Over the last few months, we changed podcast hosting companies for Teaching in Higher Ed and Dave’s (my spouse’s) podcast – Coaching for Leaders. I’m glad we made the move, but it does mean that if I ever want to calculate the most listened to episodes of all time, it will be quite a manual process.

In the meantime, I took a look at episodes that aren’t recent (anything before episode 200) and saw which of these more evergreen shows were standouts in recent months.

• Episode 132 | Teach Students How to Learn with Saundra McGuire
• Episode 184 | The Science of Retrieval Practice with Pooja Agarwal
• Episode 60 | Practical Instructional Design with Edward O’Neill
• Episode 70 | Not Yet-Ness with Amy Collier
• Episode 99 | Encouraging Accountability with Angela Jenks
• Episode 81 | The Ethics of Plagiarism Detection with Stephanie Vie
• Episode 95 | Teaching in the Digital Age with Mike Truong
• Episode 98 | The Skillful Teacher with Stephen Brookfield
• Episode 61 | All That is Out of Our Control with Lee Skallerup Bessette
• Episode 136 | Teaching Naked Techniques with José Bowen
• Episode 164 | Setting Students Up for Success From the Start with Joe Hoyle
• Episode 4 | Your Teaching Philosophy: The What, Why, and How
• Episode 197 | Interactivity and Inclusivity Can Help Close the Achievement Gap with Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan
• Episode 58 | Universal Design for Learning with Mark Hofer

It was fun to see some names I hadn't seen in a while on the list, along with some people who will soon be coming back on the podcast. Next week, I’m having a second conversation with Viji Sathy that I’m really looking forward to… And Saundra McGuire has agreed to another interview that we are working on scheduling.

Finally, here are some recent bookmarks I saved that may be of interest to you:

• Collecting, measuring, analyzing, and using student data in open distance/distributed learning – presentation slide deck and notes by Paul Prinsloo – each time I read something or hear something from Paul, it always leaves me reflecting on how to improve some aspect of my work
• Ten Hot Topics Around Scholarly Publishing – this is so worth a read!
• Tweet and graphic by @nilblogger: Inspired by McIntosh's invisible knapsack essay, I created this graphic to illustrate the concept of info privilege (aimed at ugrad audience). What other examples of info privilege come to mind? #critlib #scholcomm #infoprivilege
• Patch 29: My 25 Cents Worth for Instructional Designers – worth way more than twenty-five cents!
• Building a bus map when there are no fixed routes or stops via Wired Magazine – absolutely fascinating. #systemsthinking

I’ve got episodes scheduled throughout the summer months on Teaching in Higher Ed. Hope you will be able to join us to continue the conversations and learning.

This article was originally posted on EdSurge and is reposted with permission. The following is the latest installment of the Toward Better Teaching advice column. You can pose a question for a future column here.

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Dear Bonni, How do you help inspire other educators? Sometimes the problem isn't my students—it's my colleagues. If they seem bored or tired, the students pick up on that and then think that all classes are tedious.

—Working at a small community college

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Our emotional well-being matters as teachers. Not only because (if we are going to do it well) facilitating the learning of others requires a lot of energy. But also because if we are experiencing feelings that are not conducive to the work of learning, we can inadvertently transfer those emotions to our students—just as they might catch a cold from us if we’re sick.

Daniel Goleman’s research illustrates the way our emotions are contagious. In his book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006), he describes how we humans are hard-wired to connect with one another. Those connections can be a pathway for our emotions to strongly influence another’s, in positive or negative ways.

Create Agreement That Emotions Matter

There are certainly still faculty arguing that we need to stay far away from any desire to be an edu-tainer. They argue that it’s not up to professors to worry about whether a teaching approach is working for students, that somehow the burden is on the students to adapt to whatever style of instruction is used. Thankfully, there is a renewed emphasis on how emotions can spark learning.

Sarah Cavanaugh, author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion (2016), describes how we can energize our students’ learning by heightening curiosity, encouraging mindfulness and capturing learners’ attention. She stresses that “emotions certainly determine many of our motivations, decisions, and behaviors, and the circuits governing both learning and emotion overlap.”

Think back to a teacher who had a tremendous impact on you—and there was likely a way that person captivated your imagination or tapped into emotion in some way. Dave Stachowiak (my husband and host of the Coaching for Leaders podcast) shares this story of a class that has stuck with him since high school.

On the first day of the chemistry course, the teacher provided a routine overview of the syllabus. Then, he casually lit a candle at the front of the room and explained that the most important thing for students to learn in the class, was that things were not always what they seemed. And with that, he picked up the burning candle and popped it in his mouth, and chewed. Then he said “see you tomorrow,” and left the room.

As Dave mentions, his chemistry teacher was not dynamic one hundred percent of the time. “He didn’t need to be,” Dave emphasizes, “because we were always on the edge of our seat.”

When students first join the online portion of my Introduction to Business class, they are presented with an introductory video for the course that is meant to mimic the feel of watching an Indiana Jones movie.

Like Dave’s teacher, I try to give them the sense that this class is going to be different. My hope is that they see it as an adventure that will help them learn, but also will be a series of experiences we will have together in the process. I work hard on those first impressions to engage students’ sense of encountering the unexpected.

My advice is to try to generate some kind of agreement among your fellow faculty members that it is worth it to be purposeful about how to ignite the imagination of your students.

Raise the Collective Self-Awareness

I have been teaching in higher education for 15 years now. Not once have I ever had a professor confess that they perceive themselves as boring. Yet, I remain convinced that there are those who do not possess the capacity for drawing learners in and gaining their attention.

In Ken Bain’s longitudinal study of how superb post-secondary educators approach their teaching, he asserts the importance of attaining and maintaining students’ attention. Bain writes in What the Best College Teachers Do (2004):

“They consciously try to get students’ attention with some provocative act, question, or statement.”

One of the best ways I have ever observed of raising one’s self-awareness is by using video or audio recording as feedback. My first professional job out of college was teaching computer classes. The person I reported to handed me a cassette tape as I was headed out of work one day. It was a recording of me teaching that day. As I listened, I immediately identified phrases I was saying repetitively that were distracting. It was painful to listen to—but it provided me with incredibly powerful feedback that has stayed with me for decades to come.

A tool like Swivl can help with video and audio recording feedback. Even if you do not ultimately decide to invest in a product made specifically for that purpose, knowing more about how video can transform our teaching is helpful. This video series with Jim Knight (a senior research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning) conveys how videos can “eliminate perceptual errors and allow for teachers and coaches to refer to real evidence of practice.”

Acknowledge and Redirect

The work of teaching is one of the hardest things I have ever done. When my colleagues want to vent about the challenges they are encountering, I hope to be a good listener for them. However, if too much of the conversation seems to be about student shaming, I do try to redirect to something more positive.

It is a delicate balance to know when we just need a person who can relate to our frustrations and when we really need to focus our attention back on more productive and life-giving thoughts.

Christopher Emdin, author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood (2017), epitomizes this sentiment when he writes:

“The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teachers you associate with. Teaching is a profession where misery does more than just love company—it recruits, seduces, and romances it. Avoid people who are unhappy and disgruntled about the possibilities for transforming education. They are the enemy of the spirit of the teacher.”

When we focus on increasing our collective capacity to serve our students well, we leverage the best of what a community of teachers has to offer.

Photo credit: Simone Acquaroli on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I headed to Nebraska to visit Hastings College. I did a keynote and a workshop and had a wonderful time. They are doing some transformative work at Hastings that it was fun to catch a small glimpse of during my time with them.

Whenever I travel, I think back to the post I wrote with guidance on how to ease the process of moving throughout the world. Much of the post still holds up and is worth a look. However, the best part came in the comments.

Robert Talbert recommended getting TSA pre-check – and that advice has paid off in spades for me and for our entire family.

If you follow Robert on social media, you might have seen that he is currently recovering from heart surgery. You can learn more about it on his blog. He has also invited some of us to help him queue up some posts during his recovery. Watch for one from me toward the end of February.  

As I think back to my Nebraska trip, I have a few other travel-related resources to share, plus a request from a listener to participate in his research.

PackPoint

I had grown tired of fumbling around with my packing list in Evernote. Each time I traveled, I copied the text over to a new note and sometimes even had to uncheck the checkboxes, if I had messed up my system the last time I used it. Yes, Evernote has templates now, but they still don’t go anywhere as far as my new packing list find.

PackPoint is a great app, which has features I didn’t even realize I needed. As soon as I purchased it, I could easily integrate it with my TripIt account. PackPoint then knew that I was headed to Nebraska – and that it was cold there. It added a heavy jacket to my packing list without me even needing to lift a finger.

It bases packing lists around activities. There are many built-in activities, such as essentials, swimming, business casual, hiking, and so on. It was easy to set up my own built-in activities, such as the one I created for the various electronics that I bring and their associated chargers.

Tom Bihn Backpack

I received a new Tom Bihn backpack for Christmas and this was my first long-distance trip with it. I like the way it can expand to fit a large number of items, yet isn’t awkward when there isn’t much stuff in it.

The Synapse has a place for a water bottle in the middle of the bag, which I discovered I like a lot more. It centers the weight and also I don’t have to worry about the bottle falling off the side when I’m moving about.

Noise Canceling Headphones

I wrote my first travel tips post in 2017, before I discovered the joys of having noise canceling headphones. I purchased a pair of Beats, but candidly didn’t do a bunch of comparisons before diving in. They have a long battery life and are easy to connect to my iPhone or iPad during a flight via bluetooth.

TextExpander

The other tool I am always happy to have on the road with me is TextExpander. In full transparency, they are a regular sponsor of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, but I was recommending them long before they started supporting the show.

There were quite a few weather delays during my trip to Nebraska, which made me grateful that I had all the tools I needed to get some serious work done during that time. With TextExpander, I can have access to all my snippets across my computer, smartphone, and tablet – with everything syncing across all of those platforms.

I use TextExpander to save time with my email signatures, letters of recommendation for students, data I forget all the time (like my work phone number), and for longer pieces like creating the show notes for each episode.

Here’s a post I wrote in 2018 with more about TextExpander, including a demo of how I use it.

Participate in Educational Podcasts Research

Even though it has nothing to do with travel (except for the way in which podcasts help us go different places in our minds), I did want to extend an invitation to you on behalf of a listener. The last thing worth checking out is participating in Scott McNamara’s research on educational research.

He writes:

“Hello, I am Scott McNamara, Ph.D. at the University of Northern Iowa. I am conducting a study to examine the motivational factors for listening to educational podcasts. This study consists of completing a short 20-minute survey. To participate in the study, you must be in the field of education (e.g., pre-service teacher, higher education professor, education administrator, practicing teacher, related service provider) and have listened to an educational podcast.

If you are interested in participating in this study, please visit this information on the Survey to find out more. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please email Dr. Scott McNamara at the University of Northern Iowa at scott.mcnamara@Uni.edu.”

Please consider supporting Scott’s research, as we will all be able to benefit when he publishes his results.

Your Turn

What have you been packing up for your trips, lately, that have helped reduce the stress of travel and enjoy yourself a bit more?

Sorry about starting with a bad, musical pun in the title. I want to share about three powerful exchanges that I have witnessed recently on Twitter. My apologies if you now can't get Three Little Birds out of your head.

Ian Wolf Encounters a Disengaged Student

Let's begin with an experience most of us have encountered, as shared by Ian Wolf.

2/ Student came in 15 min late to my Science Fiction class of 12.

She did not blend.

She immediately began to stare at her phone with a single earbud firmly entrenched.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

3/ Now, just so y'all know, I'm dynamic AF: high kicks, deep stances, lots of questions and dialogue, and that's just the times when I lecture.

I couldn't get this girl to engage with the class.

I even asked her – politely – to join. She pulled out the earbud for, like, 2 min.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

4/ Now old me woulda lost his cool and called her out for being disrespectful and surly.

But when I noticed the earbud go back in, I saw two paths diverge in a yellow wood. I decided to take the one less traveled by.

I figured there had to be a good reason for her.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

5/ As I released class, I asked her to hang on for a sec in my most soothing and calm voice. Once everyone else was gone, I didn't tell her what was wrong about how she had behaved.

I asked her if she was okay.

She was not.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

6/ As I was directing her to the campus resources best suited to help, I was struck with the realization I could have utterly lost her as a student if old me had spoken. No question. I would have escalated, she would have responded in kind, etc.

Instead, I just listened.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

7/ I never would have grown as an educator without the great insight, development, and tirelessness of those mentioned already.

I'm proud of being better at my job now than I was then; however, I wouldn't be good without better educators to guide me.

tl;dr Thanks, y'all.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

A few thoughts that came to mind as I read Ian's tweets… When he mentions that the young woman didn't “blend.” It is impossible for me to read something like that and not go back to this old SNL skit of the bass-o-matic. “Mmmmmmm. That's terrific bass!”

via GIPHY

And off my mind goes to the question of “will it blend?” from Blendtec. I'm also having fun picturing Ian doing high kicks and deep stances in his classes. In case he needs it (or some of you do, too), please follow that up with some of these stretches.

In case you aren't familiar with some of the acronyms Ian used. AF is akin to “as heck” – like how so many of us are saying it is cold “as heck” in the midwest right now. Except that isn't quite strong enough, so some people use a word that rhymes with duck instead of using the word heck. Also, TL/DR stands for too long/didn't read. Some people recognize that we may not have time to read the whole article or series of tweets sometimes, so they synthesize it for us. So Ian shortens his series of tweets 1-7 down into “Thanks, y'all.”

Ian's first tweet began by mentioning people who have inspired him in making these changes in how he interacts with students. I didn't want to start with it, lest it seemed self-serving. However, he mentions others who have had a profound impact on me, as well, so here it is:

1/ I need to begin this thread with a big thanks to @bonni208 for stressing kindness in her @tihighered podcast, @Jessifer for vociferously arguing for treating students as people, & @SaRoseCav for showing through her research just how impactful emotion is on learning.
Story time…

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

Ian was a guest on episode #222 when he shared about those Teaching in Higher Ed guests who have made the biggest impact on his teaching. He is also a proud member of the Teaching in Higher Ed Completionists – those people who have listened to every single episode of the podcast.

I am working on getting a dedicated page on the site for completionists to share favorite episodes, though I haven't gotten to it quite yet. There is a completionists Slack channel, however.

Viji Sathy Receives a Gift

Many of us have received gifts from our students to thank us for our teaching. In this next series of tweets, Viji Sathy tells a story of some earrings a student gave to her. As you might expect, it was so much more than that.

These may look like ordinary earrings. They are not. #TuesdayThanks pic.twitter.com/NY7UtkxpoS

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Viji continues on after that with:

After my first semester of teaching I was riddled with self-doubt and wondering if I had taken on more than I could handle. The soundtrack in my head that first year was impatient and unkind. #ImposterSyndrome in full force.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

But after the semester, this student stopped by to gift me these handmade earrings to thank me for teaching and demonstrating care in the class.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Semester after semester, I chipped away. I attended #facdev, read a lot, asked for help and advice. Now I find myself in the position to offer #facdev, writing a lot, and offering help and advice.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

These earrings stay out to remind me of this wonderful and unpredictable journey.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

To my educator colleagues, who may be doubting themselves right now: stay the course, ask for help. Remember everyone has a day 1, or semester 1. We all remember it.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

And to that wonderful student, I have so much gratitude for the gift you gave me — and it wasn’t the earrings, but I love them too.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Viji's story reminds me of the importance of committing to lifelong learning in our profession. We may get to places in our teaching where we are effective at coaching others, but there will always be more to discover, fail at, and learn from…

Matthew Cortland Has a Leaky Roof

These past few weeks on academic twitter have been focused a lot on disability accommodations. A professor wound up apologizing for his suggestion that he would not accommodate students' needs surrounding test anxiety. There was this powerful post about neurodiversity. And then there was this memorable series of tweets from Matthew Cortland, esq.

Someone messages to ask, in what I believe to be good faith, why I go so hard at academics for ableism.

It's because the roof leaks.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

When it's wet outside, water leaks from the bedroom ceiling. You may ask, quite reasonably, ‘why don't you do something about it?'

Because sometimes I have to pay the rent late.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I was told by law school administration that I couldn't tell professors I had a disability or that I needed accommodations. I have #IBD, my symptoms require, as my accommodations letters put it, “unhindered restroom access.” The law school tried, very hard, to violate the ADA

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I had to threaten to sue them to be allowed to tell professors I had a reasonable accommodation on the basis of disability that meant if I needed to go to the restroom? I wasn't going to raise my hand and ask for permission (as some profs insisted).

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

One professor, upon my disclosing chronic illness said, “you won't need something silly, like a large font, will you?”

When I explained Crohn's, he interrogated me about how he'd know if I was faking or if I was really in the bathroom.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

That was the first interrogation of many. I was cross examined, repeatedly, about my accommodations. Even though they were from Uni Dis Services & based upon voluminous medical evidence, were they legit? no, really, how was I scamming them?

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

Instead of assigning a proctor to stop time when I needed to toilet (as I requested) they gave me 1.5x time on exams. I had final exams (upon which the entire class grade depends) taken away from me before my allotted time had expired. It literally trashed my gpa.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

For the entirety of my law school career, I was told every single day, explicitly and implicitly, that I didn't belong, that I wasn't welcome, that the profession didn't have any room for me.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I was told by the professors who were supposed to mentor me that if I got a firm job (and I wouldn't, but if there was a miracle), they'd fire me after a month on some pretext because I “need to use the bathroom too much.”

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

…it was relentless. And other professors saw it. And my classmates saw it. And it perpetuated a culture. Those professors weren't just teaching what was on the syllabus – they were teaching discrimination, they were teaching ableism.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

That pernicious discrimination is the norm throughout the profession. And if it's ever to stop, it must begin with academe, it must begin with law schools. That's why I go so hard.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I have an incredibly expensive education, a license to practice law, a useful skillset. I'm a good advocate.

When it's wet outside, the roof leaks because I never got a firm job, because I'm unemployable because I spend too much time in the bathroom.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

Cortland's thread has been added to since I first bookmarked it, including this Patreon page entitled Shouldn't Need to Become a Lawyer. I also noticed a number of powerful videos of him advocating for various healthcare policy issues.

Your Turn

These three individuals really got me thinking about my teacher. I am grateful for their expressions of despair, change, and hope in this place. What have you been reading on Twitter that has been transformative lately?

 

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?