Both of our kids are really into surprises these days.

They enjoy hiding (but don't do it very quietly, so you know exactly where they are). Then, they like to jump out and yell at the top of their lungs:

Surprise!

They get such a kick out of it. Their joy is contagious.

Surprise

Our kids aren't the only ones who should recognize the importance of surprises. I have had some wonderful, challenging conversations with colleagues about how students often experience their classes, the exact opposite of anything unexpected. “We come in and sit down. He lectures for 20 minutes or so. He shows a video from the same content creation company, with examples that are not current. He lectures for a few more minutes and tells us of any upcoming exams.”

It is all way too predictable. We need to infuse our classes with authentic surprises and keep the learners curious about what will happen next. Here are a few sources of inspiration:

Create Times for Telling

Derek Bruff introduced me to the idea of “times for telling” on episode #71. Ever since discovering this approach, I seek out opportunities to present problems, challenges, or something mysterious in my teaching.

Use Prediction

Another technique is to have students be presented with a situation and ask them to predict what happened next. James Lang writes about this in his book Small Teaching. One of my favorite experiences doing this was when I played the first part of a Planet Money podcast called How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil's Currency. The episode starts with an explanation of how the Brazilians had lost all confidence in their currency.

For a while, inflation was so high that grocery stores were raising their prices every day. Shoppers would run ahead of the guy changing the price tags, so they could pay the previous day's price.”

The narrators then explain how Brazil's leaders brought together a group of economists together to make recommendations on how to solve the problem. I then pause the episode and have students get into groups of 3-4 and give their advice to Brazil on how to resolve the price instability. I do this early in the semester to get students accustomed to talking with each other and problem-solving in groups. It also helps them recognize that this class experience will be drastically different than professors they have had who rely primarily on lecturing in their teaching.

Bring a Prop

One of the most memorable classes in my doctoral program involved a guest speaker bringing a gift bag and setting it in the front of the class. He didn't say anything about it, at first. But, we were all captivated by it from the moment he brought it in. He brought in the unexpected. It turned out to be a $10 paperback book – one of his favorites about leadership. We valued it much higher than that because of the way in which he used it to get our curiosity going as to what was inside that bag.

Carry the Lessons Online

Having surprising elements is even more vital when we move to an online platform. When you create a video for your class, create some unexpected elements to capture the learners' attention. Give your students a taste of agency right when they enter your course. When they click on the section of your course that contains the syllabus, include a course trailer that really piques their interest in what they will learn in the class.

Go Somewhere

The feasibility of literally going somewhere will be limited by factors such as class size and campus location. I enjoy having my students meet me at Back Bay. We listen to a podcast and then gather around to discuss what we heard. Sometimes we visit local businesses or non-profits. In cases when moving outside the classroom isn't realistic, I invite guest speakers into the classroom using Zoom.

Play a Game

Another great way to create a surprise element in our teaching is through playing a game. My students absolutely love playing Ellen's Heads Up game as a review for an exam, or to reinforce some newer concepts in a class. It is available for iOS or Android. You can buy a .99 custom deck and create cards to align with your course.

Your Turn

What do you do to bring surprises into your classroom? 

I received a series of questions about open textbooks from a person who attended my keynote at the University of Georgia in October of 2017.

***

Greetings! I heard you speak at UGA about publishing open textbooks with your students and I decided that I had to do this too.

So here I am, teaching a class with 20 undergrads, and this crazy idea to have students research Confederate monuments in the state, and write up a resolution to a specific monument in Georgia that they researched over the course of the semester.

The goal of the book is to document each monuments' specific history as well as allow students to express their solutions as to how they believe the monuments should look in the future.

I know that I will get my students research and writing where it needs to be, but I am totally ignorant to this self publishing process. Looking through the different publication options, I wondered why did you choose Pressbooks over just uploading straight to Amazon?

I do not want to charge any money for the book as I am fearful that my students may think that I am profiting from their work–which I know will not be the case–but that still nagging feeling in the back of my mind. I would love any and all advice that you might have for me regarding the process. I am hoping to include photographs (taken by my students) in the book as well.

Also—I love your podcast in every way imaginable. It re-energizes me daily.

***

Thank you for the edifying words about the podcast. It is inspiring to learn that the keynote I gave at UGA has inspired you and that you have embarked on this journey.

At the end of 2017, I wrote up some details on My First Experience Co-Writing an Open Textbook, in case you haven’t seen that post yet.

You pose some questions that I didn’t address in that post, however. Here are some thoughts about what you asked.

Why Pressbooks?

My experience with Pressbooks has led me to the belief that it is probably the best option out there for creating open textbooks. That being said, I am very new to this process and haven’t done an exhaustive search or extensive comparisons. This open textbook about how to write an open textbook is a good guide and happens to be written using Pressbooks. Another similar and excellent resource is A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students.

Options like using Github or Gitbook to get started with open textbooks seem daunting for those who are less familiar with those tools, already. Since Pressbooks is based on WordPress, people who have done some blogging in the past are likely to feel quite comfortable in that environment.

For those who aren't ready to write their own open textbook, it is well worth exploring the many sites that offer open textbooks that you can adopt as is, or customize. To name a few such sites: Open Textbook Library, KPU's resources and links, and Harvard DART.

What you are describing seems like a perfect use case for Pressbooks. You could create a book on Pressbooks and have a digital version available at no charge to you (or your students).

Mike Caulfield’s Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers gives you a look at how this works. His book is available on any computer or device that has a web browser. His book is an example of what’s available with the free version of Pressbooks.

Why Amazon (CreateSpace)?

If you wanted to make a copy of your book available in print, the free version of Pressbooks would not be a good option. There are many options for print-on-demand services and I have also not done too much investigation in this area.

I went with the advice from a guy I met who works for Pressbooks. He said that if I didn’t have any ethical issues with using an Amazon-owned company, that CreateSpace had some good options.

Most of my “heavy lifting” happened in Pressbooks. I used their cover creator and one of their templates for all my design and formatting. Then, I used CreateSpace to distribute hard copies across various publishing platforms (most namely, Amazon).

Charging Students

I completely understand your concern about charging students for a textbook that you would potentially profit from. If I were teaching undergraduates and writing an open textbook with them, I would likely keep everything in digital form via Pressbooks.

My class was a group of doctoral students who were thrilled with the potential of having something they wrote in printed form. As of January 16, 2018, I have made half of what I paid for a Pressbooks paid book. I suspect that I won’t likely make all of it back, but don’t mind losing money on this kind of an endeavor.

I shared with the students that there was a potential for me to eventually make a small sum of money. I had them sign an online document indicating their understanding of that possibility.

What helped me with the potential ethical challenges in this process was that students were not bound to purchase a copy of the book. It was an option that they had if they wanted to buy one. Transparency was essential. Everyone understood my costs and how I was attempting to reduce them or eliminate them in this way.

Many Questions Remain

I know I still have so much to learn about open textbooks. As I was researching your questions, I came across Ingram Spark, a self-publishing platform that uses Pressbooks as its content editor, that looks like it could potentially save me money with having a print and ebook created of my doctoral students’ books in the future.

I wish I would have documented more of the steps that I had to go through in generating all the needed information for the printed and ebook editions. I suspect that come March (the next time I will be co-writing an open textbook with students), I will be scratching my head, trying to remember what I selected the last time I was in Pressbooks and Createspace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…shapers of knowledge, not consumers of it.”

Open Textbook – Beginnings and Endings

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

You know what else happened?

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

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

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

I wrapped up my last keynote for the year at the DET/CHE conference. The event didn't require extensive travel. It took me less time to get there than it does for me to drive to work. I got to meet Michelle Pacansky-Brock in person for the first time – and get photo bombed by a new friend in the process.

If you have been reading my recent blog posts, you know that we are looking to start an end-of-year book club. One of the possible books on our list was Confessions of a Public Speaker. Since I knew it was highly unlikely that it was going to make the top spot on everyone's priorities (based on the surveys that had been submitted by that time), I decided to read it on my own.

The biggest piece of advice Burken (the author) has for his readers is the importance of practice. All too often, we futz with our slides until the wee hours of the night, to the detriment of investing time in rehearsal. Burken is heavy on stories and a bit lighter on the promised practical advice. From memory, a few other recommendations he makes include:

1. Don't picture your audience naked
2. Tell stories
3. Use a slide remote that has a timer built in (I prefer setting alarms on my Apple Watch)
4. Ask people to move to the front of the room, if your audience is sparse

Advice for Presenters

As I wind down from my recent speaking adventures, I thought I would share some of my advice on presenting.

1. Invest in a wireless clicker to advance your slides, so you aren't tied to the podium.
2. Use Nancy Duarte's advice in Slideology – and have your slides enhance your presentation, not deliver it.
3. Involve your audience in some way – I used Glisser a lot this Fall to take questions, pose questions, and allow people to tweet out my slides as I was presenting.
4. Make your presentation more memorable by thinking like a storyteller.
5. Build a resources page for after your presentation, to help people take their learning even further.
6. Use SlideShare to convert your slides to a presentation that can be viewed/embedded online (instead of people needing to download your slides, if they just want to take a peek). Here are my slides over on SlideShare from the FIU Online conference, which are then embedded on that event's resources page.
7. To the extent that it is at all possible, avoid commenting about any technical or other difficulties you are experiencing. The people who are attending your presentation want to get to experience it without having to lose confidence in you, or the event's tech team, due to behind-the-scenes challenges. At one of my recent keynotes, the music for my course trailer example didn't play when the video started. Instead of mentioning that fact, I waited a few seconds and then started humming the best version of Indiana Jones music I could muster. The audience seemed to enjoy it even better than if the music had played. The tech team was then able to restore the sound by the time we got to the next clip. Some may have even thought I planned it this way (though I didn't indicate that).
8. Have a backup plan for when you experience severe technical difficulties. If there's no way for you to display your slides, be sure you have a hard copy of them with you, preferably printed with multiple slides on one page. Here's what I had with me in my bag during my most recent keynote, just in case of any unforeseen issues with projecting the slides during the event. As a side note, I have never had this happen during a keynote talk, but it does happen periodically when I am teaching regular classes.
9. Pause during your talk. Count – one, two… and give the audience a moment to catch up / come back. Silence can be an incredible attention-grabber, if used well. Used poorly, it can be boring – at best – or really awkward.
10. Don't read from notes. If you know your material to be asked to speak on a topic, it is likely that you don't require notes to be able to talk about it. If you follow Duarte's and Garr's advice to only have one idea per slide, you won't have to worry about forgetting one of your points, because you will only have one thing you are talking about per slide.

Dave and I talk more about tools we use in teaching / presenting during episode 88.  Now it is your turn.

What is your advice for presenters? 

 

I received a question from one of my doctoral students that has me embarking on a multi-part post. I will share more about her question in subsequent posts. For now, my first piece of advice to her is  about finding good partners.

All of us educators will find ourselves lacking an understanding of context in many aspects of our work, if we are honest with ourselves. I am grateful to those who have helped me understand more about teaching underserved populations.

I continue to seek out ways to better understand the learners who are in my classrooms, as well as those in the community who won’t ever set foot on a college campus.

Find Good Partners

One way I work to keep developing myself is through finding good partners. I consider every podcast guest a partner in helping us all become more effective at facilitating learning. My higher education friendships are almost all based on some sense of being in solidarity with others who are working to make students’ lives better.

A more formal partnership that I have recently established is with ACUE: The Association of College and University Educators.

You may have heard ACUE mentioned on previous episodes. They have been regularly connecting me with potential podcast guests for about a year now.

ACUE was founded in 2014 by leaders in higher education to promote quality instruction at colleges and universities nationwide.

ACUE’s comprehensive Course in Effective Teaching Practices prepares college educators to implement all of the essential practices shown to improve student outcomes. This facilitated, online Course is offered to cohorts of faculty at participating institutions.

Educators who satisfy Course requirements earn a Certificate in Effective College Instruction endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE).”

In the coming year, Teaching in Higher Ed and ACUE will collaborate on upcoming podcast episodes, as well as more in-depth content hosted on ACUE’s site with phenomenal educators.

As ACUE shares in their announcement about our partnership:

“As part of ACUE and Teaching in Higher Ed’s new collaboration, we’ll be blogging about popular conversations, hosting follow-on expert Q&As, and adding sights to the sounds with video excerpts from ACUE’s course library. ACUE members and podcast fans alike can look forward to these free resources as part of ACUE’s upcoming Expert Dive series.”

The first of these Deep Dives will profile Paul Blowers, as he shares how he leverages active learning approaches in STEM courses. I’m excited to speak with him in November and for all the other future conversations this partnership will enable.

Next Steps

While you may not establish formal partnerships, as the one I have described here. However, you will no doubt benefit from collaborations with your students’ family members, other teachers, and members of your community.

In future posts, I will share some resources about telling compelling stories, as I continue to answer this students’ questions.

I received the following question from a podcast listener this week:

Hi Bonni, Thank you so much for the podcast. I have found it so helpful!

I am a Logistics professional in the UK but I was asked to give some courses last week and this week in English in my subject at one of the French Grand Ecoles. I was able to put some dynamic lecturing, retrieval practice, bloom's taxonomy, small teaching, etc into practice it was great fun! – yes I have listened to lots of the podcasts! I have been teaching a small group of 15 and 2 lecture classes of 100 per class.

One thing if you have any advice… Next Monday is my last session teaching in the repeated lectures ( 2 hours each ) in the afternoon. I have realised I have a large amount material to cover in this last 2 hour session – ( I went a bit slow on the first two lectures and now have a lot to get in as well as to get the students ready for a test).

Any advice on what to do when time is short in the classroom and you have a lot to get through? I can't change the deadline!

Cheers again, Michael

---

I have found myself in this sort of situation more times than I care to remember. I get excited about a topic (often times because the students really got into it) and I lose track of time.

As you have already indicated, ideally we plan more margin into our class planning to allow for these sorts of fun detours. However, the reality is that sometimes, we just need to catch up.

Here are a few thoughts I have on how to approach your Monday session:

• Utilize online resources. Provide students with resources to review outside of class. I suspect you are already doing that, but if Monday can be more about highlighting essential parts of the content that students are often confused by, that's a lot easier than trying to review it all.
• Start with retrieval practice. Better yet, do some retrieval practice during the first part of Monday's session. That way, you are not required to guess where points of potential confusion might be… You will know where additional review is needed.
• Emphasize the exam review. If one task takes priority on Monday, make it the preparation for the exam. Understandably, students are less patient learning about the nice-to-know stuff, the closer that it gets to an exam. They will value the time the most, if it is designed to help them perform better on the test and doesn't contain information that might be viewed as superfluous. This topic deserves longer than what I am giving it here, but I am stressing this point specifically because you are behind in your schedule and there's an upcoming larger-stakes assignment coming next. This would not be my general advice for how to teach a class all of the time.
• Mix up the topics. Interleaving is shown to improve retention. Therefore, mix up the review to address content you have previously covered, as well as what you have not yet emphasized in person. I am assuming they have assigned reading, or other means for addressing the content outside of class time. This can provide them with a way to test themselves on how much they have understood and retained from their reading (or whatever else was assigned outside of class time).
• Share the why. When we get rushed, we can forget to explain to students why we are approaching their learning in a particular way. Remember to explain about interleaving, for example, as a strategy that helps them retain the information better for the exam. Remind them about the importance of creating those neural connections in their brains, which is why we invest class time in retrieval practice.
• Explain the test structure. You did not indicate whether or not this is their first exam. If it is, spend some time explaining the types of questions they can expect to see and why the exam is structured the way that it is… This is when I typically reemphasize the difference between memorization and being able apply the learning in a specific context.

I hope this is helpful to you, as you consider how to plan the time together on Monday.

I also suggest taking Teddy Svoronos' advice about journaling, as he shared about in Episode 168. Give some advice to your future self who might one day teach this course again about how to structure the time better in the various class sessions. This makes a big difference in not finding ourselves in the same situation next time.

Thank you for the kind words about the podcast, Michael, and for the encouragement.

-B

 

It's been back-to-school night season in our home in recent weeks. Our son is in kindergarten, while our daughter just started her first year of preschool. There were two separate events for their respective educational levels, each of which was inspiring to me, both as a parent, and as a teacher.

The whole experience makes me ponder what it would be like, if faculty were expected to offer a similar experience to our students' families.

• What would we tell family members about our pedagogy?
• How would we demonstrate the students' learning and talk about the possibilities that are emerging for the year ahead?

Our children's school has taken inspiration from an approach called Reggio Emilia, after a community in Italy by the same name. In Reggio Emilia, learners are valued as:

…strong, capable, and resilient, rich with wonder and knowledge. Every [learner] brings with them deep curiosity and potential and this innate curiosity drives their interest to understand their world and their place within it.” – An Everyday Story

Those who have adopted a Reggio Emilia approach are quick to point out that it isn't a method. The approach is adopted to address the needs of a given learning community. The children's interests are also strongly integrated into the curriculum, thus making every classroom look different.

In higher education, we often ask questions related to why our students aren't more interested in the subject we are teaching. Instead, if we were to adopt a Reggio Emilia approach, we would regularly challenge ourselves to learn more about our students' interests and how to incorporate them into our pedagogy.

In higher education, we often bristle at the idea of needing to document students' learning through formal assessment. In contrast, Reggio Emilia-inspired settings would have us continuously:

…displaying and documenting [learners'] thoughts and progression of thinking: making their thoughts visible in many different ways… all designed to show the [student's] learning process.” – An Everyday Story

One of the most well-known resources within the Reggio Emilia community is the poem: The Hundred Languages of Children, by founder Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini). I hope you will take a moment to listen to these children share it for us in the most beautiful and articulate of ways.

Here's to hoping we can find inspiration in the Reggio Emilia approach, in a higher education context…

May we continually challenge ourselves to better serve our students' needs and help provide environments where they can thrive.

---

In case you missed it, there have been quite a few conversations and resources shared in the comments section of two recent blog posts on Teaching in Higher Ed:

• Digital Reading
• Tools for Travel

Take another look and you may be surprised what you discover.

The call came a few days before the class was scheduled to start. The woman who had been assigned to teach the course needed to remain in Hong Kong longer than she had originally anticipated. They needed someone to take over their sales and sales management class with hardly any notice. I am who they called.

One of the things that had been drummed into my head when I was teaching computer application courses early in my career was that you never tell anyone this is your first time teaching a course. If people knew that, they would wonder why they had paid a couple hundred dollars to attend a class taught by someone who was only a few pages ahead of them in the manual.

The first night of the sales class, I was prepared to act as if I had been doing this for years. My first move was an obvious give away at my lack of experience. “Please take out your textbooks and take a look at page 11.”

The cat was out of the bag from the very beginning. The norm throughout my university was that hardly anyone brought their books to class on the first day. First, they would need to determine whether or not the professor was actually going to use the textbook in the course. Otherwise, it didn't make sense to spend the money.

While I didn't think it wise to admit that it was my first time teaching the course, an even worse offense would have been to lie about such a thing. They knew that I was new to teaching in a higher education context, but they were still prepared to put their trust in me to guide them during the semester. That was almost 15 years ago and I'm still in touch with a few of the students from that very first adventure in college teaching.

I had my share of mistakes in the course, but also was able to make an impact. There were techniques I could bring over from my corporate training background that were effective with this new group of learners, yet there were also those approaches best left behind.

Failure Gets a New Look

Last week, we learned of a study that looked at why a group of anthropologists had decided not to adopt particular teaching strategies, despite the evidence that they were likely to prove effective. The Fear of Looking Stupid turned out to be stronger than the hope for change.

John Warner reflected on the evolution of his teaching over the years and emphasized The Necessity of Looking Stupid. Instead of completely revamping everything about the way we have structured a course, he recommends adopting smaller changes and continually asking the students for feedback. “Let the point of the exercise be the attempt, not the outcome,” John urges.

I would be remiss if a discussion of small modifications in our teaching came up and I didn't once again recommend James Lang's Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning. If the fear of failure is holding you back from considering experimenting with something new, Jim guides you through what approaches are worth trying and how to get started.

I just finished reading The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, with interviews between the Dali Lama and Desmond Tutu. They both speak of fear as having a natural existence within their struggles for justice.

Manuela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Archbishop Tutu said something very similar: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act despite it.”

In order for us to overcome the fears that are holding us back from taking risks in our teaching, we first need to identify what is there. Name the feeling – and then dig deeper in to why it is present.

Worthwhile Failures

In an upcoming episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, I share reflections on what I learned from my most recent set of course evaluations. You will hear the pain in my voice, as I describe ways in which I let my students down.

I hope you will also hear the absolute joy. I don't believe we are able to find such rich joy in our teaching, without the sorrows that come from not realizing our aspirations.

Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say,” Archbishop Tutu added, “save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”

Encouragement

The antidote for fear or sorrow is joy. I burst with gratitude as I consider those who “teach out loud,” stressing The Importance of Being Bad at Something.

While a quest for perfection in teaching will never be attained, we celebrate the milestones we hit along the way toward more spectacular successes and failures.

And so I would say to everyone: You are made for perfection, but you are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making.” – Archbishop Tutu

There's been a lot I've had to unlearn, since transitioning from the corporate world to academic environments.

I worked in the franchising industry for the first decade of my professional career. It was a computer training company and we had locations in 40 countries around the world. As I took on various roles, I became increasingly responsible for researching and documenting the successes and failures that various franchise locations experienced, in an effort to propagate the learning.

McDonald's has documented for their franchisees the precise amount of time to cook the french fries. We ran a far more complex business and inputs hardly ever equaled predictable outputs. However, our eccentric founder relentlessly attempted to quantify every aspect of the company that could possibly be documented, and tried to pass the lessons on with little room for variation.

When I transitioned into an entirely new context, it quickly became apparent that certain phrases that were captivating in the franchising business were considered revolting in higher education.

Best Practices

The phrase that has been most regularly disparaged in academic circles is “best practices.” Sean Michael Morris writes:

The worst best practice is to adhere to, or go searching for, best practices.”

Sean goes on to document what he has found to be most effective in his teaching, but is careful to caution us about thinking that his lessons will work for us in the same ways. He continues to offer wonderful guidance for our work, such as: being ourselves, creating trust, grading less / differently, and leaving room for silence.

Another recent caution against best practices came from John Warner, on Inside Higher Ed. He reflects on his discovery that his quizzes were not accomplishing his goal of getting students to do the reading prior to class. However, he also recognizes that in other instances, aspects of what he had tried might have worked. He concludes with:

This is why I have little faith in so-called universal “best practices.” There is never a one-size-fits-all technique or assessment. What works well in one context might not in another. Asking students about their experiences with reading quizzes reinforced that for me, teaching must be rooted in a collaborative process.

While there may not be best practices, I have come to believe there is a “best process,” and that process involves always being open to questioning what I’m doing.”

Inspiration

Instead of looking for best practices, I now seek seeds of inspiration. The majority of the ideas that I hear about when conducting interviews for the podcast are far too overwhelming to consider feasible at my institution. However, I try to break them down into their smallest components and see if I can't experiment with some aspect of the source of inspiration in my own teaching.

• I can't ever imagine being as incredible at making video and audio content as Mike Wesch, but I can certainly observe his creative outputs carefully and decide to draw inspiration from just one way in which he crafts stories.
• Gardner Campbell's eloquence is far out of my reach, but I can try administering an APGAR for class meetings and see what can be learned from the experience.
• No one would recommend I try to emulate Ainissa Ramirez's use of blow torches to illustrate key points, but I can think as failures more as data collection to help them “lose their sting.”
• Using extensive role playing games, like Mark Carnes' Reacting to the Past may be out of reach for the time being, but I can experiment with a making a game using Twine, like Keegan Long-Wheeler recommended.
• While my institution may never pull off a public sphere event as magnificent as Chico's Great Debate, as shared about by Thia Wolf, I can still experiment with poster sessions and look for opportunities to collaborate with others in different disciplines in my teaching.

I'll admit that my franchising experience leads me to wish we could read a book, or take a workshop – reduce it all to a set of best practices, and suddenly the grueling work of developing as a teacher would be over. However, when I look for inspiration from phenomenal educators, they continually show me that the work of becoming a teacher is never over.

John Warner ended his piece on best practices as follows:

As soon as I think I have it all figured out, it will be time for me to stop.”

I tried doing poster sessions for the first time a year ago. Doug McKee had inspired me, though he was skeptical that my analog approach would be successful.

This semester, I decided to experiment more with poster sessions in my consumer behavior classes, with a few key differences:

• Larger/outdoor venue: I was teaching two sections of the course and needed to find a venue to fit 50+ students, along with business professionals, students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We settled on an outdoor courtyard, with accommodated us well.
• External audience: Inspired by public sphere pedagogy, I wanted to invite business professionals, professors, and alumni to attend.
• Live event streaming: We experimented with Facebook Live, in an attempt to capture an even larger, external audience.
• Give-aways and food: We decided to involve our guests and invited them to vote for their favorite posters with tickets. I had contemplated using some kind of technology (a colleague had used Mentimeter in the past to vote on student films), but in the end, we went low-tech and did a raffle. I like that everyone had a chance to win and the way the tickets re-engaged the guests with the people at the various booths, as they went back to award their favorite posters, by handing them tickets.
• Professional photography: We were fortunate to have Taylor Gonzalez from TayJoy Photography in the class, so we could have all these wonderful photographs from the event.

I am thankful to have had a wonderful teaching assistant this semester, Jamie Jacob, who was instrumental in getting business professionals to attend and in locating some prizes for the raffle.

Emma McKay was our event planner and kept us on track with all the tasks that needed doing to make the event a success.

Emma's LinkedIn profile says that she's an aspiring event planner, but I think it is more than safe to change that wording to present tense at this point. Read Emma's reflections on the poster sessions event on LinkedIn.

One of the students in the course who was scheduled to be a Facebook Live co-host came down with something awful right at the last minute. While it was disappointing to not have Adam Tyler there at the event, it is fun to get to share his reflections on the event with you now.

Consumer Behavior Poster Sessions, by Adam Tyler

The Consumer Behavior Class at Vanguard University, taught by the o-so-talented Dr. Bonni Stachowiak, put on an incredible poster session event Wednesday, April 19th. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this event due to a horrid stomach flu that had me bed ridden for four days.

However, thanks to the incredible innovation of Facebook live, I was able to go back and watch all of the posters and the interviews that went along with them. Cathryn Lynch did an incredible job recording and interviewing, and now I will talk about some of the posters that stood out to me the most.

Consumers at Disneyland

The Disneyland poster was the first one of the night. It was very organized neat, colorful, and the Disneyland sign across the top represented exactly what the sign looks like at the Park. The Disneyland poster caught my attention just like they try to to do to you in the park with the sights, smells and sounds. Cathryn asked the question of how would a consumer misbehave at Disney, and the answer was that a lot of pass-holders let their friends borrow their pass and they dress to look just like them.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

The entire baseball poster, representing the Los Angeles Dodgers, was made to look like a large baseball field. It was neat, organized, and definitely sporty. Misbehavior at a baseball game could include fans being rowdy, drunk, and loud. For promotions at baseball games, teams give out give-aways such as selfie sticks, towels, etc to attract fans. Baseball does a great job of advertising as well.

M&M Consumption

The M&M poster consisted of a large blowup of the main M&M characters as the background. The poster also included the stat that 100 million are eaten every day! They use the significance norm to describe the importance of M&M’s to consumers.

NCAA March Madness

This poster was done to simplicity as it was just black and blue, but had a lot of great information on it as well as a visual of a mini basketball hoop. The influences at a NCAA basketball game includes situational factors and hereditary influences.

Changes in Music Consumption

The music poster was set up very organized, colorful, and attractive. Some main points included how popular music streaming has become with Apple music, Amazon music, Pandora, etc. A misbehavior of music would be illegally downloading music or sharing passwords and services.

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl Poster was very green, big and eye catching. Some main points of this poster included how everything during the Super Bowl is amped up to a whole new levels including the game, advertisements and food. Marketing is so important to consumers and they fall completely in the trap during the Super Bowl. A misbehavior of Super Bowl could be the inappropriate commercials or ones that do not support fair trade.

Consuming Movies

The movie poster looked as if someone was actually going to the movies. It was dark and black with few lighting around the outside. People go to the movies for hedonic value. Friends, family and peers also have influence on what movies people see. A situational influence could be the smell of popcorn in the theatre or the advertisements of coke.

Social Media Poster

The social media poster had a black background with colorful writings and designs. Social Media has so much power over everything, especially marketing. Instagram uses its platform for celebrity marketing, and Facebook uses all kinds of marketing to pull the consumer right in. Social Media knows how to market to your area, what you like, and what you might buy. It’s a great business!

American Spending on Dogs

This poster was bright and white, and consisted of pictures of dogs and bones throughout the poster. Americans spend the most money on their dog of anyone. Americans are in the need for companionship, and there is no better answer than a dog. They are cute, cuddly, and Americans want to make their pet as happy as possible, which means spending money. Dog supplies are not cheap either!

Consumer Health Trends

The consumer health board was light, trendy and eye catching and almost looked as if I was dieting by staring at the poster. Some trends today include vegan, vegetarian, non-gmo, gluten free, paleo diet and more. A lot of eating trends that people develop are from celebrities, and people abuse this trend by developing eating disorders and anorexia.

Tailgating Poster

The tailgating crew had on music, food, and a good time for anyone to stop by. The vast majority of Americans who go to football games tailgate. In fact, some only go to the games to experience tailgating. Tailgating includes buying food, grilling food, having drinks, and having games. Tailgating is very influential among the sports community.

Social Entrepreneurship Resonates with Consumers

This poster was very neat, clean and white! It consisted of a bunch of facts, charts, and socio-responsible companies. Some included 31 bits, Krochet Kids, Warby Parker, Toms, and more! Toms and Warby Parker are a glasses and shoe company and both donate pairs to charity for example. Consumers are always looking to give or in this case invest in products with a purpose.

Conclusion

The poster session event looked like such a big hit to the Vanguard Community. There was a good amount of people not even in the class who attended this event. Everyone was having fun enjoying each others posters and enjoying some good consumer information.

Once again, it was such a bummer that I could not attend this incredible event put on by Dr. Stachowiak, but thank you technology for allowing me to experience so many wonderful posters in the comfort of my bed.

My colleague and I presented at the Lilly Conference (Anaheim, California) this past week. Our talk was on Rethinking Assessment for Agency and Relevance.

We also got to attend others' sessions and have the experience of learning from such tremendous educators from across the country. Unfortunately, California did not deliver much, in terms of the weather…

But, the Lilly Conference certainly delivered.

Five Forms of Becoming a Teacher

Stephen Brookfield gave a talk at the end of the second day of the conference, which he entitled Five Forms of Becoming a Teacher. You can download his text-heavy PowerPoint slides from the workshop materials of his website (under PowerPoint Presentations).

I say that they're text-heavy in the sense that you can probably capture at least some portion of his talk by reading the slides. He framed everything around the principle that no matter how long any of us has been doing this teaching thing, we are still in the process of becoming…

It's hard to wrap my mind around the idea that someone who has written as many books as he has about teaching and who is the definition of expert educator, would still consider himself still becoming…

It was edifying to hear him express this in such a deep, profound way. I've been at this for 13 years and still feel like one who is becoming in each of the areas he discussed.

The five domains that Steve identifies as his areas of becoming are: pedagogically, ontologically, politically, emotionally, and racially.

Racially Becoming

The six bullets that Steve included on the slide related to becoming racially are heavy. I've had a chance to speak with him twice for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, plus some conversations before and after those interviews. In particular, we've talked about how we carry our whiteness into diverse classrooms.

Moving beyond the ‘good white person' who is unproblematically an ‘ally' – Stephen Brookfield

I've felt this temptation many times in my teaching. When a student has said something racist in one of my classes, I've observed myself try to hurry the conversation along and try to protect the students of color from what just happened.

Like they don't experience things like that all the time. Like they couldn't speak their own truth, without me having to protect them from someone else's supremacy.

I'm becoming a teacher who thinks less like a ‘good white person' who protects and more like one who has the courage to trust that heated conversations have the potential to ignite changes in perspectives.

Willingness to sit with anger – Stephen Brookfield

Thankfully, I've become far more comfortable sitting with others' anger. However, that seems to sometimes only extend to solo conversations. It is difficult for me to facilitate a group of others who are not equipped to receive others' anger.

So often, conversations about privilege translate into the privileged thinking that because they didn't set out to take others down, that somehow it means that they never could.

I'm becoming a teacher who facilitates hard conversations and helps students be prepared to sit with each others' anger.

Normalizing racism to move past shame and guilt – Stephen Brookfield

I wondered how others in the room during Steve's presentation (especially those who have experienced racism) might feel about the wording of this bullet (here I go, trying to protect others, again…).

What I understood Steve to be referring to was the need to be able to name racism when it occurs and to be able to then do something more powerful with that named action than just leave it at shame and guilt.

If we can name the racist behavior, then we can move toward changing the actions in the future. I'm still wresting with this idea and am not sure where I land. I both want to normalize it and not normalize it, all in the same moment.

I watched as our country normalized the telling of a story about sexual assault from a person who would eventually become the president of the United States. I see too many ‘all lives matter' memes, without any sort of cultural sanctions taking place.

I'm becoming a teacher who discerns how to name racism, without leaving others solely with shame and guilt. I'm becoming a teacher who normalizes the naming of, at the very least, racial microaggressions, to help change minds and actions in the future.

Becoming

I plan on doing some more writing about Steve's other areas of becoming that he spoke about at The Lilly Conference this past weekend. In the meantime, if any of what I've written resonates and you want to explore the topic of racially becoming a bit more, here are some resources.

Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episodes

• #142: The Danger of Silence with Clint Smith
• #123: Presumed Incompetent with Yolanda Niemann
• #079: Stereotype Threat with Robin Paige
• #102: Proactive Inclusivity with Carl Moore
• #124: Intercultural Learning with Maha Bali
• #119: Bridging the Culture Gap with Annemarie Perez
• #066: Making Challenging Subjects Fun with Ainissa Ramirez (first ten minutes or so of the episode is about those early influences that led her – as an African American girl – to first become interested in the field of science)

It's hard to write about becoming…. to admit that I'm nowhere done developing into the kind of teacher I yearn to be… Won't you join me in this hard conversation? In what ways are you becoming?

If you teach in higher ed, you have probably experienced it.

Despite your best efforts, your entire class seems to start experiencing a huge decline in motivation. What started out well, as you watched your students' curiosities be heightened, now feels like an attempt to lift something well beyond your capacity.

You're experiencing “the dip,” and it is a common occurrence.

You may very well not have done anything wrong, to cause this to happen. However, there are plenty of strategies you can use to bring the motivation back in a course.

1. Kevin Gannon provides resources about student motivation and learning
2. Doug McKee describes ways to engage a larger class
3. The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation provides this handout with some active learning strategies to try
4. Maha Bali reminds us that we can embrace a pedagogy of imperfection in our teaching
5. Heather Yamada-Hosley prescribes some self-care through a yoga routine for people who work on their feet (the more centered we are, the more we have to offer our students)
6. Sarah Rose Cavanagh asserts that “We don't need to coddle. But we do need to care.“
7. James Lang gives us small changes we can make in our teaching during the last five minutes of class, or the first five minutes of class

I recommend putting together a playlist of energizing music to start each class with, not taking yourself (or your class) too seriously, and just being thankful that things are probably going better for you than they are for this guy.

How do you try to address issues of low motivation, midway through your semester/term? 

I just finished listening to a Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode with Mike Caulfield on digital literacy that will air on Thursday, February 2.

Not to give too much away, but at the end of the conversation, we chat about the tooth fairy, and other childhood myths. I joke about how I have tended to stay away from controversial topics on the podcast, but that I couldn't resist sharing that my husband and I don't plan on telling our children that there is such a thing as the tooth fairy.

Since I have started down the path of breaking out of my “safe” topics pattern here on Teaching on Higher Ed, I thought I would share two myths about learning that are almost always cause for concern by people who have subscribed to them throughout their career as educators.

We all have one primary learning style that needs to be accommodated for in our learning

I bought into this myth for at least the first ten years of my corporate training career. Now, I'm confident that believing in this myth actually makes our teaching worse.

• All You Need to Know About the ‘Learning Styles’ Myth, in Two Minutes
• Letting Go of Learning Styles
• Stop propagating the learning styles myth
• One Reason the ‘Learning Styles’ Myth Persists
• The Myth of Learning Styles

One take-away from the research that debunks this myth is to have multiple approaches for helping learners comprehend what you're trying to teach, instead of gearing the students' experiences toward their preferred learning experience. Consider ways of making your teaching visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, using more than one approach at a time.

I once posted about the learning styles myth on my personal Facebook page, having no idea the topic is as controversial as it seems to be… Please refrain from thinking that showing this myth for what it is (unsubstantiated) does not mean that people don't have learning disabilities. That's an entirely different domain. Yes, dyslexia exists, for example… and there are ways in which we, as educators, should be accommodating for that disability.

If we have learners “practice by doing,” they will retain 75% of what they're “taught”

This learning pyramid has also been propagated across multiple educational contexts. It is meant to encourage us to move up as high as we can on the pyramid, lest we leave people only remembering 5% of what we said. This is not to say that there isn't ample research to illustrate the effectiveness of active learning pedagogical approaches, but doesn't the “tidiness” of these numbers make you a bit suspicious?

• Tales of the Undead…Learning Theories: The Learning Pyramid
• Why the ‘learning pyramid’ is wrong
• The diffusion of the learning pyramid myths in academia: an exploratory study
• Five common but inexcusable learning myths about how we learn

Active learning can help motivate students and help them retain more information. However, the process of learning (and teaching) is far more complex than a diagram like this could ever convey.

Your Turn

What teaching and learning myths have you observed that have persisted for too long now?

“I'll be right back,” our two year-old said, in the middle of our Finding Dory movie night. I asked her where she was going.

“I'm going to get my blanket to put down on the couch, Mommy,” she replied. I watched her go, thankful for the seasons in which our kids have been able to gain more agency in their lives. As their language and motor skills develop, they're able to seek their own paths more.

She carefully placed the blanket down on the couch, climbed up and sat down, with the most satisfactory expression on her face.

“It's better for my butt, Mommy,” she said with delight.

I'm thankful for tonight's distraction of Finding Dory and “better butts,” but I'm feeling less-than-delightful this evening. My heart is broken for so many in our country who believe their own agency will now be diminished, under a new president.

Because that wasn't enough to process, I also have a loved one who is starting to show signs of cognitive decline. This has been a week of appointments to attempt to capture whatever we can in designing a long-term plan for care.

I keep attempting to channel my inner Kerry Moore during this season. I occasionally have moments of success at it, but mostly I keep trying to control the universe of this situation far more than will ever be feasible.

While some have criticized movies like Inside Out for being unrealistic, I'm taking all kinds of comfort that Dori is able to navigate her world so well. I cling to the hope that it might be the case for my loved one, for as long as is possible.

I had been asked to participate in a post-election dialog by a student-led group a few weeks prior to the election. My first inclination had been to politely decline the invitation. However, I decided that this was no time to avoid risk and to remain comfortably distant.

My acceptance came when I thought I knew who our president would be… Tuesday's election results were a complete surprise to me and I know I wasn't alone in that.

The night of the panel, I was emotionally raw and had no idea how I had come across. The room was filled with teary-eyed students, along with others whose expressions I could not read. I knew at least one student in attendance, who I hold dear, had voted for the president elect (or at least had said she would during our most recent conversation about the topic, prior to the election).

It was painfully difficult to try to balance my desire to express the reasons for the raw emotions so many are feeling, while trying not to demonize those who had voted for the president elect. Afterward, I channeled my inner Shelia Heen (co-author of Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well) and privately sought input on how I had come across.

“What's the one thing I did during the conversation that held me back from being as influential as I wanted to be?” I asked of two of my students who stayed after the panel.

Both students were very gracious about the impact I did make, but had a suggestion for how I could have been better. I had gotten choked up while talking about how I didn't want to explain to my kids what certain words meant, when the leader of our country was speaking on television. However, one of the students said this didn't really resonate with her, not having kids.

They indicated that I could have been even more effective if I had brought up issues closer to their concerns, as college students. While I had addressed the concerns over those who could potentially lose their healthcare, with a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, most of our students are on their parents' health plans and are also incredibly healthy. I completely agreed with their critique and know that I need to become more well-versed on college affordability and accessibility.

One expert I know I will benefit from in this quest is Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of the book Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. Angela Jenks has shared on the podcast about her perspective-taking as it relates to knowing the price of our assigned textbooks. It is easy for us to lose touch with what it is like to attend college from a financial perspective, for our students.

I need to get better. I need to be better. My students deserve better than my current level of knowledge on an issue that has such a clear impact on their lives. Especially the most vulnerable of them…

I'm incredibly grateful that I'm not alone in wanting to do this work. Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel challenged us this week:

Champion each other. The fight we need will be started with hugs not assault rifles. Don’t be afraid to use the word “love” in your pedagogy.”

May we all have loving our students at the centerpiece of our teaching. Thank you for reading this post. It has been the hardest one to write that I can remember.

There's a lot of talk at my institution about course evaluations right now, since we are moving ours online and also changing the questions that students are asked.

My conversation about course evaluations with Betsy Barre is still rattling around in my head. She has written a fabulous post about whether or not course evaluations really deserve an “F”, which is totally worth a read. This course evaluation literature review compiled by Betsy is also a terrific resource.

Try not to get too lost in this interactive tool for looking at the gendered language that exists on RateMyProfessor.com. Try not to get too depressed by these warnings about response rates going down, once you move evaluations online, not to mention these cautionary tales about these surveys not actually measuring teaching effectiveness.

I'm thankful that there are pioneers out there, trying to do something that gets closer to evaluating what we truly want to assess. Those who “teach out loud” like Ken Bauer and Doug Kee also inspire me, since if we reflect on and share our teaching successes and failures, we seem that much more likely to continue to get better over time.

Mid-semester Feedback

Next week, we cross over the half-way mark in our semester. I spent about five minutes during class on Monday gathering feedback from students, about ten minutes compiling the input into a Word document, and another five minutes in class today sharing the document with them.

Getting Input

I asked my class to take out a sheet of paper and divide it into three columns. At the top of the columns, I asked them to write: start – stop – keep.

Then, I asked them to divide the page into three rows: one for self, one for the class, and one related to the professor.

Consolidating the Feedback

In Microsoft Word, I created the same row/column structure I had asked the students to create on their pages and then typed in their feedback. If they had similar feedback, I combined them and indicated in parenthesis how many other students had the same feedback.

I highlighted in yellow those comments that a large percentage of them had in common. I also highlighted in blue, those things that were stated by one or two people who may be missing key aspects of the class (e.g. the two people who wished there were some sample essay questions they could have, in advance of the exam, when in fact I give them sample essay questions an average of twice a week). I wanted to be sure to take the opportunity to share even more about how the class structure is built to help them do well on assignments and exams.

Sharing with the Class

If we're going to spend class time asking for feedback, it is important to let the class know what you took away from the input and any changes you plan on making.

In my class, I shared that for the self-reflection, students seem to most want to start studying early/more, stop procrastinating, and keep coming to class consistently. The class seemed to want to be building more of a community together and there were patterns about bringing some type of food to class (we meet at noon), and a few random ideas about outside class events they may decide to hold. Finally, students expressed a desire for me to start holding more review sessions outside of class and to keep reviewing through retrieval practice-oriented games and other in-class exercises.

Getting the Most Out of Mid-Semester Feedback

I will admit to being sometimes reluctant to do mid-semester feedback. If you have tried it before, you may have even inadvertently conditioned yourself out of doing it more often, since it doesn't always bring out the most positive or helpful of feedback.

However, my approach is to keep the time invested to a minimum, but still be sure to obtain valuable feedback about the aspects of my class that I may not be able to see. Also, the method I described above helps my students grow their metacognition skills, since they're also reflecting on what they want to start, stop, and keep doing.

Here are a few other ways to get the most value out of mid-semester feedback:

• Avoid feeling like you have to react or even respond to every suggested change. Focus, instead, on patterns that emerge in the feedback.
• Be sure to circle back with the students about what you observed through the feedback and any changes you plan on making as a result. Sometimes, faculty do the start, stop, keep in class as a group, which can work, but could potentially leave you wondering how the less vocal people are experiencing your class.
• Thank the students for their feedback and let them know how important it is to you always continuing to make your own teaching grow and develop, just like you'll hope they commit to being lifelong learners in their own lives.

Have you completed any mid-semester feedback yet? If so, what have you discovered?

 

I'm one of those people who almost always has a soundtrack playing in my head. Sharing music with my students is something I've always enjoyed.

I've now found there to be benefits that I never expected through this process.

Reach Out to Struggling Students

After I set up my equipment for a class, I tend to go sit somewhere in the classroom toward the back. I often find this to be a good way to connect very casually with a student who hasn't been completing assignments, or who did poorly on a recent test.

It doesn't have to be a big formal thing. We can just both enjoy the song. Most often, the student will bring up their difficulties with me, before I even address the topic.

Change the Mood

As some of you might remember, I sometimes teach three sections of the same class in a semester. I still marvel at how different classes can take on such different personalities.

I find it helpful to use music to bring more energy into a room. Or, there are those times when we really all need to settle down and center ourselves a bit, and the right tune will help us to do that.

Expand Musical Repertoire

Before streaming music services existed, students used to get a kick out of how large and how diverse my song collection was. They liked to play deejay before class and would help me rediscover artists I had forgotten about.

Today, it's less about pulling songs from my music and more about being introduced to artists who are new to me. It always seems like a turning point in a class when a student recommends new music to me.

My Playlist

Here are a few songs that you’ll hear, if you stop by my classroom this semester:

• Build Me Up Buttercup
• I Wish
• Get On the Boat
• In the Light
• I Love Me
• Try Everything
• Wade in the Water
• I Feel Good
• Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing
• Sit Tight
• Farther Up the Road

Your Turn

What are you listening to in your classroom this semester?

I'm one of those people who almost always has a soundtrack playing in my head. Sharing music with my students is something I've always enjoyed.

I've now found there to be benefits that I never expected through this process.

Reach Out to Struggling Students

After I set up my equipment for a class, I tend to go sit somewhere in the classroom toward the back. I often find this to be a good way to connect very casually with a student who hasn't been completing assignments, or who did poorly on a recent test.

It doesn't have to be a big formal thing. We can just both enjoy the song. Most often, the student will bring up their difficulties with me, before I even address the topic.

Change the Mood

As some of you might remember, I sometimes teach three sections of the same class in a semester. I still marvel at how different classes can take on such different personalities.

I find it helpful to use music to bring more energy into a room. Or, there are those times when we really all need to settle down and center ourselves a bit, and the right tune will help us to do that.

Expand Musical Repertoire

Before streaming music services existed, students used to get a kick out of how large and how diverse my song collection was. They liked to play deejay before class and would help me rediscover artists I had forgotten about.

Today, it's less about pulling songs from my music and more about being introduced to artists who are new to me. It always seems like a turning point in a class when a student recommends new music to me.

My Playlist

Here are a few songs that you’ll hear, if you stop by my classroom this semester:

• Build Me Up Buttercup
• I Wish
• Get On the Boat
• In the Light
• I Love Me
• Try Everything
• Wade in the Water
• I Feel Good
• Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing
• Sit Tight
• Farther Up the Road

Your Turn

What are you listening to in your classroom this semester?

There are some ways in which predictability is important in our teaching.

That we consistently treat our students with respect and kindness, that we honor our commitments to others and ourselves, and that we keep high expectations while continually encouraging learners toward excellence…

However, some of our patterns translate into monotony for our students. They know what’s coming next and it often doesn’t involve them doing anything other than paying “civil attention.”

Here are five ways to change it up in your teaching, to draw students back in and to engage them more in the process of learning.

Make them laugh

This feat is easier said than done. It certainly doesn’t come naturally to me and can be a challenge.

I use my personal knowledge management system to keep track of items that are humorous that are related to my various courses. I’ve got a tag for each of my classes that I apply (e.g. BUSN114, MRKT369, etc.), as well as a tag for humor.

Show a short video clip

I also tag videos in my PKM system, so that I can quickly find a video to break up the patterns I may have going in a particular class session.

The best length for in-class videos tends to be less than five minutes, but there are certainly exceptions, like with a good TED talk, or with a wonderful speaker, like Seth Godin.

Have them reflect on their learning

Todd Zakrajsek has shared on the podcast, before, about the importance of metacognition. This doesn’t have to be as complex as what the word seems to warrant.

James Lang suggests wrapping up class a few minutes early and having students write down the answers to two questions:

• What was the most important thing you learned today?
• What question still remains in your mind?

It doesn't take a lot of time to get students reflecting on their learning, but it certainly is powerful.

Use the power of in-class retrieval practice

When Robert Bjork was on the podcast, he stated that, “Using our memories shapes our memory.” Retrieval practice is a wonderful way of helping our students focus more on getting information out of their heads, while still being in an environment where additional coaching is available.

I use PollEverywhere often for retrieval practice (in-class, anonymous quizzing). However, I also even change up the method by which I do retrieval practice, so even that doesn’t become monotonous. Buying a custom deck of Ellen's Head's Up game is a great way to review key terms in a class. That's the game I'm playing with students in the picture at the top of this post.

Change up the environment

Another illustration from Robert Bjork, when he was a guest on the podcast, had to do with context. When we study, or otherwise engage in learning, in different environments, our retention increases.

Consider holding class outside, or in a different room than normal on your campus. I sometimes have students get up and walk around the room, giving input using sticky notes or by writing on flip charts. I even occasionally have them walk around the building we are meeting in a couple of times, with a partner, quizzing them on some material we just talked about.

Your turn

What do you do to keep from being too predictable in your teaching?