This time of year is always both exciting and terrifying for me. Maybe the fear isn’t quite as bad as terror, but I definitely experience some anxiety thinking about the start of a new academic year.

Overall, these nerves mostly seem normal and perhaps even healthy in some ways. I care about our students and want them to have a transformative experience in my classes. As I am now spending more of my time in a faculty development capacity at my institution, I consider it a sacred responsibility to also be working to help us all collectively be becoming more effective in our teaching.

Lawrence M. Lesser posted a beautifully written piece for Faculty Focus this week:

Opening Intentions for the First Day of Class

Lesser has clearly done ample reflection on the role we play as teachers in serving our students well. He was motivated by reading a poem in a Jewish prayer book that described the ways in which we might enter a place of worship. It stressed the intentions that those who gathered might emphasize. Lesser decided to write his own intentions for what he hoped those who entered his classroom experience.

He writes:

May the door of this classroom be wide enough

to receive all who seek understanding.

May the door of this classroom be narrow enough

to keep out fear or closed-mindedness.

May its threshold be no stumbling block

to those whose knowledge—or language—is shaky.

May the window of this classroom inspire us

to connect our learning to the world beyond these walls.

And may this classroom be, for all who enter,

a doorway to growth and purpose. Welcome!

That’s only a portion of his poem. I encourage you to read the entire thing. Thank you, Lawrence, for inspiring us for the new beginnings that are upon us. May this spirit of welcome be present for all of us, as we embark on our respective learning journeys.

A favorite recent musical discovery of mine comes from Brandi Carlile, as she invites a young musician (Benicio Bryant) to join her to sing her song, The Joke, on Late Night with Seth Myers. It’s a beautifully written and performed song, with Carlile showing her joy in mentoring this young talent who is accompanying her. It also reminds me of the important work we must do to welcome everyone into our classes, particularly those who may not feel like they belong there.

The lyrics are powerful, as Carlile shares two stories of individuals who are feeling marginalized and discouraged. The website Genius offers further insight into her intentions in writing the song. Carlile has shared that she wrote the first part of the song for boys feeling marginalized and forced into these kinds of awkward shapes of masculinity that they do or don’t belong in.” She also extends the invitation for healing to girls who have had the dirt kicked in their faces and been called weak.

The chorus powerfully asserts:

“Let ‘em laugh while they can

Let ‘em spin, let ‘em scatter in the wind

I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends

And the joke’s on them”

Any nerves I may have about these precious first impressions within my learning environments could very well pale in comparison to how the people I meet there might be feeling. The faculty I work with may be wrestling with how to respond to last semester’s devastating course evaluations and not feeling like they are able to live up to their teaching ideals. The students I encounter may be struggling to balance all the priorities they already feel pulling on them as they enter our classroom.

May we transform any sense of fear we have into empathy for those we are so fortunate to teach this year. As we encounter those who are embattled, marginalized, and feeling like their joy has been stolen, may we listen to their stories without judgment or unrequested prescriptions.

We also must guard our hearts and minds against the toxicity that can come from engaging too frequently with those who have an antagonistic attitude toward their students. Christopher Emdin reminds all of us in his book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood:

“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.”

Let’s do this, friends.

With humility, grace, patience, love, hope, and a strong sense of purpose. Let us challenge our students and encourage them along the way. I look forward to being in community with you throughout it all.

Our kids have started their summer camp routine. They won’t wind up going every week, but there will be times when I can tackle those things that are hard to keep up with during the academic year.

They did such a wonderful job of making the transition that I wanted to reward them. I shared a number of possibilities of what we might do to celebrate. They picked the place I least wanted to go – but such are the chances we take when we let them decide.

That’s how I found myself at Chuck E Cheese earlier this week.

How I found myself bawling at Chuck E Cheese involves Sean Michael Morris’ keynotes at the University of Warwick:

Imagination as a Precision Tool for Change

Sean writes about agency in such a powerful way. I know that my understanding of it is childlike and immature. He writes about how some of us might think we are giving our kids agency when we get them a car for their 18th birthday. He shares:

“The car is a symbol of freedom without being freedom. In offering that car, a parent also offers with it an indoctrination into the world of car insurance and car payments, into the world of traffic violations. Cars are not themselves free from policing, and therefore neither will the teenager driving one be.”

I wonder how many times in my feeble attempts to give my students agency in my teaching, I have actually given them a car. I’m also pretty sure that give is the wrong verb to use when talking about agency. Is it something I can give to someone else?

When I teach doctoral students, they can resist taking risks and experimenting far more than my undergraduate students ever do. I make clumsy attempts at fostering an environment that might facilitate greater agency, while they ask for more specifics on assignments and where they might find the rubrics. Sometimes I get hopeful when learning from people like Sean, while other times the existing system and culture feels too massive for me to ever hope to have any impact on (particularly as an adjunct, which I am in the case of teaching doctoral students).

As I sat in Chuck E Cheese, I was being hammered by cognitive dissonance. I subscribe so wholeheartedly to what Sean was advocating in his talk, yet I felt so incapable of breaking free of the oppressive systems my work is often embedded within. He talked about how we get tempted to perform “what Freire might call an adaptation, a shift in behavior designed not to alter the status quo, but to maintain it, even within a slightly altered framework.” I suspect I regularly do this, sometimes being aware of my failed attempts, while other times thinking I “succeeded.”

I managed to get myself together after a rather unexpected event took place within the walls of Chuck E Cheese. If you have been there, you know that every hour or so, this giant mouse (well, it is a person in a mouse costume, but you’re probably with me still) comes out and parades around the restaurant. All the kids follow the character as if he were the pied piper until they all get to the front of the restaurant.

This parade was like none other I have ever seen at Chuck E Cheese. About 20% of the kids were under five years old and the other 80% appeared to be at least high school age. A basketball team was celebrating one of their players’ birthdays and they seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the younger kids were.

I was expecting them to show that they were attempting to be ironic. Instead, their smiles seemed genuine and this sense of pure joy continued as they began to dance. The mouse led everyone in the movements and every person joined in without reluctance. The young men modified the moves only somewhat to better let them express their more advanced dance abilities. I even found myself grooving a bit, never having recognized that the Chuck E Cheese theme song was so danceable.

When I sat down, my tears were completely dry and I was back to celebrating with the kids as they brought over fists full of tickets and a raw sense of delight. When they ran off to play other games, I would go back to Twitter, this time with a renewed hope that no, I can’t do this, but we just might be able to do it together.

When we got home, I had our son watch one of the Playing for Change songs: Stand by Me. If you’re not familiar with them, they create songs using musicians from all over the world. They combine the audio tracks that were recorded with gifted artists from Indonesia, France, Japan, Brazil, Morocco, India, England, the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Australia, and beyond.

The first musician starts out reminding us:

“No matter who you are. No matter where you go in your life. At some point, you’re going to need somebody to stand by you…”

Stand by Me | Playing for Change | Song Around the World

I’m thankful for people like Sean Michael Morris for pushing us to be better at what we do. He does that on a collective basis through his writing, his talks, his workshops and his collaborations. However, he also has done this for me on a personal basis for agreeing to be on the podcast twice and for engaging on Twitter regularly.

At some point, we are going to need someone to stand by us. And despite the evils of Twitter (and there are plenty) – there are also phenomenal opportunities to connect with others in solidarity.

Just some of the people who I feel standing by those of us who teach in higher ed include:

• Sean Michael Morris (website; Twitter) – critical instructional design
• Maha Bali (website; Twitter) – intercultural learning
• Clint Smith III (website; Twitter) – spoken word poet, contributor to the Pod Save the People podcast, Harvard PhD student
• Jesse Stommel (website; Twitter) – co-founder of Digital Pedagogy lab and Hybrid Pedagogy
• Robin DeRosa (website; Twitter) – open education, interdisciplinary eduction
• Chris G. (website; Twitter) – Digital redlining and privacy
• Pooja Agarwal (website; Twitter) – Visit Pooja’s Retrieval Practice website, if you don’t already have it bookmarked
• Laura Pasquini (website; Twitter) – Digital pedagogy, eclectic higher ed interests and experience
• Isabeau Iqbal (website; Twitter) – Coaching, faculty development
• James Lang (website; Twitter) – writer, faculty development
• Viji Sathy (website; Twitter) – Inclusive active learning
• Josh Eyler (website; Twitter) – His new book, How Humans Learn is available for preorder.
• Laura Gibbs (website; Twitter) – If you use the Canvas LMS, check out Laura’s Canvas blog
• Laura Gogia (website; Twitter) – Recently published a fascinating look at competency-based medical education
• Jacinta (website; Twitter) – PhD student, inclusive teaching and learning
• Angela Jenks (website; Twitter) – Anthropology professor
• Annemarie Perez (website; Twitter) – Inclusive teaching and learning
• Kevin Gannon (website; Twitter) – “History, teaching, and technology with a custom paint job”
• Asao Inoue (website; Twitter) – Writing theory, antiracism, teaching, race theory, writing assessment
• Katie Linder (website; Twitter) – Writer, podcaster, “learning like it’s her job”
• Alan Levine (website; Twitter) – “Barking about and playing with the web since 1992 – and sharing it all openly”
• Derek Bruff (website; Twitter) – Teaching and learning, faculty development
• Sarah Rose Cavanagh (website; Twitter) – Psychologist, professor, writer, and faculty development
• Peter Newbury (website; Twitter) – Teaching and learning
• Stephanie Lancaster (website; Twitter) – “Occupational therapist, learning scientist, teacher, and an activist at heart.”

Twitter List compilation of all the above individuals and others

Your Turn

Who has been someone who has stood by you as an educator and encourage you to keep growing and changing?

 

On June 19, 2018, I had the opportunity to attend an AAC&U Webinar entitled:

Teaching Techniques to Improve Learning and Ensure Classroom Success

It caught my eye because of the presenters, as fantastic people who have important things to say on the topic of teaching techniques and because of the quality of everything I have ever seen AAC&U produce.

The presenters were as follows:

• C. Edward Watson (moderator)
• Elizabeth Barkley
• Jośe Bowen
• Claire Howell Major

They each started out with an overview of how they see teaching and learning.

Barkley sees college teaching techniques as a way to make learning about teaching and learning more digestible. She recommends we consider breaking these big ideas and extensive research into bite-sized chunks. She used a recipe metaphor in thinking about how to grow our skills and knowledge about teaching.

The Rules of Engagement in NEA Higher Education Advocate, by Elizabeth Barkley

Bowen said that we need to look for ways to design our instruction in such a way that our students do the work, instead of us taking on the entire burden. He showed us a picture of a really buff guy and compared that to how we think about our own research. We may love doing 200 pushups at a time, while our students may just be tackling their first few and experiencing challenges we have long since forgotten.

“We are content experts and students are on the outside.” We have to think about the entry point for them into our subject matter.

Howell Major shared how complex teaching is… We need to consider how we:

• Analyze learners
• Set goals
• Select content
• Choose approaches
• Identify assessments

“To be able to do these base level things and to be able to do them really well, teachers have to have a special kind of knowledge.”

Pedagogical content knowledge

“Where really great teaching happens is in the middle part, where the two things come together.”

How do faculty learn how to teach more effectively?

• Observation
• Trial and error
• Conferences
• Classes

Another way to deepen that pedagogical knowledge is through educational research.

Interactive Lecturing: A Handbook for College Faculty 1st Edition, by Elizabeth F. Barkley (Author), Claire H. Major (Author)

Q. Is there a particular technique for student engagement that you have seen work in a lot of different contexts?

A. Barkley – Teaching and learning is more complex and is a larger task than a single technique. I introduce techniques with a framework that refers more of a design approach. Have to attend to many elements, including: motivation, active learning, create tasks that were challenging – but not too hard, valued as a part of a community, and addressing cognitive and social emotional elements.

One technique that works is the contemporary issues journal. Connect them to the themes within the course.

Contemporary Issues Journal

Q. What would you say is the most valuable thing that higher education has to offer students in terms of learning and how can we ensure that students can have access to that learning?

A. Bowen – “We are in the change business.” Great teachers should want to make themselves obsolete. Most of what they need to know, we can’t teach them anyway. Learning how to change is vital. Learning how to change one’s mind. This happens in a course, and across a campus. How do students become more self-regulated in their learning, how to change themselves?

Neuroscience helps us think about teaching. The flight or flight reflex impacts our ability to learn. The techniques we are talking about help more at-risk students. There’s a disproportional benefit to transparency, for example, to at-risk students.

Q. Lecturing has been demonized. What are your thoughts on the research on active learning vs lecturing.

A. Howell Major – All lecture (100% lecture) is compared to lecture plus active learning. That’s what is most often being compared. What happens if you add active learning to your lecture? Straight lecture benefits more traditional white male students, but even those students do better with active learning. More marginalized students benefit even more.

What the research helps us see is not what works (for sure), but what could work. Collecting data helps us see who these approaches are working best for…

She spends a lot of time thinking about both what she is doing as the teacher and what the students are doing, as learners. When she is lecturing, for example, she offers guided note taking tools for her students to use to help them stay engaged.

Bowen recommended using a cognitive wrapper to promote metacognition, in class, and handing back the papers with ten minutes to go… and asking them to read the feedback on the assignment and reflect on it.

Cognitive Wrapper Template

Q. How do you address students who don’t care as much about our areas of expertise as we do, as researchers?

A. Barkley – “Caring is something that we really want students to feel.” This is a normal desire to have. The digital story technique is one approach she has used to help students care more about the content. The immigration story is one topic they tackle and create a short video.

Digital story

Bowen – Stressed how this applies in online environment, as well. He encouraged a digital presence as a means for demonstrating that you care, even in a class that is in person. Facebook groups, video profiles of ourselves, getting to know our students.

“Transparency helps students understand why we are doing things.” When we do discussions, for example, it is important to talk about why we are asking students to undertake that effort and to engage in that way.

Bowen recommended:
Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Loediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel

Q. How to you address differentiated instruction (the need to address learners of all levels of knowledge and motivation?

A. Barkley – teaches at an open institution in the community college system. “We take the top 100% of students who apply.” She looks at her learning goals and identifies different ways that students might address that particular goal. Another technique drawn from the K-12 system is to set aside 30 minutes in her online sessions for students to do the differentiated work to do what they need to do at their particular level.

Q. With the recent challenges that have come up in areas of psychological research (Stanford prison experiment, marshmallow study, etc.), what areas of educational research do you feel like could use more of a critical lens to be applied to it?

A. Barkley – stressed that there hasn’t been enough research on techniques that are not effective. Group work is supposed to be good, for example, but what about when it doesn’t go well. Can it undermine learning?

Howell Major – stated that this kind of research does have flaws. Typically done at one institution, doesn’t take different variables into account. Researchers attribute causation to something that is only correlation. We have found out some techniques that do work well in some contexts that we can then try out in our teaching. She also stressed the importance of the questions being asked in this body of research. “If we ask more nuanced questions, that can take us to the next level.”

Bowen – “20 years ago, we were all about learning styles and now we know, uh, not so much.” We all learn in varied ways and no one learns how to play tennis by just watching, as an example.

Q. These techniques take time. How do we address that as a concern?

A. Bowen – “Do you want to cover the content, or do you want students to learn the content?” He revisited the gym analogy and encouraged us to design workouts that students can do when they aren’t in the gym – more able to connect with them in their contexts. Read chapter 2 vs find a relative who has a disease that is mentioned in chapter 2. The way we frame what students will do out of class is vital in our teaching.

Howell Major – shared about some research on students who got 80% of the content for the class and how they did as well as those who got 100% of the content.

Thanks to AAC&U for an excellent webinar and to all the presenters. I was more engaged during this session than I have been in a long time when participating in something while sitting in front of my computer with its many potential distractions. 

Each time I have been able to talk with an expert about how they are making learning active in their classroom, I have walked away from the conversation inspired.

I have been contemplating putting some guidebooks together that curate content from Teaching in Higher Ed (past podcast episodes and blog posts), as well as from other sources. Rather than waiting until I take action on that, I put something together in a blog post.

Here are some ways to leverage active learning in your teaching:

Learn About Learning

Before attempting to modify how you teach, it is well worth spending time discovering what the research says about how we learn. When Saundra McGuire was on the show to share about her book: Teach Students How to Learn, she reminded us that “Learning is a process, not an activity.”

Episode #132 with Saundra McGuire: Teach Students How to Learn

Saundra also stressed how important it is for us to believe in our students' capacity. When we believe that they are capable of great things, it translates into our teaching.

Another resource that has been recommended many times on the show is:

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel

Get Started

It can be overwhelming to think about completely altering how we teach. Instead, think small and start with a few approaches that can yield big results. In James Lang’s Small Teaching, he provides ample techniques we can use. One of his many approaches that keeps rattling around in my brain involves prediction. I try to regularly ask in my classes now, “…and what do you think happened next?” – “…what do you think would happen if…” – “…when this company did that, what results do you think they saw?” and so on…

Episode #92 with James Lang: Small Teaching

James also wrote a series for The Chronicle on the first five minutes of class and the last five minutes of class as other ways to do small teaching.

Cathy Davidson gives us even more ideas for getting started with her post:

What I Wish I Knew When I Started Doing Active Learning

Gather Your Tools

You don't have to use technology to get learning more active in your classroom. Even something as simple as a sticky note offers plenty of opportunities to engage. One approach often used in STEM classes (but one that works in any kind of class) is called peer instruction. Peter Newbury shares about peer instruction on episode #53. Another method is known as retrieval practice. Pooja Agarwal recently came on Teaching in Higher Ed to share about the science behind retrieval practice. Here are some tools I use for both peer instruction and retrieval practice in my teaching:

• Quizlet (including Quizlet live)
• PollEverywhere
• Glisser
• Sli.do
• Kahoot
• Ellen's Heads Up game

I also use a lot of pen and paper activities, as well as sticky notes and even have experimented with Plickers (a digital and analog combo).

Build a Structure

Making a shift from more passive to active learning can be challenging. After you have worked through a few “small teaching” approaches, it helps to build a structure into your course.

Paul Blowers described his environmental science class structure in vivid detail on episode #179.

Chrissy Spencer also has great advice for how to structure large classes to make them interactive on episode #25.

A structure might look something like:

• 00-05 – Activate learning from prior class, create “time for telling” and/or current news related to concept
• 05-10 – Retrieval practice for current module
• 10-15 – Mini lecture
• 15-25 – Mini case or game/puzzle
• 25-35 -Debrief case or game/puzzle
• 35-45 – Mini lecture
• 45-50 – Next steps

Break the Structure

The reason for the structure is to get accustomed to talking less in our classes. Once we have made that shift, we don't necessarily have to structure each class session the same. In fact, it is in the unexpected where opportunities for learning can emerge.

Ainissa Ramirez provided such inspiration on making challenging subjects fun in episode 66. When we attempt to do that, things are likely to get pretty messy. But, Ainissa reminds us: “It's the messy stuff where you learn.”

Be Patient

Some have accused me of making all of this messy teaching stuff look too easy. Teaching requires celebrating the small steps that might one day lead toward greater learning. It means vulnerability is essential and failure is inevitable.

When Yale’s Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Meg Urry, visited Teaching in Higher Ed, she shared just how challenging it can be to correct mental models.

Episode #69 with Meg Urry: Correcting mental models

As she says on the episode, “Real learning takes time.” This is true when we are talking about our students, but especially so when describing our own learning.

Another resource to help you with active learning comes from Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching.

Your Turn

What other advice or resources do you have for people looking to implement more active learning in their teaching approaches? 

 

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?