Teaching

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

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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.

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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.