Practical instructional design, with Edward Oneill

Bonni: [00:00:00] Much of the craft of teaching happens outside the classroom. As we make plans for how to best facilitate learning and of course on today’s episode Edward O’Neill joins me to talk about practical instructional design.

Production Credit: [00:00:15] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:22] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:52] I am absolutely thrilled today to be having joined me Edward O’Neill and he is a Senior Instructional Designer at Yale. But I think even more than that how I feel like I’ve come to know him is through his podcast which is called The Teach Better podcast and if you have not taken a listen to that I’d highly recommend it. This is Bonni Stachowiak and Edward I want to welcome you to the show.

Edward: [00:01:14] Thank you very much. It’s nice to be here.

Bonni: [00:01:17] Edward, I was so happy that you accepted me on LinkedIn because I feel like I got to know even more about you than sometimes our bios. Show us you’ve had a fairly eclectic background would you start out talking about your early research and early study in academia and then kind of catches up with what you do today.

Edward: [00:01:34] I sometimes say I’m the world’s oldest living liberal arts student you know like I know a little bit about a lot of things. So as an undergraduate I wanted to act and do things like that. I studied theater and literature and with kind of a focus in psychology which turned out to be useful.

Edward: [00:01:52] And then for graduate school to film school and get a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies. Really I just loved old movies. I loved old black and white movies. And so that was a ball and I found a teaching to like the theater training kind of came back the performing aspect of teaching as opposed to the facilitating aspect of teaching.

Edward: [00:02:13] And I was fine with successful students who liked me and you know I was good at that. You know what we know stage on the stage had a role. So I taught for 10 years and wrote and published the most obscure or the most obscure film media studies stuff you could imagine. And so you know six people thought my work was very good. You know as I did it, I was also teaching what used to be called “new media” – you know which now is now 1.0 the media 1.0 are under two or three point now. And you know I taught students to take photographs and videos and make web pages and stuff like this all of them are like a liberal arts context or something so professional mediating context.

Edward: [00:03:01] And as I went along I just kept thinking can’t I spend more time planning teaching and playing with thew toys like do I really have to do I really have to now stand and deliver information and grade papers. And so I transitioned away from teaching. I spent a year making videos for people and doing Web writing. And I had a really funny job.

Edward: [00:03:27] There was a company that would send you you could sign up to get information as a text message on your cell phone tehy had weather and news and there was one of movie reviews and it was all local. So I lived in San Francisco.

Edward: [00:03:40] And so I wrote like a hundred and thirty character movie reviews that will come to you on your phone and there were things that were playing at specific theaters. So the first thing would say something about the movie.

Edward: [00:03:54] And then there had to be enough space for like you know one for a hit one for more or apply one for more and then there’d be a little a little more summary and that if he said no one for location or one for info then you would get the actual like a place where it was showing.

Edward: [00:04:09] So I was actually kind of writing Tweets before there was a twitter. I was like writing all movie reviews and free SMS messages. That was a crazy job. It was really really fun.

Bonni: [00:04:21] It sounds like a fun thing. And so early like you said to be crafting honing that skill of micro writing. I’m so glad to have you on the show today especially because you and Doug- Doug is the other co host of the Teach Better podcast and you do a little bit different format similar to this one but there’s two of you who are interviewing another person and you have decided at least so far to have those be all professors from the Yale community.

Bonni: [00:04:48] And I sometimes find myself. You just described yourself like a nail on the head. You know a lot about a little bit about a lot. And it reminded me of a song that Diana Krall I know she is not the first one to have sung that. But I know a little bit about a lot of things but I don’t know enough about you.

Edward: [00:05:06] I don’t know enough about you. I love that song.

Bonni: [00:05:06] And that’s how I feel about you.

Edward: [00:05:11] I’m so glad someone finally recognized it.

Bonni: [00:05:13] When you’re on the episodes I always want to go. I want him to talk more so it’s so fun to get to. I get to ask you whatever I want and we’re not going to have to make sure that Doug and whoever our other guest is feels included. So this is a fun opportunity for me.

Bonni: [00:05:26] Well I wanted to. First off. So you’re doing instructional design at Yale and you say in your LinkedIn profile that a lot of times what you’re consulting clients need are a couple of things. One is intuitively appealing ways of conceptualizing the learning process and then the second one is a survey of the relevant tools and which ones are best going to fit their needs and capabilities are kept sorry capacities.

Bonni: [00:05:51] And I thought that was just a really nice way of honing in on what a lot of people do need someone like you to help them do. And you have a special skill that you’ve identified which is finding the points in the learning process where assessment and evaluation can be woven in seamlessly. Anytime the subject of assessment or evaluation comes up it doesn’t tend to draw a lot of people going.

Bonni: [00:06:14] Yes let’s talk about this for hours. It’s kind of thought of as a headache and I really appreciate and can see that gift and your being able to help people do that more seamlessly. Before we talk about some of your successes and the tools that you would recommend let’s start out with failures and I’d love to hear how you or maybe you actually don’t even know it’s a failure.

Bonni: [00:06:33] I’d love to hear how you designed your early courses before you had more expertise in instructional design. What what was the way that you used to approach design in those early first courses that you were teaching.

Edward: [00:06:46] Oh those were failures. [laughter] There was no doubt about that. I mean what happened in those courses was… I made sure… Most importantly,I made sure students had to do something every week and an online course you can’t just say go read some books and we’ll chat a little then write a long paper. I really knew from the beginning that they had to do it very incrementally a little bit of a time that was right.

Edward: [00:07:16] I decided that you needed consistent deadlines 100 percent of the time there was a Monday holiday. I had to send out a big announcement and some of the things I did right… Monday morning the students get a message saying, “Hey – how you ever see those old crazy black and white horror movies?”

Edward: [00:07:36] Did you know that style really came from Germany and some of the people [who] shot them actually came from Germany and like we’re going to look at some really intense you know scary weird horror movie it’s not gory but atmospheric you know getting an interest in this subject and then reminding them there’s something to discuss on Wednesday and again on Friday, you have an assignment due over the weekend. Blah blah blah and so I got a lot of a cycle and communication things right.

Edward: [00:08:06] But one thing I really got wrong was I thought we would do a different concept each week.

Edward: [00:08:14] And they would try and learn that one concept and then I would give them feedback and I we move on to new concepts. But like if they didn’t follow the instructions. There was no second. I couldn’t tell if they had learned or not there’s no second chance.

Edward: [00:08:30] And I was so foolish you don’t learn anything by doing it once. Let me see your hand in a roaring fire and be like really like a woah won’t do that again. But most things. It’s practice. There’s a lot of repetition. And so I think my failure was thinking that you could constantly say let’s do something different now with something different.

Edward: [00:08:55] Now let’s do something different and I learned how to do was stardom on something that would come back again a few times slightly differently. And every time it comes back you would say the last week we did it this way and this week I want you to do it this way.

Edward: [00:09:12] You know the new part I highlighted pink or something like that. So anytime you had repetitive information I’d highlight the new information and I just kind of found my way. Luckily eventually towards a way of deciding on my classes that was that was really really effective because people had more than one bite at the apple. You saw things again from slightly different angles.

Edward: [00:09:32] I think it probably helped students build a more robust mental model which takes on all the things were low and they really internalized they really internalized the concepts. But boy it was humiliating when you look and say gee why are they not learning with this material.

Edward: [00:09:50] And I do a whole workshop or have a presentation on. How I failed to change these things because I didn’t want to accept the responsibility. And I wanted to see it as the students fault. It’s so hard to get out of that.

Bonni: [00:10:08] It’s what I’m hearing from you too is though still even back then that natural at least you were measuring to see that the learning wasn’t happening. So I think there would be compounding that issue of you failing in those ways would be if you hadn’t ever noticed that you were failing in those ways.

Bonni: [00:10:25] If you didn’t have to worry about potentially bruising egos or giving unsolicited advice if you could just say it like this what are two or three of the biggest things that the faculty that you see today are doing that are holding them back from being as effective teachers as they could be.

Edward: [00:10:44] I think professors know their content. And they think what they’re offering is a great big mountain of content which they have mastered. You know to an amazing extend.

Edward: [00:10:57] And they don’t realize that you part of expertise is…It’s like Tetris, you know, like when you do it beautifully and all the pieces little fall that there’s no gaps or anything.

Edward: [00:11:08] Or like one of those little wooden puzzles that’s kind of like a cube but when you slide it this way and that way the little pieces fall out and you end up a little like Lincoln Loggy kind of sticks and there’s actually a way of like making a cube out of them which I could never do those things. I’ll tell you.

Edward: [00:11:23] But their knowledge is like that they learned all this different stuff and it stitched together in the tiniest space it’s just all knit together and it’s all the individual pieces and then it’s kind of like patterns and patterns inside of patterns and you know finally make this cube.

Edward: [00:11:40] And so professors don’t realize how tightly packed their knowledge is a heavy organized. And when I go to a class and the professor they’ll give the big idea and then they’ll mention this tiny detail here and then they’ll mention this tiny detail over there and then they will mention something about what’s happening next week and then they’ll go back to the big picture and I can see what’s happening because I am not in the class.

Edward: [00:12:07] The students there. Their knowledge there’s not recognized that lets it’s just little pebbles. They’re still piling in the little toothpick twigs that will eventually if they stick with that become the lincoln logs that form the cube. And so if I had to speak to Professor and say just one big thing I just say they’re not going to get it.

Edward: [00:12:29] They’re not going to get all the content. And it’s really not about the content. You you have to help them learn. You have to help them go through a process you get them from where they are to the next step. There is a blog post about the five stages of teaching like you know like the five stages of death you know.

Edward: [00:12:53] And the first stage is I’ll just tell them all the wonderful things I know and I’ll be so fascinated because I love this stuff so of course will love this. And you know you get the bored faces and you get back the exam and it’s it’s the stuff he said but it’s it’s all disarranged it’s it’s like a funhouse mirror version of yourself and I mean when that first happened to me I read these midterms and I kind of said this sentence but it didn’t mean what the person thinks it meant and then I realized oh. They are a different person that had different experiences.

Edward: [00:13:31] So when I say that’s what it means to me I need to find out what their experiences are so I can bring them one step in this direction. That’s all.

Edward: [00:13:46] So thinking too much about content and not thinking about where the learner is coming from and how they have to build their own knowledge of it. I think those are those are big obstacles in higher education. But professors are extremely well intentioned and very knowledgeable. But if you don’t a little bit learned to shift your perspective just doling out the information this is not going to be the most effective thing to do.

Bonni: [00:14:10] You know the textbooks that I use I try to find the least expensive ones that I can while still them being decent. I’d try to find some balance there and it’s been you know it’ll renew every year but I don’t require them to have the latest one as long as it’s the last 3 or 4 versions or what have you.

Bonni: [00:14:30] It had been I will say I’ve been I’ve had the same intro to business textbook adopted for probably 6 years or so and I just this last semester I had realized when I was grading one of the tests I thought these answers are really bad but bad all over the place and thus they all shared.

Bonni: [00:14:49] And know study notes for the exam which there would be nothing wrong with that of course they were studying together but it just didn’t it didn’t seem like that was what was happening here. And I’d open up the textbook and sure enough they were just copying and memorized in their mind. Some definition from the book. And it was horrible.

Bonni: [00:15:04] So I thought that’s what I’m working on now is going back and packing some of that and saying what you have to do the reading again even though you already know it but just to try to find where they’ve just done a bad job. Giving definitions so you can fill in some of those gaps there.

Bonni: [00:15:17] But yeah that’s it is not knowledge that you’re describing where it’s so easy for us when we have more expertise to do that recall and see all those connections. In fact the prior guest that I had on the show Peter Newbury who’s teaches physics at UCSD and he talked about that same thing where an expert in physics is going to have that stuff mapped out.

Bonni: [00:15:40] And someone doing it for the first time has to really work hard just to recall the specific information that they’re being asked. But they don’t understand all the other connections so it’s slower but it’s also it’s almost like going back to those early Internet connections where you know it took us four hours to download a picture. It’s just it’s a whole different process.

Edward: [00:15:59] That’s a really good analogy… by taking that long…people today wouldn’t understand it. There’s a nice distinction and the learning science discussion and I hope I get this right. There’s rehearsal and there’s elaboration.

Edward: [00:16:16] So when you repeat – you have the vocab cards for your language class – the little flashcards – and you practice – you’re just rehearsing. You’re trying to repeat the same thing and you’re stuffing it into memory.

Edward: [00:16:30] So you might have a flash card that says “maison” one side and the “house” on the other. Elaboration is where you you kind of talk about the subject or kind of talk around it. Well “maison” could be a family and that suggests the family lives in a house.. a “maison” is not “hôte,” which is we say “hotel.” It could mean something slightly different or the older meanings of it. So, elaboration seems to be much better for learning and that thing you build in that network connecting the information to the old information.

Edward: [00:17:04] So when I taught online… the thing I found was that they would read about something like well early cinema had monopolistic practices. People patented the technologies and then wouldn’t let anybody else… They’ve claimed that you can’t use a movie camera because we invented it and everybody kind of claimed some version of that.

Edward: [00:17:24] I would have them talk about monopolies and I would look at and it was just a mess because everyone was saying talking about something different. So they didn’t understand the reading because they didn’t understand the word monopoly.

Edward: [00:17:37] So I made it so the first thing was. What is a monopoly? That’s a different dictionary definition and what is it to you. Is Microsoft a monopoly is Mac a monopoly. Is is Google monopoly. And is that a good or bad thing and made them talk about their experiences. I made them look at dictionary definitions, construe their own definitions. I made them reply to each other etc. and then I said now reading the book in early cinema. You know when ask a question about monopolistic practices a paragon what the question would be. But they had they had elaborated.

Edward: [00:18:14] How is the monopoly that the monopolistic practices they had in the teens in the film industry similar or different than what’s going on now?

Edward: [00:18:25] So then they had to compare. Well I think the monopoly is this. They’re saying it’s that everybody could see slightly different things. So kind of wasn’t one right answer. So I made them do a lot of elaboration and comparing. So that even if they didn’t it’s it’s almost the opposite of repeating the definition in the book except for some standard definition.

Edward: [00:18:47] But you know it could apply to this and it could apply to that . And that was much more effective because you know getting them out of memorization mode. I mean they started in the words but they didn’t think about the meanings.

Bonni: [00:19:00] I liked that distinction between rehearsal and elaboration. It does certainly resonate with me as a tension I’m often feeling in the introductory courses that I teach.

Bonni: [00:19:10] One of the things that you talk about being particularly adept at doing is having methods for incorporating assessment and evaluation into the design of courses.

Bonni: [00:19:19] What are some of the things that we often do that missed that opportunity to get that assessment and evaluation in there without driving ourselves crazy and doing more more tracking than we need to or more tracking then we’ll provide the value that we’re looking for.

Edward: [00:19:33] I think the most annoying thing is when you feel like you have to administer a survey after the classes or something like. It’s extra work for everybody. The information probably isn’t that good. What will your response rate be things like this.

Edward: [00:19:50] So it’s an assessment I like to call up parts. Grading the two parts of grading. One is evaluating or we would say assessing that is saying how much a person learns some of the assessments and the other is reward by getting an A I get a reward. If I get a D it’s punishment’s.

Edward: [00:20:17] So a lot of times the recommended professors that have some assignments where the students are say elaborating and you just want to see them processing the information and talking and thinking about it. You don’t have to grade it’s it’s it’s a lot of work to grade things you’re not sure what the standards would be just give them points you know just say so much of your homework.

Edward: [00:20:41] You know the homework you get an A if you turn it in and you’ve answered all the questions that’s all you know on time that’s off it’s only 10 percent of your grade for all 10 homeworks but you’ve got 10 percent. So oftentimes students 10 percent A I’m not missing one of those freakin homework even if it’s 1 percent of their grade.

Edward: [00:21:00] No no I’m getting that A and then you know you get them to do the work and you give them a reward and you’re not. You may not be grading it you may have them come to class and look at each others or you may look at a bunch of them and say OK I didn’t mark them individually but I’m going to show you you know when people got number 6 wrong. This is what they did wrong. So you kind of do it all at once.

Edward: [00:21:24] So separating out the different things that are happening with the assessment using formative assessment to find out what’s going on. But you did. You don’t have to grade everything. This is a wonderful message for teachers and professors. You know usually it’s just a stack of things if you grade.

Edward: [00:21:40] And the more work they assign the more you have to grade. And so that’s that’s one you know one big plus. The other is. To evaluate yourself by using. The work that’s graded it’s. So if you know at the end of the course there are 10 things you wanted them to get.

Edward: [00:21:59] You should be able to line up the assignments with those 10 things and then look at the grades and be able to say wow. Item Number Six people did terribly or you know assigning number six and clearly not teaching that very well. So I’m going to really have to rethink about how to teach that.

Edward: [00:22:20] And that can go down to exam questions that each topic corresponds to kind of an exam question so that and then when you graded exams you look at the overall performance on each question and the item that has the lowest median score. That’s their assessment. Is your evaluation that is when you when you assess their performances. That’s an indicator of what worked and what didn’t. So you at least know where to focus. You can at least say that’s the topic that I could do much better on.

Bonni: [00:22:56] And is that something that you also would recommend being transparent with the students that that’s what that’s been used for so they can see that you’re willing to put some of your own skin in the game.

Edward: [00:23:07] That’s a great idea. What I sometimes recommend is: if you structure what you want to learn is there are certain things that. If you get to the student’s final paper final exam and you look at it and every professor knows there’s things that you see on there that will make you cry and bang your head against the wall.

Edward: [00:23:31] And those are competency level tasks. Those are things where how could she get out of week 2 of my course and not to be able to answer this question. As you look at that and you feel sick to your stomach and you want to cry. That’s a competency question. Absolutely everyone should get it by the end.

Edward: [00:23:50] But the hardest questions are kind of mastery level questions and you probably shouldn’t have many of them because only 20 percent of people are going to get them right because that is the most complex. And then the other things are in the middle. So they know that this body of literature you know that they know about this booking bookkeeping technique. They know about this kind of problem to solve and looks to be quite discrete.

Edward: [00:24:12] But if you organize your exam. So it’s like basic intermediate advanced you know there’s three questions in the beginning they’re super basic. Don’t overthink them. I just want to make sure everyone knows this stuff. It’s just I’m checking myself you know the things are intermediate. We had five topics of the middle. They’re not complex. Each one is on a separate topic. Again don’t overthink it’s just about topic A it’s about topic B.

Edward: [00:24:41] I’m trying to see what you learn and I’m trying to see what I didn’t. I didn’t teach effectively. And then there’s this there’s two questions you get to pick one. Those are hard questions you have to really think to figure this out. Spend a bunch of time on that don’t half ass it.

Edward: [00:24:58] So yeah transparency is one of the most important things in teaching. So you can combine that with you know it’s their assessment, it’s your evaluation and I think that’s a great strategy and I know people have told me you know I had put some really basic questions on the exam and I’m like a lot of students get them wrong and I just you know it just kills me. They didn’t get it.

Bonni: [00:25:21] I’m going to have to find this graphic that I’ll put in the show notes for people to look at. That’s from some research from Harvard about motivation which you and I were chatting a bit about our dissertations before we pressed record.

Bonni: [00:25:32] This one’s in my dissertation if anyone wants to read it but I think there’s probably better things that I’ve written since my dissertation. We were both talking about getting our dissertations done and that was the most important thing.

Bonni: [00:25:44] But anyway it’s this diagram that that is around motivation that if I don’t feel challenged at all I’m not going to be particularly motivated. But if I feel too challenged that’s also going to really drop down my motivation. So wanting to construct things in such a way that there’s not all this pressure to perform that there’s such high stakes in this.

Bonni: [00:26:06] And at the same time if there’s completely low stakes and there’s nothing in it it’s really hard to get there. Their effort going in those cases so I like the way that you’re proposing this. This was designed for assessment.

Edward: [00:26:22] Yeah thank you some. I think Professor I talked to that when they do active learning in the classroom one of the hardest things for them to figure out at the beginning is something that just took them you know blindsided them was how long you give the students to talk about something.

Edward: [00:26:39] And it’s a very clever response that. You can give them a one minute problem a five minute problem in a 15 minute problem because they’re are very different. And they would approach it differently. So it gives them problem. And to give you one minute to talk about this. Broad strokes first impression what is your gut tell you what do you think in general. You’re not really able to find the answer. I don’t want the answer. I want you to tell me what does the answer look like. Prediction wise and why.

Edward: [00:27:08] And then maybe the next thing is now spend five minutes talking with your neighbor about how to set up the problem can you come to an agreement about there are ways to set it up. I would just say that and then five minutes and 15 minutes we’re about to be actually solving the problem and we’ll come around and help you want to assure that we will set it up for interesting ways. So it’s almost like you can do that they just don’t have difficulty and let the students know. OK.

Edward: [00:27:35] Don’t spent a lot of time on this think quick and kind of you know grade things up for where I think there’s a graphic about these kind of challenge motivation things that could flow. You know this mentality.

Edward: [00:27:59] It’s like a pinwheel and it’s kind of like I forgotten what the dimensions are one is harder is harder easier. There’s something else kind of like as well it’s the stakes. If it’s easy and low stakes you’re bored. It’s kind of like boredom on one end and then the other and just like you know steam coming out your ears and you know total emotional breakdown stress.

Edward: [00:28:24] And somewhere in another zone it’s like hey this is hard but I’ve got the hang of it and the stakes are too high. Life is a great time. I think that is really really helpful for our teaching.

Bonni: [00:28:37] One of the things you were talking about earlier reminded me of a post that I wrote that I’ll link to in the show notes and that is about using the iPad game that the Ellen Show came up with it’s called heads up and essentially it’s kind of like the game catch phrase some people might be familiar with where you have your iPad. You do look ridiculous by the way people walking by the classroom seen holding the iPad above your head and it has a word on it.

Bonni: [00:29:01] One of the vocabulary words you’re trying to get them in this case to be able to elaborate on although at the early stages they’re just at rehearsal stage but they they try to describe that word to get me to say it.

Bonni: [00:29:14] And then as soon as I do I make the iPad I sort of flipped it down like a sign and then flip it back up and it gives them a point if they skip it. I put it back behind my head and then put it back up and that means they don’t get points and they pass their turn to the next person.

Bonni: [00:29:29] And it’s so I was really thinking about teaching some of the less experienced students in the freshman and sophomore levels versus playing that game though actually when they’ve had me before for the earlier classes they’ll say hey can you bring that game in again cause we really like that and they get to where they can beat me at that game.

Bonni: [00:29:49] I just cuz I’m not as fast as they are. I mean some of them are just sharpest could be and they can they can process it so quick. I mean you know how it is. I’m in my 40s now I’m forgettin work. It’s so fun to see that transformation in two ways. For me one is because yes of course the best gift to me would be that they are far better than I ever am at anything.

Bonni: [00:30:11] So it’s like a compliment when they are moving up in their knowledge and their skills but then also that that they have a fond memory of something that they learned from me in a fun way in earlier classes and now they want to do it sometimes in the early phases they get shy about it and we’re going to do that silly thing again. And you know if it grows on them it just takes it takes some time sometimes.

Edward: [00:30:35] I worked with a professor at USC and he had a version of Jeopardy that he worked for PowerPoint and center. And then it’s kind of a touch screen computer very very early in computers and the MFA kids love to play Jeopardy.

Edward: [00:30:50] I mean you know there’s an engineering class and they just he would ask and you would offer them that. And he says you want to do another problem to do this. So you had a drill concepts with jeopardy. I mean it was it was really charming. That story of Youssif that came out so rich we target ads. It’s the less experience students they need more motivation they probably need more practice I agree with you 100 percent. If you’re if you’re not finding students who are smarter than you know. And you’re the smartest person in the place I don’t know.

Edward: [00:31:31] It’s not smart enough but you encounter young people who are so phenomenally bright that it is interesting seeing here your brain which is you know such a rich network of knowledge. And you know you do the creative thing of figuring out the scheme could be used in learning contexts. That’s not a speed thing. Know that’s dexterity that’s not speed.

Bonni: [00:31:57] Yeah yeah. There is another fun thing that happened to I was showing in a business ethics class that I taught. It was the first time I taught it at the undergraduate level and I showed a couple of clips from John Oliver’s show and I always get it confused.

Bonni: [00:32:13] It’s not The Daily Show because that’s John story. May he rest in peace in a very short time. He’s not dying. He keeps telling us he’s not dying he’s just going off the air. Anyway what does John Oliver show anyway. You know what I’m talking about and it’s so funny next week.

Edward: [00:32:27] The night next week – yesterday – or whatever. I can’t remember either.

Bonni: [00:32:29] Yeah. This student would then go on and watch all his prior ones and every week the new ones that were coming out and he’d come to me and said Do you see this one yet to see this one yet. So it’s fun to introduce them to that and…

Edward: [00:32:43] And the feedback, too… I mean I taught media studies, so it was easy pickings in a way. You would. At a certain point I decided well what are they watching. I can show them my favorite things. And I had to do one presentation. And you ran a clip of under 2 minutes and talk about it in the context of the class Well we saw a lot of family guy they just love family and the more vulgar the better.

Edward: [00:33:10] But you brought in things I’d never heard of that we’re so on point. It’s you stepping away from the center and reading and helping them communicate with each other. Yeah you know – it’s it’s great that you inspired the person to explore further and then it just fed back into the class. That’s just the ultimate reward.

Bonni: [00:33:33] It’s the best thing. Well on the last episode and by the way this is the point in the show where we do recommendations and on the last episode if people listened to it which just aired yesterday so you know, Edward you don’t have to have listened yet but I talked to talked a little bit about fears in my teaching and some of the things that I do to try to resolve those fears because it’s kind of I had just my first teaching nightmare for the fall semester starts.

Edward: [00:34:00] Oh my god.

Bonni: [00:34:01] I’ve talked to a professor who works at our institution who’s been there 20 years and he says I hate to tell you but they don’t go away. It’s just kind of a normal part of the year. But I forgot to read this quote. So that’s going to be my recommendation is just for us to revisit Parker Palmer’s words and this quote I’ll link to it in the show notes.

Bonni: [00:34:18] I’ll put it in there but it’s also on the Teaching in Higher Ed Facebook page. So of people listening are on the Facebook page you also have seen it there and it’s just my favorite quote about teaching and Edward as you and I were talking. I hadn’t planned yet.

Bonni: [00:34:31] What I was going to recommend for the episode but it’s just reminding me of the passion for teaching and a lot of it is in this quote he writes I am a teacher at heart and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy when my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us when our experience is illuminated by the lightning life of the mind. Then teaching is the finest work I know.

Edward: [00:35:02] There is a special privilege in people letting you help them out and change. You are there in special moments especially young people’s lives when they are seeing things for the first time you get to see some and discover something that is familiar to you. But I mean I think that could capture something of the kind of sacredness of teaching.

Bonni: [00:35:25] What is your recommendation for the listeners today.

Edward: [00:35:28] I think getting back to the work of Carl Rogers the kind of founder of humanistic psychology he pioneered kind of non directive non-direct of psychotherapy instead of telling the person what was wrong with them. Rogers decided that if you just listened to someone and tried to understand them were essentially were a good listener of a certain kind that they would discover themselves.

Edward: [00:35:54] Through your non-judgemental acceptance and valuing them as a human being. You know we listen you try to understand you don’t judge and you do try and really do this yourself. You’re not just there is kind of a technical professional you’re a human being and it turned out that a lot of research that ensued showed that when therapists and counsellors listen and are less judgmental etc. It’s a process of growth kind of naturally unfolds.

Edward: [00:36:25] So Carl Rogers that have a pulse on becoming a person instead of the space writings. And if you read it you might find this is terribly touchy feely but he does go on to show the research behind what he’s talking about some of which I think would be be cutting edge today.

Edward: [00:36:42] And yes some things that they’re all about learning and and because he sees therapy as as learning and a sense of learning to be yourself. And so it’s been very inspiring for me to go back to Carl Rogers and think about the teacher as a teacher.

Edward: [00:36:59] I have to have to try and understand you as a unique learner and not value something about you. Even if I tell you that that went wrong. But I appreciate that you, I think you were going in the right direction. And if I really try and understand you and find what you’re doing is valuable and try and help you grow yourself then it’s not so much about information transfer and it’s a more humane kind of relationship.

Bonni: [00:37:30] I want to thank you Edward for being on the episode and especially for your continued work on the Teach Better podcast it’s so much fun to listen each time you produce an episode.

Bonni: [00:37:40] And sometimes I get a little hint from Doug what the next episode it’s going to be and I want to say hurry up. Hurry up because I can’t wait to get to learn from another expert in teaching.

Edward: [00:37:50] That’s great. I actually you know I’ll edit some of them it’ll be a while before they come out. Oh I want to tell people about those are such cool stuff up there. I mean you know when when you’re passionate about teaching and you focus on it and you try and improve you do. And I feel like my education is talking to the people who do this well like you. And I’m just learning more every day.

Bonni: [00:38:17] Well thanks again for joining us on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Edward: [00:38:20] Thank you for having me.

Bonni: [00:38:23] Thanks again to Edward O’Neill for joining me on episode 60 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast if you’d like to comment on the show notes or give us any additions to ours talks today. You can do that at teachinginhighered.com/60.

Bonni: [00:38:40] As always if you have suggestions for the show in general you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/feedback. And if you have yet to subscribe to the weekly updates you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening and being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community. And I’ll see you on the next episode.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.