Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 234 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Maria Anderson comes back to the show to share a new lens to support learning outcomes.

Production Credit: [00:00:13] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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

Bonni: [00:00:50] Today I welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed, Maria Anderson. She is a Salt Lake City based consultant who spent 14 years teaching at the college level, 16 years writing curriculum, and 6 years developing digital products for learning. She built iPad games to teach algebra, launched the Canvas network MOOC platform, built adaptive learning platforms used by McGraw Hill, and worked as director of learning design for WGU, a fully online competency-based education institution. While a professor at Muskingum Community College in Michigan, she directed the week long MCC Math and Technology Workshop for five years helping faculty to prepare to teach online or improve their skills. Anderson is a software developer and a CEO of a startup, author, speaker and a learning futurist. She holds degrees in math, chemistry, biology, business administration, and higher education leadership. Maria, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Maria: [00:02:01] It’s great to be back.

Bonni: [00:02:03] I was excited when you reached out because you’re not one to do that unless you’ve got something- I was going to say something really juicy going- the second you sent it over I thought “Oh my goodness. This is something that I needed. And I didn’t even know that I needed.” And I feel like many people are going to have that sense too.

Bonni: [00:02:23] But I think before we get to talking about this tool, what you call a lens, I know you have some history to give us. So why don’t you walk us through the history of how we used to do this thing? And then we can talk about how you’re recommending we might put a different lens on it.

Maria: [00:02:39] Yeah cool. It’s almost like one of your end of podcast recommendations.

Bonni: [00:02:44] We’re reversing things here today.

Maria: [00:02:47] So as you know, I teach math when I’m teaching a class. And I’ve taught it for a very long time. And I started to get uneasy about what we teach in math maybe in like 2009ish when we started to see a lot of computer algebra system tools come up with the Internet. And so you no longer needed to spend a lot of money to use a computer algebra program to solve math problems. You still had to actually have Internet access and there was a lot of resistance to that. But I think we’ve gone through a really big shift in the last 9 years and we may not have even realized it happened- and I’m not just talking about math. So let me take you back to when I was in school. So now we’re talking like the 90s.

Bonni: [00:03:30] By the way, the thing I love about this story is because people will have heard this in your bio but it still do strikes me you have the most eclectic collection of education, so there’s no way you’re just going to talk about math. So you have a lot of different educational experiences to draw from.

Maria: [00:03:45] And so in the 90s I was learning math, chemistry, and biology at the same time. And the internet was like in its infancy, we used it for email and everything was text based, no images. When I was studying for my classes are my professors were teaching us, you got your information from basically three sources. You got information from your notes that you took in class, you got information from the textbook you were assigned, and you of course bought because there wasn’t anything else to go to, and you got your information from like going to the library. And that was your source of information.

Maria: [00:04:20] So at that point in time, it was tremendously important for you to know a lot of information like cold because it would be a pain like somebody asks you on the job a question and you have to say oh wait one minute while I run back home and get that textbook or set of notes, right. You couldn’t do that. But then if you go forward say 10 or 15 years. Ok, now we have a more mature Internet.

Maria: [00:04:46] So now like if I’m on the job and I’m asked a question, I’m not even really going back to my notes and textbook anymore, the more easy solution to finding information is to go to my desktop and search through a Google search for that information. Right. So that’s maybe the early 2000s mid 2000s. And so that’s already a shift, the way we access the information changed, the ease of access and information changed. And so the necessity to maybe have that complete perfect set of notes no longer holds the same value as it used to hold to us. Right. Because now you can search the internet for a resource to help you when you can’t remember details of something. What is important is that you know what to search for and how it is categorized, not that you can get to every stinking detail in their head.

[00:05:42] And so then you have to take one more step into the future to today. In 2009- and I know you are a big Mac fan- in 2009, the iPhone came out. In 2010, Android came out on smartphones. That was nine years ago.

Bonni: [00:05:59] Oh my gosh.

Maria: [00:06:00] In that nine years, we have gone from it just in the United States, from zero use of smartphones to 270 million smart phone users in the United States. That’s almost the full population of the United States. And if you break that down by demographics, if you look at that 18 to 29 demographics it’s 94 percent of that population has a smartphone in their hand and 100 percent has a cell phone in their hand. But that smartphone penetration rate is incredible because now you no longer have to go find your desktop to search for information. Where do you search for information? At your fingertips. And that is a profound difference.

Maria: [00:06:52] And so now if I need a piece of information I pull out the thing at my fingertips and look for it. It’s important to know what to search for. It’s important to know if the information you’re getting is high quality or not, but we’re no longer in information sparse environment. And I think that that should really change things in how we teach what we teach and the depth to which we teach it.

Maria: [00:07:21] So what I’ve created here is a lens that you can put your learning objectives through in order to ask yourself the question, in the world we now live in, not the world of 30 years ago, not the world at 15 years ago, but in the world we live in today, how deeply does a student need to know this? I’m not talking about the define, apply, create kind of deeply. I’m talking about how much of the information that goes with that learning objective needs to be memorized versus known it exists.

Maria: [00:07:56] So for example, I’m just going to use a math example because it’s a fairly simple one probably at some point everybody learned how to solve a quadratic equation. That is an equation with an X squared in it. And there’s essentially four levels that you could learn that. You could learn to solve a quadratic equation by completing the square. You could learn to solve a quadratic question by factoring. You could learn to solve a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula. Or you could learn to solve a quadratic equation using technology.

Maria: [00:08:27] Now solving a quadratic equation using technology was not an option 30 years ago unless you had access to a mainframe computer. But to do that with technology today means my students take out their phone, they graph the equation, and they touch the two zeros at the graph. It takes about 20 seconds. To solve a quadratic equation by completing the square, the first one I talked about, means doing a lot of algebraic work on a piece of paper. It probably takes about five minutes and about 50 percent of the time they do it wrong. And so that begs the question if we can do it with a technology that is at 94 percent of their fingertips, why would we keep doing it in a way that are likely going to be wrong 50 percent of the time and that they’re not going to remember to the next term.

Maria: [00:09:21] And what’s interesting is that I taught this type of thing ten years ago, we would spend 95 percent of the time killing the students with the algebra.

Bonni: [00:09:30] Yeah.

Maria: [00:09:31] And 5 percent of the time trying to get them to understand it in any kind of real world context, we can actually reverse that.

Bonni: [00:09:37] Yeah. I think that people say “oh but I want them to calculate every little thing of the standard deviation because I don’t want them to go to the shortcut of doing it in excel,” because they really want them to understand it but they’re really not understanding it.

Maria: [00:09:51] That is the thing that’s so absurd. Doing the actual like this is like very heretical for me to say as a math professor but doing all of that procedural algebraic calculation kind of stuff does not lead to understanding of how to apply and use the mathematics, it’s actually practicing how to apply and use the mathematics that leads to understanding how to apply and use mathematics. It’s a misnomer I think that going through all of this extra work leads to the result we think it leads to. If you ask any math teacher how many other students can tell whether answers are reasonable right now they’ll say “oh they’re horrible at it” and that’s doing it with the algebra. Right. So maybe it’s time to switch.

Maria: [00:10:39] And let me give you a completely opposite example here. I’m guessing that you are a pretty good speaker and writer, is that fair?

Bonni: [00:10:48] [hesitating] I can hold my own. Sure.

Maria: [00:10:51] How many comma rules are there, Bonni?

Bonni: [00:10:53] Oh I have no idea.

Maria: [00:10:54] Could you name any of them?

Bonni: [00:10:56] No. Actually I can! Just one.

Maria: [00:10:59] Name one, the main one.

Bonni: [00:11:00] The… Oxford Comma, yes.

Maria: [00:11:03] Right. Because there have been Internet memes around it, right? .

Bonni: [00:11:05] Because it’s made me laugh on many many many occasions. Yes.

Maria: [00:11:09] Now what if I told you that there was no way you could be a good writer or speaker without understanding the seven comma rules that exist and how to categorize sentences based on those comma rules. What would you tell me? That’s absurd, right?

Bonni: [00:11:23] Yeah.

Maria: [00:11:24] That’s absurd. You don’t need that to be able to speak and write. And I think that’s kind of what we’ve done and a lot of subjects. In math, we’ve said you have to know all of this procedural algebra to actually understand what to do with math. And in a lot of subjects we say you need to memorize every fact yourself to understand the subject. And I just don’t think that in the world we live in today where the technology is now and again remember that shift, I don’t have to go find a textbook, I don’t have to go find my professors notes, literally at my fingertips.

Maria: [00:11:59] If I need a piece of information, I can get it if I really needed to complete the square in a class five semesters from now when I don’t even remember having been taught it in the first place, I could go to youtube and type in “completing the square” and I would be delivered a tutorial about how to do it. Too much we’re still assuming that students need to know 100 percent of everything cold. And what that does is it creates barriers to success for a lot of students for topics they actually don’t need to know that well anymore.

Bonni: [00:12:36] It would be like me saying Bonni, you can’t be a professor unless you know those seven comma rules you wouldn’t have graduated without it. So in the math world we see students who want to be a nurse and because they can’t complete the square accurately on a test, they fail math right. I mean there’s more to it than that, there’s like polynomial long division and all sorts of other kind of horrid stuff we do to students that we should stop doing in my opinion.

Maria: [00:13:00] So here’s a lens that I think you have to put your learning objectives through. So at the bottom of the lens there’s “E” for existence. And that is does the learner need to know it exist? Can they find the right search for words for it later at the very least? This one you maybe would not assess, you might just demonstrate it once or reference it and you’re learning in your learning structure. But you’re just going for existence. They know it exists.

Maria: [00:13:24] The next level up is Supported. So that’s an “S”. Can a learner do this supported with help from notes, tutorials, peers? Here’s my example of completing a square. If they go to YouTube and they see a video of it on YouTube could they follow that video and reproduce it themselves? That’s supported. And I think in that case we assess it using a more low stakes kind of assessment like we give them a homework assignment, a project, a group assignment, an open notes quiz, an open internet quiz or something like that and make sure they can demonstrate that they can do the scale with support.

Maria: [00:13:58] The next level up as Independent Learning, so that’s an “I.” And that is we do want to stick the learner to do it independently without extra assistance of the Internet and we do want them to maintain that skill until the next expected refresh. Maybe it’s a prerequisite for the next class or a couple of their next classes. So an English classes is of course a prerequisite for the writing they do in their other classes. In a math course might be a requisite for a lot of science classes. And even if you’re teaching something like a government class, of course there are things you want to learner to know independently of having to go for help like the basic structure of government and how the House and Senate work things like that.

Bonni: [00:14:38] Part of that is building our critical thinking skills.

Maria: [00:14:41] Yeah.

Bonni: [00:14:42] And I can’t I can’t do that if I stayed existence all the time.

Maria: [00:14:45] Good, correct. But probably if we use the government example, probably the learner doesn’t need to know how many representatives the state of Utah has or the state of New York has, they can look that information up. They just need to know it varies based on population so again there’s a different depth of knowledge that’s necessary there.

Maria: [00:15:05] And so those are the kinds of learning objectives where you want to have multiple assessments and quizzes, exams, papers. Whatever you’re using, you want to hit it multiple times during a semester.

Maria: [00:15:16] The last level on the scale is a Lifetime Learning level so the “L” in ESIL. So it’s E for Existence, S for Supported, I for Independent, L for Lifetime. And the lifetime level, you want them to know it not just to get them to the next class where they get a refresh, we want them to know it, know it like forever know it. In which case you not only want multiple assessments, but you probably want to know make sure that it’s cumulative through the semester a cumulative assessment at the end and that it scaffolds in your program so that you don’t just teach it in this class, you teach it in many many classes throughout the degree program so that it is a lifetime skill upon leaving the program.

Maria: [00:15:58] And that is going to vary depending on the major and depending on the career. But I do think we need to start looking at our learning objectives through this lens because we are still teaching a lot of stuff in the way we learned it 30 years ago. “That’s the way I learned it, so that’s why they should learn it.” No the world has changed. We have technology at our fingertips. And the amount of information in the world has been multiplied by like at least a hundred. So whatever you used to need to know for an immunology class like my class back in 90s whatever it was I took it I won’t give away my age completely, but that amount of information for that class is probably a hundred times more than it used to be. And you can’t expect a student to memorize it all. You have to decide, you have to put your stake in the ground on like “okay what is important for them to walk away independently knowing in this course and what can they do supported by the Internet?” Because there’s no way we can do it all anymore. There’s just too much.

Bonni: [00:17:03] You talked about scaffolding. And that is something that I just see so many times not done well. We think about just our classes in isolation, and it’s so critical to supporting the learning. I just don’t see enough evidence of these kinds of conversations because the one you and I are having, this is something we should be having all of the time. And one other thing I wanted to say is if you’re going to teach someone that these kinds of lifetime knowledge and skills, show them what it looks like. Yes. Give examples that are in different contexts. Yes. But also show them what it doesn’t look like and that’s something that a wonderful instructional designer, he’s professor emeritus at Utah State. And David Merrill is his name. And his model when you’re doing demonstration, which is not what we’d necessarily think of a like step one, step two but you’re walking people through things show them what it looks like, show them different contexts, yes. But also show them what it doesn’t look like. It’s not this and it’s not this and it’s not that. And that’s something that I have found helpful in teaching. Because often I’ll catch myself making a mistake. And that’s often because I showed them what it is and then I show them a different context but I forgot about that. Show them what it doesn’t look like.

Maria: [00:18:14] Well I think too often when we design curriculum we design it by topics and by the resource we use, like a textbook. But that’s not actually- if you want to get at this independent and lifetime level of skill you have to have that scaffolding you talked about. And that means you don’t design by the topic. You will still teach by topics- we should design by the larger level skills you want out of the students.

Maria: [00:18:42] So for example, if you want students to be able to judge an answer based on reasonability then that needs to be one of the goals of the course and you need to actually teach that skill multiple times in the course. You can’t just assume they will leave the course knowing reasonability because you taught the procedural algebra. It doesn’t doesn’t work that way. You have to not only demonstrate it, have them practice with it, assess them on can you tell if this answer is reasonable or not. I mean there’s a whole structure that goes into place for that to actually be skills students leave the course with. And so that’s I think super important as setting up what you believe to be the course learning objectives or the competencies for the courses typically maybe five to seven of those in a course and maybe 5 to 10 depending on the course. But those are not topics, those are skills. A topic would be something like parabolas, going back to a quadratic equation. But a skill would be something like interpreting the key features of graphs and relating those graphs to the math of their equations, that’s a skill and that’s taught across all topics.

Maria: [00:19:54] And I think too often we’ve fallen into the habit of basing our curriculum on some resource which is organized by topics and not on the skills we actually want. So now when I’m designing curriculum I put things through actually two kind of lenses.

Maria: [00:20:10] One lens is what are the competencies I actually want students to leave the class with? So it’s my first critical lens I look at the learning objects through. And then the second is this ESIL scale, how deeply do they need to know it? And what I’m really aiming at is I want them, my large assessment’s, my high stakes assessments are aimed at the Independent and Lifelong Lifearning levels and everything else doesn’t need to have a high stakes assessment.

Maria: [00:20:39] So it is actually this matrix of assessment where some of the assessment is lower stakes, yet I still need to teach them some of this algebra. But it doesn’t need to be a high stakes test. They need to practice it. Yes. They need to be able to demonstrate they can do it. They need to know what the search words are for it, but they don’t need to fail the class over not knowing an ancient algebra technique. And I say ancient because you find a lot of these techniques in textbooks from the 1800s. So they really are fairly ancient. And I question why we do this. But it’s not just math that does this, lots of subjects have this issue where there’s still the need for the history teacher to have the students memorize dates or still a need for the engineering professor to walk students through proofs that use some of these ancient algebraic techniques even though in the real world you would never use them because real world numbers don’t- You can’t use these techniques on real world numbers. Anyways, it’s just a really- we need to pay a lot more attention to a curriculum that’s all I can say.

Bonni: [00:21:45] You’ve got an example of the quadratic equation as it relates to ESIL. Do you want to walk us through? So this would be one of you would typically see this learning outcome and what kind of a course?

Maria: [00:22:00] Probably like a college algebra course or an intermediate algebra course or free calculus course of some kind.

Bonni: [00:22:05] Sure. You’re going in, you’re seeing that there and you’re going ah, I need you to put this one that I see is so often out there through this lens. Walk us through what that might look like.

Maria: [00:22:13] So for me, solving a quarter of equation using technology that’s absolutely a lifetime skill. And that’s because they should be able to solve any equation using technology forever. They can do it right from their phone. There’s apps you can use. I teach them how to do that. They could graph them, they can look at them and know what the solutions mean they know how to apply them they know what the graphs look like cold. So they should be able to do it with technology, lifetime skill, high stakes all that.

Maria: [00:22:39] The next one down for me is solving a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula which is good in a pinch. If you have to show algebra because it always works, it works 100 percent of the time. And so that one to me is more like an independent learning. Like okay you might need it for some other class you take in science where somebody demands that you solve it without using technology. So if someone is going to demand you solve it without using technology, I might as well teach you the technique that will always work.

Maria: [00:23:04] Then we go down to solving an equation by factoring. Now this to me is a supported example. We spend a god awful amount of students lives teaching them how to factor but in real world problems with decimal coefficients factoring does not work and most of the world has decimal coefficients, decimal numbers in the math. So to me, this is something that we touch on it. We actually backwords engineer this one a lot of the time so they look at the graph and figure out what the factoring must have been rather than learning the techniques for factoring. So they can put the pieces together, they can go look at help to get the factoring. But to me this is a supported skill. Now that’s at my school. At your school, it might be different. Right. And that’s why you have to put it through the lens of your own context. But for this class level and for for what I teach, it’s supported. So I’m not going to put it up. They don’t have to factor in a high stakes exam. They have to be able to solve, but they can solve with technology, they can solve with the quadratic formula. They don’t have to be able to factor to do it. They can demonstrate if they want as something they know. But I’m not going to fail them over this one.

Maria: [00:24:14] And then the last one is solving a quadratic equation by completing the square. And honestly the use of this is to find a vertex and I can find a vertex in 20 seconds or less using technology. And for me to require them to do this the only reason is because it might appear in some other textbook or it might appear in a calculus class. And like 98% of my students are not going to calculus. So it’s something where I’m going to make sure they know that it exists. This is a technique, I might demonstrate it. They know the words, but they don’t need to be able to actually do it. I will assume that if they need to do it three classes from now, they can look it up on YouTube which is exactly what they would do if I taught it to them right now because they wouldn’t remember it three classes for now.

Maria: [00:24:59] And so that’s how I put it through those lenses. I change the structure of the way I teach it. And what this does is it frees up a lot of time because all of that algebraic manipulation, all that memorization that people make students do, it’s eating away at the time that would give you the chance to spend more time on context and spend more time on application.

Maria: [00:25:22] And so we have that time now in class. I actually of the time in class now to spend 10 to 15 minutes at the beginning of every class walking through graphs we’ve seen in the news that week. Whether they exactly match the topic of the day or not. Which also gives us the ability to go back and talk about our older topics like OK this graph is not what we’re studying right now but it is something we have studied or will study in the future. So let’s talk about it. I couldn’t have made room for that stuff if I still had to spend hours and hours of class time on these older techniques that you have at your fingertips now.

Bonni: [00:26:00] Oh yeah. So if people want to find out more about this lens and they want to start putting some of their learning outcomes learning objectives through the lens, where can they find more information?

Maria: [00:26:11] So I’ll give you the link to my blog about the ESIL Lens. So all the information is there and it’s it’s a real paradigm shift. The world has shifted.

Bonni: [00:26:22] So those notes will be at teachinginhighered.com/234. And I hope to hear from some of you I know Maria would love that too just to hear how you’re wrestling through this. Maria mentioned that one of the things she does, one of the many many hats she wears is as a business owner and so this is what she does for institutions that want to think through this stuff too. And so I’m just excited to hear from people as they start to do that because I think all of us being very honest with ourselves are going to find that we will wrestle and we should wrestle and we’ve probably been looking at things with missing- like I said in the beginning, missing this lens but not knowing even what it was we were looking for so I’m so excited thank you so much for this gift you’ve given to us educators.

Maria: [00:27:05] Thanks for the opportunity to share it.

Bonni: [00:27:06] This is the point in the show where we each get to give recommendations and Maria when you were talking I just added one to my list. I hardly ever do this but you were talking about using charts that were in the news and this is something that in so many disciplines we can do. And one tool that is the best one I’ve ever seen to do exactly what you just said in a bunch of different disciplines is called Statista. And so you should see if you’re yeah see if your library subscribes to it I know it’s a very popular site but they have- I’m in the discipline of business and they have lots of ones for us in the business world. I’ve seen ones in sociology that would look at big subjects like poverty and things like that. So I mean you can find lots of data. And what’s really neat about it is they do have like the chart of the day or whatever in a given topic. They also have reports and things and then they also just have charts. And I like using it because I I’m I’m sort of interested in playing around with ESIL in terms of knowing about different types of charts. But then also being able to download it to your computer and if you were looking at poverty rates in such and such a community you could even add external data to one of the Statista charts right inside of PowerPoint or a similar charting type of tool and so it’s really neat. I’d go in there and start playing around and see what kinds of charts and graphs and reports and data they might have around your discipline. And since you said you know it, do you want to mention anything before I get my next couple of ones?

Maria: [00:28:33] Well yeah. So I just say that at the very least subscribe to their newsletter because it comes out every day. There’s a chart every day that they send. It’s really it’s always timely and related to the news. So I love that. I just started an Instagram page called Graphs in the World and it pulls some resources from from there from the New York Times, from the Economist like I monitor a whole bunch of different sites for graphs.

Bonni: [00:28:59] Oh wow.

Maria: [00:28:59] I wanted a way to share those graphs with my students and it turns out that students don’t actually really know. And as soon as I said well what if you could do it on Instagram they all pull out their phones like OK what’s the account name. So in order to make sure that there’s something that stays in my students lives long after the class is over, I created that Instagram account so that they could start following them.

Bonni: [00:29:21] Oh I’ll definitely put that in the shows too. Thank you so much. And then the next one that I did plan on talking about is I’ve mentioned before it was actually Brian Dewsbury who recommended to all of us on an earlier episode the Scene on Radio podcast and he was talking about their first season which was called Seeing White and it was a really powerful look at race. Their second season is on men and the last part of that series is called The Juggernaut. It’s part 10 and it is writer Ben James and his wife Una are raising their sons in a progressive and queer friendly New England town. They actively encourage the boys to be themselves. Never mind those traditional gender norms around masculinity and femininity. All was well until the elder son Huck went to sixth grade. And oh my goodness. I listen to it when I was apart from my family on a trip to a conference recently and I just wanted to- my husband has since listened to it but I wanted to come home and just to hug our son. Oh my gosh because you know you can have these values in your family and want your children to express themselves and not let the world mess them up. Then they go into the world and they encounter different things and it just was such a reminder of how hard it can be to be a boy. And especially growing up. And oh it was really hard when to listen to because I felt such empathy for this young man and the young man is just a delight to listen to and hear how he’s taken in the world and the dad is just yearning to be a great dad and to not you know project things onto the son that he wouldn’t otherwise. It’s just a really great story. And there’s such great storytellers anyway it’s engaging from beginning to end. But I felt like it challenges all of us thoughts about just young men, young women. It’s just a powerful thing.

Bonni: [00:31:20] And then the other thing I wanted to recommend. I’m laughing because I’m not alone on this one. The book by Michelle Obama that she just put out called Becoming is a absolute delight. And there are so many things that resonated with me. I knew I would enjoy it but I didn’t necessarily feel like every page I was going to connect as much as I actually did because- someone said this on the podcast I was listening to about it, she is able to write in such a way. I mean she is married to the President of the United States but yet she’s able to write as such an independent voice. And one quick example is- and this is I’m not like spoiling my husband because they don’t tell me what happens at the end. I’m like ok I’ll hold back.

Maria: [00:32:04] But she’s talking about how she used to get mad because Barack wouldn’t get home on time, that she’d be preparing dinner and he wouldn’t be back on time and this is when he’s early in his politics and stuff and she would get so ticked off and then she realizes like I just love how she phrases she says no when he says I’m coming home, what he really means as I am intending on coming home and intending it might mean but I’m going to have one 45 minute conversation before I leave the office and instead of being mad about that all the time, she is just no longer mad, just dinners happening when dinner is happening. And so if you’re there that’s great we’ll love to have you. But we’re not going to wait for you. And then the same thing with getting the girls off to bed. That’s really important with young children that get enough sleep and so bedtime was going to be 7:30 in their house whether he was there or not. And again it wasn’t angry, it wasn’t controlling she was able to release all the anger and just set up things that worked for their family and no more resentment.

Bonni: [00:33:02] It was just one tiny tiny example it’s a wonderful book encourage people to pick it up and since bazillions of people already have I know I’m not alone in with him. It’s a really really good read. So Maria, what do you have to share in your recommendations.

Maria: [00:33:16] It’s not as educationally minded I’m afraid. But knowing your love for all things Mac.

Bonni: [00:33:22] Yes.

Maria: [00:33:22] I recommend the Fuse Reel Cord Holder, it’s little kind of start up company and they make this- you know that big boxy part of the Mac cord, it actually sits in the middle of a circular device and you can wind the device to pull your cord in and just pull on the two ends of the court to let the court out and it’s all like one nice little package you can throw in your bag. It works pretty well. It’s just delightful delightful to not have the cord just all over the place all the time and it seems to be preserving my cord better having a place for it.

Bonni: [00:34:01] It reminded me a little bit of the things that people used to hold their hoses.

Maria: [00:34:06] Yeah like a real that’s a good description.

Bonni: [00:34:09] It looks really cool.

Maria: [00:34:11] Yeah but it works great.

Bonni: [00:34:14] Maria, thank you so much for coming back on Teaching in Higher Ed I said this to you last time that I hoped that wasn’t the last time. And I also hope today isn’t the last time too, you have so many wonderful resources to bring us from running your business and designing courses for other institutions and also teaching yourself. You just bring so much to the community and just really appreciate your time today.

Maria: [00:34:34] Well thanks so much, Bonni. It’s great being here and talking with you.

Bonni: [00:34:40] Maria Anderson that was so great having you back on Teaching in Higher Ed. And we hope you come back soon. Thank you so much for sharing about that ESIL scale and all the other recommendations that you made. I’m looking forward to seeing that Graphs in the World and following it and seeing it grow and the Fuse Reel Cord Holder, so much good stuff.

Bonni: [00:35:02] And to anyone listening who has yet to sign up for our weekly e-mail list you can get all the stuff coming in with a single e-mail into your inbox each week or should I say most weeks you can subscribe at teachinginhighered.com/ subscribe. Would love to be able to send you those resources as the show notes come out. And I also typically write about once a week on either teaching or productivity. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next time.

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.