Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 239 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Michelle Pacansky-Brock shares how to become an authentic online teacher.

Production Credit: [00:00:14] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:23] 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 am welcoming to the show Dr. Michelle Pacansky-Brock. She is a noted leader in higher education with expertise in online teaching, course design, and professional development. Michelle’s work has helped online instructors across the nation and beyond understand how to craft relevant, humanized online learning experiences that support the diverse needs of college students. Michelle is the author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, has received national recognition for her excellence in teaching and has held various leadership roles with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC). Currently, Michelle is Faculty Mentor, Digital Innovation with the California Community College system. She coordinates equitable professional development programs to support faculty and staff to learn and grow without the requirement of being on campus. As part of the California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initative-Online Networ of Educators, her work contributes to supporting 114 colleges, 90000 faculty and staff, and 2.1 million students. Learn more about Michelle at brocansky.com and connect with her on Twitter @brocansky. Michelle, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Michelle: [00:02:15] Hey there Bonni, thanks for having me.

Bonni: [00:02:18] This might seem like an overreach, but I feel like I’m talking to an old friend even though we’ve only met once in person but I just feel this kinship with you connecting first through Twitter. It’s funny because I don’t even think of your last name as your last name, I think of you as Brocansky. That’s where my brain starts and then I have to back into your real last name before I actually get there.

Bonni: [00:02:39] Says a lot about the power of having a digital identity. And I feel a kinship with you too. When I saw you present in person for the first time, I could feel what you were going through. I think we had a conversation right afterwards where you were saying “I need a minute.” Like you were saying you’re so emotionally drained, and I just I think we have a connection in that way that we give a lot to what we share. And we also have last names that are really hard to pronounce.

Bonni: [00:03:05] We do have that. Someone who is your friend kept saying you two are so similar. It was fun to connect in person and then also to just have so much empathy I think for what we try to do, such a sense of significance in the work that we do but yeah it does take a lot- usually I try to have a few minutes by myself before I ever start to speak and then afterward, I feel like a mess, I want to go hide. But it’s usually rude to go hide. But that is my general desire, but I usually overcome it because that’s considered rude to runaway to the bathroom or something.

Michelle: [00:03:38] I totally get that.

Bonni: [00:03:41] Well we wanted to sort of do a little look back in time. And we’re going to be exploring what it takes to become an authentic online teacher. But I know first we want to look at some of the things that get in the way. I know for you, this is tied to your history in teaching online as well. You want to us back?

Michelle: [00:03:59] Yeah. So I started teaching full time in 2002 at a community college and then around 2003, I taught my first online class and I had this vision that it was going to make my life easier because I had an infant and a toddler and I thought oh that sounds so wonderful to teach a class online. And I had always been very intrigued and engaged in technology. I grew up in Silicon Valley. My dad had a home office when I was a kid and I would hear the squelch of the modem at night. He worked on a mainframe. And so technology has always been a part of my life. I was teaching art appreciation and art history courses and so I jumped into the opportunity to teach art appreciation online. And I did take the training program at my college at the time that really was more about using the LMS and that sort of thing. And when I got that shell, that empty shell which looking back on it, it was such a harrowing experience because all I could think was what do I do with this thing? And how do I create something for my students to be sure that my students are going to learn?

Michelle: [00:05:13] And ultimately what it was doing was I was teaching in learning management system, which at the time was Blackboard, with no images. I mean this was back for Google. This was back before digital images kind of had evolved. And I would do something like, I was using discussions to foster student to student interaction. So you think oh, you were doing it right. But my discussions looked like I would tell my students to take out their book, their $110 book that they were expected to buy, open it to page whatever, look at this image, then come back to the discussion and answer the question.

Michelle: [00:05:53] Now if you think about the way learning happens in an art history like classroom, you’ve got the image at the center of the room, the room is dark and it’s all about looking and talking. So when you’re having really meaningful interactions in a classroom, it’s all anchored around the image and engaging with the image. So what I was doing, I knew was ridiculous, but I wanted to ignore that. I really wanted to just push that down and not recognize it. And I think that that’s one of the things that really gets in the way with becoming an authentic online teacher is that it really comes back to the simple thing that we like to forget, that we are human being.s We are people and people by nature don’t like to recognize our faults. We don’t like to kind of dig into that messy stuff. And especially when we’re in this academic arena, we’re supposed to be the holders of of knowledge.

Michelle: [00:06:51] And then in addition to that, online teaching is different because I had never seen an online class. I had never had a great online teacher. I didn’t know what that looks like. And I didn’t know how to become that myself. So those are the things that really got in the way. I mean the technology is a barrier, but there’s so much more than that. There’s so much more about our own kind stories that we hold in our mind, and the way we pivot and navigate. And just kind of the fear of going to an unknown place and risking emotional exposure, becoming vulnerable, taking a risk. So those are the things that for me really got in the way.

Bonni: [00:07:33] Take us to 2006 to an experience that changed everything.

Michelle: [00:07:38] Yes. 2006 was a very formative year for me and it took me a long time to really reflect on it and understand it. And I think I still am doing that. But in 2006 I had a major open heart surgery. I was 34 at the time and I had a 3 year old and a 5 year old and a very supportive husband. And I did not expect to have open heart surgery that year. I’ll stay out of that whole story. But really what happened was the surgery was in January and so I took a whole semester off of teaching, which was a huge privilege looking back because what it really forced me to do was to get out of my day today very, very, very, very busy life of managing teaching and being a mom. I’m sure you get that Bonni, there’s no room for much else.

Michelle: [00:08:42] And so I was forced to just lay down and not do anything. And then as I started being able to come back a little bit, become physically active and move around, I found myself engaging with these new things out there called podcasts. This was the first podcast wave. We are kind of like a second podcast wait now or maybe the third, but the first time I ever heard what a podcast was, it was the first time I’d ever heard of what a blog was. We’re still talking pre-Facebook, we’re still talking pre-YouTube. But just this idea that I could be in my house and listen to conversations between other people, other educators, and most of them at that time were K12, they were K12 teachers that were doing some really amazing creative things and also using these new technologies that are coming out, using blogs in their teaching, using podcasts in their teaching.

Michelle: [00:09:42] And that to me just sparked something in me. And it really made me go to this very reflective place of my teaching and try to lay it on top of what I was doing. I can remember a couple of other takeaways after that experience. I remember sitting in my office with a student who had earbuds in. This was before iPhones, but when iPods were popular. That’s what we started seeing like an earbud in the ear while people are talking. It was such a disturbance to me initially, like I would think “oh how rude, what is this person doing?” And then I remember thinking “oh that could be that could be me that they’re listening to.”.

Michelle: [00:10:23] And so I started to kind of contextualize those things differently. And that’s also when I found a blog post written by an art historian named Beth Harris, who has done amazing things with her work. She is one of the co-creators of Smart History and now she’s part of the Khan Academy. But she wrote a blog post about this tool called Voice Thread and I remember reading that blog post and looking at this tool called Voice Threat and it’s a visually centric online environment, you uploaded image or any kind of media and you have conversations around it. You can use your mouse to draw the image and I’m thinking, my mind was blown. That was the online art history piece that I had been missing. And so I started using that in my classes and it changed everything. It changed more than I expected it to change.

Michelle: [00:11:18] As I peel away the layers of what I just shared, I think having that time to reflect- which I know that most educators don’t have that time. It’s a real privilege. It’s being able to find faculty or other educators to share and see what they’re doing, or listen to what they’re doing, which is what I think your podcast is great for. And also experimenting, and trying new things, and doing continuous surveys with my students, check ins. How did this go? Or how was this experience? Just very open ended questions and seeing what comes to the surface. I learned so much and I think everything that I did in my teaching was always guided by my students feedback.

Michelle: [00:12:05] And so I began to understand that student feedback was critical to me becoming authentic. And I think that’s another barrier that a lot of educators have, is they kind of get afraid that, “if I ask them that, it’s going to be all bad stuff that I’m going to learn.” And there will be some of it and by human nature, we remember the bad stuff more than the good stuff. But there’s such a rich array of data that the students can share with us if we let them in.

Bonni: [00:12:34] You couldn’t have predicted this, but your story was very healing to me from a recent experience that I had. I had been asked by the Chronicle to share about an experience that really transformed my teaching and I went with the authentic answer which I share in the article that they posted. I shared about becoming pregnant in my early 40s and it was a high risk pregnancy and there had been losses along the way and lots of hardships and so it was I better be really aware of my body and how I’m carrying it and literally carrying a child.

[00:13:11] But but then when was the last time I ate? Am I breathing? How am I sitting and carrying myself? And it mellowed me out. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t had a similar experience, but it really just completely made me more empathetic. I think it just- everything is not about my class. Everyone and everything is not going to be “on” 100 percent. That is not a kind of energy that any class any professor should ever expect themselves to sustain, let alone other people who have so many other things going on in their complex lives. But I was horrified when the story went out because there’s all these other amazing educators I’m just totally intimidated by my picture being up there with these greats that are famous worldwide people. And I was like “oh gosh they all told stories about students that had changed their lives. I hope I don’t sound like a narcissist.”.

Bonni: [00:14:08] But I mean as you’re telling the story, things that happen very personal in our lives really can change our teaching. I just felt better like it doesn’t have to be a story about- I mean tons and tons and tons of students have of course changed my life- but that really is that thing that just transformed the way that I teach even including today. And I think it helps.

Michelle: [00:14:28] I’m sure your story touched so many people. Know that. That’s so important. Thanks for sharing that with me. I think that gets in the way of teaching too because we know that it’s all about connection in the classroom. So whether you are teaching in the classroom or online, it’s about connection, it’s about human connection. And if you were to share that story with your students, they would connect with you because they see you as a real person.

Bonni: [00:14:56] Oh yeah and they did. Yeah.

Michelle: [00:14:58] Yeah. And oftentimes as educators, as instructors, professors, teachers, whatever we want to call ourselves, we think we have to shut that out. We think we have to be professional and there’s a difference between personal and private and when we open up some of the personal and let our students in to some of the personal parts of our our lives and experience, it just helps them to understand that. You’re a person just like they are, we’re all just people. That’s all we are.

Bonni: [00:15:29] There’s also the whole what I just envision as completely downshifting. You’re like going 80 miles an hour on the freeway and all of a sudden you’re in first gear and you’re kind of not used to this yet. But because with your surgery, you literally lay down, heal, rest. And that was not what your life looked like before that.

Bonni: [00:15:52] And I think it helps us carve out spaces. I’m not tremendously great at it, but I do treasure the importance of that carving out. One of the books that’s been recommended on the show before is The Slow Professor. A couple of people have recommended it, I have those authors on. But just that whole idea of slowing ourselves down, giving ourselves time for reflection, and that that’s great modeling to do for our students. We know how important metacognition is for them, why do we not think it’s important for us?

Michelle: [00:16:19] Completely. Yeah and that’s what my practice now is yoga and pilates. That’s my thing. And when I don’t do it- the month before where we are now was all travel. I traveled so much and I can feel it inside me now that I need to get back to that. It is, it’s a practice and it’s hard to make time for that. So yeah I totally, completely agree.

Bonni: [00:16:42] Well let’s spend a few minutes then talking a little bit about then the things that help. You’ve shared a little bit about that, but let’s go a little deeper into the kinds of things that help us become more authentic as an online teacher.

Michelle: [00:16:56] Yeah I think in addition to the things that I just said, I want to just connect with some of the work that I’m doing now. I’ve transitioned professionally into a faculty or a professional development role, which I really really enjoy. And it took me a long time to, I felt guilty for not teaching. Not that I won’t ever teach again. But I I really do feel like I’m in a good place now.

Michelle: [00:17:20] Looking back at what has helped me, I carry that into my work now. So the team that I work on, it’s an amazing team and we support professional development across all 114 California Community Colleges, which has 60,000 faculty 30,000 staff and administrators. What we try to do is create ways for those water cooler moments that are so powerful when when two people come together and share something that they’re doing. We are now creating online spaces for that to happen. Like blogs. We have a blog that we have where we invite faculty and staff to just share what they’re doing on the blog, through writing or through video, or I will meet up with instructors in Zoom and just record like a ten minute video of them talking about one thing they’re doing in their class.

Michelle: [00:18:16] And then the screen share because we need to see those classes. And we need to see what they look like. And those are the things that I think really really help a lot. It’s just creating opportunities and places and environments for faculty to share and show what they’re doing.

Bonni: [00:18:37] So many of institutions I’m aware of have it where at their in person classes they might have a week where you’re invited to sign up to sit in some of these great educator’s classes. But we see less of that in the online environment probably because it’s newer. But I was laughing when you shared that with me earlier because I have a series- it’s 3 videos so far but you got to start somewhere. But it’s “show us your course” and I kind of treat it like a little behind the scenes tour.

Bonni: [00:19:05] But that really when we moved over to canvas as a new learning management system a couple of years back. How else are you going to figure out what those course shelves should look like? And at the time, we were so, myself very much included, interested in the pretty ones and well are you really going to learn div codes and responsive things. It’s like well we’re actually finding out more it’s more about the usability than it is the how pretty does it look.

Bonni: [00:19:33] And one quick thing about Canvas, by the way, they really figured out on Canvas through a bunch of research they did that the students are just paying all attention to whatever’s on their home page. Myself very much included would be like designing this amazing course with all these things you could walk through week by week and they’re never seen in that stuff. They see what’s on their home page. They see what’s due across all of their courses. And so I teach both in Blackboard and in Canvas and I and I now just take the learning from what both of these organizations are learning about effective teaching and I really have now just gotten everything to how can I break this down into a small enough component that someone could do this in a small enough period of time. But so don’t break it down to match not a five minute thing but like a 15 or 20 minute thing and then have enough of that showing up on their home page that they’ll do something about it. And Canvas by the way just completely transformed their home page too where we can even just add to do’s to students home pages things. So I’m laughing so hard. Sorry Canvas and Instructure that I’m not using very good vocabulary for your product, but I don’t even have to know what it’s called I just know “hey I want them to watch this video so I’m going to add this to their to do list.” And then blackboard if I don’t have that, I’m going to make the same thing where it’s like a to do so they can check and make sure they know what to do.

Michelle: [00:20:53] Yeah. One of the courses that my team offers, because we also have four four week online courses and we’re moving towards some one week online courses also and they’re offered at a very low cost. But one of them is called humanizing online teaching and learning which is the course that I designed. And so much of it comes from my own experiences and my own teaching. But now it’s being facilitated by my peers. It’s a really beautiful thing to see how they adapt it. And so we’ve got this really short video on the home page it’s it’s co-taught by two facilitators and they’ll come together and record separately in different parts of California but they’ll merge them together in one video so it is these two heads and they’re pretending to look at each other as the other one is talking.

Bonni: [00:21:38] I love that.

Michelle: [00:21:40] It basically just says “Welcome to our class” and they say in unison and then they tell the participants where to click to get started. And it’s just a super quick- educators rarley think about using video in that way. It’s like videos are hour long lectures so we need to unpack that by modeling those things and feeling how they help us, how they do help us feel more comfortable and kind of ease that anxiety that one feels entering a class can be really powerful.

Bonni: [00:22:11] You just totally sparked my creativity and that came from me making a mistake. So I’ve been filming some panels on culturally responsive teaching with my colleagues and I did it the first time and the video turned out great. And in Zoom, which is what Michelle and I are talking on today and also what I recorded these videos on. It’s we will know who’s talking. And so it’s like having a two camera shoot but you’re not shooting with any cameras besides webcams and so the most recent person who talking is gets big on the screen and I can see everybody else up at the top. But that doesn’t get filmed so I see it while we’re recording, but the video doesn’t turn out that way. So then the next time I went to record and I said “Oh yeah I know that you all can see each other but it doesn’t show up that way, it’ll just be the big video.” And lo and behold if you don’t have your speaker views that the correct way when you go to record in Zoom, it’s going to record like Brady Bunch style. It’s a Doug McKee reference who talks about that as the Brady Bunch and if you don’t know a Brady Bunch as we got to really get back to some good 1970s television watching. But I love this. The two heads pretending they’re looking at each other but then I was like wow what if you got nine people on the Zoom. Because you really could do that if you- as the recorder you’d have to tell the person like they’d have to write on a piece of paper where everybody else on the session was so they’d look at the right person. You have my creative juices sparked right now.

Michelle: [00:23:38] And I’ve done that before with recording not in speaker view. I’ve learned that lesson too. So I totally know what you mean.

Bonni: [00:23:48] I’m all telling them “oh you’re not on film right now.” They totally were.

Michelle: [00:23:54] That’s funny. Yeah I think the other thing that my team is really recognizing now is how much face to face professional development can be a barrier for so many people. Especially those who teach part time. And in our system, we have 60,000 and 70 percent of them are part time. And we know that many of them, I don’t know how many, but many of them teach at multiple colleges in our system. So when there’s a there’s a workshop on campus, they probably don’t know about it and even if they did and wanted to be there, often are not able to. That’s true for full time faculty also. I don’t mean to leave them out of the equation.

Michelle: [00:24:40] So trying to create opportunities that are untethered, which goes back to my term I started using it my previous role at CSU Channel Islands where I worked before my current role. We are experimenting with free online one day conferences and we did one in October of 2018 called Can Innovate and it was an opportunity to- we put out a call for proposals and basically just accepted folks who wanted to share how they’re using Canvas to support student success. And it was a really dynamic day. We had 29 sessions and 19 speakers. And at the end of the day, we had 1,131 people who attended. And on average they attended like 3 point something sessions.

Michelle: [00:25:29] So just that ability to attend from anywhere about 88 percent of those folks attended online and the rest of the attendees joined in from campuses up and down the state in group viewing rooms. So trying to foster that culture of learning from anywhere is I think a really exciting opportunity. And also just as a faculty member who wants to learn and grow, knowing that there are lots of different ways to do that other than a formal gathering on campus. And Twitter is another great way too, I know that you and I both learn a lot through people we connect with on Twitter.

Bonni: [00:26:12] I was able to attend. I’m laughing because I think I attended 3.1 sessions. But I was able to attend and had someone with me and we actually did it from my home. Then we had a lot less likelihood of having interruptions. And it was pretty amazing because I watched it on my iPad but I put it up on the Apple TV, if that makes sense like I projected ad up on there. And then it almost made me feel like you were all in our living room. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all but just the casualness with it. But really, it was very very engaging the guy- I wish I could remember his name- but he did a session on Canvas has something called mastery paths and it’s basically like a way of differentiating the learning. One one way you can use this technology is to differentiate where if you didn’t do as well and you need some extra review, you could build it in where that person gets extra scaffolding to help them to the next concept versus if someone demonstrated they already have the mastery they did whatever assessment or quiz or whatever, then they can move on faster.

Bonni: [00:27:11] And I’d watched a bunch of sessions and I kept trying to figure it out. And I realized I was trying to jump forward. I was trying to turn it into a Choose Your Own Adventure thing before I even just learned the basics of it. But he was so clear, but also just really warm and he had examples but he didn’t jump to them too fast. He set the really big picture first. I just thought he was great. You probably remember his name.

Michelle: [00:27:32] Marvin Patton.

Bonni: [00:27:33] Yes. He’s great!

Michelle: [00:27:34] He works at Merced college. Yeah so maybe we could put the link to his archive.

Bonni: [00:27:40] Yeah. And I watched a bunch of other ones too. I think I did more than three now that I start to think about it. What a great event. Because you mentioned how many people that you support. But I don’t think you’re counting me and the countless people can go to these for free. I mean because I didn’t paid to go about session. And I think you’ve got one coming and you want to share about? Or are you going to wait until the end to share about that?

Michelle: [00:28:01] I would love to share about it now. We have this we have this wonderful keynote speaker.

Bonni: [00:28:07] She’s amazing.

Michelle: [00:28:09] Yes. On February 28, 2019 we are hosting CCC which stands for California Community College CCC Digital Learning Day. And Digital Learning Day is actually a national event that emerged from K12. And it’s a very cool concept. Basically it’s organic, it’s very grassroots, it’s like this is a day where we’re going to dig into digital learning and all that it means. And so there’s like this national map of places around the country where events are popping up for Digital Learning Day.

Michelle: [00:28:45] So we thought well let’s do it for our system. So last year we did it for the first time last February and it was a big success. And that’s we built on that for Can Innovate. And so will be our second annual Digital Learning Day and we’re looking at exploring digital literacies across the curriculum which is a really important conversation for us to have. And Bonni, we are so happy and grateful that you’ve accepted our invitation to keynote that day. So it’ll be good. We’re going to be doing some different things this time and kind of focusing on honing in on a couple of different technologies looking at how they’re being used in the classroom and also trying to build in some hands on time during the day which is a little bit different. So we’ll see how that plays out. I haven’t gotten all figured out yet. But it will be interesting

Bonni: [00:29:34] It’s back to that experimentation thing that if you’re not willing to iterate then doing the same thing is probably safer but it’s not going to take you to as unexpected of places as taking those bigger risks can.

Michelle: [00:29:49] Exactly. And with digital learning I think that’s baked into it. It’s about this curiosity and experimentation. So I do agree. I think we have to really model that and then see how it goes and learn from it and move on.

Bonni: [00:30:03] I’m thrilled that today’s episode is sponsored by Text Expander. The reason why I am is because we only take a small number of sponsors and it’s always because it’s a product or service that we are incredibly passionate about. Text Expander as I’ve mentioned many times on the podcast before is one of the first things that I install on a new computer and really is just essential to my workflow. It helps save us time in small and big ways. It can shave a few seconds off for me having to remember my work phone number that I never remember or I just type in a little what they call snippet- so I do in my case ZWK phone, as in my work phone. The Z is just to have it be a different kind of phrase than one I might accidently type and as soon as I press the spacebar, automatically there’s my work phone number. It can be something of a longer message I send out to all the podcasts guess a little bit about their recommendations segment of the show, explain what that is and rather than me having to type that fresh every single time, I can have more of the interaction that I do with those prospective guests, the real rich stuff, the stuff that is unique to each one of them and not some logistical aspect of running the show.

Bonni: [00:31:19] So we’re very thankful to Text Expander for saving us a bunch of time. I’m saying we and really it’s a lot, Dave, my husband and I were just loyal users of text to expand our inner so appreciative for their service and what it does for us at saving us time so we can be freed up to spend more time on the good stuff. And if you go to textexpander.com/podcast you can get 20 percent off your first year and be sure and mention that you heard about Text Expander on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts. There’s a little dropdown for you to do that there. Thanks again to Text Expander for sponsoring today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. And speaking of the recommendations segment, let’s hear a little bit about what Michelle and I have to recommend on today’s episode.

Bonni: [00:32:07] This is the time in this show where we get to share our recommendations and my recommendation is back to checklists. And I actually have a early episode of Teaching in Higher Ed that was entirely dedicated to checklists. I read the book called The Checklist Manifesto and just was sold from there, which I was going to recommend on today’s show and then realized I already had. So I’m not going to break my own rule and recommend something that I already have. But definitely if you haven’t read The Checklist Manifesto, it’s worth it. It’s a lot more interesting than one might think from the title.

[00:32:39] At any rate, that I found a checklist which is specific to Canvas. I promise Canvas is not a sponsor for today or I would have mentioned it by now. But they have a wonderful instructional design team and they put together a checklist for the beginning and end of a course. And even if you taught in another learning management system such as blackboard, I think this is a checklist worth looking at because it’s not so specific to canvas that it wouldn’t help you regardless of what learning management system you’re using.

Bonni: [00:33:07] And one of the things I really like about the tool is that they’ve got a page which I’m linking to in the show notes. They’ve got a page that talks about the checklist itself and how you might use it. Again it’s for beginning or end of a course. But then to access that, you click on a link and it opens up a blank google document that you can make a copy of and then will go into your own google docs. You could save it there.

Bonni: [00:33:31] So it’s just a really nice use of a template and you’re not going to go back and accidentally save over their template it’s creating a copy if you let kids create niqab copy in your google docs. I thought that was a clever way of having a tool that really gets used and gets put into my digital system versus their digital system.

Bonni: [00:33:48] So anyway, I would definitely suggest checking out this course check list again specific to Sanvas but really could be applicable to any learning management system. And I’ll tell you what. Make a checklist and then revise it every time and your life is so much easier the next time around when a course starts or when it ends. You don’t have to have the cognitive load of remembering those things or potentially forgetting them. You’ve just got your checklist and you can kind of go into manual drive. Lots of driving references on today’s podcast. Michelle, I’m going to pass it over to you for your recommendations.

Michelle: [00:34:25] Ok so I have have a whole list in front of me but I’m going to go 3. 2 are kind of tool related and then ones a book. The first tool is Adobe Spark. Bonni, do you use Adobe Spark?

Bonni: [00:34:38] I do not. I just downloaded the app the other day but I have not even played with it. This is video, yeah?

Michelle: [00:34:44] So Adobe Spark. First of all it’s free and you can use it on your computer. You can use it on your iPhone. And I heard that Android is either coming out or has come out, I’m not sure yet. But it includes 3 tools. One is video. One is post. And one is page. And they all do something different. They’re all kind of like a storytelling suite of tools. But let me start with the simplest post. Create social graphics. And when I say create social graphics, I mean it connects you with a whole repository of images and templates that’s really easily you can create like a beautiful Twitter, an image formatted specifically to fit in a Twitter post with like a quote on it or something like that. So really interesting tool that I think you could have students use to share reflections or takeaways or muddiest / clear points. Those kinds of things. And then actually you create a beautiful web page. It’s amazing in a drag and drop interface. And then the third one that has really gained a lot of traction in our system is Adobe Spark video. And I’m sharing this because humanizing online teaching is so very important, as we talked about. And I’ve found in my work with faculty that they’re often very reluctant to show their face and their videos. And Adobe spark video allows you to create a video with your voice but you pull in images and icons to create the story and so that’s an entry point that really works for a lot of instructors. So check that out.

Michelle: [00:36:17] The other one is Name Coach which is a tool that I’m sharing because of our kinship with our last names. So Name Coach is a really simple tool and it’s a tool that we have adopted within our system through the online education initiative. And it’s a very simple way for an instructor or a student to go in and simply record their name. And then it sits in Canvas, it actually sits in their profile so anyone can go and listen to how to say that person’s name. So it’s a really nice addition to equity. It also gives students the ability to select their preferred pronoun. So lots of different ways that it supports equity, so check that out.

Michelle: [00:37:00] And then my book is a book that I just finished listening to by Brene Brown, who is baked into everything that I talk about. Her work has been very transformative for me. Her most recent book is called Dare to Lead. And she’s looking at her research within the context of organizations. Brene Brown is an affective researcher and she researches shame and vulnerability. And so she’s looking at the way that shame and vulnerability impact the way that we lead and the way we kind of normalize it or push it away inside of our organizations through the conversations that we’re willing to have can really take us to a more authentic place as a leader. And as I listen to it, I thought about higher education organizations and I just kept thinking, “O my gosh. Oh my gosh. Everybody has to listen to this.” So it’s very powerful.

Bonni: [00:37:53] I just added it to my wish list for books I want to read. And I was contemplating that it might be something helpful- we haven’t done a lot around leadership development in my institution specifically for department chairs or deans or that kind of thing and I sort of think well that is my discipline. I probably could and you can’t solve all the problems but I probably could you know give a contribution and I thought that would seem like a good book to start with and just have conversations around and see where it takes us. So I’m glad you said that.

Michelle: [00:38:23] Yeah I think so I think you’ll like it. Yeah. OK. You know I have a quote by someone named Alexander Den Heijer and I don’t even know who this person is other than that he is kind of in the cells carers space, which is really important. So that loops back to what we’re talking about too. But here’s the quote: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” And I think that applies to us as people but also applies so much to our students. So a lot to think about in that quote.

Bonni: [00:38:57] I love that. And I can’t wait to see what Sierra does with that quote graphic. She’s the one who does all the recommendations graphics on which a quote will be placed for this one. She’s going to come up with something amazing, I’m sure. No pressure, Sierra.

Bonni: [00:39:16] I love it. Well thank you so much for spending time with me today and for inviting me to be a part of your event in February. I’m excited to join you for that. Now hearing more about it I’m even more excited than I already was. So thanks for your time today. I just love any chance I get a chance to learn from you. And you’ve given me a lot to think about and I’m sure everyone listening.

Michelle: [00:39:36] Thanks so much Bonni. Have a great day and thanks for listening.

Bonni: [00:39:42] Thanks once again to Michelle. Pacansky-Brock for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. If you’d like to go to the show notes to see all the links to the wonderful things that Michelle referenced and recommended in today’s episode, go to teachinginhighered.com/239.

Bonni: [00:40:02] Thanks also once again to Text Expander for sponsoring today’s episode and making our lives easier for those of us that have access to your service.

Bonni: [00:40:11] And thanks to all of you for listening. It’s great having you as a part of this community. I just love the chance that I get to be in a community with people that care so deeply about teaching and serving our students. Well thanks for listening this time and I’ll see you for episode 240 next week. Take care.

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