Bonni: [00:00:00] Fears and concerns over changes in education persist. Whether it’s our disdain for lecturing to a bunch of disconnected texting and Facebook students or their boredom at being put to sleep by a droning Professor reading from a PowerPoint something’s gotta give. In today’s episode Episode 28 Dr. Cathy Davidson joins us to talk about finding the right practice the right tools and being able to see what we’ve been missing in higher ed.

Production Credit: [00:00:30] Produced by Innovate Learning: maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:39] 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: [00:01:07] Today on Episode 28 of teaching in higher ed Dr. Cathy Davidson joins us. She’s a renowned scholar of cultural history and technology. Her work focuses on trust data new collaborative methods of living and learning and the ways we can change higher education for a better future.

Bonni: [00:01:27] She’s the co-founder of the Humanities Arts Science and Technology Alliance and collaborative free otherwise acronyms as haystac.org Hand I’ll be linking to that in the show notes which will be available at teachinginhighered.com/28 and that’s a network of more than 13000 scholars, artists, and technologists who are committed to changing the way we teach and learn.

Bonni: [00:01:56] And I have her as a guest on today’s show of course because of her expertise but especially because I had the pleasure of reading her book over the summer called And Now You See It How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live Work and Learn. She has published in addition to that more than 20 books.

Bonni: [00:02:16] And you can read about those if you go to the show notes at teachinginhighered.com/28 have a link to her bio and she just only skimming the surface here but I just want to get us right over to her as our guest and all that she has to offer us today so feel free to talk out more about her bio.

Bonni: [00:02:34] And one last thing I want to mention about her which I think is definitely of note is President Obama appointed her to the National Council on humanities in 2011 and in 2012 she was named the first educator to serve on the board of directors of Mozilla. Again there’s a lot more to find out about Cathy. But let me just go over and now and welcome Dr. Cathy Davidson to the show.

Cathy: [00:03:01] It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Bonni: [00:03:03] Let’s start with the topic of attention and I think for those that haven’t heard of it yet hearing about the gorilla experiment would be a great way to begin.

Cathy: [00:03:13] Well this is an experiment that we’ve actually begun a long time ago in the 1970s. And when it was first sent people said this would change our whole view of human nature. Well it didn’t.

Cathy: [00:03:22] And one reason was that it was done was very poor a blurry technology and people just blame technology for what I’m about to describe. But then in 1999 the student of the person who invented the experiment.

Cathy: [00:03:34] Neither is the great one of the founders of cognitive psychology of the field who did this first one of his students Dan Simon and one of his students reprised a famous experiment and this time used contemporary digital video equipment and the experiment goes like this.

Cathy: [00:03:56] You in the audience you were in the audience and you watch six people they happened to be graduate students at Harvard pass basketballs back and forth and three other people passing the basketballs are wearing white shirts and three are black.

Cathy: [00:04:09] And you as a member of the audience are asked to keep tally of how many times the ball passes only between people wearing the same colored shirt symbols they say only between people wearing black shirts and the video is very short it’s under two minutes. So the video ends and the Tester says how many times how many passes were there. And you raise your hand if you count it 12 13 14 15.

Cathy: [00:04:33] Perfect Score. And then the Tester says and who saw the gorilla and midway through the tape. The six people were playing in a hallway in front of an elevator on a very consistent very short small space right in between them comes a woman. She’s an undergraduate at Harvard was wearing a blue gorilla suit head to toe. She on camera for 90 seconds that’s a long time in camera time.

Bonni: [00:04:58] Yes.

Cathy: [00:04:59] And you sound check she makes her face and she walks off in normal testing situations. People who haven’t heard of the experiment before and now it’s pretty famous. So it’s the results have changed. But people who haven’t heard it over 65 percent do not see the gorilla. this is kind of amazing.

Cathy: [00:05:20] And because so many people have seen it. Simons and Chabris have redone it where they say hey you know there’s a gorilla coming and you know there’s a vessel counting but so just let us know. Even when you know that how many times it’s counted it’s changed and in this version they change the whole background color.

Cathy: [00:05:40] And people don’t notice the background color so even when you know there’s a gorilla even you know there’s a trick you know and you know there’s basketball even when you know that attention blandest they can change the background color and you don’t notice it.

Bonni: [00:05:53] What are some of the gorillas or what is the attention blindness some of it that you’ve seen us have in higher ed today what are we missing.

Cathy: [00:06:01] The whole point of attention blindness is the more you concentrate really carefully on a task the more you miss everything else. And this is a great teacher the human brain because concentration is very very important.

Cathy: [00:06:13] But don’t forget you miss everything else. I think one of the things we’re doing with our obsession with standardized testing and I are education is the responsible party. We publicize our test scores. We require high test scores of First Things Going undergraduate and professional schools.

Cathy: [00:06:31] You know we require standardized tests coming in through 12. Can’t change its test obsession until higher education. But one thing we’re doing is we’re saying that choosing the best possible answer from four or five available answers is the way of the world. Well I don’t know about you but if I google attention blindness I might get two or three million answers for get one out of the four.

Cathy: [00:06:55] I live in a world of Selma. We all live in a world of so much information that being able to find the right particular answer that some pastor wants in a particular situation is the last thing we need. We need to have filters.

Cathy: [00:07:09] We need to know what data is we need to have data literacy. We need to have the ability to take knowledge that’s out there and we combine it in creative ways that work for the world we’re living in now. We need to not just think critically but contribute creatively.

[00:07:24] We need to have students take the lead because we also live in a world now where anyone who has an idea can communicate that idea that anyone else has an Internet connection without applause buttons without an editor.

Cathy: [00:07:37] That’s an astonishing human capability. It’s also an astonishing human challenge and where we’re still educating people for a system that was designed for the Model T and the assembly line. Basically our higher education system was redesigned between 1965 and 1925 specifically for the era.

Cathy: [00:07:55] The last information age the era of the Telegraph and The Year of the Model T and the assembly line. And we live in this world with this amazing new capacity and a very old educational system.

Bonni: [00:08:06] In your book Now You See It you both give a lot of challenge to us as educators and you also give a lot of inspiration. It’s an interesting mix that I took away from reading it.

Bonni: [00:08:17] I loved what you had to say about our brains and how they have such enormous capacity for ever changing and ever learning. Would you share some of your research around our brains and how it combats some of the myths that are out there.

Cathy: [00:08:32] There’s so many things. I mean we’re constantly it’s first of all I don’t believe that you know Google makes us stupid word distracted etc. etc. I like to say distraction is our friend because if we’re aware that we’re distracted that means that we’re having a kind of metacognition we’re thinking to yourself something isn’t working well.

Cathy: [00:08:52] And as long as we know something isn’t working well we have the capacity to change. We can change our tools. We can change our methods. We can change our partners all of which are great ways of helping us learn in times of crisis.

Cathy: [00:09:04] But that tension blindness that gets us that gets us into trouble is exactly what the gorilla experiment says. You know it’s when you think you know the whole world and you’re busily counting that world and you don’t notice there’s a gorilla in the corner.

Cathy: [00:09:18] I think one of the things that’s wonderful about the era we’re living in now is we have capacities we’re learning constantly. I mean the informal learning we all do now as a matter of course it really has only been at the disposal since about.

Cathy: [00:09:34] I like to say April 22nd 1993 was the day that was the day the mosaic 1.0 browser was relicensed so it could be made available to the general public and from then on we had this ability to learn not from experts but from anybody.

Cathy: [00:09:50] I mean you know if I hurt my elbow I don’t call my doctor. I go to I heard my dad come and find out with Tom, Dick, and Harry and Mary and Sue and Janie all have to say about their hurt elbows and I learned from that.

Cathy: [00:10:04] We now know from the American Medical Association that 75 percent of doctors who originally said the biggest problem was people self diagnosing online. Now 75 percent of doctors say they leave for their patients to say what they think is wrong with them because they find out actually that patients are co-learners. In this job of diagnosing a condition that’s a great metaphor for education too.

Cathy: [00:10:28] At any stage of life early childhood or very old age were able to be we think of ourselves not as recipients of some kind of passive knowledge but as cold learners in this quite remarkable enterprise of global learning.

Bonni: [00:10:44] What are some things that you think about some examples from either your Tetun or the professors that you coach in your programs that were facilitating and learning and learning and real learning and are teaching.

Cathy: [00:10:59] Well one that’s a great question. One of the things I like to do is I have my students write a constitution. I usually put up a constitution that have either been written by previous students or famous constitutions like the preamble to the U.S. Constitution or I sometimes use the Mozilla manifesto or other manifestos from educational organizations.

Cathy: [00:11:25] I then leave the room with the instructions that as a group and I usually put this in a google doc or some other collaborative document. I leave the room.

Cathy: [00:11:35] With the instructions that when I’m gone they think together about what they think are the proper standards for conducting a class together. I say you are a miniature society in this class. How do you want to conduct yourselves.

Cathy: [00:11:48] What is your constitution. How do you constitute yourself. Why that learning is because normally the last thing you do when you come into a classroom and sometimes you never do it at all is think about the conditions of service in that classroom.

Cathy: [00:12:03] You know you just assume that’s a given. You know the teacher is you know the students you know what the syllabus is if you follow the syllabus and do all your homework you’ll get a good grade. I’m actually saying no no no.

Cathy: [00:12:14] What happens if you take responsibility for your learning online you have to write you have to decide whether something is credible or not credible credible. If somebody says your elbow hurts because you’re reading too many jelly beans that’s not credible learning if they say you’re bursitis and maybe you need to adjust the position of your keyboard. That might be credible.

Cathy: [00:12:34] How do you learn those things how do you learn judgment. If you’re only taking information from your teachers in formal education you’re never going to learn the judgment you need to make constant calls about credibility when you’re online 24/7 as we are as most of us now are.

Cathy: [00:12:51] So I really think that the ability to make decisions to work collaboratively to create a project and carry it through the implementation to take something from critical thinking to really creative implementation and contribution to the public and the world give back of your education to the world that’s helping to support you during your educational your time of education.

Cathy: [00:13:14] All of those are things that we have to think about and thinking about them makes us think about what we’re not thinking about what gorilla is in the room in normal education what things are we being spoon fed that aren’t being spoon fed to us in the world and how can we change those conditions.

Cathy: [00:13:30] So I would say creating a class constitution is the single most important thing I do and my in my own classes to foster and learning and to make students responsible for their own learning in the classroom and with a skill set that then transfers to the rest of their lives.

Bonni: [00:13:49] When I have done things in the past that would be more in the realm of student centered learning. For the most part it is met with welcome arms but I will say that there certainly are the occasional students who meet with anger. Do you ever find that with the level of students you work at or are by the time they get to graduate and beyond.

Cathy: [00:14:11] And I say and I say if we didn’t find that we should hang up bar are you know our credentials as teachers because our students feel that way because they’ve been well taught to feel that way for 12 years. In other words if they passively came into a class and said oh now we’re going to unlearn and do all of them.

Cathy: [00:14:30] That would mean they didn’t. They hadn’t learned very well the lessons of the first 12 years of their education. So the brilliance of learning and that’s not my term it’s the futurist Alvin Toffler’s term the brilliance of learning is it makes you think about things. It’s the gorilla again.

Cathy: [00:14:46] It makes you think about things that you think you know completely that you know well and to think about. Why am I shortchanging myself with something that I actually am pretty good at. You know you’re bad student or a rebellious student.

Cathy: [00:15:01] It’s easy to then try something new. If you were a great student you’re giving up a lot for the world we live in. That’s one reason why so many older people are grumpy about the Internet. Hey we were doing great before and now this comes along it knocks the wind out of her sails.

Cathy: [00:15:17] We’re not we’re not experts anymore we’re not doing as great as we once were. That’s not fair. And I think the students feel the same. So one of the things they often do is ask them if they think their habits of learning in the past prepare them for their world outside of education.

Cathy: [00:15:35] And I often make experiments where they basically make experiments where they have to fail. So for example I will ask them to I I do a lot of tricks of my closet. I will do things like ask them to sign up for a collaborative document like a Web site or wordpress or a Google doc.

Cathy: [00:15:57] And of course to do so they have to sign the terms of agreement and they often do that in about two minutes. So then I’ll say okay you’ve all agreed to something. Now we’re going to take a pop quiz on the terms of agreement you all signed.

Cathy: [00:16:10] Well they all fail. And I say wait wait wait this is a constant digital literacy and you failed the first pop quiz. And you’re telling me you know everything. Well of course what I’m telling them is we all have become accustomed to signing those you know check here to agree you agree to these terms when none of us reads.

Cathy: [00:16:27] We know that from the research Nobody reads those 40 page terms of agreement. But what is wrong with a world where we all are so compliant that we’re signing away our rights to something that’s as important as our data our privacy.

Cathy: [00:16:43] You know the right of other to know by keystroke by keystroke what our preferences are and then dictate other choices to us. Those are some huge human privacy. My goodness we’re giving up huge human rights unconsciously.

Cathy: [00:16:58] So after my students failed the tests and they fail it completely. They don’t get anything right on those on those tests about the terms of agreements they’ve just signed up once they have.

Cathy: [00:17:07] I say OK if you were going to redesign things in terms of agreement so you didn’t fail. How would you redesign them and then we’ll do things like write our own terms of agreement.

Cathy: [00:17:17] That’s a class constitution. So now we go right back to my first assignment of writing a class constitution. So I mean I think resistance to learning is a well honed skill and attention blindness.

Cathy: [00:17:30] It is a life long honed skill and attention blindness. If I only count the number of gorillas everything is I mean the number of basketball passes the way I’m told if I get a perfect cancer on the basketball talks tosses the way I’ve been asked everything is OK. Well we know it’s not.

Bonni: [00:17:49] There’s a gorilla in the room. We have to be exposed to that before we even see the gorilla and I have huge empathy for people who think they’re doing perfectly and then suddenly are confronted with the gorilla and that’s a pretty shocking and scary world to think about. And sadly we all find gorillas in our lives.

Bonni: [00:18:11] But usually they come through tragedy. They usually come to the loss of a loved one through the end of love. You know you think all relationships great and suddenly you’re getting a dear john letter through a failure to not being able to get a job you know through really traumatic to culture shock very very through his illness a terrible illness we’ve all had those moments where there’s a before and after in your life when the world looks different.

Bonni: [00:18:38] The world was not different. What changed with your ability to see a world that you didn’t have to see when you were privileged not to when you saw the world only had basketball tosses in it. It wasn’t that the gorilla didn’t exist.

Bonni: [00:18:51] Was that you didn’t see it. And usually it’s tragedy that makes her see the gorilla. What I try to do in my classes is in a very careful nurturing controlled prepared for environment help my students to see there are gorillas. But by seeing the gorillas you’re not in a worse situation you are well armed and in a better situation to cope with the gorillas of the world.

Bonni: [00:19:16] You spoke earlier about the fears and concerns around multitasking I’d like to revisit that a little bit. Tell us about the concerns that used to exist around the calculator around what it was like to listen to the radio in the car. What are some of those old myths that.

Cathy: [00:19:32] My Favorite is the debate that went on on the level of state legislators and the Senate itself in the 1930s when Motorola wanted to put car radio and radio people thought there would be no mayhem bodies lying all over the road with car accidents because there was no way you could multitask.

Cathy: [00:19:53] The board didn’t exist back then but they would have said your attention was divided instead of concentrating on the road your attention concentrating on the radio. Well we now know that in fact the radio helps save lives because one of the biggest problems in driving is not paying attention to not just paying usage of the radio but falling asleep at the wheel.

Cathy: [00:20:13] So the radio actually was a great device for helping especially in night driving in long distance night driving and getting past the mesmerizing quality of the road at night. I think in our common world what we mean by multitasking is you can’t do all these tasks. The brain doesn’t know how to mount a task.

Cathy: [00:20:31] The main brain is constantly multitasking. We just don’t know what is. It’s again like the gorilla and that’s the tension blindness. I’m speaking with you on the phone. I also happened to be looking out the window my door is closed but if my door weren’t closed it probably be people coming by and none of that would seem like multitasking until it was too much.

Bonni: [00:20:54] If an airplane suddenly was presenting itself for Godzilla or King Kong was suddenly presenting itself out my window you better believe I’d be taking you to paying attention to that and I would then lose the train of thought of this conversation. I would feel like Oh my goodness I can’t handle that multitasking.

Cathy: [00:21:11] So all multitasking means is you’re overloaded. You can’t do all the different tasks that you are being asked to do to get that moment. So again in moments more multitasking I say take a deep breath and realize that this is your brain telling you you can’t handle this situation and think about what you need to do to handle it. Is it that you need to do fewer tests.

Cathy: [00:21:34] Is it that you need to shut out some of the distractions in your life. You know it’s something out my window is distracting me from my computer screen. The problem is that my computer screen. It’s that thing outside I went.

Cathy: [00:21:46] Maybe I need to shut my blinds. Is it that I need some better tools. Is it that I need some partners to help me with a complicated task that I’m not able to do alone and confused or distracted. We know that about after about six minutes the mind starts to wander even from most very very concentrated tasks.

Cathy: [00:22:05] There’s only a few tasks that are often called Flow tasks and I’m going to butcher the name of the brilliant psychologist who talks about flows. Polly is I’m going to say it and I know that.

Bonni: [00:22:17] I’m just feeling so better much better about myself but I can’t get but.

Cathy: [00:22:22] We will put it We will tell people how it still is and I get it. He says there’s only about 4 true flow tasks that allow you to keep on totally concentrated past 6 minutes and you’re suddenly looking out the window Mark and one of them is brain surgery.

Cathy: [00:22:37] I’m really glad my brain surgeon doesn’t have their mind wandering. Another one he thinks of is playing chess. Another one he thinks is dancing to loud rhythmic music.

Cathy: [00:22:48] He always says rock music I’m not sure if he means actually rock music or any loud rhythmic music and video game playing and those are the kinds of Multisensory totally involved tasks that we tend not to be distracted from.

Cathy: [00:23:02] Other things reading a book. My goodness reading a book of people go off the page in two or three minutes a week. Even when we think we’re totally absorbed we go off the off the page. There’s so many psychological experiments that show that we think we’re concentrating when in fact we’re not.

Bonni: [00:23:20] And of course a lot of educators and there are times when this is a good approach let’s put the cell phones away. Let’s put the computers let’s be fully present for each other. But I think though that it can’t be like that all the time or we’re missing opportunities.

Bonni: [00:23:34] And that’s one of the things you bring out in your work. But tell us about the unit tasking attempt that Howard Rheingold has with his digital journalism course every year.

Cathy: [00:23:45] Yes that’s my one of my favorite things. Howard begins his classes by saying turn comes your cell phones close your laptops close your eyes. And then he has his students sit there not just undistracted by cell phones and undistracted by computer screens but undistracted by the world around them.

Cathy: [00:24:07] And he has them close their eyes and think really deeply and carefully about what they’re experiencing with their eyes closed in this room where they’re suddenly given the task of concentrating. And then when he has opened their eyes His people tell what they noticed.

Cathy: [00:24:23] Nobody notices the same thing in a room even without any distractions even with their eyes closed. People. Someone notices the air conditioning.

Cathy: [00:24:33] Somebody else notices somebody speaking outside. Somebody else notices a car horn someone notices the breathing of the person next to them. Someone notices that it’s warm on one side and cold on the other side of their body.

Cathy: [00:24:45] Someone notices that when they close their eyes they see little sparks in their eyelids somebody else says I see green in their eyes and my eyelids and as he goes around the room people start remembering more things they experience.

Cathy: [00:24:58] Now that’s the word distracted by the world not just cell phones not by the laptops by the world. And that’s everyday life. That’s the world we live in. It’s a world of constant complicated sensory perception that we’re not paying attention to the gorilla experiment reminds us there’s always something we’re missing.

Cathy: [00:25:20] And so whenever I teach a class we do something called pairs share a little experiment what we do with a very sophisticated technology of machine made paper and machine made pencils and pass out index cards. And I always have people at some point in the class do a pear share exercise that goes and this is what I would do about attention.

Cathy: [00:25:40] OK we’ve been talking for the last half an hour about attention. Write down three things we’ve missed that we haven’t talked about in the last half hour and I have students write them down silently by themselves. Then they turn to somebody else in the room and I have them for 90 seconds each take turns reading out loud.

Cathy: [00:25:58] First one person reads everything they think we missed the other person reads the three things they think they say. And then I have them negotiate and tell us to prepare as a class to share the single most important thing we’ve missed.

Cathy: [00:26:11] What that does is it gives everybody in the class the chance to hear their own voice. It allows the introvert and extrovert the chance to speak with the same velocity it allows them to share ideas. And it also in that experiment allows them to hear dozens of things in a classroom that we were missing even when we thought we were staying completely on topic.

Cathy: [00:26:31] That’s a metaphor for higher education. Following the syllabus covering the content given having made sure that we have coverage and everything we teach make sure we meet each classroom. It’s a myth. There’s always something we’re missing and often what we’re missing is the single most important content of the class.

Cathy: [00:26:50] So being aware that there’s always something missing and we need the right tools threat methods and my mike and the right partners even to have a chance at seeing some of what we’re missing. To me is the most important experiment and lesson of attention blindness for higher education.

Bonni: [00:27:07] This is the part in the show when we get to recommendations and I’m going to actually shift mine over to you and I’m going to introduce a couple of things and then ask you to share because you’re really the expert and not me.

Bonni: [00:27:16] But there are two things I don’t want us to end this episode with you without mentioning one are the 21st century competencies and they will have a link to many of the articles that you’ve written as well as one on education on social media literacy.

Bonni: [00:27:33] And this is Episode 28 so this will be a teachinginhighered.com/28 so I’d love if you would share about this resource and the discussion happening around 21st century competencies and that I would love if you would share a bit about haystac and for anyone who may not know what that organisation is and what resources are available to educators there.

Cathy: [00:27:54] Well what I love about the 21st century competencies ideas they say all the time because our world changes if you go back and look at 21st Century competencies even three years ago data literacy was not particularly high on the list.

Cathy: [00:28:08] Now I think that there have been so many data breaches and Target has given away or so security numbers. Last week Sony was broken into and very private information of people you know there their actors their agents their producers was you know made public out large data literacy is very high on the list.

Cathy: [00:28:28] And I think what’s important is reading writing and arithmetic are still hugely important we also have to read write and do basic mathematical and data literacy in a whole new context. So that’s that’s one thing haystack is an organization I go founded in 2002. It now has about 14000 network members.

Cathy: [00:28:50] It’s dedicated to the tech traces changing the way we teach and learn. Hey tech is an acronym acronym it’s HASTC.org and it’s answer Humanities Arts Science Technology Alliance and collaborative collaborative is the National Science Foundation term for a virtual collaboration and virtual experimentations across institutions.

Cathy: [00:29:11] And it’s there’s no content stable content on haystack any net worth when you join as long as you follow the network rules which are basically respect and civility for others and attention to all the different ways formally and informally that we can teach and learn as human beings.

Cathy: [00:29:28] You can contribute anything and anybody can respond to and sometimes you know a few years ago of a student who is a first year college student published a blog that was seen by over a million people.

Cathy: [00:29:41] It’s a self created network. It is a huge content. We’ve been told we have some of the most complicated voluminous and trafficked content of any open source Web site on the World Wide Web yet for education on the World Wide Web and you know it’s all user generated.

Cathy: [00:30:00] People are curious and interested and then finding other partners to be part of it. I’ve just started a job at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York after 25 years at Duke University and we’ve started something called the Futures initiative which is dedicated to the twin goals of equity and innovation.

Cathy: [00:30:19] Too often innovation is seen as somehow only for the corporate world or elite institutions. Actually if you have to struggle in this world you should you have to learn to be an innovator. So this is really dedicated to putting back together again the idea of equity with innovation and there’s a group for the Futures initiative on haystack and we invite anyone to join.

Cathy: [00:30:40] It also has an open member group and you can learn along with us about how a world that has more social justice equality and civility and it is also a world that can be and that tactically innovative on all levels as we come to a close.

Bonni: [00:30:56] Now Cathy I wonder if you might just share one more recommendation to people that are listening to this podcast these are people that have a passion about becoming more effective at facilitating learning.

Cathy: [00:31:09] I love the books of my friend and former coach teacher Dan Ariely Predictably Irrational and the Upside of Irrationality. For empirical experiments that teaches all the ways we don’t know we know each other. I think they’re very very useful in that way. I think Howard Rheingold Net Smart is a fantastically interesting book.

Cathy: [00:31:31] Daniel Kahneman and thinking fast and slow is a very very interested book and then go for an ethnography of how young people really do think about social media in the world. Dana Boyd’s beautiful book It’s Complicated is really a great primer on how young people are thinking and learning today.

Cathy: [00:31:51] And it’s complicated. There’s no one answer. The cliches are just just plain wrong. But that to me is an nice little companion group of books to not only understand technology and higher education and learning today.

Cathy: [00:32:06] But to really understand that the ways of thinking and the intersections between those displays that we think it’s human beings with deep and incredibly flawed way. We all think it’s human beings and the way the digital age either exacerbates or it can improve those lives.

Bonni: [00:32:22] Well Cathy thank you so much for squeezing us into your busy busy schedule today. This is going to air at the toward the end of December and what a great time to get all these great reading recommendations so we can spend a little bit or perhaps time digesting some of these great resources.

Bonni: [00:32:38] And thank you so much for the inspiration that you provide to all of us and also the challenges that you just want to have us all be being better at what we do. I saw the other day on Twitter you had gone to some type of an event and you said it’s really not as much the myopic view on higher education but just for you maximizing human potential and you do such a wonderful job of that. Thanks again for joining us.

Cathy: [00:33:02] Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thank you.

Bonni: [00:33:09] Thanks once again to Dr. Cathy Davidson for joining us on today’s episode. If you have any suggestions for future topics or guests please go over to Teachinginhighered.com/feedback.

Bonni: [00:33:21] I always love getting ideas and inspiration and just hearing your feedback on how you’re enjoying the show. And speaking of enjoying the show it really helps others discover this podcast if you are open to giving it a review on iTunes or on Stitcher or whatever tool it is you use to listen to it.

Bonni: [00:33:40] And as always I recommend you subscribe to our weekly newsletter if you haven’t already. That’s at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. That’ll get you a weekly article on teaching and also the notes from each of these podcasts. With all the great links and in this one we got that’s great book recommendations and tools from Cathy so you want to be checking those out at teachinginhighered.com/28.

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.