[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 451 Course Trailers Revisited with Rob Parke.

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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 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.

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Today, Rob Parke comes back on Teaching in Higher Ed to talk about those wonderful videos we can send out in advance of our courses to get students excited about taking them otherwise known as course trailers.

Rob is an Associate Professor of Information Technology Practice in the Information Technology Program at the University of Southern California. He established the connected devices and making minor at USC to teach non-engineering students to create internet-enabled hardware devices. He currently serves as the lead faculty for the Gateway Programming course whose mission is to introduce and excite non-computer science majors to the world of programming.

Rob has a strong interest in inclusive teaching practices and has been actively involved in addressing issues of inclusion and equity both within USC and externally. He served as general chair of the 2021 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, which encourages and supports diversity within computing. Outside of academia, Rob has a lifelong love of technology from the technical to the creative with professional experience in software development, information technology, web design, audio engineering, film, tv, post-production, and digital media. Rob Parke, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:24] Rob Parke: Thank you so much for having me, Bonni. I’m thrilled to be back here.

[00:02:27] Bonni: You and I are going a little retro today. You have made what I called a course trailer and what you called something else. To start out with, we’re actually just going to play the audio from the course trailer and then once it’s done, I’m going to invite you to share what we would have been seeing if we had the whole picture because this is intended as a video. There’ll be a link to it in the show notes and let’s take it away and have a look and listen to your course trailer.

[start of audio playback]

[00:02:59] Rob Parke: Hey, everyone, if you want to build devices that can change people’s lives for the better, such as medical devices and wearables, if you’re interested in hardware entrepreneurship or startups, or if you just want to create something cool with electronics, check out ITP 348. If you’ve taken at least one programming class, ITP 348 is a great option. I’m Rob Parke and I teach ITP 348 – Making Smart Devices Introduction to Wearables. ITP 348 is a hands-on interactive course where you learn how to build and program smart devices.

You’ll leverage your software programming skills with hardware development and cloud connectivity so you can build things like wearables that measure heart rate, cloud IOT dashboards, Bluetooth cars that you control with your phone, e-textiles and fashion projects, and many more. I have worked to create an engaging learning environment where every class is interactive with most of our time spent building projects instead of lecturing.

We also have an extensive resource on the course website and all lectures and class times are also recorded for you to watch later. Here are some great examples of past students’ final projects.

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ITP 348 is open to all students regardless of major and that counts as an elective for many minors and majors. The only prereq is an introductory programming course. You don’t need to have any prior electronics experience. I promise that we’re focusing on building electronic devices and there is no math or physics involved. Please email me, Rob Parke, @parkuscedu with any questions. I hope to see you in class.

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[end of audio playback]

All right, Rob, so we were not able to see what was happening during that course trailer, so you’re going to recreate it through what were some of the visual features that were included in this video?

[00:05:16] Rob: It’s a lot of my face, so I’m on about one-third of the screen and then the other two-thirds is text that comes up for most of the video. Then behind me is actually my wife’s actually a therapist. It’s her private practice office and I can talk more about that in a minute. There’s some lights and there’s some simple background decorations to set the scene. Then when the music really picks up, what does get lost on a podcast is that instead of having just texts show up, I’m actually inserting clips of students’ final projects in this particular class. That’s what you see for maybe 20 seconds or so, and then it comes back to me talking.

[00:05:50] Bonni: All right. One of the things that stood out to me from having watched it, I think you sent it to me a couple, two, three months ago, is the visual image of the student’s final project. Before we get into how you created this, why you created this, would you talk a little bit about the class and specifically what it’s all culminating toward?

[00:06:11] Rob: Sure. This is a class that I created in 2019 and it’s designed for students who– I teach software programing classes for people that aren’t majoring in computer science. They could be an engineer setting chemical engineering or they could be a history major, anything across the university.

The second class of student could take, they take one class in programming, they know a little bit about that and then they could take this class where they learn to build, the term is smart devices, but that’s not a very descriptive term, Imagine anything that is like your thermostat at your house or your office that you can control with your phone. That could be a smart device, a wearable smartwatch, a Fitbit, Apple that could be a smart device.

It’s essentially small piece of electronics that you can write code to usually connects to the internet. Students learn about electronics, they learn about wiring, they learn about programming, about connecting to the cloud. The class culminates in the last month. Other class they get to build their own final project. It’s like I give them some parameters, but I really want them to have fun and build something that’s interesting for them and they all have such diverse backgrounds that it’s fun to see them put play.

They take a month, they come up with the idea and I just say, hey look, as long as this’s got some sensors, a temperature sensor, a motor, whatever it fits these categories, I’ll let you build mostly whatever you want. In that part you were talking about, I’m just showing maybe five or six or seven little videos because I try to have students record videos of their final projects.

[00:07:45] Bonni: You and I have been friends for years and the very first half of the first sentence that you say in the video goes like this, “If you want to build devices that can change people’s lives, dot.dot.” I remember you saying this is probably, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago now, was a lot of people used to want to make apps for dating apps, that kind of a thing. You did try to instill more of a socially minded, bringing some good into the world. I don’t know if that tends to be a challenge for you anymore or a parameter you still–

[00:08:20] Rob: Yes. Thank you for reminding me by that. I used to teach a mobile development class and making mobile apps. Yes, exactly as you said it was, I let them choose their own project and half of them were dating apps or how to find a party. I just after three semesters of that. I was like, come on friends we got all this great knowledge, you got to fix something else. I let them choose their own project, but I said it had to have some social benefit. It didn’t have to be a course they thought I would like. It’s just something that was important to them and that was really impactful.

What I found with this class, the electronics class is that I don’t know, probably lots of reasons, but a lot of the projects already veered towards helping other people. I had to draw a box around like, okay, let’s at least categorize it a certain way. I do encourage them to do that and I’ve had students that shows in the video. Someone makes a smart king, like a walking stick for someone who’s visually impaired. There’s this also in the video is a spoon for someone that might have mobility issues and it would help them eat.

I encourage them in this class that they’re still think about like, who could benefit from this outside of you. I’ve, at least, kept this a philosophy without having a set a strict boundary because students they’ve made musical instruments and they’ve made a lot of things like that. I’m a little more flexible with that because I haven’t gotten 15 how to find a party app. [laughter] Yes, I think that’s really– I students have lots of opportunity to build really cool things, but not a lot of maybe encouragement or opportunities to think about someone other than themselves that they want to build for. I do keep that as a marker of parameters if possible.

[00:10:09] Bonni: You and I don’t have a lot in common as far as the context in which we teach. You teach at a very large, more research-oriented institution. I teach at a very small, more teaching-oriented institution, just for one example of how we are teaching in very different contexts but we do have something in common. That is that our institutions, I think people who work there would tend to be more likely to describe them as a residential experience that not as much emphasis placed on online classes.

You and I have been, let’s just say, teaching online more than perhaps some of our colleagues. Talk a bit about why you decided to make a course trailer, a video promotion for this particular class. What were some of the background behind why you thought it might be helpful?

[00:11:04] Rob: I’ve always struggled with enrollment for this class. This class started in fall of 2019. The second time I ever taught it was in the first semester of the pandemic and so it’s all hands-on. We all have little pieces and kits and so making a new class it’s an elective too, I should say that. There’s not a built-in audience for that class. In my department, we never had a hardware physical class. It’s like the first class of its kind. I’m not saying that as a, I’m bragging about that. Students don’t know that these kind of classes exist, right? Because there’s not an audience for that.

Our general minimum guideline is 12 students to make the class work. I think the first semester I got, I had eight and they said, “It’s the first time you can let that go.” Then pandemic, I think I had 15 the first semester. Then we were going to be permanently online for a while. Administrators were like, “How is this going to work? It’s a physical hardware class.” I was like, “Oh, I’m going to put all these kits together. I’m going to send things out.” Both skepticism maybe of a hardware class being online and also just, there’s a lot of classes. It’s an elective. It’s hard to get traction.

For every semester, I would market it. I would figure out what students groups on campus might, like their interests align with the class. There’s Harvard classes, there’s entrepreneurship classes, there’s some classes where students will go and teach electronics or in programming to elementary students around campus. Those groups, I would send them an email. Then I would go to former students and I’d look at advisors of other departments who might have some overlap. I would send them this email that I wrote that I thought was like, “Trying to make an exciting, trying to be honest about the class, I have pictures.”

I did that for four or five semesters. Every time I would get, I would just barely get over the 12 threshold. I think at most I had 20, but usually, it was 14 to 15 students. Students that would take the class would say, “Now that I took this class, I really loved, it was one of my favorite classes I got to build something physical.” I knew that students enjoyed it, but they just couldn’t figure, find out about it. I thought I’m sending these emails every semester, all these, I have a list of people I email. I should also say it’s an engineering class where you build things.

There’s a lot of students that aren’t engineers and they think, it’s going to be math and physics heavy, so I shouldn’t take it. It’s not right. That’s not how we design it. I thought I was doing everything that I could but just couldn’t get enrollment. My wife used to be a professor, she’s also a psychologist and she’s working on creating an online program for high school and college students who are struggling with anxiety. It’s like a learning coping strategies. For about a year, she and I have been learning video editing, video production. That’s why it’s in her office.

We set up her office to look welcoming and inviting on camera, even though it’s obviously welcoming in person, making that translate to cameras different. As I’ve been learning about this and getting ready to help her, she’s talking a lot about communicating with high school and college students and the importance of video and I thought we were going to be in her office doing some recording one day and I thought, maybe I’ll just try this, right? What can I harm? We already have it set up, the camera’s there, the lighting’s there and I also thought, I’m editing videos for my wife.

Maybe I’ll get some practice just doing it for myself. I wrote out a script because I thought, I’ve watched my wife do these videos and it’s, I forced myself to write a script so I could keep it timely. Just after like, I don’t know, six hours of recording at her, her office, I just decided, oh, I’ll just try it. I’ll just get in front of the camera and do this two minutes. I was on a whim, but I thought maybe this would help. I was shocked after struggling for, like I said, five semesters, six semesters to get enrollment up, I had 25 students which is the cap. It filled up three days of registration, and then there was another 25 on the waitlist.

I was nothing. I did nothing different. Everything was the same. It was the same email that I sent out the same student groups. I contacted the same advisors. The only thing did was different was in the email, which used to had pictures. I put this short video and that was it. That was the only thing that changed and I was just pretty blown away by how impactful that was. As a medium of communication, I’m obviously in a video is important, but I don’t typically record videos and if I do, they’re more Zoom lectures where I don’t have a script. Just try to keep it short, but I’m still rambling. This was higher production script. The impact was significantly noticeable. I was pleasantly, I was delighted obviously. I’m very happy.

[00:15:55] Bonni: It is so rare in situations like this that we actually have constants that same groups same through email, but just the video part was different. Were the pictures still in the email? Then in addition to it, there was a video or pictures are gone now it’s a video.

[00:16:11] Rob: In the email, I had four or five, like a banner almost of some projects put together. That was the same but the video was different.

[00:16:24] Bonni: Then did you have a screenshot that ended up linking to the video so they could tell as soon as they opened up the email, this email has a video in it? Or did it just say, basically let click here [laughs] to go access the video. Do you know what I’m saying? A text-based link or an image that looked like you were about to click on something that would take you to a video.

[00:16:44] Rob: It was an image that looked like it was going to take you to that. I’m very grateful to my amazing wife because she’s been getting these ready for her, this program she’s launching. I learned the strategies of having a link that says, here’s the video. That’s fine. I did have that. In case the video didn’t load, but I made sure to take a screenshot of, because I use Gmail.

I don’t have a fancy, sophisticated email program. I figured I just took a screenshot of the video, dropped a video icon on the image. It looked like a click it and then link that to YouTube so that way I knew the video. I just sometimes at least in Gmail or sometimes I send it through Blackboard, embedding the video gets lost, the actual video gets lost. I cheated by putting a picture of what looked like a video that would then link to that.

[00:17:31] Bonni: That’s so helpful. First of all, congratulations, what a wonderful set of results. I think that so much when I get a chance to meet someone’s, a lot of times technology comes up pretty quick. I imagine the same is the case for you, Rob. I think people might walk away from our conversation thinking that what they need is to have a partner who is making videos and already has the light set up, have to have all the most expensive, has to have a exquisite script, and while there is not a way in this case that I can prove my hypothesis but I’m still going t share it with you anyway, Rob, I think it wasn’t the script.

I think it wasn’t the lighting. I think it wasn’t, yes, these things helped to get someone to click, but once they got there, I think what they got to experience is a authentic, engaging, delightful person and so often, sadly, people’s perceptions of online classes are such that I’m not going to have someone who’s engaging, I’m not going to have someone that cares about me and cares about the world and making it better through the things that we learn.

I think that it overcame so many potential concerns that people might have about any class, but it’s just that online learning has historically gotten a bad rap when we don’t apply those same criteria to an in-person class and make sure that the person’s going to be engaging and make sure that they’re going to care about me as a learner and they’re going to care about making the world better and changing people’s lives the way that you described from your earliest words and the video.

I do know that you did have the same secret superpower and that is that your first take or maybe your first series of takes, you got a little coaching from someone. [laughs] What was the coaching that you got that maybe helped take it to the level where it got to be where it is today?

[00:19:26] Rob: Yes, so my wife behind the camera, it had the yes.

[00:19:30] Bonni: [laughs] I think it was the first line that you needed a little help to go. Oh, you go.

[00:19:35] Rob: Yes. I think I’m trying to remember what is that I said, there was something that I was, I think I said, “Hello friends or something.” The way I said it, she was like, sound like an alien speaking to other humans. I think that shifted me in thinking about it. I think that if I can at least comment on your hypothesis, I think you’re 100% right and I don’t have control either, but I hope that no one would think, “Well, I don’t have a camera, and I don’t have lighting, and I don’t have someone to help film me, so I can’t do this.”

Not at all, and I don’t think that’s true at all. I think the production has been fun, I already had it set up, so I did it. That’s why I did it. I don’t think that was important. I think exactly what you said is what I believe, that I’m trying to convey to students who I am, what I’m going to be like in class, but also what they can do. That’s really the whole point is, it’s a class that they don’t fully understand, and who would if you haven’t taken it, and it’s online, like you said, so there’s already two kinds of mysteries like, “Oh is this–“

The class, it’s a fair amount of work, so do I want to take a class that is a question mark? If I can show them, like you said, “Hey, I’m going to be present, I’m going to be as engaged as I can, I care about you, I care about you as students and your development–” I really think a lot about that first line you said, “If you want to make devices that change people’s lives.” It’s very impactfully at first saying, “Hey, this is what you could do in the class and then a few seconds later I’m going to show you what other people have done in your exact same position that are coming from where you are with no prior experience.”

Did it need to be done in the way I did it? No, I don’t think so. I would say if you’re going to do it, and I say this as someone that doesn’t like to write a script because I just like to speak, I think that can be helpful. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all, but some talking points of where you want to go, and thinking, what I just said, what’s at the very beginning, I don’t like to say attention-grabbing because I don’t mean it to be manipulative, but what are they going to get out of this? What are students going to benefit from? Maybe if students are writing papers and discussing ideas, maybe it’s harder to show something for that, but do try to do that.

Also, the last thing I’ll add on and I’ll stop talking is, even if students are writing papers and there’s nothing to really show perhaps, if you can, and I know if you’re using iMovie or some other program, you might have to do something and maybe this is too much, but if you can have any visual that occasionally pops up every 10, 15 seconds, whatever it is. Just maybe text on the screen.

It can be a picture of, like I had in the video, students working on projects together, or collaborating online, or whatever it would be. Just something that it’s not just us as an instructor talking for two minutes straight. Even if you’re super engaging, that’s a hard sell. Some text, some bullet points, some key ideas, and keep it short. Definitely keep it short like a trailer.

[00:22:34] Bonni: You sharing about this is reminding me of a real transition I had in my teaching. It’s been modeled from so many prior guests to create high structure in classes. I do tend to be one of those, like you, I can talk off the cuff, and I can go in, but to have a planned active learning activity, I’ve just learned time and time again the importance of structuring that and having times, this is going to take two minutes, this is four minutes, and really thinking through that really pays off.

Both in terms of the learning that gets to be facilitated during that time, but also saves me time in the long run because while I can do it in the moment, it’s a little bit stressful and it’s nice to just to be able to relax having thought through timing and things like that. We can do that with video too, and it’s not something that I naturally do. If I was going to sit down and record, I might just start talking, but I think you’re right, at least having bullet points, especially being something two minutes, that’s a tough timeframe.

I wanted to encourage people that it can seem like video editing would be incredibly hard, there is one hurdle. That hurdle is learning how to edit on a timeline. We’re used to, in Microsoft Word, when you’re editing, moving paragraphs around. That’s generally speaking a comfortable thing for people to do. Or in Excel, you’re moving data or formulas from one cell to another cell. Well, in video or audio editors, you’re editing on the timeline. From zero when it starts to, in your case, two minutes when it ends. Planning out that timeline and thinking about it in advance can be really, really helpful.

There is a wonderful research article called A Time for Telling. Schwartz is one of the two authors of the article. That’s just a reminder to us that that first impression, if you want to build devices that can change people’s lives, like, “You got me. Yes I do as a matter of fact and you seem like a cool guy,” then you’ve got me, you’ve got my attention, and then once you’ve got it, like you said, to sustain it, it will be nice if I can bring in some images or if I can bring in some text.

Once you learn how to edit on a timeline, you can practically use any tool because they’re all like, “Where is the timeline? How do I add a graphic in here? How do I add text in here?” Your transferrable skills, the amount of time it takes to learn a new one, really gets reduced once you just understand the concept of editing that way. Like you said, I think what’s so powerful about your video is I see myself in it as a potential student. Oh, those are students who have taken this actual, and they’re smiling, and they’re so– That’s very memorable from that class and they all look like a regular college student.

They don’t look like they just are Einstein or something like that, and I could never do this because you were intentional about lots of different people with different projects, and it really is compelling. Us getting to be more purposeful about gathering images or some kind of data that would be compelling to people of student work to the extent that we can get permission to share students’ work, I generally will do that now even.

“I’m asking for some feedback on this. Would it be okay if I shared your feedback? I’ve got a podcast, could I share your feedback using your name, not using your name?” Just getting used to, “Is it okay to share your work publicly?” and that can be really fun too. I wanted to have you share a little bit more about the kit because, Rob, all this time I didn’t even realize you had a kit. I was picturing that if I signed up for your class, that I would be going somewhere, I don’t know where I would go, but I need to order myself a Raspberry Pi, and a Pizza Pi, and a Whipped Cream Pi.

I still remember the first time someone– [laughs] I interviewed a guy named Steve Wheeler such a long time ago from the UK and he mentioned Raspberry Pi and I was like, “Okay, I know what a Raspberry Pi is,” but then he started mentioning other pies, Banana Pi, and I literally thought he was kidding, and, I looked it up afterward, every single one was real. Anyway, the ones I made up I think are made up, but yes. Anyway, tell me more about this kit, and how do they get it, and all of that.

[00:26:54] Rob: It’s been one of the fun but probably very stressful elements of this, is just, to work on basic electronics you can go on Amazon, you can order for $50, $70 a kit of basic electronics parts, but what I discovered when I was building the class was I didn’t want to make just a electronic class. Arduino or Raspberry Pi is similar, a little bit different, but students can learn that, and that’s fine, it’s a useful skill. I really wanted to make this idea of connecting writing code with building something, and then having it connect to the internet, which is the smart device part, not just the electronics class.

To do that, I also wanted to make projects that I thought were really cool. We have early projects where lights blink on and off, and that’s important to do to get started, but that’s not super exciting at some point, so I wanted to think about what other kinds of components could I add that students could play with that aren’t in these basic kits you buy online. Then I had to work with a company, they’re called SparkFun. Really cool people, and it’s been a three-year process of refining it where I say, “I have these variables I have to manage, which is I wish it could be free. I wish students don’t have to pay anything for the kit.”

To get what I want to do in the class, I can’t do it. What I do is I figure out all the parts. It’s like, students are going to build a smartwatch, so that’s going to be the brain, the computer, that goes in there, the microcontroller, but then there’s a heart rate sensor. That’s a little more advanced, you’re not going to get just on a standard kit. I add in that, and then, for example, and I know I had shown you and your family this, little car they control what their smartphone that drives around. Then there’s motors, there’s wheels, things like accelerometer measuring gravity, acceleration.

What I do is I assemble all of these parts in a spreadsheet, and then work with this company, SparkFun, to say, “I don’t want students to pay anything more than like a textbook.” I wish it was $50, ends up being around $100. That’s like they come in a class, they pay that money for the kit. Then other parts, which ends up being sometimes that amount or more, my department is gracious and just buys that. When students come to class, the department purchased kit of electronics, which is all these supplies, the sensors, the motors, and then they order from the company this custom kit.

Which is really great. They have worked with the company, and it has like a USC logo on it, and they’ll ship it out to students. That’s the two-stage process. There’s a few other things where in order to make a smartwatch, students, they need a wrist wrap, so I have some TAs and I make Velcro wraps. That’s a separate thing we’ll cut and we’ll provide them. That’s where all those pieces come from because they’re all custom to do.

Things that I think are fun, that I hope students think are fun, but also just to say again, you were talking about the diversity of the background of my students, so I want to make sure that we reflect that. I have a lot of bioengineering students. I’d love having a smartwatch in there because that fits with what they’re studying. Then I have some mechanical students and so I like having the car to get to work with motors. Then I have students from all the rest of university. Having all the other sensors in there, where it feels like, hopefully, in the same way, that you said, you could imagine yourself in that video, I hope that in the actual class students can imagine what they could do with this, their own discipline.

[00:30:30] Bonni: I’m so convinced that so much of what holds us back is a lack of imagination, and not always as much as we attribute it to a lack of skills or lack of knowledge, a lack of information. That really goes that you seem like you’re helping expand their imagination, while also giving them knowledge and skills. That’s really powerful. Before we get to the recommendation segment, I’d love to have you share a little bit about if anyone wanted to poke around in any of your classes or anything like that, your philosophy and approach to course materials. I realized, by the way, and me asking this could be four episodes, because I’m so intrigued, but I’ll try to behave myself. [laughs]

[00:31:12] Rob: No, I’ll keep it brief because this would be a longer conversation and I know I’ve talked with you about it, you’ve been really helpful. When I created this class, yes, for three or four years ago, I had a really hard time because I couldn’t find a similar class across the country. I’m not trying to say that it’s the first countries of its kind, I just couldn’t find similar examples of content and textbooks because there are kids in high school and grade school, they learn about building electronics. That’s awesome I love that.

Engineering students will take very advanced electronics classes but I’m in this middle spot where it needs to be challenging for college students, but also college students that are not electrical engineers. That’s like how you make it advanced, when challenging without making it too advanced and eating physics and all that without, but also not making it so simple, that it’s not rewarding. As I ended up truly struggling to build the class, I just made the whole class open source, essentially, as a, I guess, I would say, an open educational resource.

What I’ve done is I’ve made it or just hosting on GitHub, which is a way of tracking changes over time and it’s used in software development a lot, but I use it for the course.

All the course material is on there, all the lectures, I have flipped classroom weighs. There’s like little course videos, those are free on YouTube, the assignments are there. There’s lots of resources about notes and what I wanted to do was, I wanted to make it. I was really frustrated with having to do things multiple times, like you have your notes I would teach from then have PowerPoints.

It just was easy to make mistakes and get lost. I built it so I can have the notes page with all the key notes. Students can just go online, full text, search what they want but then when I do some of the videos, I don’t do a lot of lecturing, but then the notes pages will just convert automatically to be basically slides. I have just one base. Yes, that is all free and I archive every semester so people can go look at previous semesters. I did start the class template from another faculty member at another university but I used his GitHub, you can use other people’s code, or projects to get started.

I did that and then I’ve ramped it up from there. It’s all there. I think what I’ve loved about it is, it’s much more responsive to student needs. Students have said to me, of course, website’s great, everything’s there. It’s all set up by dates this week is due but then we’d love to be able to search very easily for something and because it was set up the way it was and not sound on Blackboard or Moodle or something like that I could just go find a plug in that worked on GitHub, and I added it in just a full text search, I didn’t have the program, and I found a plug in and students love it.

Because now I don’t want to drill down to the hierarchy to find this, how the heart rate sensor works. I can just go to the search box and type in heart rate. I found it really great, I love that it just lives up there. If anyone wanted to see the electronic side, if that’s something interesting, that’s relevant to you, it’s all there, you’re free to take a look at it or if you’d like the idea of of having this course archive, or whatever your discipline is, you’re welcome to the get that. I would be delighted if anyone wanted to sample it or had questions about it I’m happy to nerd out and talk about it.

[00:34:20] Bonni: You know, I completely am enthralled with this, I have to behave myself because I can’t allow myself to go down because when I go down, I will probably not resurface for a number of months but that idea of letting something be linked to that is so easily changed. I’m doing that all the time. A colleague wanted to know if any of us and I stepped up and said, “Yes, well, I’ll try to help you find a team that will participate in this business ethics competition, but I don’t know yet what it looks like.” I just have like click here to find the instructions because it’s a blank page right now because I don’t know enough yet.

Rather than having to go all the way in and edit it, and it’s clunky, and it takes time, I linked to it in this particular instance, to just a basic note-taking tool that is web-based, and it has an app and has an app on my phone and the tablet. It’s kind of a similar idea to just pointing somewhere and easily being able to make edits on the fly and the second you do it, it’s there. The advantage, of course, to GitHub is that then you are able to see past versions because I realized I accidentally, which I can’t believe I did this but I have a course schedule in Excel that a friend gave me their template of. I realized I took this major assignment that had six pieces out and I was like “You forgot to do the Save As.”

With the GitHub, or similar repository they call it forking. I always laugh because it reminds me of that show called The Good Place. I don’t know if you ever watched that, forking, was used as a curse word in that show. [laughs] Forking, it’s like, “No, that means take a copy of it and do a Save As on your GitHub repository, which is what you did with the other person that had a similar course.” We could go up there and even make a copy of it or fork it off. Then you can always go back to your older forks to see if you wanted to see what it looked like a couple of years ago, or that kind of stuff was really nice.

[00:36:22] Rob: Like I was saying, I had used GitHub from a coding perspective, but not from building a course website. I was great that someone else had just put their template up for even forget what course that printed made by I could fork their template, essentially because I should say forking it’s not used writing the code and as soon as I upload it, it generates the website. All I have on my computer could just be Evernote, basically, it’s just in Markdown, which is like TextPlus, if you will.

I just typed those in there dropping pictures with the editor I have and once I upload it to GitHub, it took some effort to set up but now it’s automatic and makes the web pages whole set. I also felt like I’ll just add this really quick. Arduino is this electronics platform that I work with. It’s open source, there’s a very much culture of in making open source and freely sharing knowledge. That’s also why I felt like, I couldn’t find material for this class. I’m not going to write a textbook to try to sell this to people. It was really hard for me, and maybe other people can use it and it’s in the spirit of the discipline that I’m doing, too.

You helped me learn about and I asked you questions about what an open educational resource was. Maybe a couple of people are using it, but if not, at least it’s there and when people have found it, they said, “Oh, this is really cool.” That’s why I was also glad to just have it up there. I can’t do that with all my classes because sometimes I team teach things but to the extent what I can and we’re in education. I enjoy sharing that when I can.

[00:37:54] Bonni: This is the time in which we each get to share our recommendations. Rob, I’m veering left or right or up or down because I’m going in a whole different direction. Although I guess I can tie it to technology. Here we go. I started experimenting on Mastodon. Yes. I have an account on Mastodon, Dave, my husband and I are paying for a host company. We’ve got our own little host, just the two of us but we’re able to follow people on other Mastodon instances. It feels clunky.

I’m still getting used to the whole thing. It’s a whole new thing but I started following someone named Dr. Rachel Chadwick and she posts a lot of beautiful poetry. I don’t know a lot about poetry and I don’t read a lot of poetry, which is why it felt like such a gift to be following her and be exposed to all of these things. I would like to read a poem that she posted. The poem is called Still, and it’s by Margaret Renkl in her collection called Late Migrations.

I pause to check the milkweed and the caterpillar halts mid-bite, its face still lowered to the leaf.

I walked down my driveway at dusk, and the Cottontail under the pine tree freezes, not a single twitch of ear or nose.

On the roadside, the dough stands immobile, as still as the trees that rise above her.

My car passes.

Her soft nose doesn’t quiver.

Her soft flanks don’t rise or fall.

A current of air stirs only the hairs at the very tip of her tail.

I peek between the branches of the holly bush and the red bird nests lane looks straight at me, motionless unblinking.

Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world in the stir of too much motion hold still, be quiet, listen.

Rob, what do you have to recommend today?

[00:40:07] Rob: Thank you, Bonni. It’s hard to follow up. I appreciate that. Thumps up, [laughs] because it was beautiful and hard to follow up from that. I’m coming off winter break, so I have nothing teaching-related as I’ve been relaxing, but I thought I have two things. One, because the last time you had me on was to talk about Severance as a size of a sci-fi show. I was thinking of that and unfortunately, two flawed but really great shows sci-fi that I liked were Roswell in 1899, were both canceled. I still think they’re worth watching, but that’s another episode.

What I watched this year that I would recommend is, The Leftovers, which is it’s from 2014, so I am very late to the party, but I watched it this year at the beginning of 2022ish.

It’s basically a show where I think 2% of the world’s population just disappears, completely disappears. The show is not about, I say it’s sci-fi adjacent because it’s really not about what happened to those people and where did they go, that’s not the point. The point is, what happens to humanity when you try to recover from the unimaginable?

I think I just happened to watch it almost on a whim and I found it to be a really [laughs] cathartic for coming into this wherever we are in the pandemic at this point. It’s affected people differently. The show is about grief and loss, but also hope and joy. I found it to be really good and it’s three seasons, it does come to a complete end. If you like that where it’s fully set, sometimes it’s heavy, it’s been dealing with the loss, but also can be very funny and whimsical at times.

That’s my plug. Then my second plug actually does relate to what I talked about, which is there’s a show on Netflix, I think it’s called Our Planet. It’s about, the documentary about nature and the planet. My wife said, let’s watch this making of it’s think it’s called, I looked at the name of our planet behind the scenes because these people are filming in the cold of winter in jungles, in deserts.

We were just joking that it would probably be inspiring for us as we’re, oh, this is hard to record in her therapy program and her office with this little camera. We thought it would be inspiring to see what do actual real camera crews work on? I would say if you feel intimidated by recording a course, announcement or a course trailer or whatever, watching these amazing people, man couple people are living in a shack in Siberia for the winter to capture scenes of the Siberian tiger.

Other people are traipsing through an Indonesian jungle carrying his massive camera to capture on an orangutan using a tool. I feel we watched and we’re like, okay, [laughs] if these talented camera crew people can do that, then maybe we can sit in a small [laughs], office [laughter] and record a therapy program to help people. I found a relief. It was fun, really neat to see. One, last thing I’ll say though, the very last scene is an unexpectedly challenging but powerful scene about Walrus. If you’re watching with children or I’m just giving a warning that it’s a tough unexpected reality of things climate change but still might not be good to the kids. The rest of it, the other hour is good. Just be aware of that.

[00:43:24] Bonni: All right, Rob, those sound amazing recommendations. I can always count on you. I don’t think you and Jackie have ever steered me wrong, so thank you for that. [laughs] I look forward to that and have to consider whether or not the kids will be watching at least through the last scene that is so, but it sounds a wonderful, wonderful thing. Rob, thank you for being my friend. Thank you for coming on the podcast for time number three or four. Now I’m losing track and I think we might have to talk more in the future about this whole course build and GitHub because I’m still super intrigued. Thank you for being back.

[00:43:57] Rob: I’m honored to be back and they have a joke on SNL when the people host five times they get a jacket. If I make it to five appearances, maybe I’ll get a Teaching on Higher Education jacket.

[00:44:06] Bonni: To make a jacket. [laughs] Absolutely. It’ll be made from Velour. That’s a joke from before we started recording [laughs] because our daughter got quite the Velour outfit for Christmas. You have Velour jacket. There we go. Love it. Thanks, Rob.

[00:44:18] Rob: Thank you so much, Bonni.

[00:44:19] Bonni: [laughs]

[music]

Thanks once again to my friend, Rob Parke, for revisiting course trailers with me for this episode. Thanks to each one of you for listening. If you have yet to subscribe to the Teaching in Higher Ed weekly email on most weeks, you’ll receive in your inbox the most recent show notes, as well as some other resources that don’t show up on the podcast show notes pages. Head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe to get those emails. Thanks to Andrew Kroeger for editing today’s episode and to Sierra Smith for the podcast production support. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:45:22] [END OF AUDIO]

The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning.

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.