Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 486 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Design for Learning with Dr. Jenae Cohn. Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stahovia, 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. I’m thrilled today to be having one of 2 co authors of the book Design for Learning, User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning. Dr. Jenae Cohn writes and speaks about teaching and learning for international audiences as the executive director at the Center For Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley. She manages the teams responsible for faculty development programming, campus assessment, instructional design, and advising strategy and training. She has developed Vision and strategy for implementation of campus wide instructional support for undergraduate education and is a leader in campus wide efforts to develop curricular innovation.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:27]:

Dr. Cohn has held Prior roles at Cal State University Sacramento, Stanford University, and University of California Davis. As a sought after writer and speaker, Dr. Cohn is the author of 2 books. The one we’ll be speaking about today, which he has coauthored with Michael Greer, Design for learning, user experience in online teaching and learning, and skim, dive, surface, teaching digital reading. Janae contributes to trade and peer reviewed publications, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, Faculty Focus, EDUCAUSE review, Journal of Educational Research and Practice, Computers and Composition, Journal of Faculty Development and Other Venues. Janae Cohn, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Jenae Cohn [00:02:20]:

Thanks for having me, Bonni. It’s a delight to be here today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:23]:

I have been familiar with your Worked for quite some time. In fact, our senior director of our library had sent me your book about digital reading some time ago, and it’s still sitting there. And I just I know it’s gonna be so good, and I’m gonna go, he was so right this whole time, but Too many books, too little time, but I am very grateful to have you here to talk about this book project and to successfully have, read the whole thing and Already have gotten so much out of it. I’ve been preparing this for this conversation for quite some time, so I’m so glad to have you here.

Jenae Cohn [00:02:58]:

Oh, I love to hear that and never feel guilty for not reading a book. There is a lot to read, and you can always skim it too. That’s also okay. So I’m I’m a big, believer in just being kind about what you can make time for and taking what’s useful. But I’m I’m excited to get Talk to you today about the new book that I co wrote with my colleague, Michael Breuer.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:19]:

We are gonna be exploring 3 broad areas in our conversation. First, we’re gonna look at some user experience principles that we might use when we are designing our courses. Second, we’re gonna talk about course Assets and specifically some advice that you have for us on media. And last, we’re going to look at Assessment methods and online courses. So let’s start with user experience principles. What can we draw from that Expertise and some of those principles when we’re designing learning experiences.

Jenae Cohn [00:03:54]:

Yes. So user experience research is really handy, I think, for higher education instructors because it reminds us that at the core of any class we’re teaching, We have to think about how a student or a user is going to navigate through that experience. I think as instructors, it’s really easy to take for granted sometimes what a student’s pathway is going to be through a course. I know I have made lots of assumptions. For example, that when my student accesses a learning management system site I’ve created or a course website I’ve built, that they’re necessarily gonna look at something like a syllabus first and then look at the assignment second and then, you know, the grades next or whatever. But the reality, and I think what user experience research tells us, the reality is that Different users are going to orient to design in different kinds of ways, and we need to take, I think, An acquisitive approach to that work. So user experience research basically says we need to start by empirically examining How different users will orient to their experience. And that means really paying attention to Making sure there’s room for agency in how the user navigates through a site.

Jenae Cohn [00:05:08]:

So a key user experience principle is that there shouldn’t only be 1 really constrained pathway into finding the information a user needs. There needs to be at least one other choice. It’s also referred as having freedom referred to, I should say, as having freedom to navigate through a web space effectively. So when we’re designing courses, this actually, I think, aligns really well with universal designing for learning principles too. But if you can create in your navigation at least one other pathway to find the course grades, the readings, the materials, That gives different users different ways of making sure they have equal opportunities to find the information that they need to succeed in the course. I think a second principle that’s really useful from user experience research is the recognition that There does need to be transparent access to information as well. So this is tied in, I think, with this concept of giving users a bit of freedom We’re having at least a couple different ways to find that information. There should also be really obvious visual and verbal cues to get to that information as well.

Jenae Cohn [00:06:16]:

So if we’re designing in a learning management system, again, our course website, we wanna be really thinking about how is this information conveyed not just through text or Not just through a single button or image that could only be understood from a single perspective or a single student’s orientation, but rather could be accessed through different kinds of positionalities. Now I wanna say that These kinds of principles as you’re listening to them, you might be thinking, that sounds like a lot of work to design multiple pathways. It might sound like a tremendous amount of work to be Conceptualizing how different users will orient to text or to images to transparently find the information they need. And it is. I don’t wanna say that’s is an easy thing to do. However, when Michael and I were first conceptualizing this book, we thought principles like these were so imperative For higher education instructors to consider, because we saw dovetailing with all the parallel efforts around equity and inclusion, and we recognize that in online learning in particular, We noticed at the higher, there are a lot of really strict approaches. Like, everyone has to create a course with modules. Everyone has to create a course, that starts with a syllabus.

Jenae Cohn [00:07:28]:

And we just thought, what if we thought about it a different way? What if we thought about it in terms of trying to understand How to design something that meets as many different people’s needs as possible rather than trying to prescribe 1 single pathway or approach? Wouldn’t that make it easier to remember that who we’re supporting is not us? We’re not supporting the institution. We’re supporting students who need to be able to find their pathways into these course materials. So I think if this idea feels overwhelming, You can pick just one thing. Right? If it maybe the idea of having different pathways into the material resonates best with you. You might say, okay. Maybe I’ll just make that in an intro video to my course, I tell students they could find the syllabus either through the module section or through the syllabus tool. Right? It can be as simple as just making sure it’s really clear how How students can have an agency to navigate through the site. I could go on with more examples, but I I think those 2 principles in particular are just helpful ones to remember so that we aren’t being overly prescriptive in our approaches, and we’re not forgetting.

Jenae Cohn [00:08:31]:

And, again, we can’t control How students engage with the experience. Once you have an online course, you’re never really gonna know how someone is navigating to or orienting to it. You have to have some faith that your design can stand alone and that it can be reached and understood and that it’s good to let students again Orient to that course in the way that makes sense to them and depending on the kinds of devices they’re using as well. So a lot to unpack there, but I hope that those principles start to kind of flip the script a little in terms of how we might think about the creative possibilities of online course design as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:06]:

The kinds of intentionality that you’re talking about there can be challenging. I I wanna point back to the example that you gave us. That actually isn’t harder, because already the learning management system and everyone that I know of might Place something in a module and also in a syllabus, and you don’t have to actually set that up as you’re designing the course in those 2 places, they appear. So if if it’s a assignment or a resource or that kind of thing, and you place it in a module, assuming that it does have A due date associated with it, then it will show up in a syllabus. So I think, yes, it’s difficult to have that kind of intentionality. I love what you’ve done for us, Janae, is to shrink it down for us and say, okay, let’s just think about really one thing that we’d like to try to do as we iterate a course. And then also just to remember that these learning management companies, they’ve sort of they they also study User experience quite a bit and incorporate it into their their products that they offer us. So

Jenae Cohn [00:10:07]:

yeah. That that is reassuring, right, that we can depend a little bit on the systems themselves to be designed in these ways. I think the challenge then as an instructor, if you’re the one who’s supposed to be designing and facilitating the course, is making sure those infrastructural choices in the learning management systems are transparent and clear that students know, hey. I can have the freedom to choose these multiple pathways, and Some of that may not need to be explained. Good design wouldn’t need to be explained necessarily. But I know I have plenty of colleagues who complain about the learning management system not Always feeling, quote, unquote, intuitive a lot. And that’s where I think, as instructors, if we’re attentive to user experience principles, if we’re thinking about, okay, What does it feel like to find information in a particular order? What does it feel like to look about information in a slightly different order? How many clicks does it take me? How much thinking do I have to do? Right. If they’re just kind of developing some awareness of that, they can alert their students too whether it’s through an intro orientation video to the course, whether it’s through kind of planning out a series of sort of small announcements that wouldn’t take much time to prep Before the course begins, again, just to help students be attentive to how they find what they need and to be attentive to it’s It’s almost like it’s developing metacognitive capacity, so they’re being attentive to their metacognitive awareness of how they’re experiencing a course.

Jenae Cohn [00:11:31]:

This is all UX informed thinking that, again, I’d love instructors to consider because I think it would really lower some of the access barriers or Perceived access barriers to developing and working online developing online courses and working online.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:47]:

I’m so glad that you pointed that out. I’m just gonna repeat what you said. Good design shouldn’t have to be explained. And the biggest place that I bump into that so we are we are As we may benefit from some of the user experience design choices made by these large Learning management systems, there are a bunch of assumptions that get built into them, and the biggest place that I run into that would be with the grade book or how it’s set up. I’m reading a book which I’ll be sharing once I’m finished with it, but I’m reading a book on alternative grading approaches. And it is Very, very hard to wrestle with a grade book that was designed with particular assessment methods in mind. So that was such a great thing to point out. Let’s explore now about different media choices that we may make in our courses and some advice that you have for us there.

Jenae Cohn [00:12:39]:

Sure. So variety is key in developing an online course. I would actually take a step back perhaps and say the variety is key in developing any course because all course experiences are inherently multimodal whether you’re on-site or online. So I think that’s worth saying first and foremost. But particularly when you’re developing an online course, it’s really important to be Mindful of when will text be the best way for someone to access this information? When will video be the best way to access information. When will audio alone be the best way to access this information? And I say the best with the caveat that Media options need to be accessible. And so even if you are relying on text, even if you’re relying on video, It’s always worth remembering that you you will need to offer an alternative modality option for someone who may not be able to access that. So for example, with the text choice, you would need to point out that text to speech applications are available in browsers to make sure the information is readable.

Jenae Cohn [00:13:48]:

If you’re creating a video, having a transcript is critical. So that asterisk aside, as you’re developing your course, It’s worth considering, what does text afford me as an educator? What is the user’s experience of engaging with text? When are they gonna find text Most useful. There’s a certain tendency, I think, in online courses to over rely on video and video modules Because I think there’s an assumption that if you’re taking a course online, you’re desiring The on demand video is a primary modality for consuming information, but I think that’s an assumption. It’s not always What the user actually desires because watching video can be incredibly cumbersome. For example, for things like assignment instructions Or someone might need to return to those instructions over and over again, watching a video introduction to how to complete assignment is going to feel really slow and Probably annoying to browse through to find information you need. Right? The benefits of text are that it’s it is easily skimmable. You can easily find and search For information, even if you’re using a screen reader relying on audio, you can speed up or slow down the rate of that Audio much more easily than you can sort of buffering through a video that might be requiring more bandwidth online. Text is incredibly low bandwidth.

Jenae Cohn [00:15:14]:

It’s The most accessible modality in terms of accessing on mobile or accessing with different levels of Internet speed, particularly for international students who may have differing levels of access to Internet bandwidth. Text could be a really good choice. So I’m giving an example thinking through text specifically here. We could do the same line of thinking for video and for audio to model. The choices you’re making in media need to be based On the content, right, what do you want students to get out of what you’re presenting to them? You know, based on the audience. Remember, who is your user? Who is your student in this course? What are their needs going to be, and how are you responsive to those needs and how they might engage with it? And then c, what do you need students to do with the information? So it again, that’s a lot to hold in your brain all at once. And the advice I would offer there is when you’re designing A really high quality course. It’s worth being really judicious about what content you wanna include.

Jenae Cohn [00:16:19]:

That way you have the space and capacity To do this really deep thinking about how you present that content in alignment with these considerations around how students are gonna access and engage with it And importantly, what you want them to do with that information. I know it’s easier said than done. I’m a chronic over planner. I always overstuff my courses even Well, I can say this advice out loud. So I get it. It’s not easy to do, but that is the best way. Less is more, Especially when you’re designing online because you have to be so intentional about which media you’re selecting and why for the audiences You’re designing your course for.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:58]:

It can be such a paradox. Earlier, you said variety is key. And I’ve seen that so much as a learner, and I’ve seen it when attempting to facilitate learning for others. And yet, We don’t want to do that at the expense of having somewhat of a predictable structure. What is some of your advice around the those seeming tensions, but they actually can have some interplay off of each other?

Jenae Cohn [00:17:26]:

Right. I think that is a big tension. So I think a piece of advice I would give is if you’re planning your course, I would consider whether there are ways you can create structure with that variety in mind. For example, perhaps Assignment instructions are always consistently available as text first artifacts. So when a student goes into the course and they’re looking for an assignment, They know that that’s the media they can expect to find those assignment instructions in. And perhaps there are similar patterns created with other media. Perhaps each week of the course Always has a video introduction from you as the instructor. It establishes that there is a pattern to how they’re selecting And how they’re navigating through different pieces of information, but you’re not making a ton of different choices week by week.

Jenae Cohn [00:18:20]:

Right. It’s it’s more confusing than consistent to have some section introductions be just audio only and some being just video only and some reading just text Some weeks and not others. So I think there are still ways to create patterns and structure, and it comes down to taking that 1st step, I think, of just conceptualizing Which media choice will allow me to best accomplish the goals I have for the students, the ways I imagine them interacting in this with this material? And then from there, can I consistently follow that pattern throughout the course so that there are clear expectations that students go through, And they’re not having to think too hard about why and how each piece of information is presented or communicated differently in the course?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:04]:

As you’re describing that, I’m thinking about I mean, you you said this earlier, but all of the choices we might have. So yes, text, yes, video, but then Wait. That’s just you’ve seen those charts before of the 9,000 things that we could possibly do. When people first Start to begin to experiment with educational technologies. I think it would be easy. I have seen it be easy for people to think, oh, variety is Key. So what I’m gonna do is I’m I’m gonna use Padlet over here, and then I’m gonna use Miro over here, and then we’ll do a Google Jamboard over here, and we’ll pop over. And so That is actually not the kind of variety that you’re talking about to stimulate curiosity.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:46]:

So before we start to Explore our our last topic, and I suppose actually this relates to our last topic as well of assessment. But what advice would you maybe Clarify for us that variety of tools may not be key, but what kinds of variety might be an example for us to draw inspiration from?

Jenae Cohn [00:20:05]:

Oh, great question. So I’ll underscore your point first that picking a bunch of different tools to do the same thing is going to be really challenging for students because it takes a lot of time to learn how to use all those different tools. And by the time they learn how to use Jamboard in one place and then they have to switch to mirror with another, They’re gonna feel frustrated because they have to learn a whole new interface all over again just to fulfill potentially the same outcomes since both Jamboard and Miro are Both visualization and brainstorming tools at the end of the day. So to clarify, when I speak to variety being Useful. I’m really referring to variety, I think, in in the core sense of thinking about access to engaging with multimodal knowledge that as you’re creating a learning experience, it’s worth considering How are they getting this information by reading visually and silently? How are they getting this information by listening slowly and carefully? How are they engaging this assignment by speaking out loud? How are they engaging with assignment by writing themselves or by drawing or problem solving? I think that the more the instructor you can consider and weigh the options for communicating information And think about what kinds of activities might help students best achieve those goals by getting to think in different kinds of ways and communicate in different ways. We know from scholars like Richard Meyer, who’s written a lot about multimedia learning, or Gunther Kress, who’s written a lot about multimedia learning. These are, like, old multimedia scholars at this point or older, I should say. We know that that that cognitively speaking, this kind of multimodal Variety and learning can activate some new neural pathways and more successful achievement of cognitive outcomes.

Jenae Cohn [00:22:02]:

But switching to a bunch of different interfaces and tools actually goes against user experience principles to tie us back to our first question. And so far as you wanna give some agency and freedom to the user, But you don’t want them to feel lost. There has to be clarity to the journey, and there has to be some consistency and that clarity along the journey. So Trying to use every single possible new tool out there as cool as they might be really is is counter to user experience principle. Giving someone some freedom to decide where they’re gonna go, but not give them so many options that they feel totally lost.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:35]:

Something I appreciated in the book too is when you talk about that variety, It can be in the style of writing that I use. And am I writing more for the web where this content might be read and that web Writing would be structured in different ways than if I were considering a print book, and how that might be accessed differently. I mentioned on a recent podcast episode that I’ve experimented twice now with, instead of doing a video that I might normally do in front of a web Kim or we actually have a one button studio video setup, but that is a camera that is on my face. I tried turning the camera around and going for a couple of different walks, and so what they’re seeing on the camera is what I am seeing As I walk around and so just it that is is still video. And and like you said, the The the assignments, we know that’s gonna be in writing all the time, but the video might have some unexpected element. Did you have a prop sitting next to you. And you mentioned that in one of your videos. So it’s not just that every time I watch a video, it’s gonna look like any other video I’ve ever seen before, and there will be Five bullet points and that so it’s it’s kind of, I think, the creative stuff that you share about, But we’re not trying 13 different things to so it’s like within that constraint, then opens up the opportunities for creativity.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:01]:

And I took that I took that away from your writing as well. So the last area that we wanna get some of your advice on are assessment methods. And Janae, I feel like this is an unfair question because I know you have much more you could offer this. But what are some of the differences and perhaps similarities that we should be thinking about assessment methods and online courses versus ones in a traditional

Jenae Cohn [00:24:24]:

classroom. Right. There’s a ton we could say about this. And and I will do my due diligence as an Author of the book and say, if you wanna take a deeper dive into this answer, chapters 9 and 10 of our book do a really close investigation. Excuse me. Chapters 8 and 9. I know the tables of content in my book. I promise.

Jenae Cohn [00:24:40]:

You know, much deeper dive into these concepts. But I would say that the first thing to think about if you’re trying to assess The efficacy of your online course is what’s the data that you’re collecting about your students’ experience with that course? And I think sometimes Instructor’s still uncomfortable with thinking about their course as collecting data because it sounds impersonal. It sounds like it’s turning students into numbers And not people, which makes people makes instructors, I should say, but students, in some cases, feel dehumanized. So I wanna acknowledge that. At the same time, I don’t think data has to be a bad word because I think it actually is really useful For instructors just to observe and see what information they can glean about the class based on behaviors and experiences Within it. That, actually, I think it’s really humanizing and important to look at data because it gives us a really holistic understanding What the experience of a class for student is actually like. Their lived experiences and testimony are important. Right? So one assessment approach, of course, Would be just to ask students via surveys or small kind of follow-up reflective assignments for students to share what they learned.

Jenae Cohn [00:25:55]:

But I wouldn’t rely upon those alone because what students share verbally with you as the instructor is going to be a pretty limited window into how they experience the whole course. So I’d also encourage instructors to actually use the analytics from their courses in meaningful ways just to notice what has happened in the courses. Right. Which resources are selected most frequently? That’s not gonna tell you why. I reckon the numbers alone are just going to tell you how frequently they were used, but there’s a lot of conclusions you could come to based on that. Right? So you’d have to contextualize. Okay. Wow.

Jenae Cohn [00:26:29]:

I’m noticing this one reading was accessed a lot. You could say a certain you might think about, did that mean students were using it a lot and finding it helpful? That means this reading was really confusing, so people were having to pull up multiple times. So I would triangulate data like that with what assignments were scaffolded with that. So How did the grades or performance or feedback on certain assignments correlate with the click rate data and usage of particular kinds of artifacts? For example, that might help you reach certain conclusions and understand more about the course itself. I also think data around assignment submissions is really interesting and important. And, again, I recognize that different instructors are gonna orient to processes of turning in assignments or having deadlines in different ways. But even looking at How how many students complete the assignments within the allocated time frame versus how many didn’t complete that assignment within the allocated time frame? That might give you some good information about whether the assignment was aligned with the expected difficulty that you’ve created for the task, whether the pacing of the course Aligned with what you hoped students would accomplish. So I would say that, again, thinking about the data that’s available in the course can help you engage that assessment process To encourage more reflective practice around your course, course design is iterative.

Jenae Cohn [00:27:49]:

It constantly needs to be revised. So, again, I encourage kind of a balance of getting some feedback from your students after the class is over and using the analytics within it to make Come to some conclusions about what you could revise or do differently the next time you offer the course. The final note I will just say here about assessment So I think it’s also really important if you can to even do a little bit of think aloud protocol through your course. So time allowing, This would assume you have some generosity of time. So I know this isn’t gonna work for everyone. But it’s great if at the end of the course, if you have a few students who’ve been really engaged, Ask them to, like, do a quick screen recording of how they navigated through the course is really great assessment information for you to have too because it can really show you from a lived sense, Again, how are students finding what they need? And I think a lab protocol is a UX research protocol where a user’s website Click certain buttons, access certain links, and narrates out loud what they’re noticing. Okay. I’m clicking this link because I wanna find this resource here, and It’s I’m doing it for these reasons.

Jenae Cohn [00:28:56]:

Like, just getting to hear how someone is thinking through their experience, again, is another great way To assess an online course in particular that you may not rely upon so heavily for an on the ground or on-site course, but that can be really useful For designing, assessing your online courses.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:12]:

I’m thinking back to 25 years ago reading a web design book, and it Introduced a card sorting activity, which is kind of the inverse of what you just described. So if you have this luxury and not all of us Well, but if you have the luxury and you’re designing a course to have cards and ask people where where would you look for this information, and then you could have Essentially, what are the different components? Is it your syllabus, your modules, announcements, etcetera? And then anticipate in advance where people might Go look to find things. And then what you’re describing, Janae, would be, well, afterward, did people look for things where I thought they might and all of that. And of course, if we’re really following your advice and we take the time, it’s not gonna matter if they chose the exact one path to take because there will be alternate ways to get there. I was thinking when you were talking about that earlier, it can be so hard because when Applications, different kinds of online services get this right, and there are more than 1 place to get something. And then somebody asks you, oh, how do I get to that place? And it’s like, I really don’t wanna make this sound confusing, but there’s a lot of ways to get to that place so that it it’s kind of hard. I’ve I find myself Struggling where I wanna tell the person that there’s multiple options, but I also don’t wanna confuse them. So

Jenae Cohn [00:30:32]:

It’s hard. Yeah. I it’s a tough balance to strike, and I try to, again, give myself the grace that I’m not gonna create anything perfect for everyone at all times. But there are some principles I can try The practice and just see what comes out of it. Even just it means experimenting with just one other way of doing it. It’s better than nothing, I think. And that really the goal when we’re designing a course is just to think about how can I most creatively Develop this course this time around? Like, what’s one creative or different thing I can do to try and help 1 more student feel like They have an equal opportunity to succeed in this course. But one of my former colleagues compared designing a course, especially a new course, To making a 1st pancake, which I love as a metaphor because every time you fire up a griddle and make a pancake like, the first one is always a little weird.

Jenae Cohn [00:31:27]:

It’s always like a little underbaked or you burn it, and it’s burnt on the outside, gooey on the inside. But by the time you make more and more pancakes, They get better. You kind of figure out the right ratio, dough in the pan. I could go on forever with this metaphor. But I think it’s great for course design in particular because I just Think it again, it’s iterative. It’s it’s a good reminder. And I think also the choices you make about how much you say about the choices available Depends on who’s in your class. I think that’s also why user experience research is helpful.

Jenae Cohn [00:31:55]:

It’s this constant reminder that we need to be listening all the time to what Users of websites are considering when you’re developing a site. And I think the same thing goes with course design. If we can just keep getting continuous feedback from students About their experience all along the way, we’re informed by how different populations, different years are gonna orient to it. So I think that means being willing to change I do different things year by year, and that’s that’s okay too. So lots of

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:24]:

choices. Such good advice for us, Janae. Thank you so much. This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I’ve got a random one, Janae. Go for it.

Jenae Cohn [00:32:35]:

I’m excited to

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:35]:

hear it. I want to recommend Mason jars with lids and reusable straws. So only Janae gets to see this because She’s on video with me, but it’ll also be linked to in the show notes. But some months ago, I bought these mason jars, and they’re just so lovely To be able to drink all kinds of things that helps me because they’re larger than a normal glass that we might have in our house would be. But I do tend to be sometimes a bit clumsy, so if you knock one of these over, it’s not entirely waterproof, but the lid has this silicon barrier that you’re gonna get a few drops of water or iced tea on whatever desk he’s just spilled it on as opposed to the entire thing, which I have done before. They’re really sturdy, they’re really convenient, and I even will sometimes carry them with me in my bag and be able to transport Again, safe I wouldn’t bring a glass around with me wherever I went, and sometimes water bottles are such a hassle to hand wash and all that. So I’m just finding them. I’m finding all kinds of purposes for them, and I really, really like them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:41]:

And I just wanna recommend mason jars today. And, Janae, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to Recommend.

Jenae Cohn [00:33:48]:

Well, I feel honored and privileged. I got to see the

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:51]:

Mason jar. Yes. It’s very exciting.

Jenae Cohn [00:33:53]:

It does look pretty cool. It’s like a large glass Mason jar with the I haven’t seen the stainless steel lid, the stainless steel straw. Yeah. I feel like I might be compelled to buy one that was a good pitch For the mason jar.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:05]:

I I I have I have some bad news for you though because I don’t think you can buy just 1. So you might be buying 6, I think. Oh. Yeah. I apologize. Half. No. It may be I’m sure anything’s possible, but you might find when you went to look that 6 is gonna be a far better, price per bottle than if you were than per jar than if you were to go and just buy 1.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:27]:

I don’t know. It’s been a while since I

Jenae Cohn [00:34:28]:

was up. I’ll I’ll have to look. I’ll I’ll be cure it may make sense that you’d buy them as a set. Most glasses, I guess, you have to buy insets now that I think about it. They’re matching. You can share them with your friends.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:39]:

Yes.

Jenae Cohn [00:34:39]:

Which is good too. So I have a couple recommendations. I will do my fun one first, and then I’ll do more of the shop talk Style recommendations. So the first one is I know that some people recommended board games, and I love playing a board game At the end of a long day, I am on the screen all day. I said I still wanna use my brain, but I wanna get off the screen. So I would say the board game I’ve been enjoying a lot lately is one called 7 wonders. It is a competitive engine building game For those who are so familiar with game terms where you have to build your own civilization before your your Playmates do. And there are ways that you can make your civilization stronger than theirs.

Jenae Cohn [00:35:24]:

It’s it’s really interactive. There’s a 2 person version called 7 wonders duel If you just wanna play with 1 other person, but it’s a game we can play up to 6. My husband and I will play the 2 person version a lot at the end of the day. It’s, like, 30 minutes. And It’s I just think a game is a fun brain reset for me when I don’t wanna be intellectual, but I want to still be I think strategically and creatively and competitively. So that’s a fun one. The other recommendation I’ll make is for, more of a shop Talk perspective. I will say that when Michael and I wrote our book Design for Learning, we were really inspired by the communities, the online communities around user experience research.

Jenae Cohn [00:36:06]:

And, Really, our genesis for this book was, gosh, why aren’t why are there not more higher ed people engaging in UX Communities, there’s so much we have in common. We all really care about people, students, users having good experiences and learning. So I would say that if you are feeling inspired to kind of go a little outside of the higher ed space and Want to also be engaged in these conversations as a great LinkedIn group and medium site called the UX of EdTech. It’s run by that I think has been really interesting An inspirational for me as I’ve been learning more about this topic. And then the press through which we published this book, Rosenfeld Media, I just wanna put in a plug for just their book series. They have their I think the books that I have found especially helpful are ones on Writing UX writing has been great for instructional purposes. There’s a great book called conversations with things that’s kind of all about Automation and ways that UX designers write automated text, which given all the hullabaloo over AI and its potential use cases and instruction, I think is incredibly helpful too. I just think sometimes my my new shtick right now is, gosh, in higher ed, We could be doing such a better job of being in conversation with our colleagues in other industries who are doing overlapping things.

Jenae Cohn [00:37:32]:

I’ve just found it enriching to be willing to explore other fields. So those are the places I would point to, again, for folks who are feeling inspired by, like, the very I gave him such a superficial nugget of UX Principles and practices in this short conversation, but you could dive in more deeply. And I think, hopefully, feel equally as inspired buy some approaches that I think are flexible and exciting and and humanizing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:58]:

Speaking of not having enough time to read books, As I received not just a digital copy, but a a hard copy of your book as well, I did go to your publisher’s website. Oh my goodness gracious. I can see why you recommended it today, fascinating topics. And I I love the ways in which the design links them in between each other In in a very unique way and kind of invites you into be curious and explore a bit. So what a great place for people to visit. Janae, thank you so much for coming on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Thank you for your work and your generosity to the broader higher ed community. I’m so glad today’s

Jenae Cohn [00:38:37]:

conversation. Oh, thank you again for having me. Just a delight to get to talk to you, and thank you for your thoughtful questions and stewardship of these conversations.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:48]:

Thanks once again to Dr. Jenae Cohn for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production Support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you’ve been listening for a while and you have yet to subscribe to the weekly email, I encourage you to head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe so that you can receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as other goodies that don’t show up on those regular show notes such as quotable words and other recommendations. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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