Bonni: [00:00:00] On this episode members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community join me to celebrate all the learning that’s gone on in 50 episodes. Many also share their recommendations to the listening community.

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

Bonni: [00:00:21] Welcome to this fiftieth 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: [00:00:49] Hi this is Bonni Stachowiak and I am so happy to be celebrating Episode 50 with you. And I have a number of people who either called or emailed in to share what they’ve gotten out of the podcast so far and also to provide us with some recommendations of their own.

Bonni: [00:01:05] One of the themes that you’re going to notice from the people who have communicated at least one of the themes I noticed is just how not alone we are. That was the number one trend I saw and all the communication I received. It feels good to know that there are other people out there that care so much about teaching in higher ed.

Bonni: [00:01:26] And also [who] face a lot of the same struggles. So that was really a nice thing to hear. And I’ll tell you I really appreciated the encouragement and I’m looking forward to introducing you to many or reintroducing you to many of the listening community. First up is David Yates from Southeastern and Southeastern was actually one of the universities who we had one of our guests from.

Bonni: [00:01:48] And that was Cameron Hunt MacNab on Episode 24 who shared how to cultivate creative assignments and I have thought back to that episode so much and really enjoy following her on Twitter and seeing all the great ways she’s continuing to innovate in her field and in teaching in general.

Bonni: [00:02:06] So here is David’s message from what he’s taken away from 50 episodes and a recommendation from him.

David: [00:02:13] Hello Bonnie. This is Dr. David Yates was Southeastern University. Congratulations on your fiftieth podcast. I’m a big fan of your podcast and your Web site and I have five takeaways. Number one I enjoy all of the tools that you share both the ed tech tools and productivity tools.

David: [00:02:37] Number two I appreciate the variety of your topics in just your first year. You’ve already covered many of the issues that we face in teaching and learning in higher ed. Number three I appreciate the different perspectives of all your guests and the fact that your guests range from what I would call normal folks like me fellow higher ed educators.

David: [00:03:05] But also some top of the line experts in our field of light. Ken Bain and Steven Brookfield. We all bring different perspectives regardless of where we teach or what we teach or how long we’ve been teaching and all those different perspectives really inform our pedagogy.

David: [00:03:27] Number four I appreciate your passion for education. We model for our students. We are passionate about our teaching in general or about the subject matter that we’re teaching.

David: [00:03:42] And number 5 I’m especially proud of your commitment to your students. I also believe that there is a reason that we even exist. And so congratulations on all of these wonderful characteristics of your podcast and your Web site. God bless.

Bonni: [00:04:03] David thank you so much for recording that message and I will just say that touches me so much that you have taken those things away from the show and were willing to share that with me and with other people who listen.

Bonni: [00:04:14] It has been for me a wonderful last almost year now getting to talk to as you said some phenomenal experts in this field Ken Bain and Steven Brookfield are two that really stood out to me as well. And just to have be able to have the courage to send an e-mail out and give it a shot and then to have people say yes.

Bonni: [00:04:36] And I’ll tell you one of the things by the way that Steven Brookfield His only condition was that I don’t charge for anything he were to provide and he would never have even had to ask. But I thought that I mean just that speaks to his generosity.

Bonni: [00:04:49] But of course he also is an expert and does take on a number of paid workshops throughout the year. And I hope to one day be able to attend a conference where he is speaking and I’ve been following him ever since. So again David just such warm kind encouraging words. I really truly appreciate it.

Bonni: [00:05:05] It’s been a great way to kick off the episode and reflect back on 50 episodes. Next up we have Christine and Christine posted in the comments section of one of the podcasts where I asked for some feedback.

Bonni: [00:05:17] She also regularly e-mails with me and once I send out the weekly updates she’ll let me know how stuff is resonating with her or what she’s passed on to other colleagues in her institution. She says that the biggest takeaway for her is.

Bonni: [00:05:31] I “knowledge that I’m not alone in my efforts to actively engage students with activities tasks projects problems during class. Thank you. I’ve also used Remind for several years I didn’t know the features of the app until you told me about it last way. On my way to teach folks how to train their dogs.”

Bonni: [00:05:49] And I did send back an email to Christine or a comment cracking up because my parents do a lot of dog training both agility training and also search and rescue canine search and rescue training. So it was fun that we had that in common cause that’s a big part of my family’s background and their world and someday I hope to have a guest on.

Bonni: [00:06:07] I won’t say who it is. In case it doesn’t ever happen meant to talk about training canines and how there are some parallels between training in higher ed. Next up we have Scott Self who might be a familiar name to you because he was on just a couple of episodes again ago on Episode 48.

Bonni: [00:06:26] And he shared how to use Evernote in higher ed and I’m still having so much fun thinking about how to incorporate many of the things that he shared. I have said before during the semester I only let myself experiment with one new tool at a time but in the summer I let myself go wild.

Bonni: [00:06:43] So I’m having fun with not just the tips from Scott Self but also from some of the other resources that I mentioned when I was sharing about Omni focus in the last episode number 49 and he called in actually and left this voicemail some time ago well before he was ever booked to be on the show or before he recorded that episode with me so.

Bonni: [00:07:05] Scott I really appreciate you doing this even though you were much less famous in the teaching in higher ed world. I’m kidding of course. I really thought it was fun to get this message and to think back it really was one of the reasons why I decided to follow up and get in touch.

Bonni: [00:07:20] And see if you were willing to be on the show and just loved having you on Episode 48 and I’m continuing to enjoy your blog. So here is the message from Scott self.

Scott: [00:07:31] My name is Scott Self from the Director of University Access Program a faculty member Abilene Christian University. One of the takeaway that I really appreciated was the discussion in episode 32 understand the need to respond to students emails.

Scott: [00:07:46] I find myself very frustrated with folks whom I report to fail to acknowledge that they received an email from one particular administration at my institution is infamous. This person will not respond to faculty interviews for 3 emails.

Scott: [00:08:00] I take away from Episode 32 everything very seriously about how I might initially put students off. Today’s reminder motivated me to create a text expander snippet that simply tells the student: “Thanks for the e-mail. I want to ensure you that I received it and I will reply to you as soon as I still give your email my full attention.”

Scott: [00:08:20] I think that my recommendation is related to this take away. I believe one of the best ways I can teach my students to manage their responsibilities is to model quality behaviors for them. For example when I promise a secret I’ll send them a research article, I’ve recently gone ahead and showed them that am creating a task. I ‘ll say to the student: “Let me make sure I can get them on my task so I don’t forget.” Sometimes I’ll simply ask Siri to remind me to send Mary the research article. In the past I would have done this after the student left but I really want to demonstrate to Mary just how important that promise is to me.

Scott: [00:08:55] And I also want to show her that I have to capture things that I need to get done. Love the show really look forward to the next 50 episodes bye.

Bonni: [00:09:04] Scott so I appreciated how your recommendation was related to honoring our students well and that is something that I also do is typically will have the student let them know let me make sure I get this into my task list so I don’t let you down on this.

Bonni: [00:09:18] But for me and some more because I’ve learned the hard way that the second that student is out of my mind and another one comes up, I just don’t have the short term memory. But I love the excuse that you’ve now given me that it’s less about my poor memory and more about just showing the students a good behavior that if they were to even incorporate into their own lives would just be a wonderful way for them to reduce stress and increase their real trustworthiness for doing what they say they’ll do. Thanks so much for calling in Scott and also for being a guest on Episode 48.

Bonni: [00:09:50] Next up I have an email from Melissa from Columbia College and she was so kind to email quite recently and share what she’s taken away from the show and I just really enjoyed getting a sense from her on how it’s resonated with her and benefited her institution. She says that your “ease of describing the technology and pedagogical challenges, the show format with the notes and the wide variety of topics that are so pertinent to me and many of my colleagues.”

Bonni: [00:10:21] She also says that she is involved with a California online education initiative piloting an online tutoring at this time so “this is also very timely to have come across your podcast series. You have a very unique gentle and fun loving attitude toward technology topics and with your guests.”

Bonni: [00:10:41] Melissa I so him appreciate those encouraging words I’m glad it’s resonating with you. One of the things you said you’re doing is you’re building a new course on universal design an online course development.

Bonni: [00:10:52] So if anyone listening has any suggestions or resources for Melissa it be fun to go to teachinginhighered.com/50 and make your recommendations to Melissa as she builds her course out.

Bonni: [00:11:06] And she mentioned that she’d be interested in hearing more about instructional design if that was something I was thinking about doing and that actually was and that’s so was so glad to hear from Melissa that it will be of value to her this summer instead of having different guests with completely different topics each week.

Bonni: [00:11:23] I will have a series I’m not sure how long it will be yet because I haven’t mapped that out yet but a series on Instructional Design Thinking for people designing their very first college course in higher ed all the way up to someone just designing or rethinking a course that they’ve taught before.

Bonni: [00:11:41] And if you have any suggestions for that would love to hear from you either at teachinginhighered.com/feedback or on the show notes for this episode at Teachinhigheredcom/50 it’s an easy number to remember and last up we have Missy McCormick who shares with us what she’s taken away from Teaching In Higher Ed.

Missy: [00:12:04] I’ve been listening to your podcast maybe for five or six months and I’ve really enjoyed it tremendously and got a lot of great information off of it. That’s really either established or made me understand that I’m not alone – for once – same struggles – and also gave me some really good tips on different ways to approach things with teaching. This is Missy McCormick and I teach art, ceramics actually in higher ed and other things that I enjoyed most recently is the idea, or I guess articulation of recalibrating our teaching. So I’ve been doing that. I’ve been in the same position now for three years tenure track and but in a new university.

Missy: [00:13:00] And I’ve taught at other places so that’s been something that’s been kind of heavy on my head of recalculating each year and recalibrating the way I approach the students and also just you know the tips on organization and perspectives on teaching has also been great.

Missy: [00:13:18] Topics that I think would be interesting and that I think about quite a bit since I teach studio arts things different approaches of teaching studio or lab classes versus extra classes which are very different and is a little bit difficult to get information on out there on the Web.

Missy: [00:13:40] And also different ways to utilize great book different grade books and how to simplify that. And I’ve often needed to give him progress grades. So dealing with grading in process or in progress of a grade and then giving final grades and how people deal with that either in their grade book or how they maybe pass out those grades in class or you know online platforms sort of like Skype or Blackboard.

Missy: [00:14:16] And then also lastly critique, critiquing student work you know discussing it in groups and different approaches that people have. I have a handful of different approaches I use but I’m always looking for different ways or new ways to assess critique in groups for small groups or large groups in the classroom. So thanks so much. Again this is Missy McCormick and I appreciate all that you do. Take care. Bye bye.

Bonni: [00:14:45] Missy thank you for those encouraging words and sharing what you’ve taken away from the episodes you’ve listened to for the last five to six months. And thanks to you for those wonderful suggestions for future episodes for more lab type ideas lab work kinds of ideas strategies for teaching for grade book strategies – including that process where we give in-progress grading and final grades and then just more generally critiquing student work. So if anyone has suggestions for Missy that you want to share now you could do that at teachinginhighered.com/50.

Bonni: [00:15:21] And Missy I will also put be putting all three of these ideas down for future episodes I will keep my eye out for good guests having to do that. Thanks too for mentioning that you got a lot out of the conversation I had with Aaron Daniel and back in episode 45 talking about recalibrating our teaching.

Bonni: [00:15:39] I am sad and happy to announce that Aaron Daniel Annas is actually not going to teaching at my institution any more so I’m really sad about that and he was joking the other day that he’ll be recalibrating his teaching once again.

Bonni: [00:15:52] So we’ll have to have him back on the show and he can share how he’s doing that he’s going to be teaching at an institution where it snows and so he says that you know this California weather is too burdensome on him and his wife Jenny.

Bonni: [00:16:06] So they need to go somewhere where they actually can have seasons so we’ll be catching up with him again soon and having him back on the show. But I’m glad you found the conversation valuable and of course I’m going to have to have him back on the show because otherwise we might not get to talk as much so we can have things we can collaborate on together like future podcast episodes.

Bonni: [00:16:25] Thanks to everyone who called or emailed and if you didn’t get a chance to do it I would still of course love to hear from you on the show notes at Teachinginhighered.com/50 or if you just want to drop me an email. You can do that at teachinginhighered.com/feedback.

Bonni: [00:16:41] I would just absolutely treasure any words of encouragement that you have or especially ideas for future guests or future shows. I always welcome those and it’s just been fun to see the audience continuing to grow for Teaching In Higher Ed.

Bonni: [00:16:54] And not just an audience but a community that’s the best part about it for me and has been so encouraging for me learning more about how to be more effective myself and getting to share with so many about what’s working for you and what ideas you have so that we can all do this better.

Bonni: [00:17:11] This is the point in the show where I make a recommendation and my recommendation is a recommendation from another recommendation from a recommendation. All right.

Bonni: [00:17:20] Once again from Doug McKee from Yale he has a blog at teachbetter.co and from his blog and also he sent me an email with a guest recommendation. He was writing about the challenge with there not been enough women in the field of economics and he talked about Amanda Beyer who has a blog called Diversifying Economic Quality.

Bonni: [00:17:49] And he recommends it because it will provide us with evidence based strategies to increase diversity in the field. Although the word economics is in the title of the blog it’s Wiki type of a website.

Bonni: [00:18:05] I will say that the strategies would work in almost any in fact most of the strategies will work in all different kinds of fields. I’m just going to read off some of the instructor practices that she recommends. She has some resources around having a growth mindset around giving students feedback on the importance of getting personal.

Bonni: [00:18:28] On study steps that you can provide to your students. And something called teaching with nuance under the classroom strategies she has adding weight time using technology. Avoiding stereotype threat cooperative learning inclusive communication and it goes on and on. She’s also got a resource on flipping a classroom.

Bonni: [00:18:50] So if you were to go up to diversifyingecon.org and I’ll have a link to that in the show notes you could get lost in there. And the best way possible because there are all sorts of resources for us to make sure that we’re not inadvertently discriminating against people in our classrooms.

Bonni: [00:19:08] We would want to make sure that we are inclusive and giving everyone opportunities to learn equally and she’s just got some wonderful resources that are research based on how we can do that better.

Bonni: [00:19:19] So that is my recommendation for today and I thank you for listening to Episode 50 of Teaching In Higher Ed and celebrating with me all that’s gone on this almost past year.

Bonni: [00:19:32] As always if you have suggestions for future guests or feature topics you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/Feedback. And if you want to comment on today’s episode you can do that a teachinginhighered.com/50

Bonni: [00:19:47] Thanks so much for listening. And if you’d like to introduce other people to the show. One of the best ways to help people discover it. Because of those tricky iTunes algorithms is too rate the show or give a review for it.

Bonni: [00:20:02] And so you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/iTunes or /Sticher, if that’s the service that you use to listen to it. So thanks so much for listening and I’ll look forward to spending the next 50 episodes with you. Take care.

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.