TIHE42.mp3

Bonni [00:00:00] Some of us have been at this for a while today on Episode 42. I share some ideas on mixing it up in our teaching.

Production Credit [00:00:08] Produced by Innovate Learning: maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:17] Welcome to this episode of Teaching In Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning.

Bonni [00:00:26] 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 [00:00:45] I have been at this for a while now. This is either my 10th or my 11th year in teaching it depends on if you count my adjunct experience where I taught just one class a semester for a year before I started full time.

Bonni [00:00:57] And so some of these classes I’ve taught 20 30 times. And one of the advantages to doing that is knowing where students typically get stuck back on Episode 25. DR Chrissy Spencer was my guest.

Bonni [00:01:13] She teaches that Georgia Tech and she talked about making large classes interactive in that episode although it could be making small classes interactive too. Her advice is really really helpful to any size of class but one of the things she talked about is doing these case studies that are broken up in a number of steps.

Bonni [00:01:31] So along the way she can catch any students who are experiencing difficulty and she said she’ll have some slides on her PowerPoint that are already created that she knows and can predict with pretty good accuracy that students might have questions around those things so when they ask a question she just happens to have a slide that clarifies that student’s question.

Bonni [00:01:52] And I have been thinking a lot about that because I certainly in teaching the classes I’ve taught many times know when they’re going to get stuck and just as an example I teach principals a marketing class that I’ve taught many times.

Bonni [00:02:04] And this week I was teach in it and was getting to a concept that many of the students have difficulty with when it comes to the exam so I like to really hone in on it while we’re in class and in person and can struggle through some of the understanding of it.

Bonni [00:02:18] And in this case it’s called the advertising response function. And even if you are not someone who knows marketing you probably know about the law of diminishing returns so it has to do with if it’s a new product or a company that has small market share they’ll get a particular return on an investment in advertising.

Bonni [00:02:37] But as their market share grows as it’s no longer a new product there is an experience of the law of diminishing returns. They won’t get as much power out of investing and advertising in that particular case.

Bonni [00:02:50] And I was thinking about this the other day because the topic did come up and I’m always thinking about ways I might change things up. And one thing I’ve been thinking about is it would probably help students if they could actually experience something Hands-On.

Bonni [00:03:03] Where they could see this because they were still struggling with it. This time I was thinking ideally Microsoft Excel has something called a scenario manager. Maybe you’ve played with that before and it can look at a couple of different scenarios that’ll plug in variables so you could consider a decision.

Bonni [00:03:20] Maybe you’re thinking about three different houses or three different cars or what would happen if you invested your money and what would happen if you kept it in savings or what have you. And that scenario manager would be a neat thing to be able to have them type in different variables.

Bonni [00:03:37] And click on the dropdown and see what different scenarios would look like with a new product with an existing product with low market share with high market share and to see this advertising response function with their own ideas and experimentation and I haven’t quite figured out how I could put that online.

Bonni [00:03:56] I certainly could create it and Excel and then have them download a spreadsheet but if anyone listening knows of a way to create something like a scenario manager that I could embed in an online course or have somehow embedded in our learning management system I’d be really interested in hearing that.

Bonni [00:04:13] But that’s that’s going to be something I’ll be playing with for a while hopefully gives you an idea of just how I’m always noodling on different ideas for how to make things more clear. But in this particular case what I did my normal I often have students do what’s called Think pair share and we’ve talked about that a lot before on this show.

Bonni [00:04:31] So I was having them. It was a repeat of what we had addressed earlier in the week so now we’re back in person and I said Explain this concept to your person sitting next to you what is happening here with this slide that you’re looking at here.

Bonni [00:04:46] And it was just the two charts side by side that expressed this advertising response function in action. There still seemed to be my gut sense was people weren’t quite clear I’d walk around the room and I would jokingly ask the students as it makes sense. Yes. Okay great I’ll have you present maybe you have a question.

Bonni [00:05:07] What I decided to do rather impromptu was have those students play the game some of you might have played at Camp something at some point in your past. The two truths and a lie exercise. So the I use. By the way I’ve mentioned this before I use an iPhone app called the Attendance2 app.

Bonni [00:05:27] And I facilitate that. That app facilitates the random calling on students so I don’t I can check myself and not make sure I make sure that I’m not calling on the same students and so I had that app. I called on a student the student is really an exceptional student she’s very good at conceptual thinking.

Bonni [00:05:45] So I said Hey why don’t you tell us two things that are true about this concept this idea of the advertising response function and tell us one thing that is not true. It was really difficult for her to do this. I was teasing her later I’d say I did a tad bit in the class but a fun teasing cause she is such an honest person with such great integrity.

Bonni [00:06:07] She had a hard time with the lie. But it was amazing because this class tends to not be the quietest class I ever have and I don’t think that’s such a bad sign. But there’s there are some talkers in there and sometimes there side conversations had to kind of bring people back a little bit more than I do in my 9:00 class.

Bonni [00:06:23] There was dead silence. Even though I had called on her and I think the rest of them felt like they could kind of relax because I had also called on another young woman in class to say she was going to have to pick out what the lie was. But the whole class silent concentrating and I love that power.

Bonni [00:06:41] Not that I think that’s always necessarily a good sign. But in that case it just was uncharacteristic of that class and I felt like it was really an exercise that was helping them think even harder than the think pair shared did for them. And again she had a difficult time with it but she finally did come up with her lie and that the student was the student that was called on.

Bonni [00:07:01] Next was able to identify that I had the students vote on which one that they thought was the lie and see if they agreed with that second student or if there was any disagreement and it was kind of funny because one of the students just one student disagreed everyone else was able to identify the law the lie.

Bonni [00:07:17] And I was really struggling with him because I wanted to see him have success too and feel like he got the concept but he kept sort of know what but what about this but what about that what about this and just trying to understand it. Finally I said help me or is there another way we can come at this and he said Oh I give up.

Bonni [00:07:36] I just wanted to win. I was sort of fell victim to someone who enjoys debating and I somehow missed it. It was cute because he did see I can see how that’s the right answer and I don’t think he was doing that out of embarrassment because this is not someone who is typically embarrassed.

Bonni [00:07:50] He’s a very confident guy and I think he was just having fun and I think that’s actually great because I think it made some of the other students think a little bit harder to it and me read it. So it’s good.

Bonni [00:08:01] Speaking of mixing things up the I’m teaching two sections of principles of marketing this semester and they couldn’t be more different. I have one at nine o’clock and one at noon. And if you have ever taught classes at 9 o’clock or at noon you’ll know they I’ve never had them be even slightly similar.

Bonni [00:08:19] Lots of different personalities and different styles of people that will show up in those classes and no classes like even if I had one at nine o’clock in the spring and one at nine o’clock in the fall they just all have their own personalities as you know.

Bonni [00:08:33] So this week we were looking at the topic of public relations in addition to the advertising that I spoke of earlier. And in one of the classes I was able to go through the slides I had prepared I had some examples of public relations in action. There’s a company called Nest you might have heard of that has thermostats that you can control on your iPhone.

Bonni [00:08:54] We have them here at home. We love them. They also came out with a smoke detector product and I was talking about they had rented a old fashioned fire engine. Bright bright blue and they drove that around to different towns as they were introducing the product.

Bonni [00:09:09] And I was giving that as an example of PR that I had really enjoyed in the last couple of years. And then Google rented out a couple of barges in a port. And at first the press and people there in that community had no idea who it was they didn’t know it belonged to Google so it was this what’s in this barge is that some secret thing the government’s doing.

Bonni [00:09:32] And there is just a lot of speculation and it ended up. Someone was able to identify oh this is Google. They were able to figure that out through public records. And then what’s Google doing in there and it turned out to be a big PR stunt.

Bonni [00:09:47] That was how they introduced some of the early Google Glass google glass products and they had people get to go inside the barge and experience the product and had all of these events.

Bonni [00:09:58] So it was the whole anti Apple because Apple does that their events typically in a really nice auditorium. And here’s the opposite of that with Google just really doing something different. So we talked about PR and in the 9am class that we went through that.

Bonni [00:10:11] And then we did also talk about the university where I teach. And they say that often helps them just think about how then does that relate to something they’re closely connected with. And by the time it got to the noon class they really just really wanted to talk about what’s going on in their school.

Bonni [00:10:29] And I didn’t even have a chance to get to the fire engine example and the Google example until the very last three minutes of class had to be my more than my normal concise person when I’m seated in a 50 minute class so they just really got passionate about some things that are happening at my university.

Bonni [00:10:47] There is an example that I wouldn’t normally share on the show other than it made our Orange County Register newspaper so it was big enough to have it be out in the press so our tennis team was canceled at our university and this has been something that’s been discussed a lot by our students.

Bonni [00:11:04] And then there’s a construction project and all the things that can happen with construction projects while they’re going on. And so there is some grumbling. And I would say even more than grumbling they were thinking about PR.

Bonni [00:11:18] There was a lot of thoughts about how they would do things differently and as an example they said oh I would have just done the summer so it wasn’t so messy and people that have problems with parking and all that. And if you’ve done a construction project like that before you know that’s not something that is going to get done over the summer.

Bonni [00:11:34] But they’re young and they don’t know that necessarily yet they have less experience and but it was it was a good discussion. It was one of those where yes they didn’t get as many outside examples and they are going to have to probably put more work in outside the class reviewing than the students who we were able to get through.

Bonni [00:11:50] Predictably the slides on the PowerPoint at the same time I think it’s one of those things that we belong to the Western accrediting body out here and they have a requirement that says that when you think about the meaning and integrity.

Bonni [00:12:09] And quality of a degree that it needs to be more than we add up all the classes and then there’s something that it equals it has to be more than not a degree has to have more meaning and more quality than than just the adding one plus one of courses.

Bonni [00:12:23] And it made me think about that as far as this is their university. This is something that they take a lot of pride in and this is something that they did need to talk about and had some concerns about.

Bonni [00:12:34] And I’m not sure I’m the perfect person because I don’t have all the answers but I was a good person to listen. And then of course as always working to tie it back to something relevant to the class and keeping us focused on that in public relations because that was the topic that we were discussing.

Bonni [00:12:49] Those of you in areas that actually have winters you have snow days but out here in California we have unexpectedly hot days and this week in my other classes there was an unexpectedly hot day and then it got compounded by the air conditioning breaking down and at some point.

Bonni [00:13:07] I’m convinced that in our classroom the heater was actually on because there was air blowing but it was hot. So we decided unexpectedly in my introduction to business class to go outside as it was there was a really nice ocean breeze and we talked about something called Theory X and Theory Y.

Bonni [00:13:25] And those show up in the management section of the course. And I have them do a little self assessment that sees in theory X in theory y. Just to give you a quick primer if you’re not familiar with it it is one way that a management theorist looked at how do we motivate people and if we’re more of a theory X people we think we motivate people best by carrots and by sticks.

Bonni [00:13:50] And we have this perception that people aren’t just naturally motivated they’re not really creative you really have to stay on them and watch them if you’re not careful. They will be dishonest so you have to have some security systems in place and that’s theory x theory Y is the other end of the spectrum that says work is as natural as play.

Bonni [00:14:11] And people really do have this inner ability to be creative and they really can be motivated by things other than purely economic factors. So this is the little self-assessment that they took.

Bonni [00:14:23] So we went outside and I handed out the handouts had them find a shady spot and take it and then normally I have them come back and a four in the classroom may have them come up to the front of the classroom and just put a little tick mark under a number that represents where they landed on this self-assessment.

Bonni [00:14:41] It’s from a negative eight all the way to a positive eight and have all those numbers written up on the board and then visually we can see what patterns we might see in that class. Well for outside we didn’t have a white board.

Bonni [00:14:54] So instead I had three posts and I just said well this post is negative eight and then we go all the way to the center post is zero and then we go all the way to this other post and that’s going to be positive eight.

Bonni [00:15:04] I had them stand there and this was different than in the classroom because they didn’t have to take a risk and own their assessment and it wasn’t as confidential obviously if someone cared that much they can watch them make a tick mark.

Bonni [00:15:18] But they’re usually so worried about their own score and their own process of going up to the White Board to put a Tick mark that they’re not thinking about anybody else. This time we could all visually see where people had landed and I was happy with the results because well we lost the opportunity for anonymity.

Bonni [00:15:34] We gained the opportunity for people to get really specific about where they landed how they see things what they think it takes to be a good manager a good leader that kind of thing.

Bonni [00:15:44] And it was a nice experience and it made the going outside I think they liked that mixing it up a little bit and getting to experience something different and having a nice cool breeze on a what felt like a summer day but of course we’re not we’re not quite to summer yet out here.

Bonni [00:16:01] But it feels like a number of days and so one of the other things that it helped me do besides just ask specific questions to students who were standing there was I got to say well now that you’re standing here we’ve talked a little bit about theory X and Theory Y.

Bonni [00:16:17] How would you like to be managed because because the self-assessment and the whole theory is built around how we view other people but how do you view yourself. How would you like to be managed.

Bonni [00:16:28] And almost everyone only two students were the exception but almost everyone walked a pretty good deal closer to the theory y range. Most of the students were already in theory y but they’re moving even further over toward that positive eight ranking.

Bonni [00:16:48] Saying that they would like to be treated as someone who’s inherently creative who finds work as natural as play and so on and so forth. And the two individuals who didn’t move one of them said he just has this perception that for summer jobs he likes Theory X to tell me what to do and he feels like when he gets into what he called a quote unquote real career he’s going to prefer Theory Y.

Bonni [00:17:11] But as for now he likes to just be directed and have that Theory X and then another one said that he’s currently working at an organisation and he just likes to be told what to do and he likes to have that clear direction.

Bonni [00:17:23] I did not spend time coaching him around how that may not always be great for his career if he stays there I didn’t want to call attention to it because there are times I did say I believe when we need Theory X. It’s not like we can always run things in the business context under Theory Y.

Bonni [00:17:41] But at the same time the management theorists and the research would say that that in the long run the Theory Y is going to pay off and you’re going to be able to maximize your workforce better.

Bonni [00:17:52] So the other thing I was able to do is ask them in my teaching what things I do that you would classify as Theory X as me having a Theory X viewpoint and what things I do in my teaching that would demonstrate to them that I have a belief of Theory Y.

Bonni [00:18:09] And just to report back what they said they said when you give us an exam you have taken steps to have us not cheat. So I have two different versions of exams and if they’ve got a baseball hat on I have them turn it around and make sure they put their cell phones away.

Bonni [00:18:25] And they said that would be Theory X and they were right. And then people who come in to classes late they have to call me if I’ve already collected the sign in sheet.

Bonni [00:18:35] They have to call me and leave me a professional business voicemail just like they would if they were meeting someone for an interview. They would let the person know that they were going to be late. And so that was another example they had.

Bonni [00:18:46] And then on the theory Y they said they perceived that when I let them have their own self directed learning during the week that’s the hybrid structure of my class where a third of the class is they watch things called pen cast and they take quizzes and do different exercises online.

Bonni [00:19:04] They can do it anytime they want as long as they have it done before we normally would have met on that Friday. If we did meet on the Friday and they saw that as really giving them a lot of flexibility that they liked I have them play a board game that former students created called bulls and bears that teaches about the stock market and they saw that as Theory Y.

Bonni [00:19:26] And then when I have them do quizzes and different kinds of reinforcement using the service called PollEverywhere that they text in the answers on their cell phone they saw that as theory Y too. It was fun just to get it’s like a little mini assessment of how the classes going without having them formally go through one which those of course have their their merits as well.

Bonni [00:19:49] But I just thought this was a nice thing to kind of check in and see what they thought as Theory X and theory Y I didn’t ask their opinion as to whether they thought those things were good or bad. It was just to helping them identify the difference between theory X and Theory Y.

Bonni [00:20:01] But using my teaching style as an example it was helpful both in terms of reviewing and also helpful in terms of getting the pulse on how they were experiencing the class which I felt good about.

Bonni [00:20:13] This is the time in the show when we give recommendations when I give recommendations and the recommendation I have is one that I have given before but it has now changed so I want to give it again. And that is the Remind app it used to be called Remind 101 and they renamed themselves. I think within a day of me recording that podcast.

Bonni [00:20:34] Cracks me up so it’s remind.com and it’s a wonderful service that you can download an app for your phone and you can send out text reminders to your students. And it has evolved. It was mostly in the beginning just text SMS messages to your students.

Bonni [00:20:54] But now they have apps and they have apps for every kind of cell phone that I know I have. And the students can download the app and so can you so that you can send a message from your app which is great. And then students can also receive the message from their app and they can have little replies to you.

Bonni [00:21:11] They call them stamps or they just give a little thumbs up or thumbs down or a question mark. There’s not a lot of options but they can have a little bit of interaction back with you when you send out a message and I like seeing that from my students I don’t see it from all of them.

Bonni [00:21:26] Most of them have smartphones in a class I’ll typically have at this point maybe one student who doesn’t have a smartphone at this point but not all of them download the app because I haven’t really stressed it as important yet although I’m probably going to in the coming semesters because the other thing you can do now is actually attach a picture which you can think of.

Bonni [00:21:46] Pictures are great but the picture can be your handout so you could actually have a PDF or a jpg or anything that you wanted to send out to your students. They could get that via the remind app if they wanted to.

Bonni [00:21:58] I haven’t used that part of it is much like I said not everyone has the app so it’s not something that I’m doing too frequently. So I’ve talked about three mind app. What I love about it is they don’t have my cell phone number. They don’t.

Bonni [00:22:11] It’s not a two way street we’re we’re going back and forth a lot. It’s it’s a great way for me to update and I also like that it can schedule reminders so I can have it where if we have a class where we’re going to be using laptops in the class and doing some research or collaboration.

Bonni [00:22:27] I can remind them because most of the time we don’t use laptops in class so it’s something abnormal and I can remind them whatever length of time ahead of time I think is appropriate for that class and schedule those out.

Bonni [00:22:40] I also before I have reviewed for exams by sending out maybe five messages a day I only do that if the class wants me to by the way because I don’t want to bombard them with texts. But as you might imagine they like getting help on reviewing for the exam. So that’s something.

Bonni [00:22:55] Then I’ll just schedule them all out to be for the week before the exam maybe three a day up. And the highest I would ever do would be five a day and that’s actually a lot for me. So the Remind app and the remind service actually just made a change that’s really exciting and that is that it now has chat within the app.

Bonni [00:23:16] And there’s a number of ways you can set it up so it used to just be that way where I send a text i send a message out. Then there got to be a little of interaction where the students could say thumbs up thumbs down. There were the things they call stamps and then now it’s opening up for a little bit more of collaboration where students could send me a message if I want to allow that.

Bonni [00:23:40] Or I could send them a message and then they could only reply If I started the chat and they have it set up where you can have office hours so there’s only certain times of the day or certain days of the week or however you want to set it up it goes Sunday through Saturday.

Bonni [00:23:55] And you can get specific about exactly what hours you want to have where they can chat with you. And then you can even get more specific about what classes can start chats with you. You could have it where none of them can chat with you unless you initiate that chat with a student.

Bonni [00:24:12] I oftentimes when they do particularly well on an exam I’ll send them out a remind message. And now it’s so great because I can send them out to remind chat and they’ll get it and then they can write back to me and say thanks or or what have you and I really like this service so I signed up for being an early adopter of the service.

Bonni [00:24:33] So it’s one of those things that I’m not sure as of you listening to this if they will have rolled it out to everyone or if it’s still something they’re going to be cascading out to their users. But I’m really excited about the potential here. I think it’s a nice balance between I don’t want them having my cell phone I don’t want that I don’t want that open because I don’t want to have to start doing do not disturb on my own cell phone.

Bonni [00:24:54] I haven’t set that up yet and I’m not really inclined to but I can set up some parameters. Like I said and lots of options and flexibility as they do such a great job of working with K through 12 teachers and with higher ed to continue to innovate in their company and it’s just so fun to see so I’d really recommend that you check out if you’re not already using the Remind app.

Bonni [00:25:18] I’d really suggest it for your classes it’s a wonderful way to send things out. That’s a little bit more immediate than e-mail. They really if you want to get a message out this is the way to go. And students really like this they like it in my classes.

Bonni [00:25:34] And if you’re already using it I’d suggest that you either sign up to be an early adopter for the text abilities or calling them chats. So you could you could sign up for that.

Bonni [00:25:44] Probably when you log in to remind.com just like me and I’ll say hey do you want to sign up for this and you could click the button it took probably less than a week for them to to add it to my service. And if you’re listening maybe a little bit later maybe they rolled it out to everyone so check out and see if the app has chat’s down at the bottom for you to make use of.

Bonni [00:26:05] That’s it for this episode of Teaching In Higher Ed. Again this is Episode 42 so you can go to teachinginhighered.com/42 if you’d like to add comments to this post I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got other ways that you’re mixing it up in your teaching and keeping things fresh and alive.

Bonni [00:26:25] And also would love overall feedback from you at teachinginhighered.com/slash feedback you have any feedback for the show ideas for topics ideas for guests or just let me know how you’re experiencing the show.

Bonni [00:26:38] I would love to hear from you. And the last thing I would love to tell you about is that we have a weekly update that goes out to you where you can get these show notes automatically in your inbox you don’t have to worry about coming to the site and clicking on the links that you want to check out the all come in your inbox as well as a weekly article.

Bonni [00:26:57] About teaching or. Personal productivity. And that’s just one e-mail. Like I said I don’t bombard you with a lot of them. I know we’re all busy but would love to have you sign up for that. And also gets you a free copy of Ed Tech essentials. And that is 19 tools that help you bring in technology to facilitate learning more in your classes.

Bonni [00:27:18] Thanks so much for listening. And I will look forward to talking with the next time.