[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 341 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Susan Roll and Jennifer Wilking share about multidisciplinary teaching.

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

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[00:00:22] Bonni: Hello and 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.

Today on this episode, I am joined by two people that work very closely together and collaborate on a course, as you’ll hear about in today’s interview, it’s Susan Roll and Jennifer Wilking. Susan Roll, PhD, is a professor and director of Chico State’s School of Social Work, and Jennifer Wilking, PhD, associate professor and vice-chair of Chico State’s Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice. They are both recognized for advancing student research and engagement on the issues of housing and homelessness.

Roll and Wilking developed and co-teach an innovative multidisciplinary Political Science and Social Work course that helps students learn how to research, informs local policy on housing needs in the Chico community. Students are immersed in learning about homelessness issues directly from community members as well as understanding the need for data and research in those areas, then they design and implement research to address those data needs. Students also have the opportunity to give back to the community by volunteering at local homeless shelters and by presenting their research at public events. Jennifer and Susan, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:11] Jennifer Wilking: Thank you for having us.

[00:02:12] Susan Roll: Thanks.

[00:02:13] Bonni: I don’t know if either of you have seen all these memes that are going around, and they start out with a, “This is how it started,” and there’s a picture usually, and then, “This is how it is now.” You might envision if you’ve not seen these, a faculty member who says this is how my term started out before the pandemic, [chuckles] and they’re looking all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and this is how I am now and they’re just completely disheveled. I thought we might apply that same meme to your collaboration. Would each of you share, and we’ll start with Susan and then we’ll ask Jennifer, the same question is, what was it like before you started this collaboration together for you in your teaching?

[00:03:00] Susan: I’ve been teaching about 12 years now and higher education and I would say it was going along like it’s supposed to. It’s real scripted and this is what we do and for example, when we teach community organizing, we start with this concept and then we say we do this concept next. It seemed real average and I think I was a pretty good teacher and could bring quite a bit of enthusiasm to the class, but it was just we did what we always did. That for me really marked a difference between pre my relationship with Jen and post my relationship with Jen.

[00:03:32] Bonni: How about for you, Jen, what comes to mind?

[00:03:35] Jennifer: I think what comes to mind mostly is that I was just teaching such different content. I came to Chico State as a Comparative Politics and International Relations professor and so I was teaching politics of the developing world and politics of industrialized societies, so I tease I was teaching the whole world. I occasionally taught a methods class, but it was very much internationally oriented in comparative politics.

I really feel like I’ve taken a pretty sharp turn in my career, both in terms of what I teach and what I research, and that was largely inspired by this collaboration as well and I think by the fact that I’m in a department with a lot of criminal justice professors and public administration professors, and I just saw the value of being able to do more local work.

[00:04:28] Bonni: Tell us now, how did your collaboration begin?

[00:04:32] Susan: We actually have a sweet story about it. Jen and I both have very big dogs and we walk them early in the morning. Jen was starting to get more involved in work around homelessness, having volunteered to be on a local board, and she knows I’m a social worker. We were really just chit-chatting over our dog walk one morning and talking about what kinds of solutions our community had been trying and the ongoing frustration that so many have with the difficulties in trying to solve such a complex issue as homelessness.

We got chatting that morning and really said, “Hey, we ought to look at this together,” because both of our lenses really bring something different to identifying different issues.

[00:05:15] Bonni: I am smiling so big right now because I just love that it started with dogs, [chuckles] it’s just so perfect. That is not what I expected you to say and it is completely delighting me. What are the names of your dogs?

[00:05:27] Jennifer: At the time it was Bodie and Elsie.

[00:05:32] Bonni: Is there a sad Bodie story?

[00:05:34] Jennifer: Bodie passed away a couple of years ago but now we have Waylon and Waylon occasionally joins us on our walks too. He has a lot of energy so he’s not always invited.

[00:05:44] Bonni: Okay, [laughs] and your pups, Susan?

[00:05:48] Susan: Mine is Elsie. She’s a dalmatian.

[00:05:51] Bonni: Oh, oh. She was already including Elsie in it, I …  [laughs]

[00:05:55] Susan: Elsie and Bodie were pals and now Elsie and Waylon are pals.

[00:05:58] Bonni: I love it. When Waylon’s allowed to join, I love it. It’s perfect. Well, you already mentioned about being inspired to bring in the issue of homelessness into your classes. Talk to us about what happens when you bring social issues into a class and, of course, feel free to use homelessness as an example.

[00:06:20] Jennifer: It’s been an interesting issue to bring into our class, especially with our interdisciplinary class because I bring many criminal justice students to the class as I teach the research methods class for our department. In addition, we have legal studies students in our department, and then Susan has social work students. In the past, we’ve taught this with another professor Mariah Kornbluh, who taught community psychology.

It was really fascinating to see how students across these three disciplines just had different orientations from day one to this issue of homelessness. That’s something that I feel like we’ve navigated throughout the class and one of the real benefits of interdisciplinary teaching is this exposure to different perspectives. In addition to just that day one orientation, just watching those perspectives change over the class as they dialogue with one another across the disciplines.

[00:07:21] Bonni: Susan, what comes to mind for you, when you think about bringing homelessness into a class, bringing a social issue. What kinds of surprises come up for you, or?

[00:07:30] Susan: I think for us in social work, we talk a lot about social issues, it’s our values and ethics, so that was pretty common for my students. I think the really neat thing for them was then to get into a classroom of students that don’t always talk about this all the time, right? We were all learning from each other. Our students were so comfortable talking about challenging issues, and then they’re meeting their classmates that this is a really new issue.

What was neat for my students, the social work students, was they got it that they had to start from square one and explain things. It really sharpened their tools in terms of how they understood social issues and explain social issues to people that didn’t have a background like these social workers had. That was really exciting for them to be able to have that opportunity. We just saw it right away some of the first couple days of class, we were like, “What’s going on here?” They are having really neat dialogues.

[00:08:25] Bonni: Tell us a little bit more about the class, then what’s it called? How many students? How many times have you taught it? Just give us a little bit of a background.

[00:08:33] Jennifer: We’ve taught it, let’s see three times now and we teach it each fall. We call it the interdisciplinary course around homelessness and housing because it doesn’t have an official name. We were flying under the radar the first few times we taught it because we knew there were a lot of challenges with teaching interdisciplinarily. We just decided to schedule our classes at the same time and we found a third room, or a fourth room in the case of the first semester too.

We each met with our classes individually on Tuesdays, and then on Thursdays, we met in that bigger auditorium. The first time we taught it, it was in a huge auditorium. It was not an ideal space for collaborative work, students were wrenching around trying to talk to each other in their groups in these fixed seats. Since then, we found an amazing room with individual monitors, really designed for group work and the class has just really evolved.

We’re going to bring in a different third partner next year in Public Health and Health Administration. Last year, we taught it on our own, just the two of us, and we never keep it the same. We always change the research project at the end and we change how they’ll deliver it. In some ways, we continue to just make more work for ourselves, but in others, it’s evolved so nicely now that I’m feeling really confident that we’ve figured some of this stuff out and are getting it dialed in more and more every time we teach it.

[00:10:10] Bonni: Susan, do the two classes have shared learning outcomes, are there any that stays separate? Could you explain that logistics to us?

[00:10:18] Susan: Yes. Again, that’s something we keep playing with. It’s funny. I just laugh when Jen says we change it every time because we think, “Why do we keep making all this darn work for ourselves?” We have it going well, and then we change it but each time, we have these new ideas. Generally, they’ve had roughly the same learning outcomes and they have, I would say, about 40% or 50% of the reading is shared and roughly I would say about 60% to 70% of the assignments are shared. It’s some overlap, and then some individual.

Like Jen said, this isn’t official on the books. I really just largely manage the social work students. I follow up with them on assignments, office hours, and everything. They’re my folks. Jen does the same with the political science students. Then when we have a third partner, that person is just entirely responsible for those students, which really, for us, makes it easier. I think some people that co-teach, it gets a little complicated when students are getting feedback from different professors and who do I go to and who do I answer to? That’s kept it a little bit clean between us. I think it’s worked really well for this type of collaboration.

[00:11:21] Bonni: Approximately how many people in each of the sections if that’s what you call them, and then total? Actually, I probably could do the total in my head so if you want me to. [laughs]

[00:11:32] Jennifer: The first semester we taught it, it was close to 100. Last year, we were each bringing 30. It was just 60 last year, but the first couple of years, it was closer to 100. Just to be clear, they’re definitely different, not just disciplines, but different types of classes. My class is, a research methods class, Susan’s is a social policies class, and then our collaborator was teaching a community psychology seminar. It works really well when we orient the whole class around this question, how does research inform local policy? Each of our classes can take a piece of that, and contribute something.

[00:12:14] Bonni: It’s like you’ve just anticipated an upcoming question for me. Ken Bain, he wrote a book and did a very famous longitudinal study about what the greatest college teachers do. The greatest college teachers build their classes around compelling, mysterious, interesting questions. It sounds like that’s exactly what you have done. Did you do that from the very beginning or did you find yourself stumbling into that as an opportunity for you to focus the learning?

[00:12:43] Susan: That’s really been the focus from the start, so how does research inform policy at the local level, and it just couldn’t be more relevant. Frankly, Bonni in our community, and I’m sure communities across the states and across the world, I think we’re all struggling with issues of income inequality, which, of course, means that some people on the bottom don’t have access to food and shelter as they ought to. It’s worked out well, that there’s so much going on so much dialogue in our local community. It’s really prominent in the media in our local community, so much is going on around homelessness that it just made it such a relevant course. That’s what helps keep it really exciting and fresh.

[00:13:22] Bonni: As you shared this overarching question for the class, how does research inform local policy, it’s so compelling to me because it seems like it would just generate even more questions. That as you start to attempt to answer that question as a student, as a learner, then there’s even more and more and more. Could you talk if that’s been the case for your students? Does this overarching question and as they go through the assignments and begin to learn more, does it start to create even more questions?

[00:13:54] Jennifer: It certainly does and I think that that’s what’s inspired us to teach the class again in subsequent semesters and to change the focus or the focus of the final projects. Certainly, for students, we’ve heard them say as well that this has sparked ideas that they want to take into their classes in the following semester.

Susan and I have even talked about trying to sequence the class and bring in, we always want more people to join the fun, but to bring in another set of three instructors to teach an interdisciplinary class in this subsequent spring so students could take their research and do some more analysis or do a follow-up study. If we did a quantitative study in the fall, they could follow up with a qualitative study in the spring. We have lots of ideas. You’re absolutely right Bonni like the fall semester just starts firing off even more ideas and we just feel like we need another semester to follow-up and develop some of these.

[00:14:56] Bonni: The class on research methods, of course, shows up across so many of our disciplines, and it is definitely something that I hear from members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community as a struggle. In fact, I just got an email about seven days ago, “What episodes can I listen to where I can make this class more effective?” My interpretation is that so oftentimes, research methods, what gets focused on is teaching research methods, which of course, would seem so obvious but that doesn’t always wind up helping students learn because it can be boring to them, because they don’t have that passion yet, that curiosity around what you can actually do if you have these tools.

Would you share just a few examples around research methods, maybe how you used to see it? You said, I taught it the way you always are supposed to teach it or whatever, and then now, when it what it looks like. Just a couple of stories that may come to your mind when you put that lens using research to explore this question.

[00:15:58] Jennifer: Yes. I think absolutely, you’re right, that students have such a deeper understanding when they’re actually doing the research rather than hearing about research methods, so that’s the first difference. I’m teaching two sections of that class right now online, and I’ve reverted back to a much more traditional format because it’s nearly impossible to do community-based research or interdisciplinary teaching online.

When we’re doing this interdisciplinarily and in our CBPR class students A, get that hands-on experience doing research. I have to teach fewer methods. We really just focus on the one that they’re using but I absolutely think that they are inspired, like you said, to understand what you can do as research. I think often that those dots aren’t connected in a research methods class, like why are we doing research.

It was so great to be in a class with the social work students and the community psychology students who have a really clear and explicit social justice orientation, whereas I had traditionally approached research and had been training my students to say, “We provide really objective data,” to have my students exposed to these different disciplines where you say, “Yes, we collect data in an objective way and we can use that data to address a social problem.” Really focusing the research in that way to address a social issue, I think was eye-opening for my students and for myself, too.

[00:17:31] Susan: I think another really the neatest thing is that we’ve had opportunities for the students then to share their research results towards the end of the class and they just get this unbelievable excited feeling that, “Oh, now I get it. This research that I did is actually going to make some change in our community.” For example, one of our final projects, we had a lot of the campus leadership come and see the final projects, including the president of the university… and the students’ jaw-dropping, “She’s here and we get to show her what we learned and we’re actually implementing some of those things.”

Another one, our favorite example is one time we got to go and the students testified at the City Council, and the City Council was considering the recommendations that they had for ameliorating some of the housing issue that we have here in our county. It was so exhilarating for these students say, “Wow, we did this research and people are listening to what we found and taking it and considering it for actual policy change.”

[00:18:29] Bonni: Both of your examples are so inspiring. They also bring to mind for me a challenge that a lot of faculty run into and it’s this whole thing of covering the material. When you teach a methods class, for example, I think I have to cover every single method in equal measure. There’s a past guest, which I’ll link to this episode in the show notes, because it really changed my mind on this, or just gave me a new way of looking at things. It’s by Maria Anderson, and she created what’s called the easel lens. Those letters stand for things that I don’t remember, but I’ll give you the gist of it.

She says that for all of our learning outcomes, we should think about, on one end of the spectrum, you should be familiar with this. Then all the way over to the other end of the spectrum, you should be able to break this down. One of her many disciplines is math and so she gives an example on the episode of like, and I remember when I took stats, for example, do you literally need me to be able to hand calculate out a standard deviation or do I just need to know what a standard deviation is and what it might tell me about the findings of this?

I think so many times we think, “You got to be able to break this down because that’s what I did and that’s what–” Yes, that’s what you did when you were getting your PhD. Even if you were getting your PhD today, that might not be the case. I can remember my husband and I actually got our doctorates together. It’s funny because you mentioned research methods and his method was a grounded study, a grounded model.

I can just barely be over here on the side of the spectrum that says, “I know what that is.” I understand basically, that you don’t have the model already, so you kind of build the model up as you go, but if I needed to know more about that, I would know where to go to look. Just the fact that I know, that is one way that qualitative studies are conducted versus if at an undergraduate or even a master’s level if a professor was attempting to have me know every single one of those methods, versus what you can do, in fact, I want to transition us there now, what you can do in terms of student learning.

You don’t just have students producing research, making policy recommendations, et cetera, but you also did a study on this class. Can you tell us a little bit about your qualitative research around the effectiveness efficacy, I think of this class?

[00:20:57] Jennifer: We conducted focus groups with students about three months after the class. It was really fulfilling to see borne out in those focus groups, what we knew experientially and anecdotally, that it was meaningful to have students together, and that they were growing and that their perspectives were changing. We saw this happening throughout the semester but in the focus groups, that was really clearly borne out, that there were very clear benefits from the interdisciplinarity and from the community-based participatory research component, but then, when you add those two pedagogies together, it had a super impact.

Students, and Susan, you can jump in and help me out with some of these outcomes. I should have reviewed our research, I’ve moved on to our more recent project, but students certainly, their perspectives changed in terms of critical thinking around homelessness. We especially saw that with my criminal justice students. We used a really cool method, a mind map. Our colleague Mariah Kornbluh brought this in.

At the very beginning of the semester, students drew homelessness as a word in the middle of the page, and then we brought in tons of markers and colored pencils and they did just kind of a quick mental association. Then, we did that again at the end of this semester and we used a software program to analyze those mind maps and to say, “What’s the density and how many different nodes and associations were made at the beginning of the semester versus the end?”

We could show that their thinking did become much more complex around this and I think, especially for the criminal justice students, became a lot more nuanced. They first came in with a certain approach around public safety orientation around homelessness and really started to understand more of the systems and social structures that affect homelessness and housing issues.

[00:23:09] Bonni: That sounds like such a revealing exercise. Also, they probably really can then see, “Wow, look at the difference between the before and after.” I didn’t even know you were going to share that. This reminded me of how I first brought you into the conversation. [chuckles] This is how it started and this is how it looks now. Yes, absolutely. Susan, what about you?

[00:23:29] Susan: We’re talking still more about some of the outcomes of the students?

[00:23:32] Bonni: Yes, or anything else that came to mind.

[00:23:34] Susan: Well, they certainly understood more about the importance of being civically engaged, and I think that’s been a neat thing for all of us. I think that we think of the campus as its own little world, and even though in our case, our campus is just really integrated with our small community up here in Chico, California, they really could understand that what we do on the campus has impact in the community and vice versa. It became more of a porous relationship that we had between the campus and the community, and I think that was really excited for them to see.

[00:24:07] Bonni: Where I teach, I would say, is a little bit different than yours in that it’s a smaller campus and also is a religiously affiliated campus. Sometimes I know we can shy away from things that might be controversial. Homelessness shouldn’t be controversial but in terms of that, you sometimes see people like you just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, some of the misnomers that people have about social issues like this, I’m curious about if you find this more service orientation, or at least research orientation, helps to be able to just reduce some of the polarization because then we’re not–

There’s a person or a group of people who need help, or they need advocacy, or they need something. When we do that, does it help reduce some of the polarization in terms of your perceptions?

[00:25:02] Jennifer: I think one of the biggest benefits in the class and one of the biggest transformations we see, is when we have our students not only go out and interview and conduct the research on a certain day, we usually do it on Make a Difference Day, but they also volunteer at a homeless shelter that day. We break it up between volunteering in the morning and then interviewing in the afternoon or whatever. After that day, that’s when lightbulbs really start to go off for students and they get really excited and more engaged in the project and it’s starting to make a lot more sense.

I think you’re absolutely right, Bonni, once they have an experience and actually talked to a person who is experiencing homelessness, all of those preconceptions start to drop away. I think that’s the beauty of doing research, too. We talk before this day, and we talked at the beginning of the class in my class about being open and curious, and letting the data tell you what the data is going to tell you. It’s really cool that they’re doing both on the same day, and just connecting with folks and hearing experiences, and really breaking down some of those preconceptions.

We had one student who came up to us afterward and said, “Oh, my gosh, that was my old neighbor.” Then another student said, “That lady used to be a nurse.” We’re like, “Yes, that’s the case. People previously had good jobs and stable housing, and now they’re experiencing homelessness.”

[00:26:33] Bonni: Talk about humanizing, it’s so powerful. Yes, Susan.

[00:26:38] Susan: I think another thing that the students really understand is the importance of using data. When the data starts to show something different than what they understood was that the origins are the reasons for a social issue. Once they say, “Wow, it really is in the data.” It’s homelessness and housing, unfortunately, in our community, in many communities is a very, very political issue and that’s been a challenge for Jen and I to walk. We just keep going back to, we need to rely on the data and the data speaks for itself. We can remain apolitical in that way and the students get it. They go, “Wow, it really is in the data.” If we just pay attention to facts and data, I think that’ll get us a lot farther in being able to solve some of these difficult problems.

[00:27:26] Bonni: That’s so great too that you can stand in that, as you said, have a firm foundation there because so much, where we are today just is this them not having learned enough yet about that there is data, that there is such a thing as accuracy. I think especially some of the students that I have the opportunity to work with will want to push away from, “Oh, the news, it’s all fake. Nothing is true.” Then, it’s like, “Well, actually, let’s talk.” I do struggle with that a little bit because it’s often not one of my learning outcomes, but you can’t just leave someone there. I like that idea of just resting in the data, that that’s a great thing I’ll be taking away from today’s conversation, for sure.

[00:28:12] Jennifer: Susan, you should talk about the inspiration about the community-based participatory research component with that Pew study around a certain percentage of Republicans felt that college education was no longer relevant. Susan came to us, Mariah and I, and said, “How do we make us relevant? How do we stay relevant?” This felt like a really good way to do that to show students that you can use data, you can use these things you’re learning in college to address a problem and impact policy within a semester.

[00:28:47] Bonni: Amazing.

[00:28:48] Jennifer: We motivate the class with that research to like, if we’re going to be in the academy for the rest of our careers, we need to change and show our relevance and not just write and do research for one another.

[00:29:02] Bonni: Before we get to the recommendations segment, I just wanted to talk a little bit about what are often called throwaway assignments. Just this idea of I write a paper, and you’re the only one who’s ever going to read it. You’re the only one who’ll ever give me feedback, and it feels to me like it would have such little impact. Of course, all these assignments that you’ve been describing today are the opposite of throwaway assignments. They’re assignments that students can see as meaningful, as the work that I put into this can potentially have an impact on others.

I’d love to have each of you share anything that comes to mind that you haven’t shared already. Just around the opposite of a throwaway assignment, things that you do where students or stories that you have of a student did this work and change something in some way.

[00:29:49] Jennifer: Well, all of our assignments build on the previous assignment. I don’t think we’ve talked about a lot of the challenges and messiness of the class, but that that certainly comes into play, especially as the semester progresses, and we’re getting closer to some big event that we’ve set up, and it’s usually a public event and so the stakes feel high and they’re also interdependent. My students will do some data analysis and then they have to pass it off to the social work students and then the social work students have to look at that analysis and the write-ups and come up with a social policy or a policy recommendation.

It’s sequenced, it’s interdependent, and the stakes feel high. I think group work can be challenging without high stakes. [chuckles] It can definitely get tense sometimes in the groups. We’ve certainly had to manage groups before. Susan and I always have a moment, it feels like mile 24 of the marathon where we feel we’re not going to make it. [chuckles] It’s going to be a huge mess, and it’ll be the end of the class, and then it all comes together. I agree, they’re definitely not throwaway assignments and often, because they’re interdependent and interlaced and sequenced, and so it’s important to get that first one really honed in. [chuckles]

[00:31:16] Susan: I think just the knowing that they’re going to have to present this in a public forum really raises the level of accountability. It feels scary and I think they like it, it’s that good fear. It’s so funny, Jen and I, we’ve just done it, every time. We get towards the end of the class, we’re like, “Oh, no, this isn’t going to work, this time. It’s not going to come together. They’re not going to be able to do it.” Every time, I just like, our hearts swell on the last day. We go, “Oh, my gosh, they did it. They really came through. They came through for each other, they came through for us, they came through for our community.” It’s been really exhilarating.

[00:31:49] Bonni: I have found in my own teaching, I hear stories like yours and they’re both so inspiring, but also it can be intimidating. I don’t know how I could ever do something even remotely like that. I just want to encourage anyone listening who’s feeling a similar way that I go back to my theater days, from my much, much younger days [chuckles] breaking the fourth wall.

Even if you just started out by inviting, for example, your dean or your provost, to come and watch their final presentations, or a group of businesspeople or community partners, whatever, if you started so small, just by opening up in some small way, it really does both increase the motivation, but also what I would consider to be a healthy amount of pressure.

I don’t want to put pressure that’s not helpful onto our students, but just it’s a realistic pressure that all of us experience when we want to make a difference in our work. I think it’s a healthy amount to put on them, but also can really help motivate to realize, wow, this could actually help me make some kind of a connection. If nothing else, if I just invited people from the community in or people from the business world in then, who knows? Maybe that that one exchange of a business card or whatever could really be transformative. I found that starting small just to break that fourth wall can be a really big helpful thing.

You’re also inspiring me just to think about where do I limit myself, because my imagination isn’t big enough yet to go, “Well, you could do something like that.” [chuckles] It’s exciting to hear your stories, it really is.

This is the time in the show where we each get to give our recommendations. My recommendation today almost has nothing to do [chuckles] with what we’re talking about, though, I suppose in some tiny way. I recently switched services for my digital bookmarks. I for a long time have encouraged people to not keep their bookmarks. I don’t mean academic writing.

If I was going to be writing a research paper where I needed to do a lot of citations, I use a tool called Zotero, some people use Mendeley and Note, what have you. I’m just talking about a bookmark for just one’s general knowledge, “Oh, I have an idea. I want to bookmark this about my class,” or, “I want to bookmark this about some public issue that I care about.”

I’ve been for a long, long time using a bookmark service called pinboard.in, and I’ve been very reluctant to go try anything else [chuckles] because I really got settled there for quite a few years. My husband started using a new service called Raindrop.io. It’s available on your browser so that you could easily add digital bookmarks there. It’s also available as a Windows app or as a Mac App.

It’s really similar to the bookmarking service I was using except for it’s just beautiful. It automatically grabs a image associated with that site. You can put tags, you can have different collections that you want. Maybe you have a collection around your teaching, maybe one around your research, one that’s more personal. I love tags because tags can work across collections because something might be a video that is related to a class. I can search with a really fine-tune preciseness. I’m really having a lot of fun with Raindrop.io.

I do encourage people, if you’ve been using bookmarks just inside of Chrome or inside of Firefox, you’re locked in there. Yes, they sync across computers, but it’s nothing like having it across all of your devices and having a bookmark tool that’s built to be a really good bookmark tool and constantly improving. I’d encourage you to back away from your browser bookmarks, [chuckles],= try out a digital bookmark tool and Raindrop.io.

I switched about 10 days ago, maybe 14 days ago. No problems. I was able to export them from my old one, import them easily and really, really liking it a lot. It’s one of those times when you make a huge switch, and then no regrets. [chuckles] It’s really, really good. I’m going to pass it over to Jennifer next to you, and then we’ll pass it over to Susan.

[00:35:56] Jennifer: My recommendation is for folks if you’re on Twitter or other social media, to follow the Hope Center, Hope for College. It’s also #realcollege. This is Sara Goldrick-Rab’s work and they focus a lot on student basic needs, food security, and housing and security.

I am just amazed at how many staff members they have working on this and doing research and really staying so current. I wake up and I’m like, “They’re doing so much out of the Hope Center and a lot around COVID. I think it’s just such a good daily reminder for me as I go into my classes. I think we’re all feeling a little bit out of control right now and just having to roll with whatever is happening in the world. A really good reminder that our students are feeling the same way and some of our students are very food and housing insecure. Just to keep in mind, my students have a lot more going on than I’m aware of. That would be my recommendation.

[00:37:01] Bonni: Thank you so much, Jen. Susan, how about you?

[00:37:04] Susan: That’s a good one, Jen. How about two quick ones? One is a early book and one is an old book and a newer book. When I first started teaching, the book that influenced me the most was Parker Palmer’s Courage To Teach, which probably lots of people are familiar with. I still hold on to the early lessons from Parker Palmer about being humble, and I have had to remember that so many times in this class. Again, when things get messy, and you feel like you don’t have control and just letting that go and letting the process spill out, has been a helpful lesson to me.

That’s also, I would just add such a benefit to teaching with other people, because we just have each other’s backs all the time. When you come into a day, and you’re not feeling up for it or you forget what the heck we’re supposed to be doing, and the other person can just pick it up, that’s been a real joy of co-teaching for us I know.

Then I’ll share a really, really recent book that was actually just released in the last few weeks. It’s called The Purpose of Power, by Alicia Garza. The tagline is, “How we come together when we fall apart.” Alicia Garza is one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and it’s an excellent book. I can hardly wait to teach my class next semester because they’ll all be reading it.

I think the way that we make community change has changed a lot. I think folks like me have a lot to learn from younger folks about how we do community change. I’m excited about Alicia Garza’s new book, and I’m excited to be bringing it to my class.

[00:38:26] Bonni: Both of those books sound incredible. I’m so ashamed to admit this, but [chuckles] I have never read the courage to teach. I’ve literally read the segment that he is very early in it. I think it’s chapter one, or the introduction, where he just talks about the joy and then the searing pain of teaching, and he captured it better than anyone I’ve ever seen before but I can’t believe I still haven’t done it. You’re making me go, “I got to get.” That’s got to be for the holiday break.

I’m sharing it now publicly to many, many people, [chuckles] so that’s my commitment, I got to get on that. This other one sounds so good too. Thank you so much for these. I think that in the moments that are emerging now, people like Alicia and I forgot her last name.

[00:39:11] Susan: Alicia Garza.

[00:39:12] Bonni: Just like you said what they can teach us, it’s amazing. Thank you both for coming on the show and being willing to share about your collaboration and all that you’ve learned from it. It’s just been such a joy to be connected with you. I’m just walking away, completely inspired by our conversation.

[00:39:30] Susan: Thanks, Bonni. We love this work, we are grateful every day we get to do it. Like Jen said, we just want everyone to try it because we’re having such a nice time with it, and we want other folks to come and try it out.

[00:39:40] Jennifer: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Bonni.

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[00:39:46] Bonni: Thanks once again to Jennifer Wilking. And Susan Roll for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m leaving our conversation completely challenged in a good way and inspired by your work. Thank you for doing that for me and for other members of this community. Thanks to all of you for listening and for being a part of Teaching in Higher Ed. If you’ve been listening for a while, I hope that you take away how much I care just about the idea that we are all working collectively in solidarity to become more effective at facilitating learning for our students.

Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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[00:40:46] [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.