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Teaching What You Don’t Know

with Therese Huston

| December 3, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

teaching what you don't know

Today I welcome to the show Dr. Terese Huston to talk about teaching what you don’t know.

Guest: Therese Huston

Faculty Development Consultant, Seattle University
Author: Teaching What You Don’t Know

Seattle University faculty page: here
Personal page:  www.theresehustonauthor.com
Twitter:  @ThereseHuston

Therese Huston received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She was also awarded a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship with the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Therese was the Founding Director of CETL (now the Center for Faculty Development) and served as Director from 2004 to 2010. Drawing upon her background in cognitive science, she has spent the past decade helping smart faculty make better decisions about their teaching. Her first book, Teaching What You Don't Know, was published by Harvard University Press (2009).

Quotes

If I could go back to my 28-year-old self and give her one piece of advice, it would be to talk to a content expert.
-Therese Huston

I wish I had offered to take an expert to coffee once a week to brainstorm what I should be teaching.
-Therese Huston

Teaching is more than just knowing every single detail there is to know; teaching is much more about stimulating learning.
-Therese Huston

You have to be thinking, “I’ve got to do something that I know well, but if I’m going to be the best teacher I can be to my students I’ve also got to teach them some things that are perhaps outside of my comfort zone.”
-Therese Huston

No one can be an expert on this material, and what I’m going to be doing is to always look for the most recent, most important topic that I can be teaching you.
-Therese Huston

If I’m doing a good job up here, I’m going to be pushing the boundaries of what I know.
-Therese Huston

Notes

Teaching what you don’t know looks at it from two perspectives:

  1. A subject you don’t know
  2. A group of students you don’t understand

Things unique to people who experience minimal anxiety when teaching outside of their expertise:

  • They had a choice about whether or not to teach the subject
  • They addressed the “imposter issue” with their students
  • They embraced a teaching philosophy that emphasizes the idea: “I don’t need to master the material”

You have just been assigned to teach a course outside of our expertise. What are the most important steps to take in preparing to teach it?

  1. Tell someone (deal with the imposter issue)
  2. Find five syllabi for similar courses online
  3. Get a timer and start practicing preparing for your class in set chunks of time.

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:
Therese’s book: Teaching What you Don’t Know*
Sonos speakers : See on Amazon*

Therese recommends:
Licorice tea: See on Amazon*
Book: Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and the Art of Receiving Feedback*
Book: Difficult Conversations*
Podcast about Book: Coaching for Leaders: Episode 143

Tagged With: learning, millennials, preparation, research, teaching

Making online courses work

with Doug McKee

| November 25, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Doug Mckee talks about online courses

In today’s episode, Doug McKee joins me to share about online courses. His Introduction to Econometrics class is taught about as close to an in-person as you can get, but without being bound by geographic barriers.

Guest: Doug McKee

Associate Chair and Senior Lecturer of Economics at Yale
http://economics.yale.edu/people/douglas-mckee

Website: http://dougmckee.net/
Teach Better blog and podcast: http://teachbetter.co/
Personal Blog: www.highvariance.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeachBetterCo

Quotes regarding online courses:

We weren’t lowering the price, but we were lowering the geographic barriers.
–Doug McKee
You don’t need a big film crew, and snazzy digital effects; you just need to be clear, and communicate it well.
–Doug McKee
Students show up, and they don’t have any questions. What I do is come with questions.
–Doug McKee

Links:

Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/
Zoom: http://zoom.us/
Examity: http://examity.com/
Explain Everything iPad app: App Store Link*

Recommendations:

Bonni recommends:
Sherlock: IMDB
Doug recommends:
Poster sessions with students: Read blog post here
CS50 course: Syllabus
TeachBetter podcast: episode with David Malan

Tagged With: cheating, edtech, online, podcast, teaching

Celebrating 75 Episodes

with Dave Stachowiak

| November 19, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Peter Newbury

On today’s episode, ten prior guests, as well as Dave and I, come together to celebrate 75 episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed. We look back at episodes that have had a big impact on us, take a listener question, and make recommendations.

Guests:

1) Sandie Morgan
The Eight Second Rule – Wait eight seconds to give students a change to respond
https://teachinginhighered.com/6

2) Michelle Miller
Rebecca Campbell’s – Don’t refer to students as children
https://teachinginhighered.com/62

3) Scott Self theproductivenerd.org 
Rebecca Campbell – Normalize help seeking behavior by being transparent with our students
https://teachinginhighered.com/62
Mail App add-on: Act-On

4) Josh Eyler (two coming up both mentioning Cameron Hunt McNabb)
Cameron Hunt McNabb – How to bring more creative assignments to students
https://teachinginhighered.com/24

5) Janine Utell
Cameron Hunt McNabb – Creative and critical thinking and “backwards design”
https://teachinginhighered.com/24

6) Jim Lang
Amy Collier – Not-yet-ness
https://teachinginhighered.com/70
Article in the Chronicle mentioning more of Jim’s recommendations

7) Doug McKee
Zero inbox
https://teachinginhighered.com/56
The weekly review
https://teachinginhighered.com/64
Recommendation: Pinboard for read-it-later service
Pinboard
Pinner App*
Paperback Web App

8) Jeff Hittenberger
Appreciates Bonni’s vulnerability about her own teaching, that she's willing to admit her own mistakes.

Questions from a Listener:

Question: When seeking a professorship, how do you stand out from the crowd? Or, how do you find opportunities to the things you love in other career paths?
Peter Newbury from UCSD, who appeared on Episode 53, answers the question.

Recommendations:

Dave recommends:

Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts:
Guest: Anissa Ramirez
https://teachinginhighered.com/66
Guest: Meg Urey
https://teachinginhighered.com/69

Beth Buelow’s podcast:
The Introvert Entrepreneur Podcast
Episode 93: Kevin Kruse and The 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management

Bonni recommends:

Podcast:
http://verybadwizards.com/episodes/75

Books:
What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain

Cheating Lessons by James M. Lang

 

Tagged With: effectiveness, jobs, podcast, teaching

The public and the private in scholarship and teaching

with Kris Shaffer

| November 12, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

2

Podcast Notes

 

On today’s show, Dr. Kris Shaffer talks about two topics: public scholarship and student privacy.

Guest: Kris Shaffer

Website: kris.shaffermusic.com
Twitter: @krisshaffer
GitHub: kshaffer

We don’t have a nice, fuzzy boundary between completely private and completely public like we used to.
—Kris Shaffer

We don’t advance human knowledge by publishing something and putting it inside a fence and making it hard to get.
—Kris Shaffer

Social media is about more than just projecting my identity online; it’s about cultivating a community online.
—Kris Shaffer

And by raising a question, sometimes we advance knowledge more than by simply stating a fact.
—Kris Shaffer

Links:

www.openmusictheory.com
www.hybridpedagogy.com
Open-source scholarship on Hybrid Pedagogy

Recommendations:

Bonni:
Zotero tutorials: http://universitytalk.org/zotero/
N. Cifuentes-Goodbody on Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctornerdis

Kris:
CitizenFour: A documentary about Edward Snowden, streaming on HBO. Watch trailer here.
Hello, by Adele: Watch here.

Tagged With: music, privacy, teaching, zotero

Team-based learning

with Jim Sibley

| November 5, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Jim Sibley shares about Team-based Learning.

Slide1

Podcast Notes

Team-based learning has come up a few times on the show previously (Dr. Chrissy Spencer in Episode 25). Today, however, we dive deep into this teaching approach and discover powerful ways to engage students with Dr. Jim Sibley.

Guest: Jim Sibley

Jim Sibley is Director of the Centre for Instructional Support at the Faculty of Applied Science at University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. As a faculty developer, he has led a 12-year implementation of Team-Based Learning in Engineering and Nursing at UBC with a focus on large classroom facilitation. Jim has over 33 years of experience in faculty support, training, and facilitation, as well as managing software development at UBC. Jim serves on the editorial board of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching.

Jim is an active member of the Team-Based Learning Collaborative and has served on its board and many of its sub-committees. He has mentored colleagues in the Team-Based Learning Collaborative’s Train the Trainer mentorship program. He is a co-author of the new book Getting Started with Team-Based Learning that was published by Stylus in July 2014. He is an international team-based learning consultant, having worked at schools in Australia, Korea, Pakistan, Lebanon, United States, and Canada to develop team-based learning programs.

Jim’s Book: Getting Started With Team-Based Learning

Jim's Website: www.learntbl.ca

More About Jim’s Personal Story:

  • The Stroke
  • Interview with Brainstream
  • Hiccups

Team-Based Learning Defined

  • A form of small-group learning that gets better with the bigger size of class you have. The idea is to discuss the question until you get to some sort of consensus.
    Team-based learning could easily be called decision-based learning, because as soon as you make a decision, you can get clear and focused feedback. That’s what team-based learning is all about.
  • Think about a jury, where you need brainpower. Then imagine you’re presenting the verdict, and you look around and see five other juries, on the same case as you. You can bet they’ve put a lot of thought into the verdict, and if they all have a different verdict than you, you can bet they’re going to give feedback.
  • Team-based learning is not a prohibition on lecturing…but it’s in smaller amounts, and it’s for a reason like answering a student need or question. An activity will often make students wish they knew about something, then you teach it.

About Teams

  • The Achilles heel of group work are students at different levels of preparedness.  Team discussion has a nice leveling effect.
  • Experience shows that smaller teams are the ones that have the most trouble
  • 5-7 students is the ideal size for a group.
  • Big teams work because you’re asking them to make a decision, and that’s something teams are naturally good at.
  • Because team-based learning is focused on teaching with decisions, there is less opportunity for people to ride on the coattails of others.
  • Instructors don’t have to teach about team dynamics or decision-making processes because teams are naturally motivated to engage in good discussion (if their conclusion is different than every other group, there will naturally be a lot of feedback).

The Team-Building Process:

  • The instructor builds teams, trying to add diversity to each team.
  • The instructor of a large class can do an online survey for diversity of assets.
  • Even freshman classes can have diversity (different people are better at different subjects).
  • CATME has an online team maker function, as does GRumbler.

Should students ever elect their own teams?

  • Student-selected teams are typically a disaster, mostly because they’re a social entity, and you tend to pick people that are the same as you.
  • It does work when students are passionate about the project.

Team-based learning requires commitment:

  • Team-based learning is something you have to commit to, not just something you try on for a day. it’s not a pedagogy that you can sprinkle on top of your lecture course; it’s a total change to the contract between you and your students.
  • It used to be that you were a “sage on the stage” or a “guide on the side.” Team-based learning means you’re a “sage on the side.”
  • Roles change. Everybody is uncomfortable at the beginning; students are in a new role, you’re in a new role.
  • You’ll get some student resistance, but if you commit, student evaluations at the end of the semester will show that students rate team-based learning courses better than conventional ones.
  • Teachers who do commit talk about “joy” and say things like “I’m falling in love with teaching again” and “class is so much fun.”

When should we use Team-based learning? Any cautions?

  • It works for all disciplines, but if you, as a teacher, are a last-minute person, be cautious with team-based learning. Because you’re making your students uncomfortable, and they’re looking for someone to pin it on, and if you’re disorganized, you'll become a target.
  • For teachers, it’s a similar amount of work as a traditional course, but because you have to do all the work upfront, it might seem like more.

Resources

  • teambasedlearning.org
  • Jim's Site: www.learntbl.ca
  • Jim's Book: “Getting Started with Team-Based Learning”
  • Use the ERIC database  to research your topic
  • Use peer-evaluation tools like those available on CATME

Recommendations

  • Bonni uses Feedly to subscribe to student blogs. It serves up all new student posts in one place, saving her from having to go to each blog individually. Feedly Pro allows you to gather student blogs, and then students can subscribe to the class collection with one click.
  • Jim recommends an article in the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching by Bill Roberson and Billie Franchini. The article discusses why some teaching activities seem to crash while some seem to soar.

Tagged With: podcast, TBL, teaching, team-based learning

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