Teaching in Higher Ed

How to engage students in the classroom and online

with Jay Howard

| | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

It is such a crucial part of what we do as professors… Getting students involved in discussions and helping to facilitate their learning.

Dr. Jay Howard joins me on this episode to talk about how to engage students in the classroom and online.

ENGAGING STUDENTS

Podcast Notes

Guest

Dr. Jay Howard

Engaging Your Students Face-to-Face and Online (July 2015) (Jossey-Bass)

Norms

The real norm is not that students have to pay attention. It's that they have to pay civil attention.

When students feel you value them enough to try to learn their names, they'll be much more forgiving of mistakes.

Two classroom norms that do not foster discussion

  1. Civil attention, create the appearance of paying attention
  2. Consolidation of responsibility for student participation

Attendance 2 app

Regardless of class size, there will be around five students who will become your dominant talkers who will account for 75-95% of student comments in the typical college class.

Online discussion forums

Engage Students

  • You can change norms. They are not fixed.
  • Shifting the workload toward the students.
  • This helps them learn more.

Recommendations

Bonni recommends: Michael hyatt's ideal week blog post and template

Jay, author of Apostles of Rock, recommends: The Lost Dogs

Closing credits

Using iPads in the higher ed classroom

with Guy Trainin

| | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Dr. Guy Trainin joins me for episode 22 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to talk about using iPads and tablets in the classroom.

Podcast Notes

Guest

Dr. Guy Trainin

Life in the classroom before the iPad

iPad integration in a higher ed classroom

When the professor has invested, but the institution has not

Supporting students with disabilities

The “haves” and “have nots”

Collaborative learning assignments

Recommendations

Closing credits

Review on iTunes or stitcher to help others discover the show

Weekly update /subscribe
Feedback /feedback

Role immersion games in the higher ed classroom

with Mark Carnes

| | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Students voting to extend the class time? Professors reporting that students are doing the reading for the course without threats or other forms of coercion? Today, in episode 21, Dr. Mark Carnes joins me to talk role immersion games in the higher ed classroom.

Podcast notes

Dr. Mark C. Carnes, Professor of History, Barnard College

Author of Minds on fire how role immersion games transform college, published by Harvard University Press

The classroom struggle before Reacting to the Past

Your class was less boring than most.

Role immersion games

  • Reacting to the Past
  • Audio from Faculty Perspectives video (through the 2 minute mark)
  • Transcending disciplinary structures.
  • Origins of the title of Minds on Fire
  • What we give up as professors to make role immersion games work
  • Contributions from other academic disciplines to Reacting to the Past
  • Scalability

Aspects of playing the games

  • Competition
  • Imagining what it’s like to be someone else
  • “Teaching” civil disobedience

You give up the control of knowing what the classroom is going to be like. Instead, you get the drama and, often, these moments of extraordinary student performances and transformations that leave you amazed.

Queen's College class did the India Reacting class. High attendance. All focused on it.

While some skepticism is appropriate, our tried and true methods aren't that fail safe.

Structure is different, because the “slacker's” peers are counting on him/her.

They can't hide out like they can in other classes.

Becoming someone different from who you are

Recommendations

Serial podcast (Bonni)

Google “Reacting to the Past” videos (Mark)

Reacting to the Past website

Reacting to the Past consortium

Closing Credits

Moving a course online and other community questions

with Dave Stachowiak

| | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

In this episode, Dave Stachowiak joins me to answer community questions.

Q-and-A-SHOW

Podcast notes

Bonni gives an update on lessons from cheating lessons episode with James Lang

Community Questions

Gilbert asks:

How do I engage students in discussion boards?

A listener asks:

How do I take an in-person class and put it online?

  • Revisit learning outcomes
  • Revisit assessments
  • Treat content as “chunks” or assets
  • Leverage existing and customized content

A listener asks:

What do you elearning authoring systems do you recommend?

Recommendations

Dave recommends

Lift app

The name of this app has since been changed to:

https://www.coach.me/

Bonni recommends

Post-it Plus app

Show credits

Please consider writing a review or rating the show on iTunes or Stitcher, to help others discover the show.

Subscribe to the weekly update: www.teachinginhighered.com/subscribe

Give feedback: www.teachinginhighered.com/feedback

Cheating Lessons

with James Lang

| | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Catching a student cheating can evoke all sorts of feelings: frustration, disappointment, anger, ambivalence. In episode 19 of Teaching in Higher Ed, Dr. James M. Lang joins me to talk about lessons learned from cheating.

Podcast notes

Our reactions to cheating

  • Disheartening experience
  • Feels personal

You're the last thing on their mind. When a student is cheating… their cheating isn't an assault on your and your values. – James M. Lang

  • The reality of how many students are cheating in higher ed today

[Cheating] is a long term and persistent problem in higher education. – James M. Lang

The learning environment's contribution to cheating

  • A positive or a negative contribution
  • The curricula
  • The individual classes

Reducing the likelihood for cheating

  • Infrequent, high-stakes assessment
  • Engage in more frequent assessment (with feedback)
  • When students have the opportunity to retrieve knowledge from their mind multiple times, and then do something with it, the more likely they are to remember it.
  • Service learning: helps foster students' intrinsic motivation
  • Offering unique learning experiences each semester

Plagiarism vs cheating

  • Both fall on a spectrum from easy/opportunity cheating to more planned
  • Cheating and how learning works

Academic integrity as something that has to be learned

lamar_academic_integrity
Integrity at Lamar University Poster Project

Advice for when we inevitably still encounter cheating

  • Step back emotionally
  • Have an educational response
  • Report it when it happens

Other cheating lessons

  • Self efficacy: Carol Dweck's research on mindset (video)
  • Growth or fixed mindset
  • Fixed mindset
    • “I can't write.”
    • “I can't do math.”
    • Fixed mindset were more likely to report that they would cheat the next time
  • “Learning is hard, but you're capable of getting better.”
  • “You say you worked hard on this.”
  • Early success opportunities

Recommendations

Bonni recommends: James Lang's Fullbright Specialist Program and speaking

Jim recommends: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gives a TED Talk on Flow: The secret to happiness

Lessons for us in our lives, but also for how we approach our teaching

Ending Credits

Thanks again to James Lang for joining us for this important dialog on Teaching in Higher Ed.

If you have found this show beneficial, please consider going on iTunes or Stitcher radio and rating or reviewing it. It helps others discover the show.

Also, if you have topic or guest ideas, please visit https://teachinginhighered.com/feedback