Teaching in Higher Ed

What this Trader Joe’s sign teaches us about professional development

with Dave Stachowiak

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Overcome the excuses we make that stop us from pursuing more professional development opportunities in this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed.

There's a sign posted in our local (and beloved) grocery store: Trader Joe's. “Please do not use this machine if you have not been trained,” it reads. The machine in question is a drink dispenser. As absurd as this is, in some cases, there's more training required to dispense raspberry lemonade than there is to teach a college class.

traderjoesdrink

 

Guest: Dave Stachowiak

There are abundant resources out there for professional development, but we can sometimes be held back by our own excuses.

Professional development excuses and opportunities

Here are the most common excuses for not pursuing more training on how to teach and how to overcome each of them:

Not enough time

      1. Adam Grant's Give and Take
      2. Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  • When you're waiting (Pocket)

Too hard to keep up

  • Subscribing to blogs (feedly)
  • Twitter
  • Bonni's professional development Twitter lists:
    1. Teaching in Higher Ed
    2. EdTech
    3. Teaching and learning centers
    4. ProfHacker

My discipline is unique

Nothing I've tried before works

  • Filming or recording yourself teaching

My university doesn't dedicate resources for professional development

EdTech tools

JotPro stylus (Dave)

iAnnotate (Bonni)

Your teaching philosophy: The what, why, and how

with Dave Stachowiak

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How to formulate, refine, and articulate your teaching philosophy.

Podcast notes

The academic portfolio: A practical guide to documenting teaching, research, and service by J. Elizabeth Miller

Miller provides examples of the narrative from actual promotion and tenure portfolios.

What is a teaching philosophy?

  • Why we teach. Why teaching matters.
  • Not just a formula for teaching structure, but the rationale behind the structure.

Why is having a teaching philosophy important?

Helps guide our teaching methods. Needed in the job hunting process. Typically part of the promotion/tenure process at most universities.

How to identify, articulate, & refine it?

Questions from The Academic Portfolio (p. 13):

  • What do I believe about the role of a teacher, the role of a student?
  • Why do I teach the way I do?
  • What doesn't learning look like when it happens?
  • Why do I choose the teaching strategies and the methods that I use?
  • How do I assess my students learning?

Questions of my own that  I have found useful in articulating my teaching philosophy:

  • Who are my students? How I describe them says a lot about how I approach my teaching.
  • Who am I, as an educator? How I describe myself says a lot about my teaching, too.
  • What is teaching? Is the purpose to convey information, or to facilitate learning (or something else altogether)?

Planet Money episode about young woman becoming a business owner in North Korea.

  • What are the artifacts of my teaching? Observable things.
  • What would I see/hear/experience that would be evidence of those beliefs, if I was in your class?
  • Espoused beliefs vs theories in use. Chris Argyris / Edgar Schein

Podcast updates

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Lessons in teaching from The Princess Bride

with Dave Stachowiak

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This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Lessons in Teaching from The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride on Facebook – official site

Store (selling magnets… if only today's fridges were magnetic)

Princess Bride party game

 IMDB: The Princess Bride

 Test your knowledge: The Princess Bride quiz

From: “Who played the grandson?” (Fred Savage) to “What town is Inigo Montoya from?” (huh?)

The Wonder Years

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Help students break things down. visualization. pencasts.

As you wish.

Pay attention to wishes… dreams… going to take a lot to get there. grit. resilience.

From Psychology Today:

“Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback.”

Beware of ROUSs (rodents of unusual size)

Politics in higher ed. power. French and Raven's five bases of power.

From MindTools:

“One of the most notable studies on power was conducted by social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven, in 1959.” They identified five bases of power:

  1. Legitimate – This comes from the belief that a person has the formal right to make demands, and to expect compliance and obedience from others.
  2. Reward – This results from one person's ability to compensate another for compliance.
  3. Expert – This is based on a person's superior skill and knowledge.
  4. Referent – This is the result of a person's perceived attractiveness, worthiness, and right to respect from others.
  5. Coercive – This comes from the belief that a person can punish others for noncompliance.

EdTech Tools

HaikuDeck (Bonni)

Pinboard (Dave)

Still not sold on rubrics?

with Dave Stachowiak

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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. 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.

Quotes

n/a

Resources Mentioned

Seek

Sense

Share

Recommendations

Remind (Bonni)

Tapes (Dave)

Note from Bonni re: Tapes. The application only includes 60 minutes of recording per month, which would not be enough for most of us educators in a typical semester, if we were using the service for a number of assignments. The app makers are not very forthright about this shortcoming in their documentation, when you purchase it. They indicated to me on Twitter that they are exploring options for expanding what's available, but as of this recording, no solution has been communicated.

Three things my children have taught me about teaching

with Dave Stachowiak

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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. 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.

Guest

Dave Stachowiak, Ed.D

Strawberry Farms

family

Three things my children have taught me about teaching in higher ed

  • It’s often not about me
  • You never know what they’ll remember
  • It’s the little things that add up to something big

EdTech Tools

Canva.com

Omni Outliner 

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