Teaching in Higher Ed

Teaching through student research

with Bethany Usher

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Getting students engaged in research is one of the ways we can make their learning experiences more tangible and more profound. In today's episode, Dr. Bethany Usher joins us to talk about what happens when we turn students into scholars.

Teaching through undergraduate research

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Bethany M. Usher

Challenges of getting student research to work

  • Recognizing that research can happen in any discipline
  • Getting faculty to recognize that students can make a contribution
  • Helping students see that research is something they can do
  • Setting expectations for students

Examples of this kind of research

Rebecca Nelson (now a grad student at University of Connecticut) textile exhibit; band of knitted heads

  • Discovered a new knotting technique and how the piece had been repaired along the way
  • Currently living in Guatemala, studying textile production
  • Rebecca's blog

Student did research on a skeleton population and was the winner of the student researcher award at Mason

Authentic research

When the faculty member and the student don't know the answer when they begin

Other guidance

Recommendations

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Minds Online

with Michelle Miller

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Educational technology that is designed “with the brain in mind” can be a catalyst in facilitating learning.

On today’s episode, Dr. Michelle Miller draws from her research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology and shows us how to facilitate learning for minds online.

Podcast notes

Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
How do we use our memory resources to process information
Study of human cognition and thought processes

For the Internet generation, educational technology designed with the brain in mind offers a natural pathway to the pleasures and rewards of deep learning. Drawing on neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Michelle Miller shows how attention, memory, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning can be enhanced through technology-aided approaches. (Book description)

Effective teaching

Becoming an expert in a discipline, that journey from novice to expert… (Dr. Miller)

  • Not just facts; rich, interconnected network of knowledge
  • Skill acquisition
  • Motivation: Can't separate motivation, emotion, and cognition

Technology in education

  • Avoid the gadget-based approach
  • Interleaved learning: Mix-up the topics you're assessing…

Applied memory findings

Minds Online

We made the internet to satisfy our needs and desires…

The myth of the tech savvy student

  • Students differentiate technology use
  • Skills and abilities from one domain don't always transfer over to another domain very well
  • Emphasizing why we are using a particular technology tool

Memory in the Internet age

Expertise and knowledge cannot be fully separated

  • Needed for problem solving
  • Speed necessity
  • Ability to perceive the connections

Motivating online students

  • Face-to-face context builds our skills and approaches to heighten motivation
  • These techniques are missing in the online environment
  • Procrastination is an even bigger factor
  • Distractions abound

 [Motivation] is not all about the points [in the online environment]. (Dr. Miller)

Recommendations

Bonni recommended Dr. Miller's book (Minds Online) and ClassTools.net’s Fakebook tool to create a fake Facebook page/timeline… Going to teach business ethics next semester and have students create one for the Enron crisis.

Michelle recommended the following books:

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Make large classes interactive

with Chrissy Spencer

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It seems that the larger classes get, the more distant our students can seem. On today’s episode, Dr. Chrissy Spencer helps us discover how to make large classes interactive.

Even if you teach classes of 20, the resources she uses in her classes as large as 200+ will be of benefit.

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Chrissy Spencer, teaches at Georgia Tech

Ph.D., Genetics, University of Georgia

Active learning video: Turning students into chili peppers

The interactive classroom

  • Learning Catalytics
  • Prepared in advance a few slides that help clarify commonly misunderstood concepts
  • Allowing students to fail or struggle with an answer

Interrupted case studies

  • Traditionally a set of materials where there are specific stopping points built in
  • Powerful, because students need to have their progress monitored and milestones achieved
  • Bonni's case studies rubric
  • Forming groups
  • Catme team maker

Team-based, low stakes assessments

Switching from clickers to Learning Catalytics

Flipped classroom

  • Khan Academy
  • Reinforce that reading ahead and reading in a particular way is important to making the class time in interesting ways
  • Process called team based learning
  • Lesson learned/ ignored: “start small and do things in a small and measured way”
  • Evernote
  • TopHat audience response system

Service learning

The way that students could apply learning from a content area in the real world and also give back to the community in some way (Chrissy)

  • Identified project partners that met certain criteria
  • Outside in the field
  • CATME tool helped to determine who had cars

Recommendations

  • The Dip (Bonni)
  • Find something that you love and bring it in to the classroom (Chrissy)

Closing Credits

Cultivate creative assignments

with Cameron Hunt McNabb

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When we get creative with what we assign students, we open up a whole new set of possibilities for student engagement and learning. On today’s episode, Dr. Cameron Hunt McNabb helps us discover how to craft creative assignments that facilitate learning well.

Podcast Notes

Guest

Dr. Cameron Hunt McNabb

Her bio and university web page

Recommended as a guest by past Teaching in Higher Ed guest: Dr. Josh Eyler

Cameron's students contributed to the Medieval Disability Glossary by including their research on the word ‘lame‘

Teaching philosophy

…to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar…

The truth about internet slang; it goes way back (in Salon Magazine)

Cameron's teaching philosophy from her website

Creative assignments

Must meet a specific goal and be measurable

Backwards design

Understanding by Design

  1.  Identify goals first
  2. What evidence would exhibit those goals
  3. Explore options for assignments that would provide that evidence

** Write a paragraph in “future English”

Authentic pedagogy

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. – B.F. Skinner, The New Scientist, May 21, 1964

About authentic pedagogy

Places an emphasis on learning that is a construction of prior knowledge and a high value on knowledge that extends beyond the classroom.

** “Real world” is not just vocational, but for every aspect of life…

Active learning

About active learning

** Intro to Shakespeare class; hired actors to come in and had students come with annotated script and then were asked to co-direct the scenes

A veteran teacher takes on the role of a student (from Wiggins' blog)

Other ideas for creative assignments

Recommendations

Bonni recommends Lines from The Princess Bride that could double as comments on Freshmen composition papers via McSweeney's.net

Episode 3: Lessons in Teaching from The Princess Bride

Cameron recommends that we follow Tina Fey's advice to “Say yes” (in her memoir Bossy Pants)

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How to engage students in the classroom and online

with Jay Howard

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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

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