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Small Teaching

with James Lang

| March 17, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

small teaching

On this week's episode, James Lang shares about his book: Small Teaching

Quotes

What I started to notice was that the coaches who paid attention to these little things, and focused on small fundamentals, tended to do a lot better than the teams that didn’t.
—James Lang

I’m a big believer in the opening and closing minutes of class … I think those are really ripe opportunities for small teaching.
—James Lang

I try to do framing activities to help the students realize the value of what we’re doing.
—James Lang

Resources

Small Teaching: Small modifications in course design or communication with your students. These recommendations might not translate directly into 10-minute or one-time activities, but they also do not require a radical rethinking of your courses. They might inspire tweaks or small changes in the way you organize the daily schedule of your course, write your course description or assignment sheets, or respond to the writing of your students.

  • Book: The Power of Habit* by Charles Duhigg
  • Teaching in Higher Ed Episode 71 with Derek Bruff
  • Video: How to be Alone
  • Article: Boring but Important
  • MERLOT Awards

Tagged With: design, podcast, teaching

Choose your own adventure assessment

| March 10, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On this week's episode, I share my experiences with “choose your own adventure” assessments.

choose your own adventure

Background on choose your own adventure assessments:

  • TIHE Episode 58: Universal design for learning

What is it?

  • TIHE blog post: Choose your own adventure learning (Part 1)
  • TIHE blog post: Choose your own adventure learning (Part 2)

Resources

App: Scannable* by Evernote

Recommendation

Peter Felten (@pfeltenNC) from the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University shared on Twitter: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Annotated Literature Database

Are You Enjoying the Show?

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: design, instructional_design, podcast, teaching

Take-aways from the Lilly Conference

with Todd Zakrajsek

| March 3, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On this week's episode, Todd Zakrajsek and I discuss our key take-aways from the 2016 Lilly Conference.

Lilly Conference

Guest: Todd Zakrajsek

Conference Director, Lilly Conferences California

Twitter: @ToddZakrajsek

www.lillyconferences.com

Dr. Todd Zakrajsek, Ph.D., is the former Executive Director of the Academy of Educators in the School of Medicine and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill.  Dr. Zakrajsek is the immediate past Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and prior to his work at UNC, he was the Inaugural Director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching at Central Michigan University and the founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Southern Oregon University, where he also taught in the psychology department as a tenured associate professor.  Dr. Zakrajsek also sits on two educational related boards and several editorial boards for journals in the area of teaching and learning, is an international speaker requested regularly for keynote presentations and campus workshops, and has published widely on the topic of effective teaching and student learning.

Todd was previously featured on Episode 47: Developing metacognition skills in our students

See list of Bonni’s resources from the Lilly Conference: www.teachigninhighered.com/lillycon

Quotes

Teaching should be more than telling.
–Todd Zakrajsek

If a worker knows why they’re doing something, they’re much better at doing it than if it’s a mystery to them. It’s the same thing in teaching.
–Todd Zakrajsek

Any time we start looking at these concepts and saying, “Should we do this, or that? Do the students fall into this category or the other category?” we lose the richness of all the individuals in between.
–Todd Zakrajsek

Lecturing alone simply does not return the same kind of advances you get when you add in engaged, active kinds of learning.
–Todd Zakrajsek

Resources

  • https://twitter.com/Bali_Maha
  • https://twitter.com/vconnecting (virtual connecting)
  • Video: Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University
  • Stephen Brookfield featured on Episode 15: teachinginhighered.com/15
  • Taxonomy of Significant Learning by Dee Fink
  • The Carl Wieman Project
  • From The Onion: Parents of nasal learners demand odor-based curriculum 

Recommendations

Bonni

  • Presentation polling app: Sli.do*

Todd

  • Book: Teaching for Learning: 101 Intentionally Designed Educational Activities to Put Students on the Path to Success*

Tagged With: learning, Lilly, teaching

The research on course evaluations

with Betsy Barre

| February 25, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On today’s show, Betsy Barre joins me to share about the research on course evaluations.

course evaluations

Guest: Betsy Barre

Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University

After making the move to Rice in 2012, she was able to pursue her interest in undergraduate pedagogy by working with students and faculty in Rice's newly developed Program in Writing and Communication. In this role, she taught a series of disciplinary-based first-year seminars and contributed to the PWC's faculty development programming for those teaching first-year writing courses. And in July of 2014, she began her current position as Assistant Director of Rice's newly established Center for Teaching Excellence. More

Quotes

One of the biggest complaints faculty have about student evaluations is that it’s not a reflection of teaching effectiveness.
–Betsy Barre

Just because a student likes a class doesn’t necessarily mean they’re learning.
–Betsy Barre

It turns out that the harder your course is, the higher evaluations you get.
–Betsy Barre

If students think the work is valuable and something that’s helping them learn, you can give up to twenty extra hours a week of work outside of class and students will still give you higher evaluations.
–Betsy Barre

When we want to know if students have learned, one of the best things to do is just ask them if they’ve learned.
–Betsy Barre

Part of the movement in student evaluations now is to ask questions about learning, rather than questions about what the faculty members are doing.
–Betsy Barre

Notes

  • Article: Do Student Evaluations of Teaching Really Get an “F”?
  • Screencast: Student Ratings of Instruction: A Literature Review
  • RateMyProfessor Analysis: Gendered Language in Teaching Evaluations

Betsy’s Six Most Surprising Insights about Course Evaluations

Taken from her article “Do Student Evaluations of Teaching Really Get an “F”?”

  1. Yes, there are studies that have shown no correlation (or even inverse correlations) between the results of student evaluations and student learning. Yet, there are just as many, and in fact many more, that show just the opposite.
  2. As with all social science, this research question is incredibly complex. And insofar as the research literature reflects this complexity, there are few straightforward answers to any questions. If you read anything that suggests otherwise (in either direction), be suspicious.
  3. Despite this complexity, there is wide agreement that a number of independent factors, easily but rarely controlled for, will bias the numerical results of an evaluation. These include, but are not limited to, student motivation, student effort, class size, and discipline (note that gender, grades, and workload are NOT included in this list).
  4. Even when we control for these known biases, the relationship between scores and student learning is not 1 to 1. Most studies have found correlations of around .5. This is a relatively strong positive correlation in the social sciences, but it is important to understand that it means there are still many factors influencing the outcome that we don't yet understand. Put differently, student evaluations of teaching effectiveness are a useful, but ultimately imperfect, measure of teaching effectiveness.
  5. Despite this recognition, we have not yet been able to find an alternative measure of teaching effectiveness that correlates as strongly with student learning. In other words, they may be imperfect measures, but they are also our best measures.
  6. Finally, if scholars of evaluations agree on anything, they agree that however useful student evaluations might be, they will be made more useful when used in conjunction with other measures of teaching effectiveness.

Recommendations

Bonni

  • Think about how you administer the student evaluations.
  • Check out her Betsy’s screencast (see above).

Betsy

  • Design your own evaluation instrument and distribute it yourself, especially at the mid-point of the source.
  • Take advantage of the teaching center on your campus for student interviews and classroom observations.

Are You Enjoying the Show?

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: effectiveness, evaluations, teaching

Top five gadgets for teaching

with Dave Stachowiak

| February 18, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On this week’s episode, Dave and I share our top five gadgets for teaching.

gadgets for teaching

Guest: Dave Stachowiak

Bonni’s twitter: @bonni208
Dave’s twitter: @davestachowiak

1. Wireless presentation Remote

  • Commonly referred to as a “wireless presenter”*
  • Logitech remotes* are reliable and fairly inexpensive
  • Video Downloader

2. iPad Pro

  • iPad Pro specs
  • iPad Pro on Amazon*
  • iPad pro case from Sena

3. Apple Pencil

  • Apple Pencil

4. Apple Watch

  • use as a non-distracting notifier
  • use as a timer
  • can seamlessly record and Send reminders to OmniFocus
  • TIHE article about using Due app

5. Web Cams with Zoom app

  • Logitech web cam with 1080p *
  • Sign up for Zoom*

Recommendations

  • Bonni: iPad app for pencasting: Doceri*
  • Dave: Cloud database software: Airtable*

Tagged With: edtech, gadgets, teaching, tools

What the best digital teachers do

with Sean Michael Morris

| February 11, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On today’s episode, I talk with Sean Michael Morris about what the best digital teachers do.

Digital Teachers

Sean Michael Morris,
Digital Teacher and Pedagogue

  • www.seanmichaelmorris.com
  • Twitter: @slamteacher

Sean is a digital teacher and pedagogue, with experience especially in networked learning, MOOCs, digital composition and publishing, collaboration, and editing. He’s been working in digital teaching and learning for 15 years. His work as a pioneer in the field of Critical Digital Pedagogy is founded in the philosophy of Paulo Freire, and finds contemporary analogues in the work of Howard Rheingold, Cathy N. Davidson, Dave Cormier, and Jesse Stommel. He is committed to engaging audiences in critical inspection of digital technologies, and to turning a social justice lens upon education.

Quotes

There are no principles that I’m aware of in instructional design that allow for the human to creep in; it’s very mechanistic.
–Sean Michael Morris

I believe that teaching isn’t method; teaching is intuitive.
–Sean Michael Morris

Every time we step into a classroom or design a new course … we have to step back and realize we don’t know anything, that each time it is new.
–Sean Michael Morris

I approach everything by asking, “What is it that you’re wanting to get out of this?” and, “What is it that you want your students to get from this?”
–Sean Michael Morris

Recommendations

Bonni:

  • The courses at digitalpedagogylab.com/courses
  • TIHE Episode 57: Teaching with Twitter

Sean

  • Book: A Pedagogy for Liberation* by Paulo Friere and Ira Shor
  • Book: The Qualitative Manifesto* by Norman K. Denzin
  • Book: Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education* by Mark Mason
  • Book: Savvy* by Ingrid Law
  • Twitter user: Simon Ensor (@sensor63)
  • Twitter user: Pat Lockley (@patlockley)

Are You Enjoying the Show?

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: design, instructional_design, pedagogy, podcast, teaching

Get It Together

| February 4, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Bonni shares strategies to help “get it together” during stressful times of the semester.

Get it together

Quotes

Never succumb to the temptation to say you don’t have enough time to stop.
—Bonni Stachowiak

Listening might be the most important part of our jobs.
—Bonni Stachowiak

Sometimes we’re so worried about entertaining our students that we miss the opportunities for them to have creative insights of their own.
—Bonni Stachowiak

Celebration.

  • Celebrate what you are doing.
  • Song: Celebration by Kool & The Gang
  • Watch on Youtube 

Stop. Collaborate. And listen.

  • Stop spinning, collaborate, and listen (which is maybe the most important part of our jobs).
  • Song: Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice
  • Watch on Youtube

List of projects.

  • Create actionable names for your project tasks and use a system you trust.
  • Song: Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not by Thompson Square
  • Watch video on Youtube

Back to Life … Back to reality

  • Get real with your aspirations
  • Song: Back To Life by Soul II Soul
  • Watch Video on Youtube

Recommendations:

  • Mobile App: Due
  • Website: http://www.dueapp.com/
  • Find on the App Store*

Tagged With: checklists, iphone, organization, productivity

Action science – Relevant teaching and active learning

with Bill Robertson

| January 28, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

In today’s episode, Dr. Bill Robertson introduces us to “action science” and the ways he is making his teaching relevant, creating opportunities for the most active kind of learning I can imagine.

Action science - Relevant teaching and active learning 

Guest: Bill Robertson
Dr. Skateboard

Bill has a Ph.D. in Education and has been a skateboarder for over thirty-five years. He has done hundreds of demonstrations nationally and internationally in festivals, events and in academic settings.

Bill has been an educator for over twenty years. His academic areas of expertise are science education, curriculum development, and technology integration. He also teaches and does research in the areas of problem-based learning and action science.

Find him online:

  • Linkedin
  • Dr. Skateboard Website
  • Twitter
  • skateboard videos

Quotes

People who are learning a second language may know exactly what they’re talking about but might not be able to express themselves.
—Bill Robertson

The things that made me successful in skateboarding made me successful in education.
—Bill Robertson

I realized there was a lot of physics and concepts in these sports that can be expressed and could be engaging and motivating for the students.
—Bill Robertson

The skills [students] are really good at can apply to something like education … if they can master something, they can probably master something else.
—Bill Robertson

You have to find ways to integrate the interests of your learners into your curriculum.
—Bill Robertson

Resources

  • Teaching in Higher Ed episode 015: How to get students to participate in discussion, with Stephen Brookfield
  • Teaching in Higher Ed post: Sticky notes as a teaching tool

Recommendations:

From listener Pamela:

  • Book: Training in Motion* by Mike Kuczala. Emphasizes the importance of movement for learning (and not just regular exercise)

Bill:

  • Non-profit organization: Skateistan. Using skateboarding as a tool for empowerment, with a large commitment for young women in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa.
  • Educational Portal: Edutopia. Dedicated to transforming K-12 education.

Are You Enjoying the Show?

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: instructional_design, teaching

Helping students discover interesting research topics

with Doug Leigh

| January 21, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Doug Leigh on helping graduate students come up with interesting research topics.

interesting research topics

Dr. Doug Leigh earned his PhD in instructional systems from Florida State University, where he served as a technical director of projects with various local, state, and federal agencies. His current research, publication, and lecture interests concern cause analysis, organizational trust, leadership visions, and dispute resolution. He is coeditor of The Handbook of Selecting and Implementing Performance Interventions (Wiley, 2010) and coauthor of The Assessment Book (HRD Press, 2008), Strategic Planning for Success (Jossey-Bass, 2003) and Useful Educational Results (Proactive Publishing, 2001).

Leigh served on a two-year special assignment to the National Science Foundation, is two-time chair of the American Evaluation Association's Needs Assessment Topic Interest Group, and past editor-in-chief of the International Society for Performance Improvement's (ISPI) monthly professional journal, Performance Improvement. A lifetime member of ISPI, he is also a member of the editorial board for its peer-reviewed journal, Performance Improvement Quarterly. More

QUOTES

Some of the differences between doctoral work and master’s work have to do with the amount of original data collection.
—Doug Leigh

I try to set up the expectation that when a dissertation chair is doing a good job, they’re giving a lot of feedback, and that may involve several iterations of drafting.
—Doug Leigh

Though we call them defenses, they’re not interrogations. They’re not about getting lined up to be battered with questions to prove your worth before a student is allowed into the club.
—Doug Leigh

Students who can avoid just reaffirming what’s already known are able to position themselves to do research that sticks with them as a passion.
—Doug Leigh

Resources

  • Murray Davis's “That's Interesting!” article at Philosophy of the Social Sciences (paywalled)
  • Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year (free), see the runners-up here (paywalled)

Doug also shares his reworking of Davis’s index that he developed for his students, along with representative examples …

  1. Interestingness via Organizing or Disorganizing: things which have been thought to be similar are truly dissimilar, or that things believe to be dissimilar are actually similar. Example: John A Bargh's “The Four Horsemen of Automaticity: Awareness, Intention, Efficiency, and Control in Social Cognition“
  2. Interestingness by Composing or Decomposing: what seems to be varied and complex is really better understood simply, or something that is currently understood to be simple is actually elaborate, distinct, independent, heterogeneous, and diverse. Example: Quanta's “The New Laws of Explosive Networks”
  3. Interestingness by Abstraction or Particularization: that which people assume are experienced by just a certain few are actually shared by all, or vice versa. Example: NYT's “Mass Murderers Fit Profile, as Do Many Others Who Don’t Kill“
  4. Interestingness by Globalizing or Localizing: what seems to be a global truth is really just a more local one, or that something thought to be experienced just locally is actual more global. Example: Pew Research Center's Views on Science poll
  5. Interestingness by Stabilizating or Destabilizating: what seems to be stable and unchanging is actually unstable and changing, or things thought to be unstable are surprisingly stabilit and even permanent. Example: BBC's “The Libet Experiment: Is Free Will Just an Illusion?” (video)
  6. Interestingness by Effective or Ineffective Functioning: some aspect of the world that was believed to function effectively is actually ineffective, or vice versa. Example: Derek Muller's “Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos” (video)
  7. Interestingness by Re-assessment of Costs or Benefits: what seems to be bad is in reality good, or what was believed to be good is actually bad. Example: On Point's “Is Recycling Really Worth It?” (radio broadcast)
  8. Interestingness by Inter-dependence or Independence: what seem to be unrelated (or independent) phenomena are in reality correlated (or inter-dependent) phenomena, or vice versa. Example: Quartz' “This article has been perfectly formatted for maximum reading comprehension“
  9. Interestingness by Inconsistencies or Consistencies: what has been thought to be able to exist together are in reality things that cannot, or phenomenena thought to be mutually exclusive actually can co-exist. Example: Quanta's “Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science“
  10. Interestingness by Positive or Negative Covariation: what has been thought to co-vary positively actually co-varies negatively, or what has been thought to co-vary negatively actually co-varies positively. Example: Big Think's “How Hearing Something Now, Can Lead You to Believe the Opposite Later“
  11. Interestingness by Dissimilarity or Similarity: phenomena that seem to be similar are in reality opposite, or phenomena that seem to be opposite are really similar. Example: The Atlantic's “How ‘Quantum Cognition' Can Explain Humans' Irrational Behaviors“

Recommendations

Bonni:

  • Book: Doing a Literature Review* by Chris Hart

Doug:

  • Software: Harzing's Publish or Perish
  • Research: ERIC Thesaurus of Descriptors

Tagged With: research

Talking to students about vocation

with Tim Clydesdale

| January 14, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Talking to Students about Vocation

Tim Clydesdale talks about how we can all better support our students in navigating college and beyond by talking about vocation.

Quotes

[Vocation] is about the type of life you want to lead and the type of person you want to be.
—Tim Clydesdale

It may be that the broader sense of who you are isn’t being fully expressed in your work but it’s being expressed in many other places: in your volunteer work, or your care for a family member.
—Tim Clydesdale

Vocation is a much better way to talk to students [than career] because it captures much more of the breadth of life as it’s really lived.
—Tim Clydesdale

Resources

  • Article: Inside Higher Ed
  • Organization: Council of Independent Colleges
  • The Purposeful Graduate*

What are some of the mistakes universities make when attempting to develop effective programs to facilitate more conversation about vocation?

  1. Design a program that wasn’t organic to the campus
  2. Hiring people who didn’t have a high emotional intelligence

Recommendations

Bonni:

  • Keep a list of ideas for each class you have been scheduled to teach.

Tim:

  • Good food helps with conversation. Use a slow cooker (Crock-Pot) with a manual switch. This allows you to cook but also be engaged in conversation.

Tagged With: career, vocation

Practical program development

with Doug Grove

| January 7, 2016 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Practical Program Development

Doug Grove discusses practical program development: what works and what doesn’t when building learning experiences for today’s students.

Quotes

We see a lot of benefits of synchronous class sessions, but we’re not sure every student wants that. There’s a tradeoff with flexibility.
-Doug Grove

One of the mistakes we made when developing some of these programs was trying to be all things to all students.
-Doug Grove

Every program is a little different. One of the bigger mistakes we’ve made was we just took our existing structure and placed it on any new program.
-Doug Grove

Education Technology Tools

  • Adobe Connect web conferencing software
  • Dragon Naturally Speaking for speech-to-text

Recommendations

Bonni:

  • Batch processing on the computer. Do “like work” all at one time.

Doug:

  • Book: Start with Why by Simon Sinek
  • Coaching for Leaders Episode 223: Start with Why Featuring Simon Sinek
  • Simon Sinek’s TED talk

Tagged With: design, edtech, instructional_design, technology

The ethics of plagiarism detection

with Stephanie Vie

| December 31, 2015 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

Stephanie Vie discusses the ethical considerations of using Turnitin and other automatic plagiarism checkers.

Ethical Considerations of Using Turnitin

Guest: Stephanie Vie

twitter: @digiret
email: Stephanie.Vie@ucf.edu
Academia: https://ucf.academia.edu/StephanieVie

Stephanie Vie researches the construction of digital identities in social media spaces  as well as critical approaches to composing technologies such as plagiarism detection services. Her research has appeared in First Monday; Computers and Composition; Computers and Composition Online; Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy; and The Community Literacy Journal.

She is a Reviews Section Co-editor with Kairos; a Project Director with the Computers and Composition Digital Press; and an editorial board member of the undergraduate research journal Young Scholars in Writing.

Her doctorate from the University of Arizona (2007) is in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English, and her dissertation, “Engaging Others in Online Social Networking Sites: Rhetorical Practices in MySpace and Facebook,” examined the use of privacy settings in these sites within a Foucauldian framework. More

Quote

The more moments you can take from an active, engaged classroom and bring them into your assignments, that’s going to significantly help reduce plagiarism.
-Stephanie Vie

Recommendations

Bonni:

  • Go for a walk. It’s easy to forget how great it feels walk.

Stephanie:

  • Book: My Freshman Year* by Rebecca Nathan
  • App: Wunderlist for creating to-do lists
  • App: Toggl for time tracking

Are You Enjoying the Show?

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: cheating, ethics, teaching, technology, tools

International Higher Education in the 21st Century

with Mary Gene Saudelli

| December 23, 2015 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

International Higher Education in the 21st Century

On today’s episode, I speak with Dr. Mary Gene Saudelli about developing curriculum for international higher education in the 21st Century.

Guest: Dr. Mary Gene Saudelli

Author, The Balancing Act:  International Higher Education in the 21st Century*

LinkedIn
Book on Amazon*

Mary Gene is an assistant professor and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary in Quatar. More

Quote:

I create a situation where I ask my students to think about things from multiple perspectives, but also allow their voices to be honored.
–Mary Gene Saudelli

How Dubai has Changed

dubai-1

dubai-2

dubai-3

Recommendations

Bonni:
Book: Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes* by William Bridges
Book: The Way Of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments* by William Bridges

Mary Gene:
In difficult circumstances, stop to consider your own thoughts: When you have extreme positions, does that extreme thought mirror who you want to be as a person and what you want to believe?

Tagged With: communication, culture, edtech, instructional_design, teaching

The potential impact of stereotype threat

with Robin Paige

| December 17, 2015 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

On today’s episode, I speak with Dr. Robin Paige about the potential impact of stereotype threat inside and outside of our classrooms.

Stereotype Threat

Quote

When dealing with stereotypes, one of the things we can do on our campuses or in our classrooms is create a space of accountability but without saying “You’re a bad person for thinking that.”
—Robin Paige

Resources

Academic Paper by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson: Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans

Recommendations

Bonni:
Podcast: This American Life episode 573: Status Update
Book: Between the World and Me* by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Course: 5 days to your best year ever course with Michael Hyatt*

Robin:
Book: Whistling Vivaldi* by Claude Steele
Blog: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/
Tip: Use food to create a stereotype-safe environment because it becomes a thing people have in common.

Tagged With: bias, podcast, stereotype threat, teaching

The power of checklists

| December 10, 2015 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

 

Atul Gawande

Today on episode #078 of Teaching in Higher Ed: The power of checklists

Book: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything–a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps–the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
―Atul Gawande

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.
―Atul Gawande

Definitions

A to-do list is what to do, a checklist is how to do it:
Article on lessdoing.com

A checklist is a documented process for something you’ll do daily; a to-do list is something you assembled yourself that you need to do at a certain point of your day:
Article on alphaefficiency.com

Philip Crawford, software entrepreneur on Quora, gives his definition:
Question on Quora

Natalie Houston on checklists

A checklist ensures communication and confirmation among members of a team and catches errors.
—Natalie Houston

There are Two kinds of checklists:

  • Read-do: read each step and perform the step, checking off as you go (like following a recipe)
  • Do-confirm: perform steps of the task from memory until you reach a defined pause point when you confirm that things have happened.

Advice for making checklists:

  • Keep it simple
  • Make it usable – need to be able to check things off
  • Try it out and edit as necessary

Read her article about checklists HERE

Checklist on Checklists

Atul Gawande lists things to consider when making a checklist:

  • You you have clear, concise objectives
  • Have you considered adding items that will improve communication among team members
  • When crafting the list, is the font sans serif?
  • Have you trialled the list with frontline users? And have you modified the checklist in response to repeated trials?

Class Checklist

  • See my class checklist HERE on Evernote. (I currently use an OmniFocus project template by Curt Clifton
  • TIHE Article: Use checklists to teach more effectively and efficiently
  • TIHE Article: Checklist for class planning efficiency
  • Article by the late Grant Wiggins: How do you plan? On templates and instructional planning

Recommendations:

  • Book: The Checklist Manifesto* by Atul Gawande
  • Task planning system: Trello

Tagged With: checklists, organization, podcast, productivity, teaching

Teaching What You Don’t Know

with Therese Huston

| December 3, 2015 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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 | TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmail

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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