Teaching in Higher Ed

Storytelling as teaching

with Aaron Daniel Annas

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Aaron Daniel Annas joins me to talk storytelling on this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed.

storytelling

Podcast Notes

Aaron Daniel Annas
Assistant professor of cinema arts
Faculty Director of the Vanguard Sundance Program

Storytelling

  • Who are stories for?
  • How do you distinguish between entertaining our students and educating them?
  • What makes for a good story?
  • What do we do if we aren't good at telling stories?
  • How do we know if we are good at telling stories?
  • Importance of the relevance to a course
  • Bringing in story in to a class without us necessarily having to be the storyteller

Bonni's storytelling bookmarks on Pinboard

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Biola math professor Matthew Weathers' video of April Fool’s joke

Aaron Daniel recommends:

Amazon Echo

 

Mixing it up in our teaching

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Bonni Stachowiak shares some ideas about mixing it up in our teaching.

mixing-it-up

Podcast notes

Teaching classes repeatedly

Advantage of knowing where students typically get stuck

Dr. Chrissy Spencer spoke about this when describing her broken-up cases in episode 25, when she just “happens” to have a slide that clarifies a student’s question

Reinforcing a difficult concept

Advertising response function in my Principles of Marketing class

  • Not all  understand the idea of the law of diminishing returns by the time they get to the course
  • Would be the ideal situation for an interactive online module something like the scenario manager in Excel (under data, what-if, scenario manager)
  • Did the typical think-pair-share
  • Two truths and a tie exercise

Using the Attendance2 app to facilitate the random calling on of students

Applying learning to something students know well

Lessons in PR from our university

Standard 2.2 from accreditor (whole must be greater than the parts)

Going outside

Self assessment on theory X and theory Y

What things do you see that I do that are theory X

  • Steps to avoid cheating on exams
  • Latecomers need to call to be marked present for the day

What things do you see that I do that are theory Y

  • Self-directed learning during the week
  • Bulls and bears game
  • PollEverywhere quizzes via cell phones in class

No anonymity any longer

However, I was then able to give them the opportunity to indicate how they would like to be treated as an employee

Recommendation

Remind app – now has text chat, but with office hours

What to do before you act on all you’ve captured

with Dave Stachowiak

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Bonni and Dave Stachowiak discuss what to do before you act on all you’ve captured.

act

PODCAST NOTES:

Episode #32 talked about capture. All the places where we capture what it is we need to do (either because of others’ demands, or freeing up our mind of the “clutter” of stuff that needs doing).

Clarify and organize

Before we do any of it… we need to:

  1. Clarify – process what it means
  2. Organize – put it where it belongs

For each item we have captured, we ask:

What action needs to take place?

Follow this GTD guide

If it isn’t actionable, are you going to need it in the future for reference?

Avoid becoming a digital hoarder

How I store files related to class content and specific classes

Don’t get carried away with folders, especially email, because as we read more on our mobile devices, pretty long to scroll through.

Dropbox debuts file commenting; rolls out “badge” for collaborating on Microsoft documents

Evernote/OneNote: another place not to get carried away with folders. Work, personal, reference + any shared notebooks (i.e. bondbox)

Actionable tasks

Put it into a trusted system, so you can consider it in relation to all your other priorities.

goodreads

IMDB

Dave's Coaching for Leaders episode #180: Do this for a productive week

Only set due dates for things that actually have due dates

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Bonni recommends:

Read/re-read the revised Getting Things Done, by David Allen
Buy a set of their guides
Check out Scannable app

Dave recommends:

Ulysses app

What to do before you act on all you've captured

with Dave Stachowiak

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Bonni and Dave Stachowiak discuss what to do before you act on all you’ve captured.

act

PODCAST NOTES:

Episode #32 talked about capture. All the places where we capture what it is we need to do (either because of others’ demands, or freeing up our mind of the “clutter” of stuff that needs doing).

Clarify and organize

Before we do any of it… we need to:

  1. Clarify – process what it means
  2. Organize – put it where it belongs

For each item we have captured, we ask:

What action needs to take place?

Follow this GTD guide

If it isn’t actionable, are you going to need it in the future for reference?

Avoid becoming a digital hoarder

How I store files related to class content and specific classes

Don’t get carried away with folders, especially email, because as we read more on our mobile devices, pretty long to scroll through.

Dropbox debuts file commenting; rolls out “badge” for collaborating on Microsoft documents

Evernote/OneNote: another place not to get carried away with folders. Work, personal, reference + any shared notebooks (i.e. bondbox)

Actionable tasks

Put it into a trusted system, so you can consider it in relation to all your other priorities.

goodreads

IMDB

Dave's Coaching for Leaders episode #180: Do this for a productive week

Only set due dates for things that actually have due dates

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Bonni recommends:

Read/re-read the revised Getting Things Done, by David Allen
Buy a set of their guides
Check out Scannable app

Dave recommends:

Ulysses app

How to take a break

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Five faculty members share how they are spending their breaks and what recommendations they have for how to take a break…

Podcast notes

Ten things to do instead of checking email, by Natalie Houston (guest on episode #034)

How to take a break

  1. David Pecoraro from the Student Caring podcast
    Heading to Fresno for son's swim meet
    Reading: Building social business, by Mohammed Yunus
  2. Christine – teaches part time. Fighting with insurance companies over the break. Dealing with snow days.
  3. Nicholas – teaches in Doha, Qatar  (pronunciation of Likert scale)
    “My spring break is already over, but I spent it learning how to use ScreenFlow so I can help my MA students learn to use Zotero better.”
  4. Doug McKee from the Teach Better podcast
    Two week break from teaching at Yale
    Microsoft Word in review mode
    PDF expert 5 on the iPad
    Screencasting with Quicktime on the Mac (record screen and do light editing)
  5. Sandie Morgan from the Ending Human Trafficking podcast
    Engaging with others in diverse communities to combat human trafficking
    Expand circles of influence
    Connect app

Recommendations

BusyContacts

David Allen on the Coaching in Higher Ed podcast

Closing credits

Please consider rating or reviewing the podcast via your preferred podcast directory. It is the best way to help others discover the show (gotta love algorithms).

https://teachinginhighered.com/itunes

https://teachinginhighered.com/stitcher

Spring break recharge

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Bonni Stachowiak shares about a few things she's doing over Spring break to recharge. Spoiler alert: It is mostly all about getting caught up and staying caught up for me.

spring break

Podcast notes

Differing perspectives on Spring break

a) give assignments for students to work on over the break
b) grade student work
c) recharge/refresh for the rest of the semester

Efficiency

Sign ups

Grading

Answering student questions

What about you?

Recharge, refresh for Spring break?

Leave a message at: 949-38-learn.

Recommendations

Recharge – Kindle Voyage

Closing credits

Please call 949-38-LEARN to record a message about your Spring break recommendations and / or ideas beyond what I spoke about on this episode.

Steve Wheeler talks Learning with ‘e’s

with Steve Wheeler

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Steve Wheeler joins me to share about Learning with ‘e’s…

steve-wheeler

PODCAST NOTES

Steve Wheeler

Bio

Learning with ‘e's

Origins of Learning with ‘e's

  • 2007 started blogging
  • Learning using digital technologies…
  • Incorporates comments from people into the book

 eLearning 3.0

If Web 1.0 was the ‘Write Web' and Web 2.0 is the ‘Read/Write Web', then Web 3.0 will be the ‘Read/Write/Collaborate Web'.

  • Coined by Tim Reilly of O'Reilly media – progression or evolution of the web
  • Web 1.0 – the sticky web
  • Web 2.0 – the participatory web
  • Web 3.0 – the read/write/collaborative web

Digital natives/immigrants vs residents/visitors

Mark Frensky – coined the phrases digital natives and digital immigrants in 2000 / 2001 – The Horizon

  • Digital natives
  • Digital immigrants
  • Net Generation

It's not about age; it's about context. -Steve Wheeler

Residents and visitors – coined by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu

Challenging to find a universal digital literacy tool

Every individual’s context is unique. -Steve Wheeler

I know what I need to do with the tools that are available to me and so do my students. -Steve Wheeler

We learn best when we are curious. We become curious when we don't know the answer to something. And we don't know the answer to something when we get challenged. Problem based learning is probably the most powerful method you could possibly use. -Steve Wheeler

Twitter

Initially got interested in the backchannel chatter happening at a conference.

@stevewheeler account – started with that, though his more popular account to follow is…

@timbuckteeth – avatar – Dave, the astronaut on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey

Twitter for me is probably for me the most powerful tool for communicating I've ever used. -Steve Wheeler

Lack persistence – You need to give it time.

[Twitter] is not about the content; it’s about the conversation. -Steve Wheeler

The practice of blogging

If [professors don't blog], how else are they going to express themselves? -Steve Wheeler

Professors normally express themselves through closed, academic journals. The academic capital that most universities currently subscribe to… That's going to change.

Why Steve knows that blogging is much more effective:

Wrote an article in 2005: wasn’t published for nearly three years; revised. 36 academic citations.

At the same time, wrote another article, sent it in to an open-access journal; five people instead of two… Not only did they publish it within six weeks. The way forward for disseminating… 550k views; Almost 1,000 citations.

Blogging. People are actually reading it. Could be much harsher in their criticism. Reflect on practice more deeply. 3,000 views in a day. Don’t know how he could possibly get that kind of exposure through traditional academic journals.

US

UK

Privacy

Audrey Watters on Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

Death of privacy – all surveilled; all followed; difficult to be a private citizen

The death of privacy has happened. It's very difficult to be a private citizen these days. -Steve Wheeler

  • The law is running to catch up
  • Difficult question to answer
  • School systems differ; social contexts differ; social norms differ

Steve's addition

How the maker movement is moving into classrooms

Taupaki School in Aukland – principal of the school, Stephen Lethbridge (on Twitter)- primary plus school. 5-13… through making things. Papert's Constructionist theories. Learning the curriculum subjects in a fun, challenging, exciting way.

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Doug McKee's kids' books recommendations

Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus
A story about a catepillar

…partly about life, partly about revolution and lots about hope – for adults and others including caterpillars who can read.

Steve recommends:

Don't Change the Light Bulbs: A compendium of expertise from the UK's most switched-on educators

 

Developing critical thinking skills

with Tine Reimers

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Tine Reimers helps us define the term critical thinking and truly start developing our students' skills.

critical-thinking

PODCAST NOTES

[GUEST ]

Tine Reimers

Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Specialist
Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning
Vancouver Island University

Critical Thinking

Defining critical thinking (and the inherent challenges when we want to improve critical thinking in our students, without actually agreeing, collectively, on what we mean)

Different disciplines define critical thinking differently than each other

Difficulty in the concrete way in how to get students to think critically in the discipline-specific way that I'm trying to develop…

HANDOUT: Taxonomy of [some] critical thinking theories

* Developmental
– what gets emphasized?
– a few of the thinkers/researchers who posit this theory

* Learning styles / bio-neurological models of thought
Article from Wired: All you need to know about learning styles…
– what gets emphasized?
– a few of the thinkers/researchers who posit this theory

* Categories of cognitive skills
– what gets emphasized?
– a few of the thinkers/researchers who posit this theory

* Processes of self (in culture and society)
– what gets emphasized?
– a few of the thinkers/researchers who posit this theory

Episode with stephenbrookfield/15

Suggestions to grow critical thinking

  • Invert the classroom intellectually
  • Give the students practice in situations of ambiguity and complexity

[Correction: I said I was listening to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, but I meant that I was listening to the Inside Higher Ed podcast on competency-based programs]

  • Each team gets a significant problem to work on
  • Give the same problem to all the groups in the class
  • Limited set of choices as right answers
  • Which is the best answer to this problem
  • Simultaneous report in the classroom
  • Clickers or cards in class
  • Why did you say D?

Next steps

Flip the classroom – all of class period is around problem solving and sticking to your guns

Rabbit holes are a way of thinking… and we don't give our students enough chances to do that type of thinking in foundational classes.

ARTICLE: First day questions for learner-centered classrooms, by Gary Smith, University of New Mexico

Michelson and Fink’s team based learning approach

RECOMMENDATIONS

From Tine:

 

What the best college teachers do

with Ken Bain

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Ken Bain describes What the Best College Teachers Do…

PODCAST NOTES

Guest: Ken Bain

President, Best Teachers Institute, Ken Bain (Twitter: @kenbain1)

“Internationally recognized for his insights into teaching and learning and for a fifteen-year study of what the best educators do”

“His now classic book What the Best College Teachers Do. (Harvard University Press, 2004) won the 2004 Virginia and Warren Stone Prize for an outstanding book on education and society, and has been one of the top selling books on higher education. It has been translated into twelve languages and was the subject of an award-winning television documentary series in 2007.”

He was the founding director of four major teaching and learning centers.

WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS DO

Many will be familiar with What the Best College Teachers Do… If not, press stop, and get your hands on it.

What’s still the same, in the >10 years since the book was published?

“Ask engaging questions that spark people’s curiosity and fascination that people find intriguing…”

What’s changed, if anything?

  • More definition around the natural critical learning environment
  • Started with 4-5 basic elements
  • Since then, they have identified 15 different elements…
  • Deep approach to learning; deep achievement in learning

[Good teaching] is about having students answer questions or solving problems that they find intriguing, interesting, or beautiful. (Ken Bain)

Learner isn’t in charge of the questions. Teacher can raise questions that the learner will never invent on their own.

Need to give learners the same kind of learning condition and environment that we expect as advanced learners.

[As an advanced learner, asking for input from colleagues]… I would expect an environment in which I would try, fail, receive feedback… and do that in advance of and separate from anybody's judgment or anyone's grading of my work. (Ken Bain)

Bonni's introduction to business students are listening to the StartUp Podcast and making recommendations to the founders in the form of a business plan

The tone that you set in the classroom matters

We often teach as if we are God. (Craig Nelson)

Need to recognize the contingency in our own knowledge.

As advanced learners in our respective fields, we are interested in certain questions, because we were once interested in another question. (Ken Bain)

Another important study by Richard Light at Harvard asked: What are the qualities of those courses at Harvard that students find most intellectually rewarding?

When he published his initial results:

  1. High, but meaningful standards… important to the students beyond the scope of the class.
  2. Plenty of opportunity to try, fail, receive feedback… try again… all in advance of an separate from any grading of their work

As a historian, could begin with: “What do you think it means to think like a good historian.” Think, pair, square, share… Would then have an article on hand that someone else had written on the topic. Ask them to look at that article to compare their own thinking with that.

Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge, by Kenneth Bruffee

What people are doing when they learn something is joining a community of knowledgeable peers. (Kenneth Bruffee)

Essential to this whole process is engagement

Harvard Professor: Eric Mazure, winner of the $500k Minerva Prize

Peer instruction

RECOMMENDATIONS

Think, pair, share (Bonni)

The girl who saved the king of Sweeden, by Jonas Jonason (Ken)

@kenbain1

bestteachersinstitute.org

kenbain [at] usa [dot] com

 

Eliciting and using feedback from students

with Doug McKee

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Doug McKee talks about eliciting and using feedback from students.

PODCAST NOTES

Guest: Dr. Doug McKee

[ CV ]

[ BLOG ]

WORKING OUT LOUD

John Stepper's book about Working Out Loud

Studied his own teaching and determined that those who came to class and those who watched via video did equally well in the class

I feel like I’m just breaking through now. I remember what it was like at the beginning.

ELICITING FEEDBACK

Waiting until the end of the semester to get input from our students is too late

Evaluations are valuable; but it only helps you the next time you teach the class

The Hawthorne Effect

Formal, anonymous surveys

* Customized end of semester surveys
* mid-semester surveys
* discussion boards
https://piazza.com

* in person:
* talking to students after class
* office hours
* regular lunches with students
* Reporting back about what you learned what your changing to respond
http://ictevangelist.com

* Department-wide early warning systems—We’re trying this this year to give students in all our classes a chance to air concerns to the department early enough so we can do something about them.

RECOMMENDATIONS

SpeedDial2; ultimate tab page for Google Chrome (Bonni)

Piazza (Doug)

Forgetmenot (Doug)

Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson (Doug)

Doug's blog:
teachbetter.co

Practical productivity in academia

with Natalie Houston

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Natalie Houston discusses practical productivity in academia.

nataliehouston

Podcast Notes

Guest: Dr. Natalie Houston

Opposition to the term productivity

Productivity defined

Productivity, to me, is not about doing more things faster. It is about doing the things that are most important to me and creating the kind of life I want to have…

To do something with ease is to bring a kind of comfort and grace to the task. It can also be more room [in your life]… Living a life with more ease…

Challenges and approaches for faculty

  • Blurring between work and non-work time
  • Protect quality time for your most important work/projects
  • Creating appropriate boundaries
  • Schedule blocks of time to let
  • Commit to avoiding digital devices before bed
  • Establish a bedtime for ourselves
  • Articulate an ideal weekend/Saturday
  • Enlist partner's support in fulfilling that ideal day

The idea of a sabbath day in many spiritual traditions is to set aside a day for rest.

  • Create transition rituals to help acknowledge the move between work and personal time
  • Don't force yourself to use digital tools, if analog work better; perhaps a hybrid system might work well, in some cases
  • Todoist

Email

Multiple touch points

Challenge with accessing email on our phones

Taking breaks

Set an alarm

A timer is my most important productivity tool. You can use a timer in so many parts of your day.

Timing a break enhances the relaxation of that break.

Recommendations

How to manage references with Zotero, by Catherine Pope (Bonni)

IDoneThis.com (Natalie)

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, by Stephen Kotler

 

The slide heard ’round the world

with Dave Stachowiak

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Bonni and Dave Stachowiak talk about how to make your PowerPoint (or other) slides more effective.

Podcast notes

2010 headlines:

“US Army makes the world's worst PowerPoint slide”

“We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint.”

Conflict in Afghanistan: Why developing a clear strategy was challenging.

PPT in the crosshairs

ppt

Edward Tufte (2006 publication) The cognitive style of ppt: There's no bullet list like Stalin's bullet list.

Can create bad PPT on tools besides PPT

Problems in higher ed

  • In the classroom
  • In online modules (flipped classroom)
  • At academic conferences

In the online magazine, Slate, Schuman expressed her views on just how bad it has become with PowerPoint use in education in an article called PowerPointless. She writes, “Digital slideshows are the scourge of education.”

“For class today I’ll be reading the PowerPoint word for word.” –every professor, everywhere. @collegegrlhumor

“College basically consist of you spending thousands of dollars for a professor to point at a PowerPoint and read the bullets.” @deliNeli

“Being a college professor would be easy. Read off a PowerPoint you made 10 years ago and give online quizzes with questions you googled.” –blazik

“srsly sick of all these power points. anyone can be a professor. all u need to know is how to run a power point.” @ChrisraMae17

“Y’all ever sat in a class, copied every word down of the power point, and still not kno a damn thing the professor said?” @BlkSuperMan

Richard Mayer's research shows if students w/out visuals 75% vs 89% re: bike pump

PowerPoint Slide Recommendations

Use PowerPoint slides for their intended purpose: to enhance your presentation, not deliver it.

Put less on your slides and use relevant visuals

Change your media focus at regular intervals

Employ a non-linear slide structure

Choose your own adventure (episode 25 re: large classes w/ Chrissy Spencer)

Today's meet (requires laptops/smart devices)

Recommendations

Slack (Bonni)

Tapes  |  Screenflow  |  SnagIt  (Dave)

Lower your stress with a better approach to capture

with Dave Stachowiak

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Bonni and Dave Stachowiak talk about how to capture it all, so we can have lower stress and not have things fall through the cracks.

capture

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Dave Stachowiak

What is capture?

David Allen's Getting Things Done

Why capture?

Other-generated capture

  • Inboxes
  • Have as many as necessary and no more
  • Academics inboxes
  • Email
  • Phone- office line
  • Phone-other
  • Inbox office
  • Inbox home
  • Inbox bag
  • Students after class

Tools

Self generated capture

  • Roles
  • Projects

Tools

Recommendations

Paprika recipe manager app (Bonni)

Amazon Fresh (Dave)

All that cannot be seen

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On today’s episode, I talk about all that cannot be seen.

ALL THAT CANNOT BE SEEN
Photo by Jim Frazee of Southwest Search Dogs. Used with permission (he's my Dad).

 

Podcast notes

  • Mystery commercial that I really hope someone can find and send to me
  • Augmented reality
  • Yik yak chat service (For reasons explained in the podcast, I would rather not link to this particular app/service)
  • [EDIT: 1/15/15/ at 10:20 am]: Right after recording this episode, I listened to episode 9 the Reply All podcast by Gimlet Media. I have even less certainty now about whether or not we should stay far away from Yik Yak, or get in there and spread some positivity and make our presence known. I welcome your thoughts either privately, or in the comments, below.  
  • Southwest Search Dogs

Online forum introductions

Our perceptions really do matter

Our expectations can shape outcomes in others…

This American Life previewed Invisiblia on an episode called: Batman

Especially the beginning re mindset on This American Life

NPR Science reporters Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller explain to Ira Glass how they smuggled a rat into NPR headquarters in Washington, and ran an unscientific version of a famous experiment first done by Psychology Professor Robert Rosenthal. It showed how people’s thoughts about rats could affect their behavior. Another scientist, Carol Dweck, explains that it’s true for people too: expectations affect students, children, soldiers, in measurable ways. (6 minutes)

Invisibilia

Invisibilia is a series about the invisible forces that shape human behavior. The show interweaves personal stories with scientific research that will make you see your own life differently.

Assume the best… and talk through the gaps…

Episode 14 on Dealing with Difficult Students in Higher Ed

Our diverse students

Recommendation

Coach.me

Teaching Naked

with Jose Bowen

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It is easy to want to cover up in some way as professors…

In today’s episode, President Jose Antonio Bowen encourages us to become good at “Teaching Naked.”

A conversation with Jose Bowen

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Jose Antonio Bowen, President, Goucher College

Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning

Recommendations (part 1)

This episode, we start with Bonni's recommendation and ask Dr. Bowen questions from Storycorps.

Teaching Naked

The thing that teachers do best in the classroom is to be human beings, and to get to know their students as human beings, and to make that connection between what matters to their students and what matters to them. (Jose Bowen)

  • Start with what matters to your students
  • Used to have the advantage, based on knowledge
  • Use class time to make genuine connections and not simply for providing information
  • Technology works great outside the classroom for quizzing, communication, etc.
  • We know more about teaching than we did when we were in school
  • Pedagogy needs to be our central focus, and most of us weren't trained in it

A teaching failure

Bonni admits to one of her bigger failures in teaching in the past few years

Driving the stick shift car and not always having it turn out the way we want it to

Overcoming the failures – Jose gives advice

We are opaque as to our own intellectual accent. Everybody has an accent in the way they speak, but they also have an accent in the way they think.

Academics, in particular, are bad examples of learning, because we learned in spite of the system. We're the odd balls. We're the weirdos. We're the people who liked school so much that we're still here.

Most students don't learn that way.

Failure is simply part of the game. Disconnect is just part of what happens. (Dr. Jose Bowen)

  • Embrace mistakes
  • Admit when things go wrong
  • Describe why you tried what you did
  • Model change (“I changed my mind.”)

The end of the story

The Naked Classroom

  • Furniture moves around; no rows
  • No technology / screen
  • Index cards
  • Noisy
  • Laptops aren't typically necessary

Nobody uses a laptop while doing yoga or playing tennis (Jose Bowen)

I believe in noisy and messy classrooms. Complexity. Lots of failures. People having to confront real problems. Confront each other. Confront me… (Jose Bowen)

For beginners… need to set the stage and expectations… after that, they know how the game works.

Twitter

Recommendations (part 2)

Jose closes the podcast episode with his recommendations.

Change is hard. It's hard for you and it's hard for your students… Keep asking your students what's working. Expect some failure. It's not a linear process.

That's the process of learning and we're all learning how to do something new: And that's how to be better, more engaged teachers.  (Jose Bowen)

Closing credits

  • Subscribe to the weekly update and receive the Educational Technology Essentials Guide
  • Give feedback on the podcast or ideas for future topics/guests

 

Specifications Grading

with Linda Nilson

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There’s something wrong with the way we’re grading that isn’t being talked about nearly enough.

On today’s show, Dr. Linda Nilson shares about a whole new way of thinking about assessing students’ work and making grades mean more.

Podcast Notes

Dr. Linda B. Nilson

Director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University

Specifications grading

Advocating a new way of grading from University of Pittsburgh University Times

The problem with “traditional” grading

Academic and Occupational Performance: A Quantitative Synthesis (Samson, Graue, Weinstein & Walberg)

.155 correlation meta analysis done by Sampson
2.4% of the variance in career success

2006 study by the American Institutes for Research
Fewer than 1/2 of four year college graduates
Fewer than 3/4 of two year college graduates
Demonstrate literary proficiency

Explanation of specifications grading

Bundles
Virtual tokens

Robert Talbert blog
Casting out nines

How specifications grading came to be

Benefits

Concerns

Recommendations

Bonni: PollEverywhere (new features)

Linda: Cultivate your courage by trying out things you’re afraid of…

How to see what we’ve been missing

with Cathy Davidson

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Fears and concerns over changes in higher education persist.

Whether it is our disdain for lecturing to a bunch of disconnected, texting and Facebooking students, or their boredom at being put to sleep by a droning professor reading from his powerpoint, something’s got to give…

In today’s episode, Dr. Cathy Davidson joins us to talk about finding the right practice, and the right tools, and being able to see what we’ve been missing in higher ed.

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Cathy Davidson

Cathy on Twitter 

Attention

The gorilla experiment

Selective attention test video by Simons and Chabris (1999)

We have a capacity for learning constantly. -Cathy Davidson

Patients as co-learners with their physicians in the healing process

Examples of facilitation of learning, unlearning, and relearning

Students write a class constitution

What happens if you take responsibility for your own learning? – Cathy Davidson

Alvin Toffler's term: unlearning

Alvin Toffler has said that, “…in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century, the most important skill anyone can have is the ability to stop in ones tracks, see what isn't working, and then find ways to unlearn old patterns and relearn how to learn.

This requires all of the other skills in this program but is perhaps the most important single skill we will teach.”

…Sadly, we all find gorillas in our lives. They usually come through tragedy… We have all had those moments when there's a before and an after in your life when the world looks different. The world was not different. What changed was your ability to see a world that you didn't have to see when you were priviledged not to… when you thought the world only had basketball tosses in it. It wasn't that the gorilla didn't exist; it was that you didn't see it. -Cathy Davidson

Multitasking

  • Fears about the calculator
  • Debates in state legislatures and in the senate when Motorola wanted to put a radio in the car
  • Radio actually helped save lives, especially in night driving, to combat the issue of falling asleep at the wheel
  • Brain is constantly multitasking; we just don't realize it

Flow tasks (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

  • Brain surgery, playing chess, dancing to rock music, video game playing
  • Reading a book is not considered a flow task – people go off the page in 2-3 minutes; we think we are concentrating, when we are not

Unitasking

  • Howard Rheingold on Attention Literacy
  • There's always something we are missing
  • Index cards: Write down three things we've missed and we haven't talked about…
  • Tools, methods, and partners are needed to fight attention blindness

Recommendations

Closing Credits

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  • Give feedback on the podcast or ideas for future topics/guests

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

Closing credits

  • Subscribe to the weekly update and get the EdTech Essentials Guide
  • Give feedback on guests or topics for the 2015 episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed

 

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:

Closing credits

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