Teaching in Higher Ed

Action science – Relevant teaching and active learning

with Bill Robertson

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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:

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

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.

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Helping students discover interesting research topics

with Doug Leigh

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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

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:

Doug:

Talking to students about vocation

with Tim Clydesdale

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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

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.

Practical program development

with Doug Grove

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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

Recommendations

Bonni:

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

Doug:

The ethics of plagiarism detection

with Stephanie Vie

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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:

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.