Teaching in Higher Ed

Practical instructional design

with Edward O'Neill

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Edward Oneill joins me to talk about practical instructional design.

Podcast notes

Practical instructional design

Guest

Edward Oneill, Senior instructional designer at Yale.

Teach Better Podcast

I know a little bit about a lot of things. – Edward Oneill (and also Diana Krall, etc.)

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What Edward's clients often need

  • intuitively-appealing ways of conceptualizing the learning process
  • a survey of the relevant tools & which fit their needs & capacities

Edward's special skill

…finding the points in the learning process where assessment and evaluation can be woven in seamlessly

Design approach of Edward's early courses

Successes

  • Made sure students had to do something every week
  • Ensured consistent deadlines
  • Weekly messages, creatively introducing them to that week

Failures

  • Disconnected topics, no second chances

You don't learn anything by doing it once. – Edward Oneill

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  • Not opportunities for practice

I wanted to see it as the students' fault. It's so hard to get out of that [mindset]. – Edward Oneill

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Biggest challenges in our teaching

  • We know our content, but we don't realize how tightly packed our knowledge is…
  • Edward's blog post about the Five stages of teaching
  • Peter Newbury – prior Teaching in Higher Ed guest on episode #053 shared about recall / connections

Rehearsal and elaboration

It's about stepping away from the center and helping [students] communicate with each other. – Edward Oneill

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Methods for incorporating assessment and evaluation into the design of courses

  • Have shorter/smaller forms of assessment that aren't necessarily graded 100% of the time
  • Use their performance as your own assessment

Bonni shares about teaching with Ellen's Heads Up iPad game

Jeopardy game as form of reinforcement

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Parker Palmer quote

I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind—then teaching is the finest work I know. – Parker Palmer

Edward comments:

There is a special privilege in people letting you help them grow and change. – Edward Oneill

Edward recommends:

On Becoming a Person, by Carl Rogers

As a teacher, I need to see you as a unique learner. If I really try to understand you and try to help you grow, it is not so much about information transfer; it is a more humane kind of relationship. – Edward Oneill

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When you're passionate about teaching and you focus on it and you try to improve – you do. – Edward Oneill

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Closing notes

  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.

The terror of teaching

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Bonni Stachowiak shares some of her fears about teaching and ways that she often attempts to resolve them.

Podcast Notes

The Skillful Teacher, by Stephen Brookfield

Common fears

  • Quantity over quality
  • Confusion
  • Lacking balance
  • Being inadequate

Attempts to resolve fears

Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less, by Greg McKeown

  • Have evidence to the contrary (letters, emails, etc.)

Recommendations

Tommy Emmanuel's Tall Fidler

Closing notes

  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.

 

Teaching with Twitter

with Jesse Stommel

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Jesse Stommel, shares about how he enhances his teaching with Twitter.

Teaching with

Podcast notes

Teaching with Twitter

Twitter basics

Jesse's background

When I grew up, I always wanted to have my own school… [Hybrid Pedagogy] is not really as much a repository for articles, but a space for community and for engaging. – Jesse Stommel

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Was recently in Canada for the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, where he broke his ankle

On kindness

Kindness is what drives my pedagogy. It's about seeing people for who they really are and engaging with their full selves. – Jesse Stommel

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Part of [kindness] is also about bringing your full self to the relationship you have with your coworkers, your students, and [other collaborators] that you use as a guiding ethic. – Jesse Stommel

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What the 140 limitation does

The constraints of Twitter are also its affordances. Being asked to take an idea and put it in this constrained linguistic space of 140 characters forces us to think about and question our thinking in ways we wouldn't otherwise. – Jesse Stommel

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Twitter allows for improvisation within a framework

What students should know

Twitter lets us play out our ideas

Twitter is a space for trying out ideas. It encourages us to iterate… – Jesse Stommel

[Twitter] is like a tool in the way that a pencil is a tool. A tool that lots of people can use for lots of different reasons. It becomes this platform that you can use in different ways and environments. – Jesse Stommel

Conversation with Steve Wheeler re: digital natives on episode 38

Literacies

Each person has to find a different relationship to these tools and build their own self inside of the network. – Jesse Stommel

Privacy literacy

Anyone who imagines that they can become private just with the flip of a switch is not really understanding how these networks work. – Jesse Stommel

Reflections on Teaching in Higher Ed episode 31 on the social network Yik Yak

Creative ways to teach with Twitter

Some things need to be public. – Jesse Stommel

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Canvassers study in episode #555 of This American Life has been retracted

He was peer-reviewing my tweets before I sent each one out [at our wedding]… – Jesse Stommel

I want my students to know someone in a place that is so different than the place that they are in. – Jesse Stommel

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Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Jesse recommends:

Closing notes

  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.

 

Universal design for learning

with Mark Hofer

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Mark Hofer shares how he implements Universal Design for Learning in his teaching, so that all students have the opportunity to learn.

Podcast notes

Guest: Mark Hofer

Universal design for learning

Student, Tony, who helped Mark identify the need for Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

…gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn. – National Center on Universal Design for Learning

If you think about [the UDL] components as you're designing your course, you're going to wind up with better learning experiences for all your students. – Mark Hofer

Addressing concerns about UDL

We inadvertently put up barriers for our students in their learning.

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Mark's compare and contrast example

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Get started incorporating UDL into a course

Step 1:

  • What do I know that students struggle with related to this [topic or competency]?

Step 2:

  • What kind of options could I include to help them with [those common challenges]?

It does take students some time to get used to the idea that there may be more than one way to [accomplish] something. – Mark Hofer

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Guidelines

  • Engagement – Mark is building his course around badges and experiences (through gamification and choice)

…goal is to try to make the learning as relevant and interesting to the learning, not just initially, but to sustain their interest in the learning… – Mark Hofer

  • Representation – pulling together readings, videos, interactives, where you can choose the way to learn
  • Action and expression – Mark is creating, for each project, 3 different options, all measured by the same rubric

While it is more [work] to select the various kinds of resources, it's paid back when in class the students are more prepared and we can go into further depth. -Mark Hofer

Getting started with UDL

Don't try to do [UDL] for every lesson, every day; it's a recipe for burnout. – Mark Hofer

  • Make sure all assignments aren't of the same type, over the course of a semester
  • “Pick a topic / concept that you know that students struggle with and try to find a range of different materials and see if it makes a difference.” – Mark Hofer

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Common misconception about UDL

  • While technology can help you implement UDL, it isn't dependent on using it…
  • UDL is an instructional approach and does not require technology

In relation to universal design

If you apply good accessibility practices to [course content], it will really benefit multiple learners in the process. – Mark Hofer

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Mark recommends:

Closing notes

  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.

 

Getting to zero inbox

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Managing email using the Inbox Zero approach.

ZERO INBOX

Podcast notes

Getting to zero inbox

  • Be strategic about what times you check email
  • Use email like a real mailbox with physical mail
  • Leverage a to do list / task manager
  • Make use of snippets for commonly-asked questions (TextExpander or Breevy)
  • Schedule meetings with doodle or the best day
  • Create a hub for committees and other collaboration

Merlin Mann's video on Inbox Zero

Recommendations

Bonni recommends: