Teaching Naked, with José Bowen

Bonni [00:00:00] It’s easy to want to cover up in some way as professors. In today’s episode, Dr Jose Antonio Bowen encourages us to teach naked.

Production Credit [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:22] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:00:47] Dr. Jose Antonio Bowen is President of Goutier college. He has won teaching awards at Stanford, Georgetown, Miami and Southern Methodist University where he was the Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts. He’s written over 100 scholarly articles, edited The Cambridge Companion to Conducting, is an editor of the six CD set Jazz the Smithsonian Anthology and has appeared as a musician with Stan Getz, Bobby McFerrin, and others.

Bonni [00:01:19] He’s written a symphony which has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is the author of Teaching Naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning. It’s such an honor and a privilege to have him on today’s episode.

Bonni [00:01:38] Thanks so much for joining us on Teaching in Higher Ed today. Dr. Bowen.

Jose [00:01:44] Good morning.

Bonni [00:01:45] As you already know I’m actually gonna flip the recommendations segment of the show usually we do them both at the end but I’m going to start with mine and then we’re going to end the show with yours and my recommendation today is to check out the story corps Great questions. Now first let me start by explaining what Story Corps is.

Bonni [00:02:03] They’ve been around since 2003 and they’ve collected and archived more than 50000 interviews with over 90000 participants and each person that goes and offers up a gift of their conversation gets it recorded on a CD to share. And it’s also preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Bonni [00:02:26] The mission of it is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record share and preserve the stories of our lives. And I’m going to have a link to story corps great questions on today’s show notes and that’s at teachinginhighered.com/30.

Bonni [00:02:44] And I wanted to give people just a little bit of a flavor of what a Story Corps story sounds like and this is a recording from one of their most famous stories ever an interaction between Danny and Annie. Danny is an OTB clerk and Annie a nurse and they in this conversation remember their life together from their first date to Danny’s final days with terminal cancer. It is a little bit of a tear jerker.

Bonni [00:03:10] I won’t play too much of it because we don’t have that many tissues with. But I didn’t want people to get a sense of what these stories are like.

Danny & Annie [00:03:18] *Story Corps Danny & Annie audio plays.

Bonni [00:04:00] That just gives you a little sense of the flavor of their stories. Unfortunately Danny is no longer with us but his story and his love for Annie and her love for him continued to live on through this story corp story.

Bonni [00:04:14] So Jose I’m going to ask you just a few of the questions that they have on there great questions website which is what I’m recommending today that people go to the great questions website and they think about someone that special to them in their lives and they ask them some of these questions and maybe consider recording that so they might preserve that memory with that person. So tell me what does that you do for a living.

Jose [00:04:38] What I do for a living.

Jose [00:04:40] Well I find creative solutions for problems with people who think they can’t talk to each other. Most of the time I’m a musician so I have a day job.

Jose [00:04:51] But like most musicians in my day job is currently as president of Gatter college. And so people sometimes find that to be a stretch from being an academic you know going to the dark side but especially from being a musician.

Jose [00:05:07] But I tell people that being a musician is fundamentally about listening and as an accompanist played the piano and I spent most of my life that accompanist. So my job has been to make other people sound better which is fundamentally the same job as being a college president.

Bonni [00:05:22] And how did you get into your line of work.

Jose [00:05:28] Well like by accident I think I don’t think anybody goes to college. I mean I want to be a dean or a college president. You know I was a musician. But my parents you know first generation want me to couldn’t major in music music couldn’t even majored in classics.

Jose [00:05:39] I had to major in chemistry or something practical so I did. I worked at the chemist etc for a while and only later in life but I realized that I could combine my interest in music with an academic career. I mean who’s ever heard of musicology.

Jose [00:05:52] But I ended up a musicology professor as a way to have a day gig that related to my my interest in being a musician. And then you know one thing led to another organizing a band or running a piano studio you know being an entrepreneur kind of a freelancer it’s a fundamentally organizing of the people and so you can organize a band you can organize the department from there. You get you get the you move along the academic ranks. And I found myself being a president before too long.

Bonni [00:06:21] What did you want to be when you grow up.

Jose [00:06:25] What did I or do I.

Bonni [00:06:27] What did you.

Jose [00:06:29] You know a funny question. You know I mean after the fireman stage I think you know I wanted to be a musician and then I got to do most of the things that I wanted to do as a musician. But it’s a hard life. You’re on the road all the time.

Jose [00:06:45] So you know I love the travel love getting to go to exotic places. But at some point you know I don’t like being on the road you know 300 days a year. You know actually this is a good combination of things that I do. So in some ways I get to do the thing that I most wanted to do which is to play music.

Jose [00:07:03] I just don’t do it all the time which I found I did it all the time was actually not what I wanted to do it becomes work issued.

Jose [00:07:10] And again if you’re doing it 300 days a year you spend 90 percent of your time traveling and unpacking in a fraction of the time actually doing the music.

Bonni [00:07:19] What lessons has your work life taught you.

Jose [00:07:25] That are often you have to compromise. There are often crazy people who are very good at what they do. And a little bit of craziness is OK and a lot of bit of craziness is is going to make you crazy. You know I often say it’s like that in my analogy with a band it’s OK to have a band that has one guy who’s a little nuts and you have to make sure you know he packs his drumsticks.

Jose [00:07:50] But if the whole band is that way you just you just you end up babysitting the whole time. And so it’s OK for department to have one crazy person. It’s a good thing it actually stirs things up a bit. But if but if everybody is that way then you know nobody’s bodies running the asylum.

Bonni [00:08:06] That’s the last of the story corp questions that I’ll ask. But I really encourage people to go to the show notes that teachinginhighered.com/30 and check out the more of them.

Bonni [00:08:15] I just read some of them and work because I just met Jose but there are some really engaging questions about different aspects of life parenting religion serious illness and all kinds of other things.

Bonni [00:08:26] So I encourage you to check those out and I’m going to talk to you more about what we planned on talking about and that is I’d love if you would just start for us. The the idea behind what is it to teach naked.

Jose [00:08:41] Well it actually kind of relates to your story questions. I mean in a sense you know my I think that 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 your students and what matters to you.

Jose [00:09:02] You know teachers often think well you know I’m the teacher what matters to me is important. But but nobody learns that way. You know you only learn what’s important to you.

Jose [00:09:11] So to be a really great teacher you have to start with what matters to your students. It ends with what matters to you. You have to get them there. But but you can’t get them there if you don’t know what matters to your students. And so you know in the old days you had an advantage just because you knew more than your students and so they didn’t have a choice.

Jose [00:09:29] I know the periodic table and you don’t so I’m going sit here and talk about it. But these days the phone knows more about the periodic table than you do and there’s you know all sorts of resources and so just knowing more than your students isn’t going to be enough.

Jose [00:09:43] It was never enough to be a great teacher but you could be a mediocre teacher in the past and they still pay pay for you to lecture teaching. It is all about using class time in the face to face to make real connections and not just to transfer information.

Jose [00:10:01] And so I find that technology is good at you know information providing information and also good connections. But a different kind of connection that doesn’t have to happen in the classroom. So I encourage people to use technology outside of the classroom both to connect with their students when they’re not physically present.

Jose [00:10:19] And the other is to use technology for information and testing other kinds of things that again can be done outside of the classroom and then to reserve the classroom time which is the most expensive thing you have for the most important which is that personal connection getting to know people.

Bonni [00:10:35] There’s been a lot written about teaching there’s been a lot written about using technology and you flip everything on its head and say for those of you that are enamored by the technology I’m going to ask you to throw that away when we get in the classroom and then you say to those who are enamored with the classroom.

Bonni [00:10:54] I am in front of a lectern I am pontificating about my research and my expertise. You tell them they’re going to have to throw the lectern away and actually engaged in a deeper way. I can imagine there’s been quite a reaction to you talking about this you’ve sort of unearthed some things. What’s that been like for you. What’s the reaction been like.

Jose [00:11:14] You know it’s interesting. You know in a sense I’m the middle ground. I’m the middle term you know. You’re right the both both sides have something to hate. But on the other hand both sides have something to like to that you know I am I’m not invalidating technology I’m not a Luddite.

Jose [00:11:30] But I also think that those who simply want to stay in the old way have to recognize that you know life has changed our students have changed. We know a whole lot more about student learning than we ever did when most of us were in school. We know a lot more about the brain. We know that active learning works.

Jose [00:11:44] We know that it disproportionately disadvantages poor students. You know students of color you know and so you start by saying Well do you want your students to learn. I mean almost everybody can agree on that. You know we’re in this business because we want our students to be successful.

Jose [00:11:59] And so the question is how can we be you know how can they be how can we help them be successful and so there’s some common ground there and so you know generally when I go do this you know you’re never going to get anybody to agree about everything.

Jose [00:12:11] But if I can find a little something for everybody I can make everybody’s teaching a little bit better in some way so that for somebody who’s a technology lover they say OK I’m going to put away the computer for a day and for somebody who’s a technology hated it.

Jose [00:12:24] OK I can see there’s some value in using the computer to do this. You know I’ve advanced both of them in some way but my real interest is getting people to talk to each other on the Common Ground which is that we have to be more attentive to student learning and especially those of us who work at bricks and mortar institutions which are expensive.

Jose [00:12:44] They are simply more expensive than the online and other alternatives. And if we’re if we don’t get better Toyota and Honda got better and you know you know Ford and Buick. Come on who’s ever going to want those little Japanese cars.

Jose [00:12:58] If it was the same thing about pianos they said who’s ever going to want that. No one’s ever going to buy a Korean piano. No one’s ever going to buy Japanese piano. Well they were wrong about that and I think we’re wrong when we say the online courses aren’t going to get better world.

Jose [00:13:12] We’ll always have this advantage will always be Steinway will always be forward. No we won’t. I mean they’re going to get better and so that’s what’s really important is that pedagogy didn’t used to be a key part of being a professor and it was research and knowing more than your students and you know they would learn by osmosis.

Jose [00:13:32] And pedagogy has now become got to be the central focus of what we do as faculty and virtually none of us were trained in it. So that’s a major major shift but I think it’s an easier shift to make than saying we have to change everything.

Jose [00:13:47] I’m just saying you we have to we have to actually look at the science and the research behind our real discipline which is pedagogy and not just the subject matter that we cover.

Bonni [00:13:56] To go back to your car analogy it can be best for everyone I would I would assert for everyone it’s going to be in some ways akin to trying to learn to drive that stick shift car though and it’s not all going to go smoothly for you. I can recall one of my bigger teaching fails in the last few years.

Bonni [00:14:14] I still remember this moment vividly because it represents what I don’t want to do as a teacher. I was fairly good at engaging people because I grew up doing corporate training. And you don’t get away with it when you’re asking a business to pay you thousands of dollars an hour by lecturing into them that’s not something that they will pay you good money to do.

Bonni [00:14:33] So I was asking questions with the students to get them to think about their own behavior as consumers because we were in a marketing class talking about consumer behavior so there’s this whole idea of heuristics and we go into the store and we just go down to the deodorant aisle and we pick up our deodorant.

Bonni [00:14:49] We don’t think much about it. And then off we go. But if we don’t if they don’t have the kind of deodorant that we typically would get then we start thinking about how we might behave as consumers.

Bonni [00:14:58] So I’m asking different students pretty personal question about their preference and deodorants thinking that this is going to be something we could all engage on and I stupidly asked one of the young men in class what kind of deodorant he uses. He is from a country in which they do not wear deodorant.

Bonni [00:15:16] And so he very boldly not knowing that this was going to be something that would cause students to laugh at him in the classroom said I don’t wear deodorant. Oh I mean just I still thinking back there was a few years ago and I’m still does blushing that that but stupid do.

Bonni [00:15:31] So I think that sometimes people as they started to drive stick shift car and felt one of those jerks and thought That’s not what I want to do I want to embrace diversity I don’t want to embarrass someone in the classroom that they’re going to have those failures. How have you helped people overcome those kinds of failures where it didn’t go the way they wanted it to.

Bonni [00:15:51] And yet they know that if they can just keep working on that gearshift it’s going to pay off.

Jose [00:15:58] Well that’s a great great great example I’m going to use that one because it is all about the disconnect that we assume everybody is like you know and so you know you assume everybody uses deodorant and you know you’re thinking OK I’m not talking about race. I’m not talking about whatever this is safe. If deodorant.

Jose [00:16:19] And then but again we are opaque to our own intellectual accept that everybody has an accent in the way they speak but they also have an exit the way they think and and so academics in particular are are are are really bad examples of learning because we learned in spite of the system.

Jose [00:16:39] Right. So academics and say well I learned this way it’s like no one I’ll never do that because you know we’re the oddballs we’re the weirdos we’re the people who like school so much we’re still here. You know most students don’t learn that way.

Jose [00:16:54] They don’t like school they want to be done with school and so we need to help the bottom half of the class not the top two or three kids so failure is simply a part of the game and failure is going to happen both because as I said we’re oddballs.

Jose [00:17:05] But also just because disconnect is just part of what happens you know what we are. We’re going to be in a constant battle to recover from our mistakes but by making that mistake look at what you learned. I mean look at what you’ve got. I was making an assumption about all of my students that was incorrect and that’s much more valuable than just blithely talking on and on.

Jose [00:17:29] The first thing I would say is to embrace mistakes that this is why Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley and we’re not you know the most as you know we work in a medieval institution it’s been around a long time. It’s hard to change.

Jose [00:17:43] But you know all of those 30 year old billionaires took a risk and they failed multiple times. There are greater rewards from failure and simply accepting that you know you may go bankrupt in a few classes means that you will eventually be able to if you can harness that be a better teacher reach more students.

Jose [00:18:03] So you know in your situation I find that you know when you make a mistake when something goes horribly wrong it’s okay to admit it. I mean that the students will forgive you when they recognize oh OK I made a mistake that wasn’t working.

Jose [00:18:18] I’m sorry I tried something new. Here’s here’s why I tried it. I was trying to do this. I know that from educational theory or you know the brain. This is how this is how people learn.

Jose [00:18:28] So I tried this thing and I didn’t get it right. I think you got a lot of credit. For trying many for being honest.

Jose [00:18:37] But it also models in some ways the most important thing. I think that what education is really about is teaching people to change. We have to model that that in some ways the most important thing you can do as a teacher is to model change to say I’ve changed my mind.

Jose [00:18:53] And we say what we want to teach students to be open minded to think. Well OK. But when was the last time you said your students. That’s a great question. You’ve changed my mind. I was wrong. You’ve just proved me wrong. I’ve changed my mind.

Jose [00:19:06] When you do that students think wow that’s what it means to be a smart person that the teacher or the person I admire just change their mind. Maybe I could change my mind to that. The teacher never changes her mind. You think well smart people are smart because they know lots of stuff and they’re never wrong.

Jose [00:19:23] So I need to be like that yeah. And so they’re modeling professors in trying to never be wrong. And so if you want to teach students to change their minds to be too open to be open minded we have to model that for them in the best way to model it is by making mistakes.

Bonni [00:19:38] The thing I love about how the story ends is that I had been trying to get this guy to meet with me outside because English was certainly by no means his first language. And he had not been doing well on the exam.

Bonni [00:19:49] So I kept saying hey I’ve got lunch right after this class and I know you don’t have practice until later. Let’s let’s just come and let’s just eaten the calf and let’s just let’s review the stuff and to him he was Asian and it was too that is too much of a distance. You don’t have lunch with your professor.

Bonni [00:20:06] And that experience I think he saw that I was human and approachable beyond what he had experienced in the past. And so from that point on I made a mistake I don’t I’m not proud of that story except that I’m proud that it formed a relationship where we had lunch every week in that class.

Bonni [00:20:23] After that experience I think it has a happy ending and then I can also learn to be better at engage in and challenge my own assumptions like you said.

Jose [00:20:33] But I think I think that the thing most to be proud about is that you know is that you made a mistake.

Jose [00:20:39] I mean we have to you know we say it you know the person who’s never made a mistake I mean how good could they be.

Jose [00:20:48] How good a basketball player or a piano player could you be if you’ve never made a mistake. Know that’s how we learn. And so if you’re if you’re not learning you’re not getting you’re not getting better as a teacher.

Jose [00:20:59] So in most disciplines when you’re teaching something we teach through mistakes and that’s you know very many of us for all the physical skills the reteaching you know yoga or tennis or the piano you know we’re always talking about be where your body is you know learn from your mistakes.

Jose [00:21:14] And as a teacher you just you know again we’re actually we’re teaching mental complexity we’re trying to get our students to have a more complex model of the world and to understand the answer to most things is that depends if we’re going to do that. We have to model for them our own mental complexity and that we get it wrong.

Jose [00:21:34] That’s what we do.

Bonni [00:21:36] If I were to go into a classroom where someone was truly living the principles of teaching naked what would the classroom look like. To me what would I observe.

Jose [00:21:45] Furniture is you know probably set up fairly randomly. There’s no normal there’s no front. You know it’s an active classroom it’s it’s the metaphor no visual aid here necessary. I like furniture that moves around not people in rows.

Jose [00:22:00] You might still have 300 students in class but the chairs are movable and so people are in groups of two or three doing something. The first thing I tend to do is I push content out students before class and then I give them exams before every class.

Jose [00:22:14] And I like index cards so you know if you have a reading so what was your what was your favorite passage from the reading what. What passage from the reading which argument worked least well. Write that down bring it to class.

Jose [00:22:27] Okay you read the Wikipedia site on this fine THREE mistakes write them on an index card bring them to class. So something so you come to class the first thing that you do is you say okay so what can your card to your neighbor. Turn it over and write a rebuttal.

Jose [00:22:40] Or you know write an argument for or against it or some kind of writing happens at the very first thing in class that’s reflective on what students have have have done before they came to class.

Jose [00:22:52] And then there’s an activity or there’s you no problems or we do something in class class tends to be noisy. I think we have the wrong idea about our classes being you know places that are quiet. There’s a lot of back and forth about what should be banned laptops. Should we do this should we do that.

Jose [00:23:09] There’s an article in The Chronicle this week. Well no but you shouldn’t need a laptop I mean or at least not for most of the time. I mean you know your class should be engaging enough. I mean nobody uses a laptop while they’re in the yoga or playing tennis. Right. It’s because you’re engaged doing the activity you’re too busy to be checking emails between every ball.

Jose [00:23:28] So that’s the way clash should be. It’s like an active tennis match where you’re thinking about the next hit at the same time. And I do allow computers in class and I think it’s good to periodically say to people OK take out your laptop or take out your phone and let’s figure out the answer to a problem and you might need to get data to do that because that’s how the real world works.

Jose [00:23:49] You know nobody says OK you need to read your next paper without access to data and research or know respond to this memo from the provost but you can’t use the Internet. That’s not very realistic. So classes are messy. I believe in noisy and messy classrooms messy problems complexity lots of failure people having to confront real problems confront each other confront me etc..

Bonni [00:24:14] You said something that was subtle but distinct. You don’t ban laptops it’s not that they’re not allowed. It’s that for what you’re doing in that moment. They’re not needed. And I think that helps that frame that relationship between you and the students.

Bonni [00:24:28] And I don’t know if that’s too far to go but as co learners so we’re not going to need that for this particular conversation we’re having or co learning we’re doing together. And I think that that helps because then it’s not this is a I guess it shrinks some of the distance that’s there.

Jose [00:24:46] You know exactly. And I think again in the beginning I probably have to say to you if you’re a real beginner I might have to say to you know you probably shouldn’t bring your phone onto the tennis court.

Jose [00:24:57] Probably just hold your racket with two hands.

Jose [00:25:00] But after the first lesson I have to say that anymore you know that if I’m really engaged they need both hands on the tennis racket and so so I think it’s OK to say please closure or laptops. I’d like you to close your laptops and I’d like you to now argue with your with the person sitting next to you about X.

Jose [00:25:15] I’d like you to take a side in the following argument or I’d like you to pretend that you’re Henry the Eighth and I want you to construct whatever I mean you know give me something to do that that requires you not to use your laptop.

Jose [00:25:27] So I think it’s okay to guide students because students get it this is the first naked teacher they’ve had of the first active class and they’ve had they’re going to be surprised because you know students you know we say we don’t lecture but the evidence says we still do and that students in most classes at most institutions walk into a class they open up their laptop and they start taking notes or use Facebook when they get bored.

Jose [00:25:50] That’s what’s happening in most of our classrooms. So if you’re the first person they’ve encountered it says okay we’re going to play a game today and we’re going to do. We’re going to do the hardest problem set in class and I want everybody who got the answer 12 to find some of who got the answer 13 and argue with them about what the right answer is to this problem. They’re going to look at you like they have three heads because they’ve never they’ve never encountered this.

Jose [00:26:11] So the first time it happens you probably need to explain well here’s what we’re going to do here’s why transparency really works. Here’s how your brain works. And so we know this about you know your brain and so we’re going to argue about the right solution for this problem and do the most complicated problems in class in teams because that’s where the real world works.

Jose [00:26:29] Once you’ve got them used to that I think you can you can kind of let it work the way it is but take those mistakes that you make if you notice that your students are all on Facebook.

Jose [00:26:37] The solution is probably not to have a T.A. walk around the back of the classroom and say hey you’re on Facebook.

Jose [00:26:43] Stop stop shopping but rather to change change your pedagogic I mean you know and I always think if you want to be a policeman go to the police academy. I don’t. I don’t that’s not the job I signed up for. I want to engage students and so if I’m not engaging them the problem is I’m not engaging them that I need to police them better.

Bonni [00:27:03] What are some ways we can engage. Once they’ve left the classroom.

Jose [00:27:07] Well it turns out that we’ve been handed the best of all connecting tools in the world called Twitter and Twitter is all about connections right you know the short short posts but student think of our classroom as the ivory tower.

Jose [00:27:18] Right. I always say you know your classroom isn’t Vegas what happens here stays here but I no. I actually think your classes like Las Vegas that they don’t actually recognize that what they’re learning in class can be applied outside of class every day unless you force them to do it.

Jose [00:27:32] And of course when you do that they start to get it on Twitter every time they find a movie they like or a mean they like or a post they like they share it with their friends. They’re used to finding things and saying hey everybody else needs to know about this on Twitter.

Jose [00:27:46] You know a great assignment to say once a week I’d like you to use the hash tag hash tag my course and I’d like you to share something that you find on Twitter with that hashtag. So everybody else can see and then you can pull them up in class and say well who found examples of you know abnormal psychology this week.

Jose [00:28:03] And it doesn’t matter if they use the New York Times that they found a cat video because it’s the connection that matters it’s students saying oh this is an example of abnormal psychology wherever I live wherever I find this is what my roommate did. Here’s a picture of my roommate doing something that I think is abnormal psychology. The point is that they’re good they’re applying their thinking they’re connecting.

Jose [00:28:23] And so we’ve got to get over our you know our reluctance to use cat videos because that is how students think. I had a student actually post a Seinfeld video clip on a discussion board once. My first reaction was ah come on you know a Seinfeld video but in fact he had it exactly right. He had picked the ten seconds that exactly demonstrated the concept we were talking about.

Jose [00:28:45] And I just couldn’t see it because I was I was pooh poohing the idea of a video. What does that a half of all Internet traffic is now video it is increasingly how students think and share. And so what we want to do is have them think and share about our content. That’s the world’s easiest Twitter assignment.

Jose [00:29:02] You have to get on Twitter. But the good news is they don’t have to friend you or anything right. All they have to do is just use the hash tag you don’t need to follow you. You just need to give them a hashtag that you can then find on Twitter and you can see what your students are posting about your class which is actually pretty cool.

Bonni [00:29:19] Because it’s come up far too much.

Bonni [00:29:22] I can’t believe I’m about to say this but I have sat in too many meetings lately where people say we’re working on creating a hash tag for anyone who is not aware you just press the pound sign and give it a name and that’s how you create when in the middle of typing not something you have to send off your I.T. department to create for you.

Jose [00:29:40] It’s funny. I like it.

Jose [00:29:42] It is actually the simplest thing in your mind to know your name of course number something you know. And of course the Finns do this. The funny thing is that students actually talking to hashtags you know hash tag my birthday in a sentence. No that’s a sentence. You don’t get in a conversation.

Jose [00:29:59] But it is it’s kind of become a joke but it’s true. You know students I know I was actually the students who are now into college so Class of 2019 is of course one of the most common hashtags but it doesn’t actually help because they can’t find students from my college that way because there are millions of them well hundreds of them.

Bonni [00:30:15] And it is this whole language to learn speaking of the cultural elements we spoke of earlier I was reading about the 2014 biggest social media fails and there was a company who had thought they would tag onto this big popular trending hashtag that was why I left.

Bonni [00:30:32] And so they said I think it was a pizza company or something. I left because they didn’t have any pizza. And of course that’s about domestic abuse. Why I left my abuser.

Bonni [00:30:41] And I mean just the complete bone head move there does take a little time to learn the language. But it does not take a lot of time to set up a hashtag around your class and get the students engaged and sharing.

Bonni [00:30:52] Like you said.

Jose [00:30:53] Yeah it’s also pretty easy to make a mistake here. So I mean it’s true. You know I would start by asking students what’s cool and what they use and and all of that you know you need you need a teenager in your core. I mean if your kid is actually pretty easy but if you don’t you need to find a student who you trust to say OK so help me set up what’s a good hash tag and what’s a good assignment and what will people not.

Jose [00:31:15] But then persevere a little bit because I think again you get points for trying and you will learn something from and you will learn about this world that your students inhabit and it’s a little bit like a cell phone.

Jose [00:31:26] You know I was a cell phone resistor I admit it but it did change my life and this is before the smartphone just allowed me to use that commute to talk to my mother every day and I was a better son because I had a cell phone using a social media platform will change the way that you look at teenagers and it will help you understand.

Jose [00:31:42] Oh actually I do like being connected to my high school friends or no I hate being connected to my high school friends. But at least you understand how it has changed the human condition and the way that we interact with each other for better or for worse.

Bonni [00:31:55] This is the time in the show which we shift to recommendations and as we all know I already did my recommendation up front of the story core. Great questions. I’m going to pass it over to you to whatever you would like to recommend.

Jose [00:32:08] Hmm OK. Well I guess I’ll do two Web sites. Games are like hash tag is like oh I need that I need to find my I.T. department to help me create a game that will do X and one of the easiest ways to engage students outside of classes with the game. The big repository is is merlot.org.

Jose [00:32:37] This is a site that’s curated by faculty and so people like me give away stuff here’s a game that you know here’s the here’s the DNA model here’s the whatever their academic tools. So it’s the essential site for looking for stuff.

Jose [00:32:50] And another of my favorites is smashfact.com. You can create your own games you can customize your own games smash fact dot com it’s very very simple to use. It interacts with most of your learning management systems so students can do you know I say here’s a 10 level game each level is worth a couple of points.

Jose [00:33:10] It’s worth 10 percent of your grade. Play the game all semester long and if you want an end you’ve got to get to level nine. And that’s easy and students can then do it. And again all that happens on the back and fairly seamlessly. Those are two sites that every academic should know for making games or just finding somebody else’s game that you can then use in class.

Bonni [00:33:30] So I’ve gone and I’ve read Teaching Naked and I started to practice some of this in the classes. Some of it’s going well some of it’s not. What’s your last words of encouragement before we close today.

Jose [00:33:43] Change is hard and it’s hard for you and it’s hard for your students. The process is not linear. We don’t have a choice. We can’t to go back to lecturing all the time. Keep asking your students what’s working. Expect some failure. Students are going to hate some of what you do. Some of it might be working just not yet to find a better way to figure out whether it’s working.

Jose [00:34:04] But the idea of I know what’s going on. I walk into class I’m going to talk and nothing else matters. That should be dead and buried. This is much more like learning to play tennis. It’s not going to be a linear process. You’ve got to work on Page 1 before you work on page 2 and the first thing you do when you learn to play tennis is to learn how to swing the rocket and you don’t care where the ball goes at first.

Jose [00:34:26] That’s your first mission is not to get the ball over the net. The first mission is to learn how to swing the rocket and then maybe page to learn how to use our feet. And so you know eventually you’ll hit the ball over the net and that’s the process of learning and we’re all learning how to do something new which is how to be better more engaged teachers.

Bonni [00:34:46] President Bowen, thank you so much for investing your time today into this community where we’re all trying to facilitate learning more effectively.

Jose [00:34:54] Thanks.

Bonni [00:34:56] And thanks to you for listening to Episode 30 of Teaching in Higher Ed which you can access at teachinginhighered.com/30 if you’d like to get the show notes in your inbox every week. You can subscribe to the Teaching in Higher Ed weekly update that includes the notes and all the links that the guests and I talk about at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe that a loss of get to the free ed tech essentials guide.

Bonni [00:35:23] Thanks so much for listening if you have any suggestions for future topics you’d like to hear about or future guests. You can do that at teachinginhighered.com/feedback. Thanks so much for listening and for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.