Wendy Purcell shares about rethinking higher education on episode 207 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

I think you’re seeing that universities now are needing to be much more connected to the society we serve.
—Wendy Purcell

You really will be learning throughout your life.
—Wendy Purcell

The very best education should transform you.
—Wendy Purcell

You are supporting transformation of people, and through people, transformation of society at large.
—Wendy Purcell

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
—Socrates

To an unprecedented extent, universities must partner with government, business, and civil society to take on the grand challenges of sustainable development that lie ahead.
—Jeff Sachs

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Resources Mentioned

• Envisioning pathways to 2030: Megatrends shaping the future of global higher education and international student mobility. January, 2018
• Global universities unprepared for sea change ahead. 26th January, 2018
• Future of skills and lifelong learning. 22nd November, 2017
• Differentiation of English universities: the impact of policy reforms in driving a more diverse higher education landscape. Purcell, W.M. et al (2016).  
• Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education 20(1): 24-33. 
  Education is the kindling of a flame: How to reinvent the 21st-century university. 5th Jan, 2018; update 8th Jan
• The 2018 Trends Report (Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Episode 141: The Danger of Silence with Clint Smith

RECOMMENDATIONS

Dr. Robert Talbert talks about how to get more meaningful work done on episode 120 of Teaching in Higher Ed.

Quotes from the episode

90% of the emails I get in my inbox are not actionable.
—Robert Talbert

The human brain is fantastic for processing information but it’s terrible for storing information.
—Robert Talbert

Sometimes the busyness we have is entirely self-inflicted; we work hard because we’re disorganized.
—Robert Talbert

Say yes to the things that matter and say no to everything else.
—Robert Talbert

Resources

• Getting Things Done (Updated Edition)* by David Allen
• Getting Things Done: Five Steps Overview

The Five Steps

1. Capture
   • Dave and Bonni talk about capture on episode #32
   • todoist
   • Recommendations from the Last TIHE episode with Robert Talbert
   • Bonni talks about inboxzero on episode #56
   • Capture sticky notes using Evernote
2. Clarify
   • Dave and Bonni talk about clarify and organize on episode #41
3. Organize
   • Evernote
4. Review
   • Google Keep 
   • Episode #64: The Weekly Review
   • Episode #78: Checklists
   • Essentialism* by Greg McKeown
5. Engage
   • Amazon’s Grocery Delivery Service*
   • Amazon Dash
   • OmniFocus

RECOMMENDATIONS

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.)

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

• 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

• Michelson’s Team Based Learning – team task design – good for any discipline that you can do…
• Chrissy Spencer talking on Teaching in Higher Ed about teaching large classes
• Team based learning list serve
• Team based learning site

RECOMMENDATIONS

From Tine:

• On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins 
• Reality is Broken, Jane McGonnigal

Michelle Pacansky-Brock shares how to become an authentic online teacher on episode 239 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

Quotes from the episode

People, by nature, don’t like to recognize our faults.
—Michelle Pacansky-Brock

There’s such a rich array of data that the students can share with us if we let them in.
—Michelle Pacansky-Brock

It’s all about connection in the classroom.
—Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Resources Mentioned

• Dr. Beth Harris on Smart History
• Professors Share: The Moment That Changed the Way I Teach – The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Voice Thread
• The Slow Professor by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber*
• Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning course
• Catalog of courses from ONE
• CanInnovate Conference
• Marvin Patton presents Promoting Equity with EdPuzzle and Canvas Mastery Paths
• CCC Digital Learning Day
• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande*

EPISODE SPONSOR

RECOMMENDATIONS

Saundra Y. McGuire discusses how to teach students how to learn on episode 132 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Learning is a process, not an activity.
–Saundra Y. McGuire

Physical activity is really important to having the brain operate at peak efficiency.
–Saundra Y. McGuire

Pretending that you’re teaching information is a great way to practice retrieval of that information.
–Saundra Y. McGuire

Students who may be failing our courses miserably are not failing because they are not capable; they are failing because they don’t have strategies to successfully manage the information.
–Saundra Y. McGuire

When we believe it’s possible, then we can help students believe it’s possible.
–Saundra Y. McGuire

Resources Mentioned

• Teach Students How to Learn* by Saundra Y. McGuire
• Louisiana State University’s Center for Academic Success
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success* by Carol Dweck
• Bloom’s taxonomy
• Earnest Everest Just
• ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices
• 150 ways to increase intrinsic motivation in the classrooms* by James P. Raffini

Are You Enjoying the Show?

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.

Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Brenda Gunderson shares approaches for motivating large classes on episode 160 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

I’m always looking for one new thing, one new idea to try in an upcoming term.

I think it’s important that I keep learning. And not just learning inside my own discipline, but learning outside my discipline.

Resources Mentioned

• ACUE's expert series article with Brenda Gunderson
• ACUE’s profile of Brenda Gunderson, who is featured in their Course in Effective Teaching Practices
• Interactive Notes for Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis
• Stats 250 YouTube Channel
• Edsurge Article About M-Write
• Brenda’s Keynote at the LASI conference Learner Analytics Summer Institute 2016: Includes iClicker data and Ecoach
• Recent publication about How to help students study ‘smarter'
• Academic Innovation: University of Michigan
• M-Write – writing to learn
• Dancing with the Professors 2016
• Dancing with the Professors Facebook Event Page

Are You Enjoying the Show?

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.

Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

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

• Twitter
• Luminaris Blog

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

• National Center on Universal Design for Learning
  • UDL on Campus
  • Interactive version of UDL guidelines
  • Printable version of UDL guidelines
• Universal design in architecture

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.

Mark's compare and contrast example, written about on his blog

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

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

• Peter Newbury describes getting started with peer instruction on episode #053

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

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:

• Listen to Mac Power Users 265 on Apple Music

Mark recommends:

• UDLcenter.org
• UDLoncampus – specifically for higher ed
• Luminaris Link Blog

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.

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

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

Bonni and Dave Stachowiak talk calendar management.

Podcast notes

Guest: Dave Stachowiak

Dave shared about his “Wayne's World” moment, coming back as a guest on the show.

Chart on Twitter about service hours invested by gender/race:

hrs/wk assoc. profs spend on service by race/gender pic.twitter.com/vf4EA7xL6L

— Tressie Mc (@tressiemcphd) June 28, 2015

Keep the calendar’s purpose central

Exceptions to only having items calendared that have to happen at a particular time

• Grading, as a means of budgeting time

See the big picture

My/our set up

• Mac Calendar (BusyCal)
• Exchange / Outlook
• Planbook
• RSS Calendar Subscriptions

1. Preschool
2. TIHE from Asana
3. US holidays

Make it easy for your students and other stakeholders

• TimeTrade for office hours and podcasting appointments
• Time blocks

Support collaboration through scheduling tools

• Doodle
• The Best Day

Review and reflect

• Weekly review – each of us goes through a review each week to help us reflect on priorities and commitments
  
  • Look back to last week
  • Look forward next two weeks
• Monthly review – the monthly review allows for a bigger picture view of how we are tracking toward goals
  
  • Look at next month

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

• Sunrise Meet
  • Review on FastCompany
  • Overview on The Chronicle

Dave recommends:

• Fantastical

Alan Levine shares how he creates courses as stories on episode 218 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Instead of thinking about the world through headline news stories, think about it through the experiences that people have living in these different communities.
—Alan Levine

You get better by just practicing. Not rote practicing, but stuff where you’re free to explore.
—Alan Levine

Resources Mentioned

• Alan’s Net Narratives Class
• Mia Zimora’s story
• Networked Narratives Spine
• DS106 – Digital Storytelling class
• Weekly studio visits
• Leonardo Flores studio visit
• Networked Narratives: Digital Alchemy of Storytelling, by Mia Zamora and Alan Levine
• NetNarr Studio Visit with Emilio Vavarella
• Virtual bus tours
• Alan’s choose your own adventure style course and social media setup: Labyrinthus
• #arganee world
• Mirror Mirror Arganee Alchemy Lab
• Cogdog’s Daily Blank WordPress theme
• DS106 daily create 
• Kevin Hodgson
• CLMOOC
• Hypothesis
• Jim Groom 
• Me on Futzing
• Alan’s calling card site
• Alan’s Portfolio site
• Reflection on most recent NetNarr class

RECOMMENDATIONS

In today’s episode, Doug McKee joins me to share about online courses. His Introduction to Econometrics class is taught about as close to an in-person as you can get, but without being bound by geographic barriers.

Guest: Doug McKee

Associate Chair and Senior Lecturer of Economics at Yale
http://economics.yale.edu/people/douglas-mckee

Website: http://dougmckee.net/
Teach Better blog and podcast: http://teachbetter.co/
Personal Blog: www.highvariance.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeachBetterCo

Quotes regarding online courses:

We weren’t lowering the price, but we were lowering the geographic barriers.
–Doug McKee
You don’t need a big film crew, and snazzy digital effects; you just need to be clear, and communicate it well.
–Doug McKee
Students show up, and they don’t have any questions. What I do is come with questions.
–Doug McKee

Links:

Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/
Zoom: http://zoom.us/
Examity: http://examity.com/
Explain Everything iPad app: App Store Link*

Recommendations:

Bonni recommends:
Sherlock: IMDB
Doug recommends:
Poster sessions with students: Read blog post here
CS50 course: Syllabus
TeachBetter podcast: episode with David Malan

Josh Eyler shares about his book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching on episode 231 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Part of the purpose of college is to help students develop the skills to ask really great questions.
—Josh Eyler

People are conditioned to fear failure.
—Josh Eyler

How do we build in opportunities for mistakes and errors?
—Josh Eyler

Part of the work of college is to help our students figure out what they find meaningful in their lives and pursue that.
—Josh Eyler

Resources Mentioned

• The Scientist in the Crib, by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl*
• The Gift of Failure, Jessica Lahey*
• Robin DeRosa on Teaching in Higher Ed
• Hoda Moftosa on Teaching in Higher Ed
• Retrieval practice
• Video: Why is Math Different Now
• What the Best College Teachers Do, by Ken Bain*

EPISODE SPONSOR

RECOMMENDATIONS

Teddy Svoronos talks about how to effectively use presentation tools in our teaching on episode 168 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

A real tech win to me is a device that both enhances the student experience and also reduces friction.

—Teddy Svoronos

Think very carefully about what will enhance the learning of the people watching the presentation.

—Teddy Svoronos

When we adopt technology, there are are two considerations: how valuable it is and how much friction is it going to introduce.
—Teddy Svoronos

Resources Mentioned

• Teddy was on: Mac Power Users 383 and Mac Power Users 319
• Bonni was on: Mac Power Users 240 (workflow segment)
• Slide Docs via Nancy Duarte
• Slideuments via Garr Reyolds
• Apple Watch
• Poll Everywhere
• Simpsons – Star Wipes
• Example of one way Teddy used animations in explaining sampling distributions: deriving likelihoods
• Slideology* by Nancy Duarte
• Teddy’s post: In Praise of Goodnotes
• More from Teddy on Live Annotation of Student Work with Goodnotes
• Teddy’s post: A Good Day to Keynote Hard
• Apple Pencil
• Surface Pro*
• Surface Pen
• Doug McKee’s post: Teaching Online with Zoom, Duet Display, and PDF Expert
• Attendance2

Are You Enjoying the Show?

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.

Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Ken Bauer shares how to engage the heart and mind through the connected classroom.

Quotes from the episode

I’m not going to be there and lecture; I want to really connect with my students.
—Ken Bauer

The number one difficulty for faculty in innovating in their practice is … fear.
—Ken Bauer

You’ve just got to take baby steps and change those things that you can change.
—Ken Bauer

Resources Mentioned

• Amy Collier’s session at Campus Technology 2016 Conference: Love and Risk in Education – A Call to Resistance
• Student Paola's video about her experience in Ken’s class
• Confusiasm – confusion and enthusiasm
• Nancy White on Twitter
• Ken’s blog post about his teaching evaluations
• Michelle Miller on episode #026
• Gardner Campbell on episode #107
• Common Craft’s RSS explanation video
• Flipped Learning Network

Are You Enjoying the Show?

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.

Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Derek Bruff gives his unique take on the flipped classroom… what to have the students do before they enter the classroom and what to do once they get there.

PODCAST NOTES

Guest:

Dr. Derek Bruff

On Twitter

His blog

• Ph.D., Mathematics, Vanderbilt University, 2003
• Director, Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University, November 2011 to present
• Bruff, D. (2015). An indirect journey to indirect impact: From math major to teaching center director. In Rogers, K., & Croxall, B. (Eds.), #Alt-Academy. Online: MediaCommons

The flipped classroom

Shin, H. (2015) ‘Flipping the Flipped Classroom: The Beauty of Spontaneous and Instantaneous Close Reading’, The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 24(4), pp. 1–4. doi: 10.1002/ntlf.30027.

What are the experiences and activities we want to have our students engage in that will help them make sense of this material and have them do something interesting with it?” – Derek Bruff

Eric Mazur – learning as a 2 stage process

1. Transfer of information (during class)
2. Assimilation of that information by the students (outside the classroom)

A definition

• A shift in time to that process
• Class time spent on the assimilation process

The classic flipped classroom

• Students encounter the info before class
• Come to class already having exposure
• Practice and feedback

Flipped Classroom resources

Vanderbilt flipping the classroom

FlippedClassroom.org

The Learning process

If students aren’t doing the pre-work before they come to class, the time together isn’t going to be well-served.” – Derek Bruff

Concerns that the flipped classroom is doubling the work for the students.

First exposure

Effective Grading, by Barbara Walvoord

Schwartz, Daniel L. and Bransford, John D.(1998)'A Time For Telling',Cognition and Instruction,16:4,475 — 522

Diet coke and Mentos experiment

This video is just an example of the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment; it isn't Derek's daughter

Creating times for telling

Students first need to encounter a problem, or a challenge, or something mysterious… and then that provides motivation to hear the 15 minute [explanation].” – Derek Bruff

• Linear algebra course
• Look at the board game Monopoly. What are the best places to buy on the board?
• Markov chain modeling

Classes should do hands-on exercises before reading and video, Stanford researchers say. (2013, July 16). Retrieved 21 October 2015, from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/july/flipped-learning-model-071613.html

Even when you have defaults [in your teaching], you want to have good defaults…” – Derek Bruff

Peter Newbury on Teaching in Higher Ed talks about Peer Instruction

RECOMMENDATIONS

Bonni recommends:

• Pictures as a means for reminders

Derek recommends:

• The adventures of Babage and Lovelace
  
  

Maha Bali shares about collaboration.

Quotes

The reason virtual collaboration works really well is that there’s usually no hierarchy with the person you’re working with. —Maha Bali

If you want your students to collaborate, the main role of the educator is to provide them with something where collaboration is valuable. —Maha Bali

Virtually collaborating brings the conversations to people who can’t be there in person. —Maha Bali

If you want to keep learning, I think collaboration is necessary because you need to learn from somebody and with somebody. —Maha Bali

Resources

• Rhizomatic learning
• The MOOC that community built
• Soundtrack to the collaborative play
• Virtually Connecting
• MLA Commons: Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities (Concepts, models, and experiments)
• MLA Commons: Collaboration Keyword

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Jesse Stommel shares about how to ungrade on episode 217 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

The worst rubrics don’t create space for surprise or discovery.
—Jesse Stommel

Asking [students] to evaluate themselves ends up being a really important learning experience.
—Jesse Stommel

Something as complicated as learning can’t be reduced to … rows in a spreadsheet.
—Jesse Stommel

Just taking the grade off the table doesn’t do the harder work of demystifying that culture we’ve created in education.
—Jesse Stommel

Resources Mentioned

• Digital Pedagogy Lab
• Why I Don’t Grade, by Jesse Stommel
• How to Ungrade, by Jesse Stommel
• The New Education, by Cathy Davidson*
• Cathy Davidson on Teaching in Higher Ed, Episode #169
• Peter Elbow
• Peter Elbow’s Website and Blog
• Bryan Dewsbury on Teaching in Higher Ed, Episode #215
• Parrish Waters at UMW
• Blue Pulse

RECOMMENDATIONS

Todd Zakrajsek and Bonni Stachowiak discuss how to sustain our joy of teaching on episode 280 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Don’t look for people who are like you, look for the people who are like the people you would like to be.
-Todd Zakrajsek

Schedule time and figure out ways to take care of yourself.
-Todd Zakrajsek

If you understand the importance and value of what you’re doing, it has more value for you.
-Todd Zakrajsek

Teach the students you have.
-Todd Zakrajsek

Resources

• Teaching the Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had, by Jesse Stommel and Sara Goldrick-Rab 
• International Teaching Learning Cooperative Network
• Educational Blueprints
• For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education*, by Christopher Emdin
• Neuroscientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED

RECOMMENDATIONS

Robert Bjork on using cognitive psychology to enhance learning.

PODCAST NOTES

Guest:

Dr. Robert Bjork

• Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA
• Learning and memory; the science of learning in the practice of teaching.
• The Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab

Common misperceptions

Belief that we work something like a man made recording device.

In almost every critical way, we differ from any such device.” – Robert Bjork

How can it be that we have all these years of learning things and formal education and then end up really not understanding the process? You might just think by sheer trial and error during all of our educational experiences we would come to understand ourselves better than we apparently do.” – Robert Bjork

We found all these different situations where the very same thing that produces forgetting then enhances learning if the material is re-studied again. Forgetting is a friend of learning.” – Robert Bjork

The spacing effect

• Delay in re-studying information

The environmental context

• If you study it again, then you're better off to study it in a different place.
• This is counter to the advice to study in a single place.

Retrieval practice

When you recall something, it does far more to reveal that you did indeed have it in your memory.

“Using our memories shapes our memory.”- Robert Bjork

As we use our memories, the things we recall become more recallable. Things in competition with the memories become less recallable.”- Robert Bjork

We should input less and output more.”- Robert Bjork

Test yourself; retrieval practice

Low-stakes or no-stakes testing is key to optimizing learning.”- Robert Bjork

“When I say they become inaccessible, they are absolutely not gone.”- Robert Bjork

Interleaving

“In all those real-world situation where there's several related tasks or components to be learned, the tendency is to provide instruction in a block test. It seems to make sense to work on one thing at a time.”- Robert Bjork

“We are finding that interleaving leads to much better long-term retention. It slows the gain in performance during the training process but, then leads to much better long-term performance.”- Robert Bjork

“Forgetting is not entirely a negative process. There are a number of senses in which forgetting can be a good thing.”- Robert Bjork

“The very same people who just performed better, substantially, with interleaving, almost uniformly said that blocking helped them learn better.”- Robert Bjork

Desirable difficulties

They're difficulties in the sense that they pose challenges (increased frequency of errors) but they're desirable in that they foster the very goals of instruction (long-term retention and transfer of knowledge into new situations).

1. Interleaving vs blocking
2. Varying the conditions of learning and the examples you provide rather than keeping them constant
3. Spacing vs massing (cramming)

“The word desirable is key. There's a lot of ways to make things difficult that are bad.”- Robert Bjork

The generation effect

Any time you can take advantage of what your students already know and give them certain cues so that they produce an answer, rather than you giving them an answer, you greatly enhance their long-term retention.”- Robert Bjork

Incorporating generation is a desirable difficulty but people have to succeed at the generation. If they fail, it is no longer a desirable difficulty.”- Robert Bjork

Errors are a key component of effective learning.”- Robert Bjork

Successful forgetting

• Memory relies on being in the same situation
• Present it in a different context, produces longer-term learning
• Encode the information differently; encoding variability
• Retrieval is powerful, but depends on success to make it so

Many things are involved in remembering people's names.” – Robert Bjork

Self regulated learning

The key is for us all to learn how to learn more effectively.”- Robert Bjork

As a consequence of our complex and rapidly changing world and also changes in technology and educational environments, more and more learning is happening outside any formal classroom setting. It's in our own hands.”

• Across a lifetime

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

GoCognitive’s Robert Bjork videos on YouTube

Bob recommends:

Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning

Several books on research on learning

• Make it stick: the science of successful learning

• How we learn: The surprising truth about when, where, and why it happens

• What if everything you knew about education was wrong?

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.
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