Teaching in Higher Ed

It can be stressful to head back into another year of teaching in higher ed. However, there certainly are actions we can take to make our experience more peaceful and be more present for our students as we get our new academic year underway. Our foci for the Fall Sandie and I share about where we are focused for the start to our academic year. We both have very different roles at the university, but share a desire for continually wanting to improve our students’ learning experiences in our classes. We talk about the technology tools we will be using to support our work this year, along with other ways we will seek to facilitate learning more effectively. Updates to classes Technology-using professors on LinkedIn Cheating Lessons, by James Lang Attendance 2 iPhone app Remind Check list for class planning Grant Wiggin’s checklist resources The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande Getting Things Done by David Allen Asana Recommendations Camscanner app, which connects with Evernote (Sandie) Evernote‘s use in giving students feedback on their resumes (Bonni) The End Ending Human Trafficking podcast Free ebook: Educational Technology Essentials Sign up for the weekly update, which has an article each week, along with these show notes

It is going to take creative collaboration to better equip college students to develop 21st century skills. My guest, Jeff Hittenberger, has worked in higher ed, K-12; in the U.S. and abroad; and as a teacher and as an administrator. His unique perspective helps us think about how to prepare our students in higher ed for tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities. Inspiration from childhood in Haiti Learned from experiences growing up in Haiti. Most common response to the question: “What’s up?” “I’m on fire.” Regardless of what kind of adversity you are facing, you are alive, and you have something to say. 21st Century Skills What does higher education have to learn from what’s happening in K-12, as we all work to develop 21st century skills? Disconnect between higher ed and K-12 Communication that one might anticipate happening between these educational bodies doesn’t happen. Can lead to gaps in students’ educational experiences. 21st century skills gives us one way to talk about what we have in common. Partnership for 21st Century Skills Resources for educators 4 competency areas, referred to as the 4Cs PIMCO partnership Carnegie hour Lipscombe – competency-based higher education Critical thinking and problem solving Important for faculty to discover where there are differences in how they gauge critical thinking and develop ways to assess it in similar ways Creativity SmartBoards being used to teach physics “He who opens a school door closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo The maker movement TED Talk: Thomas Suarez – 12-year-old app developer Communication How can we tap into the passions of our students and engage them? Why Do Americans Stink At Math by Elizabeth Green in the New York Times Collaboration How the increase in technological capabilities is changing our ability to collaborate Character As parents of a college-age daughter, Jeff and his wife care more about who their daughter becomes as a person, in terms of her character, than they do about the knowledge she is gaining. Answering: “Who am I? Who am I becoming? What am I contributing to the world?” Recommendations Cheating Lessons, by James Lang (Bonni) 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel (Jeff) Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century, by The Committee on Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills (Jeff)

Librarians can be such a wonderful resource to us as faculty. Today’s guests are Georgia Tech Academic Librarians: Mary Axford and Crystal Renfro. They  have been a tremendous help to me – and I’ve never even met them in person. Call it a testament to the power of academic personal knowledge management… Episode 9: Academic personal knowledge management These are the notes from our dialog together about academic personal knowledge management for academic researchers and librarians. Podcast notes Guests Crystal Renfro Mary Axford The comments made by Crystal and Mary during the podcast are their own opinions and do not represent those of Georgia Tech. Academic personal knowledge management  Academic Personal Knowledge Management – AcademicPKM.org Free course: A year to improved productivity for librarians and academic researchers Link roundups Our recent PKM discoveries Jamie Todd Rubin’s Going Paperless Blog (Mary) Jamie Todd Rubin’s post on simplifying Evernote notebooks (Mary) Bonni advises to start simple with Evernote notebooks (I use 1) personal, 2) work, and 3) reference; plus 4) a shared/family notebook with Dave called BondNotes) I Click it and I Know it video from Mircosoft about how OneNote works with the Surface tablet  (Crystal) PKM Foundations Compares it to a Trapper Keeper folder; Ways of organizing information (Crystal) First discovery of PKM was from a colleague at Georgia Tech, Elizabeth Shields (Mary) Loves using Evernote: Helped her accomplish a move a few years back in a very short time (Mary) Academic databases and PKM How the databases have kept up, as well as how the researchers have kept up with the new features (Crystal) Evernote to track and plan blogs and podcasts (Mary) Bonni’s Zotero tutorials Catherine Pope’s Zotero posts It’s very individual. What works for one person may not work for someone else. Be sure that you don’t let the ‘doing the tool’ well become more the goal versus achieving your purpose with the tool. (Crystal) Archived version of our A Year to Improved Productivity for Librarians and Academic Researchers Program Recommendations ProfHacker  |  GradHacker  |  Catherine Pope’s The Digital Researcher  (Mary) Tweet about the random sandwich generator from Dan Szymborski (Bonni) This is why I really need adult supervision: I made a random sandwich generator based on my available cold cuts. pic.twitter.com/dnwyWFXpR1 — Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) August 6, 2014 ScoopIt : Robin Good’s Scoop.it sites on content curation (Crystal) Reminders Write us a review on iTunes or Stitcher to help other people discover the show Subscribe to the weekly update and receive the EdTech Essentials eBook, as well as the podcast show notes via email – only one email per week and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Enough with the hypothetical. Now we share what tools we use in our personal knowledge management systems. Podcast notes This episode walks through each of the phases of a personal knowledge management system and the tools we each use for each step. Discipline of finding information, making meaning of it, and sharing it with others.     Personal knowledge management definition “Discipline of seeking from diverse sources of knowledge, actively making sense through action and experimentation and sharing through narration of your work and learning out loud.” – Harold Jarche Key posts on PKM from Harold Jarche Bonni’s online PKM modules Framework Bonni and Dave describe what tools we use in each of the stages of personal knowledge management. Seek – capture Feedly Newsify Mr. Reader Unread Podcasts Bonni’s favorite podcasts Overcast Instacast Follow Dave on Twitter Follow Bonni on Twitter Subscribe to Bonni’s Twitter lists RSS NextDraft: The day’s most fascinating news Audible Drafts Sense – curate Dave’s Pinboard Bonni’s Delicious Evernote Share – create WordPress.com – free blog, good place to get started, but for most customization, you will want a self-hosted WordPress site 20 minute tutorial by Michael Hyatt on how to start your own self-hosted WordPress blog / website Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Recommendations TextExpander (Dave) Breevy (Bonni) Feedback On this episode: https://teachinginhighered.com/8 Comments, questions, or feedback:  https://teachinginhighered.com/feedback

Personal knowledge management and mastery. How to capture information, curate it, and create new knowledge from it. It can be so challenging to keep up with everything we have on our plates, let alone to what’s happening in the world and in areas that are most important to us. Podcast notes Guest: Dave Stachowiak This episode introduces the terms personal knowledge mastery and management. Discipline of finding information, making meaning of it, and sharing it with others. Personal mastery “Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.” -Peter Senge Personal knowledge management Harold Jarche’s PKM resources Harold Jarche’s introductory video Personal knowledge mastery Skills for 2020 KickStarter campaigns StorkStand Potato salad Framework Seek – capture Sense – curate Share – create Definition “Discipline of seeking from diverse sources of knowledge, actively making sense through action and experimentation and sharing through narration of your work and learning out loud.” – Harold Jarche Key posts on PKM from Harold Jarche Bonni’s online PKM modules:  1. Introduction to PKM 2. PKM demo (the actual tools I use in my PKM process) 3. PKM for academics Recommendations Practical Typography by Butterick (Dave) Dave Pell’s NextDraft – The day’s most fascinating news (Bonni) Feedback On this episode: https://teachinginhighered.com/7 Comments, questions, or feedback:  https://teachinginhighered.com/feedback

How can we use silence to condition our students to answer the questions we pose? Podcast notes: Eight seconds of silence that will transform your teaching It is counter-intuitive. We want students to engage with us, so we pose questions. Then, they just look at us, or down at their desks, with a pained or bored expression. We decide this whole question-asking thing is for the birds… or, at least, for a different kind of class/discipline than the one in which we teach. Guest: Dave Stachowiak How we condition ourselves not to ask questions and condition our students not to answer them. We try to get our students to engage by asking a question. They stare back at us, blankly. It’s awkward. Thinking in terms of what to cover in class, versus where the needs actually are. What has to happen before a student will answer a question. Process what’s been asked. See if they can formulate an answer to the question. Formulate an answer in their head (how they will convey their answer). Decide if it is safe to answer. Raise their hand, or speak (depending on the cultural rules in the classroom). The 8 second rule takes this time I to account. It used the power of silence to pressure students to take to risk of engaging. EdTech Finds Broadening the definition of EdTech for the purpose of sharing a couple things that have captured our attention: Evernote water bottle (Bonni) After recording the show, I saw that not only is this a great water bottle, but it is also associated with a great cause: WaterAid. Turning off email on phone (Dave); Essentialism book

Overcome the excuses we make that stop us from pursuing more professional development opportunities in this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. There’s a sign posted in our local (and beloved) grocery store: Trader Joe’s. “Please do not use this machine if you have not been trained,” it reads. The machine in question is a drink dispenser. As absurd as this is, in some cases, there’s more training required to dispense raspberry lemonade than there is to teach a college class.   Guest: Dave Stachowiak There are abundant resources out there for professional development, but we can sometimes be held back by our own excuses. Professional development excuses and opportunities Here are the most common excuses for not pursuing more training on how to teach and how to overcome each of them: Not enough time Podcasts (Bonni’s podcast recommendations) Audio books (Dave listens via Audible.com) A couple of audio books that Dave particularly enjoyed listening to lately on Audible: Adam Grant’s Give and Take Essentialism by Greg McKeown When you’re waiting (Pocket) Too hard to keep up Subscribing to blogs (feedly) Twitter Bonni’s professional development Twitter lists: Teaching in Higher Ed EdTech Teaching and learning centers ProfHacker My discipline is unique Coursera EdEx Nothing I’ve tried before works Filming or recording yourself teaching My university doesn’t dedicate resources for professional development Faculty development centers at other universities USC’s Center for Teaching Excellence videos Grass roots efforts EdTech group at Vanguard EdTech tools JotPro stylus (Dave) iAnnotate (Bonni)

How to formulate, refine, and articulate your teaching philosophy. Podcast notes The academic portfolio: A practical guide to documenting teaching, research, and service by J. Elizabeth Miller Miller provides examples of the narrative from actual promotion and tenure portfolios. What is a teaching philosophy? Why we teach. Why teaching matters. Not just a formula for teaching structure, but the rationale behind the structure. Why is having a teaching philosophy important? Helps guide our teaching methods. Needed in the job hunting process. Typically part of the promotion/tenure process at most universities. How to identify, articulate, & refine it? Questions from The Academic Portfolio (p. 13): What do I believe about the role of a teacher, the role of a student? Why do I teach the way I do? What doesn’t learning look like when it happens? Why do I choose the teaching strategies and the methods that I use? How do I assess my students learning? Questions of my own that  I have found useful in articulating my teaching philosophy: Who are my students? How I describe them says a lot about how I approach my teaching. Who am I, as an educator? How I describe myself says a lot about my teaching, too. What is teaching? Is the purpose to convey information, or to facilitate learning (or something else altogether)? Planet Money episode about young woman becoming a business owner in North Korea. What are the artifacts of my teaching? Observable things. What would I see/hear/experience that would be evidence of those beliefs, if I was in your class? Espoused beliefs vs theories in use. Chris Argyris / Edgar Schein Podcast updates Thanks to Suzie RN for giving us our first iTunes review. We appreciate iTunes or Stitcher reviews from listeners, as it helps us get the word out about the show. Also, if you haven’t done the listener survey yet, please do. That will help us continue to make the show better meet your needs.

The podcast explores lessons in teaching from The Princess Bride, discussing topics such as student engagement, visual thinking, and power dynamics in organizations. It also introduces ed tech tools like Haiku Deck and Pinboard for link management and research. Excitement for future Q&A episodes and a brief mention of The Wonder Years is also included.

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. Quotes n/a Resources Mentioned Introduction to Rubrics*: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback, and Promote Student Learning. Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery Framework Seek AACU value rubrics Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything Wiggins (part 2) Sense Delicious bookmarking site My rubrics saved on Delicious Evernote Tapes Share Blog about them Tweet about them Recommendations Remind (Bonni) Tapes (Dave) Note from Bonni re: Tapes. The application only includes 60 minutes of recording per month, which would not be enough for most of us educators in a typical semester, if we were using the service for a number of assignments. The app makers are not very forthright about this shortcoming in their documentation, when you purchase it. They indicated to me on Twitter that they are exploring options for expanding what’s available, but as of this recording, no solution has been communicated.