Intentional Teaching

Jenny Knight and Sharleen Flowers discuss the origins and purpose of CourseSource, an open-access journal that offers peer-reviewed teaching resources for biology. They talk about the format of lesson articles, the use of learning frameworks, and the importance of sharing teaching resources. They also mention efforts to expand physics resources and the role of CourseSource in scholarly communication.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.Isis Artze-Vega is college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College, a public college in Florida with over 40,000 students. Isis is also the co-author of a book on relationship-rich education, which was the topic of her closing plenary session at the 2024 POD Network conference in November. That plenary was fantastic and before it was even over, I made plans to invite Isis on the podcast to talk about the value of relationships in learning.Isis is the co-author of Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, which she wrote with Peter Felten, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia. You might also know her as a co-author, along with Flower Darby, Bryan Dewsbury, and Mays Imad, of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. In our conversation, Isis and I talk about the two books and her involvement in them, the value of trusting relationships in the learning context, ways that instructors can help students cultivate relationships in college, and how online learning and generative AI might actually be used to foster relationships. Episode Resources·       Isis Artze-Vega on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/isis-artze-vega-69952418/·       Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12845/connections-are-everything·       Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College, https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12146/relationship-rich-education ·       The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching, https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393893717 ·       The Liquid Syllabus from Michelle Pacansky-Brock, https://brocansky.com/humanizing/liquidsyllabus  Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.In today’s episode, we dig into an important question for higher ed: How can we improve the evaluation of teaching? Researcher Corbin Campbell was quoted in a Chronicle article recently, saying, “Folks will say quality teaching is hard to measure. Quality research is hard to measure, but we do it.” I’m excited to bring a conversation with two academics who are contributing to efforts on their campuses to assess and evaluate teaching in more meaningful ways.Beate Brunow is the associate director at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching at Penn State, and Shawn Simonson is a professor of kinesiology at Boise State University. Both have been involved in the development of new frameworks for defining effective teaching, and both are using those frameworks to change how teaching is evaluated at their institutions. We cover a lot of ground in our conversation, and if you care about teaching and learning in higher ed, I think you’ll find it interesting. Episode Resources·       Penn State’s new Faculty Teaching Assessment Framework, https://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/assessment_of_teaching·       “Establishing a Framework for Assessing Teaching Effectiveness,” Simonson, Earl, & Frary, 2021, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/87567555.2021.1909528 ·       “American Value Good Teaching. Do Colleges?”, McMurtrie, 2023, https://www.chronicle.com/article/americans-value-good-teaching-do-colleges  Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.One of the themes I’ve been exploring here on the podcast is how teaching and learning in higher education has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Months of emergency remote teaching followed by more planned online and blended teaching has resulted in an acceleration of the role of online teaching in higher education. Safary Wa-Mbaleka is associate professor of leadership in higher education at Bethel University in Minnesota, and Leni Casimiro is professor and chair of education at the Adventist International Institute for Advanced Studies in the Philippines. They, along with Kelvin Thompson are editors of the new Sage Handbook of Online Higher Education out this month. On this episode, I talk with Safary and Leni. We had a lively conversation about the changing state of online education around the world and how higher education faculty and staff can respond to those changes. Episode Resources·       Safary Wa-Mbeleka’s faculty page, https://www.bethel.edu/academics/faculty/safary-wa-mbaleka·       Leni Casimiro’s faculty page, https://www.aiias.edu/education-department/name/leni-casimiro/ ·       The Sage Handbook of Online Higher Education, https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-handbook-of-online-higher-education/book281802 Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Greg Edwards, head of learning at Rize Education, discusses how Rize helps colleges quickly launch new career-oriented majors. Topics include specialized courses, online course development, advantages of a four-year degree, and meeting student demand for relevant majors.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.In this episode, I talk with Anne Reed, director of micro-credentials at the University of Buffalo. Her office oversees over one hundred different micro-credentials that can be earned by University of Buffalo students. Micro-credentials at Buffalo are learning experiences that are larger than a course but smaller than a minor that students can use to differentiate themselves on the job market by making clear the workforce relevant knowledge and skills they’ve gained.Anne and I had a fascinating conversation about micro-credentials at the University of Buffalo, how they’re structured and aligned with workforce needs, the roles faculty play in them, and why students pursue them. She also taught me how to create my own micro-credential, an "Outstanding Podcast Guest" badge that I awarded to Anne!Episode Resources:·       Office of Micro-Credentials at Buffalo, https://www.buffalo.edu/micro-credentials.html ·       University of Buffalo’s badges, https://www.credly.com/organizations/university-at-buffalo/badges ·       Anne Reed on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-reed/ ·       Anne’s “Outstanding Podcast Guest” badge, https://badgelist.com/Intentional-Teaching/Outstanding-Podcast-Guest/u/anne_reed ·       Badge List, https://badgelist.com/ ·       National Association of Colleges and Employers, https://www.naceweb.org/ ·       O*NET, https://www.onetonline.org/ ·       “The New Learning Economy” white paper by Jeff Selingo, https://info.cengage.com/learning-economy_wp_2738580·       Texas Credentials for the Future, https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/texas-microcredentials Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.Traditionally, college students who don’t have ACT or math placement exam scores high enough to place into college algebra are placed into intermediate algebra, a developmental math course that serves as a perquisite to college algebra for those students. However, this prerequisite approach has chronically low student success rates at many institutions.Enter the corequisite approach, in which these students take college algebra along with a second, support course concurrently. The idea is that students who aren’t quite ready for college algebra will get the just-in-time support they need in their support course. The coreq approach is so successful that an increasing number of states are mandating that colleges and university at least offer the option and in some cases, do away with the prereq approach altogether.What does it take to make a successful corequisite college algebra course? I wanted to find out, so I reached out to a few colleagues who have been doing this for a while. On this episode, you’ll hear from Tina Ragsdale, teaching enhancement coordinator at West Kentucky Community and Technical College; James Kimball, master instructor and assistant department head in mathematics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and Kathy Almy, longtime math educator and currently CEO of Almy Education. We have a fantastic conversation about the coreq approach to college algebra, and I think that anyone with an interest in college students success will find it enlightening.Episode Resources:·       “Co-requisite Redesign Leads to Increased College Algebra Success and College Completion,” Tina Ragsdale, Renea Akin, and Geelyn Warren, https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/jarihe/vol4/iss1/5/ ·       Almy Education, https://www.almyeducation.com/ ·       James Kimball’s faculty website, https://math.louisiana.edu/node/122 ·       College Algebra with Corequisite Support, an OpenStax textbook by Jay Abramson and Sharon North, https://openstax.org/details/books/college-algebra-corequisite-support-2e?Book%20details Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.I recently saw that Brielle Harbin received the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award from the American Political Science Association. Brielle was a graduate teaching fellow at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching from 2014 to 2016, which is how I know her. She was actively involved in our learning communities on the theme of teaching, difference, and power, work which resulted in two co-authored publications, including the award-winning article “Teaching Race and Racial Justice: Developing Students’ Cognitive and Affective Understanding of Race” in the journal Teaching & Learning Inquiry.Brielle is now an assistant professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy, where she has taught courses on politics, race, and media, and has led workshops for her peers on inclusive and anti-racist teaching. Thanks to this and other work, Brielle is now the first pre-tenure faculty member to win the Distinguished Teaching Award from the APSA! I reached out to Brielle to invite her on the podcast, and we had a wonderful conversation about her teaching philosophy and practices and how she continues to develop herself as a teacher over time. Episode ResourcesBrielle Harbin’s website, https://www.mbharbin.com/APSA Distinguish Teaching Award announcement, https://politicalsciencenow.com/brielle-harbin-receives-the-2023-apsa-distinguished-teaching-award/ Brielle's teaching publications, https://www.mbharbin.com/teaching.html State of Nature game, https://sites.google.com/site/howtodosimulationgames/examples-of-simulations/political-studies/state-of-nature Please note that in this interview, Brielle Harbin speaks as an individual and not on behalf of her organization.Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about “assignment makeovers” in this new age of AI, and a key part of rethinking assignments is exploring what we and our students can do with AI technologies in our fields.To help in those explorations, I reached out to Garret Westlake. He is the associate vice provost for innovation and executive director of the da Vinci Center for Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University. I know Garret because I helped the da Vinci Center build and launch an online short course on design thinking and human-centered design. I learned that Garret has been actively exploring the use of AI technologies in design thinking, and I was really interested in hearing from Garret how AI might serve as a catalyst for creative thinking and a supportive tool for entrepreneurship.If you’re interested in teaching creativity or critical thinking or having students tackle open-ended problems, I think you’ll get some great ideas for integrating AI into your courses from my conversation with Garret. Episode Resources:·       Garret Westlake on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/garretwestlake/ ·       Garret’s TEDx talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXuhHB093I ·       da Vinci Center for Innovation at VCU, https://davincicenter.vcu.edu/ ·       Introduction to Design Thinking, a free short course from the VCU da Vinci Center, https://davincicenter.catalog.vcu.edu/courses/introduction-to-design-thinking  ·       Assignment Makeovers in the AI Age: Essay Edition, https://derekbruff.org/?p=4105 Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message.On today’s episode, I talk with Eden Tanner about her experiment with mastery assessment. Eden is an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Mississippi. Eden had been changing up her grading practices for a few semesters, and this spring she leaned into mastery assessment. The students in her 170-seat general chemistry course could retake a new version of each of the four exams in her course basically as many times as they wanted. In the interview, Eden shares her motivations for moving away from traditional grading practices, as well as lots of nuts and bolts about her mastery assessment practices this spring. Episode Resources:·       Eden Tanner’s faculty page, https://chemistry.olemiss.edu/eden-tanner/ ·       Episode 19: Talking about Inclusive Teaching with Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/13445883 ·       Episode 15: Grading for Growth with Robert Talbert and David Clark, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/13041036 Support the showPodcast Links: Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Subscribe to Intentional Teaching bonus episodes:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/supporters/new Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.