Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher education

We know that having students go to the free version of ChatGPT and ask it questions about course content can lead to some… inaccurate answers. But what if we could send students to an AI chatbot that was actually trained on our course content? Might that be a useful tool for learning?These are no longer hypothetical questions. Top Hat has rolled out a new AI tool called Ace, an AI chatbot that reads your own course materials and answers student questions using those materials. How well does Top Hat Ace work? I reached out to Top Hat super-user Sravanti Kantheti to find out.Sravanti is the program director for anatomy and physiology at Lanier Technical College in Georgia, as well as an adjunct biology professor at Georgia State University. She recently introduced Ace to her students. In our conversation, Sravanti shares how her students have been using Ace and what they think of it and we talk about how a tool like Ace can help students succeed in a challenging course like anatomy and physiology. Episode ResourcesSravanti Kantheti on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/sravanti-kantheti-9874a261/Top Hat Ace, https://tophat.com/features/ace-ai/"The ChatGPT Effect and Transforming Nursing Education with Generative AI," Gosak, Pruinelli, Topaz, & Stiglic (2024), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1471595324000179 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.

David Hinson is the R. Hugh Daniel professor of architecture at Auburn University. David teaches a course in professional practice, a course that covers such things as running a business, marketing and communication, and professional ethics. When he realized that his lecture course needed an overhaul, he reached out to Auburn’s center for teaching and learning, the Biggio Center, for an instructional design consultation.Shawndra Bowers is the associate director of learning experience design at the Biggio Center, where she manages a team of 40 people who support online education at Auburn. Shawndra has her hand in a variety of interesting teaching projects at Auburn. She started working with David to take his onsite lecture course and turn it into an active learning course that leverages the best of online teaching and learning.In the interview with David and Shawndra, we talk about what motivated David to redesign his course, the big changes David and Shawndra made to the course, how the two have leveraged student feedback to continue to improve the course over time, and what its like to work with an online education unit to redesign an onsite course. Episode ResourcesDavid Hinson's faculty page, https://cadc.auburn.edu/people/david-hinson/Shawndra Bower's staff page, https://www.auburn.edu/academic/provost/bios/shawndra-bowers.phpAuburn Biggio Center, https://biggio.auburn.edu/"Blurring the Lines for Faculty Development," Derek's recent UPCEA blog post, https://upcea.edu/blurring-the-lines-for-faculty-development/ 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.

Students as Partners programs have been on my radar for years now. These are programs that pair faculty with thoughtful students who provide input and feedback into the faculty member’s teaching and course design. The programs seem to have incredible benefits to the student partners, to the faculty partners, and to the faculty partner’s students, but I never figured out a way to get one started while I was at Vanderbilt. Thanks to a fireworks show during the 2023 POD Network conference, I learned that Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has a recently started a very popular Students as Partners Program. On the podcast, I talk with two people who know the program there well: Aimee Fleming, associate director for the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, or CTLE, at Embry-Riddle, and Maren Rice, student partner for the CTLE. We had a great conversation about the Students as Partners program, how it started, how it works, and what benefits it brings to all involved.Episode Resources·       Students as Partners, Center for Engaged Learning, Elon University, https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/resources/students-as-partners/ ·       Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, https://prescott.erau.edu/ctle 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.

The Inclusive STEM Teaching Project is a free, online, six-week course “designed to advance the awareness, self-efficacy, and ability of faculty, postdocs, and doctoral students to cultivate inclusive STEM learning environments for all their students and to develop themselves as reflective, inclusive practitioners.”On the podcast today, I talk with two of the project team members. Tershia Pinder-Grover is director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in Engineering at the University of Michigan, and Sarah Hokanson is assistant vice president and assistant provost for research development and PhD and postdoc affairs at Boston University. We talk about what makes this online course about inclusive teaching unique, including the use of local learning communities, affinity groups, and a troupe of actors, as well as the challenges of putting together such an impactful course.And in case you don’t listen to the end of the interview, you should know that the course is being offered again this spring, starting on March 3rd, 2024. See below for a link to register.Episode Resources·       Inclusive STEM Teaching Project, https://www.inclusivestemteaching.org/·       Spring 2024 course offering on edX, https://www.edx.org/learn/teacher-training/boston-university-the-inclusive-stem-teaching-project ·       Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching courses, https://www.stemteachingcourse.org/ ·       “Ten Years of Preparing Future Faculty through STEM Teaching Courses,” Derek Bruff, https://derekbruff.org/?p=4162  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.

Tracie Addy, Derek Dube, and Khadijah Mitchell are authors of a new book called Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education. It’s a sequel to their 2021 book, What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching, both from Routledge. In this episode, the three co-authors talk about the origins of the book series, the importance of hearing student voices when practicing inclusive teaching, and how someone like me, who has been practicing active learning instruction for a couple of decades, might want to reconsider a few of his teaching practices.Episode Resources·       Enhancing Inclusive Instruction: Student Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Advancing Equity in Higher Education (Routledge, 2024), https://www.routledge.com/Enhancing-Inclusive-Instruction-Student-Perspectives-and-Practical-App/Addy-Dube-Mitchell/p/book/9781642675719 ·       Book launch on February 27th, https://lafayette.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtcuCtqDorE9KK1RnODlhWBBf4IsV7g9iR#/registration ·       “A Tool to Advance Inclusive Teaching Efforts: The ‘Who’s in Class?’ Form,” Addy, Mitchell, & Dube, Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education (2021), https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jmbe.00183-21 ·       “The Development of the Protocol for Advancing Inclusive Teaching Efforts (PAITE),” Addy, Younas, Cetin, Rizk, Cham, Nwankpa, & Borzone, Journal of Educational Research and Practice (2022), https://ldr.lafayette.edu/concern/publications/q237ht28c ·       Inclusive Teaching Visualization Project, https://inclusiveteachingvisualization.com/ ·       Tomorrow’s Professor Today at UVA, https://cte.virginia.edu/programs/tomorrows-professor-today ·       “What Really Matters for Instructors Implementing Equitable and Inclusive Teaching Approaches,” Addy, Reeves, Dube, & Mitchell, To Improve the Academy (2021), https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/id/182/  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.

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.

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.

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.

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.