Social Learning Amplified hosted by Eric Mazur

In this episode of Social Learning Amplified, host Eric Mazur sits down with Alison Cook-Sather, the Mary Catherine Woodward Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and founder of the internationally recognized Students as Learners and Teachers program, to explore the power of pedagogical partnership and whole class co-creation. The two discuss how shared responsibility deepens motivation, agency, belonging, and empathy, especially in the age of AI, when it’s easier than ever for students to outsource their learning. Ahead of her forthcoming open access book from Elon University, Enacting Whole Class Co-creation: Faculty and Student Experiences of Sharing Responsibility in Teaching and Learning, Alison shares how co-creation can work even within a traditional grading system through tools like course commitment forms and student self-assessment. Get the book: https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/publications/open-access-book-series/forthcoming-books/

Teaching is unpredictable — so why do we pretend it isn't? In this episode of the Social Learning Amplified podcast, Eric Mazur sits down with Jessamyn Neuhaus, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University, to talk about her book, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom. Jessamyn unpacks the STIR framework (Stop, Think, Identify, Repair) for navigating classroom disruptions, explores how traditional grading fuels distrust and disconnection, and presents that the goal isn't fewer snafus — it's a healthier relationship with the fact that things can, and will, go wrong.Along the way, she and Eric dig into student-centered learning, power dynamics in the classroom, and why "the super teacher" is a myth worth letting go of.Get Snafu Edu: https://www.oupress.com/teaching-engaging-and-thriving-in-higher-ed-series/

In this episode of Social Learning Amplified, host Eric Mazur sits down with Dr. Jarek Janio, ESL professor and faculty coordinator at Santa Ana College and founder of the Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) Symposium, to unpack the case for treating learning as observable competency rather than inferring it from proxies like grades, attendance, or engagement.Eric and Jarek explore the difference between performance-based and product-based assessment, how ungraded and multiple-measures approaches can reduce bias in evaluation, and what it might mean to build a classroom — and a student-teacher relationship — around a shared, visible record of ability.Get Interrogating, Disrupting, and Reframing College Student Learning Outcomes: https://www.routledge.com/Interrogating-Disrupting-and-Reframing-College-Student-Learning-Outcomes/Janio/p/book/9781041194194

In this episode of Social Learning Amplified, host Eric Mazur talks with David Gooblar, associate professor of English and director of General Education Literature at the University of Iowa, about his latest book, One Classroom at a Time. David takes us through how his research exposed a gap between what we know helps marginalized students learn and what most equity initiatives actually do, and why he came to see teaching itself as an act of social justice.David and Eric explore why grades so often override meaningful feedback, and how starting conversations with shared goals rather than methods can win over skeptical colleagues. They look at what institutions need to change, from tenure incentives to class sizes, to back up equity commitments with real structural action in a grounded, research-driven case for putting students, not systems, at the center of teaching.Get One Classroom at a Time: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674297487

In this episode of Social Learning Amplified, host Eric Mazur is joined by Ted Dintersmith, author of the newly released Aftermath: The Life-Changing Math That All Schools Must Teach, to make the case that math is the last great frontier of school reform — and why AI is forcing that reckoning to happen now. Together, they explore why math carries such outsized weight in schools despite how little of it adults actually use, and how standardized tests, APs, and college admissions keep outdated curricula locked in place. Dintersmith shares classroom examples of teaching math as a way of thinking rather than a set of memorized procedures, and offers practical advice for parents and teachers ready to act now, rather than wait for the next decade of reform.Get Aftermath: aftermaththebook.com