Intentional Teaching

On today’s podcast, I’m happy to share a roundtable discussion with three faculty who teach introductory biology courses using a non-traditional model. All three teach what is called studio-style biology, where the lecture and lab portions are not just coordinated, but actually integrated into the same time and space. The course might meet two hours at a shot three times a week, which each class session featuring a mix of mini-lectures and wet lab activities. My guests are Scott Chirhart, professor and chair of biology at Centenary College; Robbie Bear, senior instructor in biology at Kansas State University; and Justin Shaffer, teaching associate professor in chemical and biological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Their approaches to studio-style biology are all a little different, and I was glad I could get all three of them on together to compare and contrast their courses.My three guests have lots to share with anyone interested in how a department can put together an introductory course with lots of moving pieces and a strong emphasis on active learning.Episode Resources:Scott Chirhart’s faculty page, https://www.centenary.edu/academics/departments-schools/biology/biology-department-faculty/Robbie Bear’s faculty page, https://www.k-state.edu/biology/about/people/faculty/bear/Justin Shaffer’s faculty page, https://chemeng.mines.edu/project/shaffer-justin/Studio biology at Kansas State, https://www.k-state.edu/biology/pob/index.html Assessment of the effectiveness of the studio format in introductory undergraduate biology [at Kansas State] by Montelone, Rintoul, & Williams (2017), https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.06-09-0193Improving exam performance in introductory biology through the use of preclass reading guides [at Colorado School of Mines] by Lieu, Wong, Asefirad, & Shaffer (2017), https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.16-11-0320 Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Eric Detweiler is an associate professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University and the director of the public writing and rhetoric program at MTSU. When I saw that Eric had a new book out called Responsible Pedagogy: Moving Beyond Authority and Mastery in Higher Education, I knew I wanted to talk with him here on the podcast.In the interview, Eric shares the motivation for the book, the problems he sees with the notions of authority and mastery in higher education, and how not to teach about thesis statements. Oh, and we talk about ChatGPT, the AI text generator, because it’s unavoidable. Episode Resources:Eric Detweiler’s website, https://rheteric.org/Responsible Pedagogy: Moving Beyond Authority and Mastery in Higher Education, https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09343-7.html Rhetoricity, Eric’s podcast, https://rhetoricity.libsyn.com/ @EricSDet on Twitter, https://twitter.com/EricSDet  Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Thanks to another great podcast, Future U by Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn, I learned about a course at Georgetown University called Mastering the Hidden Curriculum. Part of the Georgetown Scholars Program, the course teaches students things about college that many students, especially first-generation students, don’t know, like what office are and how to interact with faculty. The course also dives into topics like imposter syndrome and how to fight it as a new college student. I wanted to know more about the course and the Georgetown Scholars Program, which provides programmatic support for high-achieving low-income and first-generation students at Georgetown. I reached out to Missy Foy, executive director of the GSP, to ask her on the podcast. She, in turn, connected me with Anthony Abraham Jack, assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students. The two of them are a wealth of information about the experiences of low-income and first-gen college students, and they had a lot to share for faculty and administrators about how colleges and universities can better support these students.  Episode Resources:Anthony Jack’s faculty page, https://www.gse.harvard.edu/faculty/anthony-jack Georgetown Scholars Program, https://gsp.georgetown.edu/ “What Students Think of Their College Experience,” Future U podcast, November 23, 2022, https://futureupodcast.com/episodes/what-students-think-of-their-college-experience/ Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via PixabayPodcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Regan Gurung is associate vice provost and executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State University, as well as a professor of psychology. Dwaine Plaza is a professor of sociology at Oregon State, and the two of them are editing a forthcoming book titled Onward to Better: How Facing a Pandemic Will Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century. Regan and Dwaine are in the interesting position of having read about two dozen chapter submissions for the book, all about lessons learned from teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic authored by faculty, staff, and administrators, including a healthy amount of teaching center directors. Full disclosure: I am one of those contributors! I wrote a chapter on our experiences with pandemic teaching at Vanderbilt University.I asked Regan and Dwaine on the podcast so I could pick their brains about what they’ve learned reading and editing all those chapters. What lessons has higher education learned from such a challenging time? What lessons should higher ed learn? And how can we get ready for whatever challenge comes next?  Episode Resources:Regan Gurung’s faculty page, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/regan-gurungDwaine Plaza’s faculty page, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/dwaine-plaza Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State, https://ctl.oregonstate.edu/ Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

In this episode, I talk with Mary-Ann Winkelmes, a longtime colleague in the world of educational development. Mary-Ann has worked at teaching centers at Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and Brandeis University. She’s also the founder and director of the TILT Higher Ed project. TILT stands for “transparency in learning and teaching,” and the project works with instructors and institutions to practice transparent course and assignment design. With all the conversation in higher education today about rigor and flexibility, I thought this would be a perfect time to talk with Mary-Ann about transparency in teaching and learning.As you’ll hear, Mary-Ann has a lot to say about the value of transparent design and how instructors can make small changes in their teaching that have outsized impact on student learning and student success.  Episode Resources:TILT Higher Ed: Transparency in Learning and Teaching, https://tilthighered.com/TILT Examples and Resources, https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership, Stylus 2019, https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620368237/Transparent-Design-in-Higher-Education-Teaching-and-Leadership “A Crowdsourced Rubric for Evaluating Infographics” on Derek’s Agile Learning blog, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2081 Hausmann, Leslie R. M., Feifei Ye, Janet Ward Schofield and Rochelle L Woods. "Sense of Belonging and Persistence in White and African American First-Year Students. Research in Higher Education (2009) 50, 7: 649-669. Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. "A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes among minority students." Science 331 (2011): 1447-1451. Brady, S., Cohen, G. Jarvis, S., Walton, G. "A brief social-belonging intervention in college improves adult outcomes for Black Americans." Sciences Advances vol. 6, no. 118 (20 April 2020).Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via PixabayPodcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

“Service courses” are courses like college algebra and calculus that are taught by math departments to students not majoring in math, who take those courses typically to satisfy a major or general ed requirement. These courses are notoriously problematic, often with high drop-fail-withdraw rates or big gaps in student performance across demographic groups. Recently, I went looking for departments who are teaching service courses well. I found the math department at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In just a two-year period, the DFW rate (that’s drop-fail-withdraw) in their service courses dropped from 35% to 25%. That’s a huge improvement in student outcomes, especially for a department that teaches eight or nine thousand students each year.I reached out to Juan Gutiérrez, professor and chair of mathematics at UTSA, to ask about the changes the department made that lead to this improvement. He very graciously sat down with me for an interview, and I am very excited to share it here on the podcast. Juan shares some of his rather amazing life story, his goals for students success especially for the Hispanic students who attend San Antonio, and the data-driven and highly successful changes his math department made to college algebra, calculus, and other service courses.Episode Resources:Juan Gutiérrez’s faculty page, https://math.utsa.edu/directory/juan-gutierrez/“A Department, Transformed,” https://math.utsa.edu/a-word-from-the-chair/ Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via PixabayPodcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see an analysis of how much time you spent on active learning, right after class ended? DART is a tool created by a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional team of education researchers. DART stands for Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching. All you have to do is record your class session with your phone and upload the recording to the DART website. DART’s machine learning algorithms will then analyze that audio and let you know how much of your class time was spent on lecturing versus active learning.I first heard about DART a few years ago, and I’ve been wanting to learn more about it ever since. I reached out to Melinda Owens, assistant teaching professor in neurobiology at the University of California San Diego and one of the lead developers for DART, and she was excited to talk with me about DART. Melinda shares a bit about her journey into education research, the origins of DART, and how college faculty can use DART to better understand and improve their own teaching. Episode Resources:Melinda Owens’ faculty page, https://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/mtowens.html DART website, https://sepaldart.herokuapp.com/ “Classroom sound be used to classify teaching practices in college science courses,” Melinda Owens et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114:12, https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1618693114 Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

A few years ago you could assume that if a student submitted an essay in your class, some human wrote that essay, hopefully the student in question. That’s no longer true, however, as AI-powered writing generators get better and better at producing intelligible text. What are we to do, whether we’re teaching writing or having students use writing to represent their learning? On today’s episode of Intentional Teaching, I talk with Robert Cummings, associate professor of writing and rhetoric and executive director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi. Bob has spent his career exploring what’s coming in terms of teaching and technology, particularly in the field of writing instruction. These days, Bob is collaborating with computer scientists to figure out what role AI technologies might have in writing instruction. I reached out to Bob to talk with me about the state of affairs in AI and writing, and we had a wide-ranging conversation that I’m excited to share here on the podcast. Episode Resources:Robert Cummings’ faculty page, https://english.olemiss.edu/robert-cummings/ OpenAI examples, https://beta.openai.com/examplesOpenAI Playground (account required), https://beta.openai.com/playground Fermat Generative AI, https://fermat.ws/ Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer science, University of Oxford, https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/michael.wooldridge/Peter Elbow, emeritus professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, http://peterelbow.com/Is There a Text in This Class? by Stanley Fish, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674467262Emad Mostaque on the Hard Fork podcast, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/podcasts/generative-ai-is-here-who-should-control-it.html“Moore’s Law for Everything” by Sam Altman, https://moores.samaltman.com/Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans, https://amzn.to/3UNC1Ed Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

On today’s episode of Intentional Teaching, I bring you a fantastic interview with educator and author Susan Hrach. Susan is the director of the Faculty Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Columbus State University and the author of the 2021 book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning. I knew of Susan’s work in embodied learning, and I discovered recently that we share an interest in active learning spaces and how they can be used to support and enhance teaching and learning. I reached out to Susan to see if she could help me better understand the connections between our bodies and our learning spaces, and she gladly agreed. In the interview, Susan describes some of the ways we use our bodies for learning, and she shares practical advice for faculty teaching on-site or online for recognizing and fostering embodied learning. Episode Resources:Susan Hrach’s website: https://susanhrach.com/Susan Hrach on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SusanHrachMinding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning: https://amzn.to/3TEsMFL“What it’s like to teach in an active learning classroom,” by Robert Talbert: https://rtalbert.org/teaching-in-alc/ “More than mere handwaving: Gesture and embodiment in expert mathematical proof,” by Tyler Marghetis, Laurie D. Edwards, and Rafael Núñez, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=AAUoDwAAQBAJ "The push for more active learning spaces on campus," Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/16/push-more-active-learning-spaces-campus Music:"The Weekend" by chillmore, via PixabayPodcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Welcome to the Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I’m your host, Derek Bruff.I directed the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University for over a decade, and I’ve worked with faculty and other instructors at dozens of colleges and universities, helping them to become more intentional and effective teachers. I’ve written two books on teaching in higher education: Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments and Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. It’s that second book, which came out in 2019, that has inspired the title of this podcast and the companion newsletter I send out most Thursdays. I’m using “Intentional Teaching” to indicate that we should be intentional not only in how we teach, but also how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this podcast, featuring interviews with educators and researchers from across higher education, will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribeSupport Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingMore on Derek and his work: https://derekbruff.org/Music: “Dreamcatcher,” https://www.purple-planet.com/.Podcast Links: Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon, among other places.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.