Centering Centers

In our last episode, we learned about ChatGPT with Cynthia Alby. Today we are diving deeper into the ethics of AI and how we as educational developers might best support the conversations happening across our campuses.

To guide us in this conversation, we are speaking with Dr. Kevin Yee, Director of the Faculty Center at the University of Central Florida. Kevin has held numerous faculty and leadership positions at a range of institutions through his career including USF, Duke, Iowa, Pomona College and UC Irvine.

His research interests within pedagogy are wide, and have included student motivation, study skills, and various emerging technologies for teaching. He is currently co-editing a book of case studies on the intersection of VR and ethics in the college classroom.

Resources Mentioned: 

UCF's resource on Academic Integrity and Artificial Intelligence Writing

Christina DiMicelli's "A Discussion for Education" - Google Slide Repository of her research and resources on ChatGPT 

Zoom Transcript of the Interview

Today on "Centering Centers", we are speaking with Cynthia Alby,  who is Professor of Teacher Education and Faculty Director of Georgia College Journeys, in Milledgeville, Georgia, USA. She shares her perspectives on ChatGPT and how it can catalyze needed change in the teaching landscape of  higher education.

Transcript of the Interview

Today on "Centering Centers", we are speaking with Teresa Focarile who is the Associate Director for Educational Development at the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing at Boise State University. We discussed the many-layered approach they are implementing to support adjunct faculty's professional learning as well as job satisfaction. 

Transcript of the Interview

Today on "Centering Centers", we are speaking with Tom Laughner who is the Director of the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center Teaching and Learning center, in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Our conversation explores his work supporting faculty in the health professions and the successful micro-credentialing program called the Medallion Program.

Learn more about the Medallion initiative!

Transcript of the Interview

Today on "Centering Centers", we are speaking with Dana Grossman Leeman who is the Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Tufts University. We discussed her experiences, noticings and wonderings from attending the POD conference in person in Seattle this fall.

Episode Transcript

This is Episode 30 and we are speaking with Cassandra Volpe Horii and Martin Springborg about their new free, open-access book: “What Teaching Looks Like: Higher Education through Photographs.” Click on the title to go to access the book through the Elon University's Series on Engaged Learning website. 

Cassandra Volpe Horii (@cvhorii) is the associate vice provost for education and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University. A former president of the POD Network (2018-19) and founder of educational development centers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Curry College, Cassandra brings her background in STEM and college writing instruction to life in her current work on educational and systemic change at her institution and in higher education more broadly, as well as through projects such as the collaboration we discuss in today’s episode.

Martin Springborg has worked in the field of educational development since 2007. His writing and photographs on the topic of teaching and learning in higher education have appeared in Thought and Action and To Improve the Academy Stemming from his work as arts faculty and in educational development, Martin also co-authored the books “Meaningful Grading: A Guide for Faculty in the Arts” and of course, the book we will be talking about today:  “What Teaching Looks Like: Higher Education through Photographs”

Transcript of the Episode

This is episode 29 of the CC podcast. This is the next installment in our chapter on SoEd. Our guest is Dr. Laura Baecher. Laura is an Associate Professor of TESOL at Hunter College (which is part of cuny system)  and she is a leader in their Academic Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.

We know Laura as the founder and co-host of the centering centers podcast and that is the focus of this episode: how it started, how it's going, and where it might go in the future.

Transcript of Episode 29

PODFEST Invitation

I want to give a quick plug for a new event that the POD Squad, a subcommittee of POD’s DRI committee, is hosting, called POD Fest. It is a fully virtual, totally free event for POD members who are interested in podcasting and interested in creating content for THIS podcast. Bonnie Stachowiak, Catherine Ross, and Siobhan McHugh will “headline” the program and participants will have the opportunity to collaborate in small groups to create an episode of Centering Centers that will air in 2023. The event will be held on Zoom on December 1st, 1 - 3pm EST. 

To register for PODFEST go to aub.ie/podfest22 

This is Episode 28 of the Centering Centers Podcast. I’m your host for this episode, Lindsay Doukopoulos. I serve as Associate Director for Educational Development in the Biggio Center at Auburn University. I also serve as co-chair of PODs Digital Resources and Innovations committee. This episode is the next installment in our chapter on the Scholarship of Educational Development and today I’m thrilled to speak with Anna Flaming.

Anna L. Bostwick Flaming is Director of the Center for Teaching in the Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology and affiliate faculty in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Anna’s interests include inclusive teaching, active learning, course design, the Scholarship of Educational Development (SoED), the history of higher education, and the history of gender. She is chair of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education’s Scholarship Committee, which supports the POD Network’s strategic goal of “advancing evidence-based practice.”

Our conversation covers topic ranging from the value of multi-disciplinary perspectives in the scholarship of educational development to the power-dynamics of CTL vocabulary choices to the way in which considerations of positionality and inclusion inform the work of the POD Network's Scholarship Committee and its subcommittees. 

A link to the ICED pre-conference session Anna mentioned about doing SoED research in combination with our practice: https://medialib.cmcdn.dk/medialibrary/80234312-1C55-406C-86A7-410099EB2739/0DDAA258-5F83-EC11-84B2-00155D0B0901.pdf

A link to the article Anna recommended by Chavella Pittman and Thomas J. Tobin "Academe Has a Lot to Learn About How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors": https://www.chronicle.com/article/academe-has-a-lot-to-learn-about-how-inclusive-teaching-affects-instructors

Transcript of Episode 28

Julie Timmermans is a Senior Lecturer in the Higher Education Development Centre at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Julie is a teacher, researcher, and academic developer with experience facilitating learning in various universities and countries, including Canada, Japan, France, and now, New Zealand. Her research interests focus on academic development and threshold concepts. Julie has been a co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development since 2020. 

In this conversation on the Scholarship of Educational Development, we speak with Julie Timmermans to learn how her experiences in multiple institutions and across countries has informed her work and her perspective as one of the Co-Editors of the International Journal for Academic Development.

Transcript

Should educational development seek to define itself as a discipline? What are the urgent conversations around our research and practice? Is the academy improving? 

In today's episode, I am excited to share my conversation with Michael Palmer and Lindsay Wheeler, Co-Editors of To Improve the Academy (TIA for short), which is the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the POD Network. It is an open-access, electronic journal that focuses on educational development practice and research. TIA publishes two issues annually with occasional special issues that respond to the profession and moment: Link to the Journal. 

Michael Palmer and Lindsay Wheeler, colleagues in the Center for Teaching Excellence at UVA, became the first ever Co-Associate Editors of To Improve the Academy in 2020 and now serve as the journal's first co-Editors. Michael, a Chemist by training, leads the Center for Teaching Excellence and has won numerous awards and recognition for his educational development scholarship and innovations. Like many POD Network members, my first encounter with Michael Palmer was the "Measuring the Promise" student-centered syllabus rubric that we use to both model and assess student-centered syllabi from faculty who go through our CDIs each summer.

Lindsay Wheeler, Assistant Director of Educational Development Research and Assessment, is a prolific and award-winning scholar in the field of educational research. Recently she was awarded the 2021 International Journal of Academic Development Article of the Year Award for her article, co written with Dorthea Back, titled: “Understanding the impact of educational development interventions on classroom instruction and student success”. Her approach to educational development research embraces collaboration as evidenced by some of her recent projects: the SoTL Collaboratory in Virginia, and the Pandemic Educational Development Research Collaboratory, which she co-leads with Eric Kaldor, in collaboration with educational developers from other four-year institutions, which focuses on documenting and reflecting on the work of educational developers during the pandemic

This article by Jamiella Brooks, Heather Dwyer, and Marisella Rodriguez, published in Faculty Focus, is mentioned in the interview 

Here is the transcript of our conversation.