CITL Podcast

Episode transcript available here. 

About the guests 

Leon Liebenberg, Teaching Assistant Professor in The Grainger College of Engineering.  

Ava Wolf is an assistant director at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. 

Resources 

Conference Presentation slide deck by Leon Liebenberg and Taylor Tucker: “Implementing Mini-Projects to Build Community and Improve Student Engagement.” 

Webarticle: “ENGINE team evaluating teaching methods that effectively engage students” 

Episode Description 

In this episode, Ava Wolf (CITL) and Leon Liebenberg (ENG) join host Bob Dignan to dispel Leon’s recipe for magic in his engineering courses. Combining the head, the heart and the hands, Leon’s students have been raving about this team-based, project learning structures for a few years now. We explore the needs and attitudes of students at Illinois, and how Leon’s passions for engineering education are translating into highly motivated, self-regulated, creative, imaginative, pragmatic graduates. 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with creating a graphic syllabus or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website, citl.illinois.edu, and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode transcript available here. 

Dawn Bohn is a Teaching Associate Professor and Director of the Online Masters of Science in Food Science program in the Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. 

Watch the Art of Teaching: Lunchtime Seminar Series’ May 6, 2021 Faculty Panel Presentation, “An Exploration of Multi-Modal Assignments,” featuring Bohn and other Illinois instructors. 

Saab Shehad, Head of Assessment and Research at the Siebel Center for Design. 

Read Shehab’s white paper, “Teaching With, About, and Through Human-Centered Design.” 

Watch Shehab’s Sept. 2, 2021 Art of Teaching: Lunchtime Seminar Series presentation, “Pedagogy and Assessment of Human Centered Design.” 

Jim Wentworth, Associate Director at CITL. 

Learn more about the Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition. 

Learn more about the Seibel Center for Design. 

Explore Seibel Center for Designs workshops for learners and instructors.  

Explore Seibel Center for Design courses. 

A cornerstone of the Seibel Center for Design’s mission, Shehad described HCD as “a problem-solving approach that tries first to identify the unmet need of a certain population. Once this unmet need is identified, we partner with those people … to arrive at a solution. 

“This is not easy and usually takes time,” he continues, adding the process takes lots of empathy for the user and iterations to arrive at a solution, but it’s well worth it. “Research shows us that whenever human-centered design is used, your chances of arriving to an innovative or creative or … genuine solution to a problem are way higher.” 

Shehab and Bohn have been collaborating to embed HCD in various food science courses, including Bohn’s capstone course, Food Product Development. 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with Human-Centered Design or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode transcript available here.

Cheelan Bo-Linn is a senior specialist in education at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. 

Informal Early Feedback (IEF) 

Sample Informal Early Feedback document 

IEF Deconstructed document 

Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) 

In this episode, host Bob Dignan invites his CITL colleague, Cheelan Bo-Linn, into the studio to talk about the role of teacher evaluation tools, namely Informal Early Feedback or IEF. 

Before broaching the informal assessment, the senior specialist in education—who works with Illinois faculty from all disciplines to improve their teaching—says it’s necessary to understand its formal counterpart—the Instructor and Course Evaluation System or ICES. 

“ICES is a really good formative assessment,” says Bo-Linn, who describes some of the features of the official end-of semester student ratings system for faculty and teaching assistants used by many academic units. 

Bo-Linn then breaks down the EIF—typically given to students between Weeks 4 and 8—and its benefits. 

“ICES typically taps into teaching … but we should also tap into learning,” she says, adding the EIF does that well and can be tailored to the course. 

“How are you doing? What are you struggling in? Are you keeping up with the readings.” she continues, adding instructors can use the answers to make quick adjustments to the course and hopefully, improve learning outcomes for current students. 

Listen to the podcast hear the full discussion, including the three things IEFs can help instructors hone in on and how CITL can help instructors apply survey responses to refine their courses. 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with IEFs or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website, citl.illinois.edu, and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Transcript available here. 

Robb Lindgren is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in the College of Education.  

Ava Wolf is an assistant director at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. 

Lindgren, R., DeLiema, D. Viewpoint, embodiment, and roles in STEM learning technologies. Education Tech Research Dev (2022) 

This episode explores embodied learning—using expression, gestures, and body movement to deepen the learning process. 

And yes, it’s okay to chuckle that this topic is being featured on a listen-only podcast, according to host Bob Dignan. He invites you to picture him and guests—Robb Lindgren (Education) and Ava Wolf (CITL)—using facial expressions, hand gestures, and other movements throughout their conversation—and join in. 

Lindgren does research on how people learn with emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality and interactive simulation and is particularly curious about the ways you can make interactions with these technologies more physical. 

“We take those things really seriously because we think that there’s a tight-knit relationship between how we move … our body, and how we think … and how people learn,” he says, adding that just getting up and looking at an object from another angle can broaden one’s perspective. 

While an avid proponent, Lindgren advises there are right—and wrong—approaches to incorporating it into learning. 

It doesn’t mean putting treadmills in every classroom, having students do jumping jacks when solving word problems, or incorporating “movement for the sake of movement.” It must be done in a way that’s meaningful to the learning objectives and content. And don’t use AR, VR, or other technology just to replicate something that can be done in the real world. 

“It’s about finding things that you can’t do,” he says. “I can’t fly. I can’t shrink down to the microscopic level to see cells. 

“What we want to do is create these very nurturing and supportive situations with the technologies that we have available to us … so it’s not just replicating the lecture but creating these better learning opportunities and experiences.” 

Listen to this episode for the full discussion, including some of the research projects Lindgren is working on, the importance of designing conducive learning environments, how to engage introverted students, and how to introduce embodied learning into your course. 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your teaching? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website, citl.illinois.edu, and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode transcript available here.

Carolyn Wisniewski is Director of the Writer’s Workshop. View her recent publications on Illinois Experts. 

Lucas Anderson is a Specialist in Education at CITL. Check out his blog where he writes about developing a teaching philosophy statement and other teaching topics. 

Read more on these topics in these Writers Workshop articles: 

Responding to Student Writing 

Teaching Linguistically Diverse Writers 

Preventing Plagiarism 

This episode delves into writing—specifically, how instructors can help students improve. 

Who better to weigh in than Carolyn Wisniewski, Director of the Writer’s Workshop, which supports members of the campus community in all stages of their writing through consultations, presentations, and writing groups, and Lucas Anderson, a CITL Specialist in Education, who trains instructors and runs the biannual Graduate Academy, which trains all incoming graduate teaching assistants. 

As host Bob Dignan points out, evaluating student writing and offering constructive criticism can be both time consuming and challenging. How can instructors do this effectively and efficiently? 

In this episode, Dignan and his guests touch on many aspects from students’ struggles and successes in their writing to effective evaluation strategies to the importance of offering constructive criticism to teaching the fundamentals while recognizing students’ linguistic diversity and respecting their backgrounds.

Anderson shares a technique he learned from Wisniewski: Read through the entire paper, summarize comments at the end—including the best thing and something that needs improvement in the next draft—and if there’s time, make limited comments in the margin to address specific errors.

“This notion of summarizing it at the end and really distilling the main message as kind of the primary thing I hope they look at has really helped me,” says Anderson, who uses the technique when helping graduate students craft their teaching philosophy statement.

“In my field, we teach HOCs before LOCs,” adds Wisniewski, who wants instructors to focus on higher order concerns (e.g., do students understand the assignment and does the paper have structure) then move on to the lower order concerns (e.g., grammar and syntax) during the revision process.

Drop us a note at [email protected]. This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode transcript here.

In this episode, host Bob Dignan welcomes Ava Wolf (CITL) and Nic Flores (Latina/Latino Studies) to the studio where Flores reflects on his teaching philosophy statement and how he merged it with the realities of his semester. 

Flores touches on various ways his teaching practices reflect his philosophy, including structuring the learning community (classroom) with no hierarchical order, sitting with his students in a circle when possible, calling each other by their names and using each others’ preferred pronouns, and co-creating ground guides (rules) and knowledge production. Another practice –no final exams. Instead, students write a paper reflecting on their research they and their learning process and then share those thoughts with their peers. 

“It’s all about the process for me,” says Flores, who believes reflection at different points in the semester promotes deeper learning. “I think I’m learning … that learning is a lifelong process. It’s not these four years of undergrad education or even the … five-plus years of post-undergrad of education. It’s about learning and the process and not the product.” 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with reflection or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website, citl.illinois.edu, and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Nic Flores is an assistant professor in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in public and sexual health, HIV/AIDS prevention, ethnography, comparative ethnic and racial studies, and gender and sexuality studies with additional interests in queer of color critique, disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies. 

Ava Wolf is an assistant director at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. 

Nic Flores’ teaching statement. 

Learn more about the Teaching Philosophy Statement and find resources to help you get started. 

Read this paper, “Best practices for using critical reflection to improve your teaching”. 

Learn more about Instructional Spaces. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Transcript available here.

In this episode, Cheelan Bo-Linn (CITL) and Yilan Xu (ACES) join host Bob Dignan to unpack the graphic syllabus. A misnomer of sorts, the graphic syllabus doesn’t focus on classroom policies and procedures, due dates, and a wordy course description, which can create a disconnect with students. Instead, it visually lays out the main learning objective the instructor wants students to get out of the course – or what Bo-Linn calls “the Big Idea” – and how they will go about learning it. It also helps set the tone for the class. 

“It’s more like a tool to help you rethink what’s the most important thing in your class and how you organize all your materials around it,” says Xu, who worked with Bo-Linn to drill down to the Big Idea of her Retirement Benefits Planning course and create an interactive, evolving graphic, which the class revisits throughout the semester to see where they, how far they’ve come, and what’s to come. 

Xu outlines the process she used and a few iterations of her Big Idea, and Bo-Linn provides some creative examples from instructors in other disciplines. 

“I would hope it would be an inspiration to encourage faculty members to just try this,” says Xu, who also reports what students think about it. 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with creating a graphic syllabus or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website, citl.illinois.edu, and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Cheelan Bo-Linn is a senior specialist in education at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. 

Yilan Xu is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. 

See pre- and post-iterations of the Big Idea or graphic syllabi to 2 courses.  

Read about interactive syllabi in this Faculty Focus article, “A Supportive Syllabus: What Students Say About an Interactive Syllabus.” 

Read more here:

“Revisiting the Syllabus”

The Syllabus Reconstructed: An Analysis of Traditional and Visual Syllabi for information Retention and Inclusiveness. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript of this episode is available here.

Our first episode is all about grades – or lack of them to be more precise. 

We chat with Kary Zarate (Special Education) and Billy Huff (Gender & Women’s Studies and Communication) about Ungrading, and why they're Ungrading in their classrooms, and the educators who inspired them to try. 

Huff and Zarate share what Ungrading looks like in their classrooms, challenges they’ve encountered, and the impact it’s had on student learning—and themselves, including, as Zarate says, bringing back “the joy of teaching.” 

Did you enjoy this episode, or do you have a story to share about your experience with Ungrading or another teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website and major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation! 

Kary Zarate is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education. Learn more at Kary's profile page.

Billy Huff is a Lecturer in the Departments of Communication and Gender & Women’s Studies. Learn more at Billy's profile page.

View Huff’s Art of Teaching: Lunchtime Seminar Series presentation on “Teaching for Social Justice in the Classroom.” 

Jim Wentworth is Associate Director of Instructional Spaces and Technologies at CITL.

Jesse Stommel is a faculty member in the University of Denver’s Writing Program, co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: The Journal of Critical Digital Pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab (2015-2021); and co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy. He is online at www.jessestommel.com. 

Jen Newton is an associate professor in special education at Ohio University. View Newton's profile page.

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Transcript of this episode

Description

In our trailer, CITL Director Michel Bellini joins host Bob Dignan (CITL) to introduce the Teach, Talk, Listen and Learn podcast, a platform where faculty and instructors across campus can shine a spotlight on the innovative and creative teaching practices and strategies they’ve implemented in and outside of their classrooms to engage students and create transformative learning experiences for them. Guests will share what worked, what didn’t work, what they want to try next time, and hope by doing so, they’ll spark a conversation with the teaching community on campus and across the globe. 

Do you have a story to share about your teaching experiences or a teaching topic? Drop us a note at [email protected]. 

This podcast was produced by the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at the University of Illinois. Episodes can be found on our website and on major podcast platforms. We hope you’ll find us there and join the conversation!

About the host 

Bob Dignan is Associate Director of Instructional Media Resources at the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

About the guest 

Michel Bellini is Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning and Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. Learn more at Professor Bellini's profile page.

You can see Bellini in this Art of Teaching: Lunchtime Seminar Series presentation, “What I Know Now: Lessons about Teaching and Learning.” 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.