Intentional Teaching

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Listeners in the United States might have noticed that there’s a presidential election coming up, and we know that can make for a challenging teaching environment. Fortunately, I have an interview to share that addresses just this moment. Bethany Morrison is a political scientist and an assistant director at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, and she has been working with colleagues at Michigan to support faculty teaching in this election year. 

In the interview, Bethany shares ideas for making connections between course material and the election, managing high-stakes discussions and hot moments in the classroom, and encouraging voting and civic engagement skills among our students. 

Episode Resources

·       Bethany Morrison on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanynmorrisonphd/ 

·       “Preparing to Teach During the 2024 Election” on the CRLT blog, https://crlt.umich.edu/blog/preparing-teach-during-2024-election 

·       Promoting Democracy Teaching Series, https://ginsberg.umich.edu/teach-democracy

·       “In the Eye of the Storm: Students’ Perceptions of Helpful Faculty Actions Following a Collective Tragedy,” Therese Huston & Michele DiPietro, https://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/In_the_Eye.pdf 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

This is a story about institutional change. The product of that change—a new framework for assessing teaching quality now in use at Appalachian State University—is important, but the process that led to that change is just as important because it's by analyzing change processes that academic leaders can affect change on their campuses. 

In this episode, I talk with Lindsay Masland, interim executive director at the teaching center at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, who not only helped shape the new teaching quality framework at App State but also launched a grant program that has helped multiple departments do some really important work aligning their programs and policies and procedures with the framework. 

Episode Resources

·       The Teaching Quality Framework at Appalachian State University, https://cetlss.appstate.edu/teaching-learning/teaching-quality-framework-0

·       Lindsay Masland on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-masland-25b04511/ 

·       “Assessing Teaching with Beate Brunow and Shawn Simonson,” Intentional Teaching episode 27, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/episodes/14189134-assessing-teaching-with-beate-brunow-and-shawn-simonson 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Today on the podcast I talk with Mariel Pfeifer, assistant professor of biology. Mariel started at Ole Miss just about a year ago as part of a cluster hire of three STEM faculty who are on the tenure track at UM doing disciplinary based education research. I was excited to hear Mariel was coming to the university because I was already familiar with her work. Back in the spring of 2023, I lead a faculty learning community on the topic of active learning in large enrollment STEM courses, and we read her study on the experiences of neurodivergent students in active learning STEM classes. 

As Mariel points out in our conversation, a lot of the traditional accommodations we use for students with learning disabilities assume that a college course is full of lectures and exams, but that’s not as true for STEM courses as it once was. Mariel shares lots of insight into the student experience in these courses and has practical advice for instructors interested in helping more students succeed. 

Episode Resources

·       Mariel Pfeifer’s lab website, https://www.pfeiferlab.com/

·       "What I Wish My Instructor Knew,” Mariel’s paper on students with ADHD and specific learning disabilities in active learning STEM courses, https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0329

·       “Structured Reading Groups,” Derek’s November 2022 blog post about group roles, https://derekbruff.org/?p=3934 

·       “Teaching Students with ADHD with Cathryn Friel,” Intentional Teaching episode 16, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/13140564-teaching-students-with-adhd-with-cathryn-friel 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Emily Affolter teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “social and environmental justice as enacted in teaching, learning, and leading.” How do Emily and her colleagues meet these diverse students where they are and help them achieve their goals? That’s where culturally responsive teaching comes in, which Emily describes as reimagining a class with equity at the center.

Emily talks with me about what culturally responsive teaching looks like in her program at Prescott, how to build trust with one's students, the unique position an instructor has in fostering equity, how to work toward equity even in large lecture courses, and what it means to decolonize marine biology.

Episode Resources

·       Emily Affolter’s faculty page, https://prescott.edu/people/emily-affolter-ph-d/ 

·       Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, Geneva Gay, https://www.tcpress.com/culturally-responsive-teaching-9780807758762 

·       Relationship-rich education with Isis Artze-Vega, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/14292897-relationship-rich-education-with-isis-artze-vega

·       Universal Design for Learning at scale with Thomas Tobin, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/14935277-universal-design-for-learning-at-scale-with-thomas-j-tobin 

·       “The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge in Curbing the Loss of Language and Biodiversity,” Wilder, O’Meara, Monti, & Nabhan, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/6/499/2754233 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Back in February 2024, as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I reached out to Paul Hanstedt, author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, to talk about the "rhetorical triangle" as a way for thinking intentionally about writing assignments and other types of assignments. We had a fantastic conversation that I shared on Patreon at the time, and I’m now very glad to share the interview here on the main podcast feed.

Paul is the vice chancellor for academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. We talk about how UMR is not like other institutions, then we talk about Paul's new book, the second edition of General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty. Paul has so much wisdom on the design of general education curricula and on the process of designing those curricula. Finally we get around to talking about authentic audiences and rhetorical triangles.

Episode Resources

·       Paul Hanstedt on Bluesky, https://bsky.app/profile/curriculargeek.bsky.social 

·       General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty, https://www.aacu.org/publication/general-education-essentials-a-guide-for-college-faculty

·       Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, https://www.routledge.com/Creating-Wicked-Students-Designing-Courses-for-a-Complex-World/Hanstedt/p/book/9781620366974?srsltid=AfmBOoqsAbLJZT5zCC9UovFUp9sTbqZJkd8KgRD0V_vFflZdQ1Wdb6H_

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

During these late summer episodes of the podcast, I’m sharing some interviews I conducted in much cooler times. Back in February as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I talked with Justin Shaffer, teaching professor in chemical and biological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Chapter three of the book deals with using technology to make visible “thin slices” of student learning. I reached out to Justin, who is also associate dean of undergraduate studies at Mines, to learn about some of the ways he uses technology both in and out of the classroom to learn more about his students’ learning.

That topic quite naturally led to discussions of Justin’s high-structure approach to course design. Justin has a book coming later this year (or maybe early 2025) from Macmillan Learning “High Structure Course Design for STEM” that will incredibly useful to STEM instructors of all experience levels. Justin is now officially the first repeat guest on Intentional Teaching. He was part of a panel way back in episode 9 on studio-style biology courses!

Episode Resources

·       Justin Shaffer’s website, https://www.recombinanteducation.com/

·       Sign-up for updates about Justin’s forthcoming book on high-structure course design, https://forms.gle/PEew6AsgFpijopm96

·       High Structure Course Design on the UVA Teaching Hub, https://teaching.virginia.edu/collections/high-structure-course-design

·       Getting Started with Discipline-Based Education Research on the UVA Teaching Hub, https://teaching.virginia.edu/collections/getting-started-with-discipline-based-education-research

·       Intentional Teaching Episode 9 on Studio-Style Biology Courses, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/12409419-studio-biology-with-scott-chirhart-robbie-bear-and-justin-shaffer  

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

A few episodes ago, I talked with Marc Watkins of the University of Mississippi about the many ways that generative AI is beginning to intersect with student learning. Marc noted that the newest versions of ChatGPT and similar tools are no longer just text generators, but multimodal in nature. That is, they can work with text and images and audio and in some cases video, too. 

To help us better understand what roles these AI tools might play in multimodal assignments, this episode features an interview I conducted earlier this year as part of the slow read I ran of my 2019 book, Intentional Tech. One chapter of that book is about using technology for multimodal assignments, and to bring some fresh perspectives to that topic, I talked my wife, Emily Bruff.

Emily is a marketer for Zondervan Academic, and earlier this year she completed an interesting multimodal project to support the release of a new book called Know the Theologians. In the interview, Emily shares her experience using an AI image generator to make theologian trading cards, and we extrapolate from that experience to working with students with AI.

Episode Resources

·       Emily Bruff’s website, https://emilyhbruff.com/ 

·       Know the Theologians, https://www.zondervan.com/p/know-the-theologians/

·       Visio Divina conference, https://emilyhbruff.com/visio-divina-conference  

·       The Parthenon digital restoration project, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBHYVIyEVjg 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

This episode is all about games as learning experiences, with not one but two interviews about the 2023 cooperative board game Daybreak, a game about climate action. Daybreak puts players in the roles of world powers building the technologies and societies needed for a warming planet. The goal of the game is to cut carbon emissions before it gets too hot or too many communities are put into crisis. 

You’ll hear from Kerry Whittaker, assistant professor of coastal and marine environmental science at Maine Maritime Academy, who has the students in her global environmental change course play Daybreak as a final learning experience in the course. You’ll also hear from Matteo Menapace, co-designer of Daybreak, about the design of the game as a learning experience.

Whether you teach about climate change and might use Daybreak in your courses or you’re looking for a deeper understanding of how learning experiences can be designed, I think you’ll find both of these conversations interesting.

Episode Resources

Daybreak’s website

Kerry Whittaker’s faculty page

Matteo Menapace’s website

Two Leading Lines interviews about RePlay Health: Kimberly Rogers and Max Seidman

One Leading Lines interview about games as counterfactuals: Patrick Rael

“Final Exams or Epic Finales” by Anthony Crider

"Collaborative Strategic Board Games as a Site for Distributed Computational Thinking" by Matthew Berland and Victor Lee

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

This spring Holly Tilbrook presented as part of a panel titled “Neurodivergent Learners (and Earners!) in Postsecondary Education” at the UPCEA annual conference. Holly is a deputy director of the Academic Centres at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education. That institute offers a variety of postsecondary learning opportunities for students of all ages, from onsite weekend courses to online certificate programs to degree programs offered across various modalities. Many of Holly’s students aren’t just learners, they’re earners, in the sense that they are active participants in the workforce. 

I wanted to know what Holly has been learning about supporting students with ADHD and other types of neurodivergence, particularly adult students and online students. I reached out to Holly via LinkedIn, where she posts thoughtful reflections on her work on a regular basis, and she was glad to talk with me. In our conversation, we discuss ways to build trust with neurodivergent students, accommodations that can more authentically meet these students’ needs, and helping neurodivergent students enter or re-enter the workforce. 

Episode Resources

·       Holly Tilbrook on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/hebtilbook/ 

·       Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge, https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/ 

·       Still Distracted After All These Years: Help and Support for Older Adults with ADHD by Kathleen Nadeau, https://amzn.to/3ze0pt8 

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Inspired by a recent episode of the American Birding Podcast, this episode of Intentional Teaching features a "Take It or Leave It" Panel. I spent some quality time with recent essays published online looking for arguments about teaching and learning in higher education that would be open to debate. For each of these hot takes, I asked our three panelists to take it (that is, agree with the hot take) or leave it (disagree), forcing them into an artificial binary that, I think, led to some robust discussion.

We have three fantastic panelists for our first “Take It or Leave It” panel. Stacey M. Johnson is director of learning and engagement at the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan University. Emily Pitts Donahoe is an associate director of instructional support at the University of Mississippi Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  Lance Eaton is director of faculty development and innovation at College Unbound.

Episode Resources:

"How Accommodating Can (Should) I Be?" by David Galef, Inside Higher Ed, May 2024

"It's Time to Start Teaching Your Students How to Be a Student" by Emily Isaacs, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2024

"Is AI Finally a Way to Reduce Higher Ed Costs?" by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, Inside Higher Ed, April 2024

"No One Is Talking about AI's Impact on Reading" by Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, May 2024

Stacey M. Johnson's website, https://staceymargarita.wordpress.com/

Emily Pitts Donahoe's Substack, https://emilypittsdonahoe.substack.com/

Lance Eaton's Substack, https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/

"Take It or Leave It - Seawatching, Records Committees, and Owls" on the American Birding Podcast

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.