In this interview with Sung Jun Han, Dr. Laura Guertin talks about how her use of technology has evolved over the last 20 years. Listeners will hear examples of how technology has enabled Laura to teach even while aboard a ship doing field work and has enabled her students to learn while commuting. Starting with the course objectives and using low-bandwidth, accessible technologies can unlock so many possibilities for learning.

In this interview with Derek Bruff, Remi talks about how annotation works in partnership with reading as a knowledge construction activity. With physical books, digital reading, and even on social media, people add notes to texts to wrestle with what they read and reach new audiences.  Let's explore how instructors can harness the power of annotation in formal educational contexts.

In this special audio note from Leading Lines producer and host Derek Bruff, Derek shares that the podcast will be winding down after a few more episodes.

Thanks to all our Leading Lines producers and guests we’ve had over the years for making this podcast something special. And thanks to all you for listening.

Some of Derek's favorite episodes: https://twitter.com/derekbruff/status/1557013656185245699

On this episode of Leading Lines, producer and colleague Stacey Johnson brings us an interview about virtual exchanges, connecting students across cultures through technology. Stacey and our Vanderbilt colleague Chalene Helmuth, principal senior lecturer in Spanish, speak with two guests with extensive experience with virtual exchanges. Brianna Janssen Sánchez is assistant professor of practice in languages, cultures, and international studies, and coordinator of teacher education, at Southern Illinois University, and Nancy Ruther is principal and founder of Gazelle International, a non-profit that partners with higher education institutions to produce globally capable graduates. Nancy’s work at Gazelle follows almost 30 years as associate director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.

In the interview, Stacey and Chalene talk to our guests about different models of virtual exchanges, the kinds of support and scaffolding to support virtual exchanges, and the impact virtual exchanges can have on both students and teachers.

Links

• Brianna Janssen Sánchez’s faculty page, cola.siu.edu/languages/faculty-…anssen-sanchez.php

• Nancy Ruther @ Gazelle International, www.gazelle-international.org/nancy-ruth…-principal

• Gazelle International, www.gazelle-international.org/

• “Assessing language learning in virtual exchange: Suggestions from the field of language assessment,” Lee & Sauro (2021), journal.unicollaboration.org/article/view/36087

On today’s episode of Leading Lines, producer and colleague Stacey Johnson brings us an interview with Jill Lassiter, assistant professor of health sciences at James Madison University. Professor Lassiter recently wrote a Faculty Focus article on service-learning in a virtual world, including the changes she made to her service-learning projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the interview, professor Lassiter shares three principles for adapting service-learning to challenging environments, describes some of the virtual service-learning projects her students have engaged in over the last few years, and offers advice for instructors new to service-learning on getting started with technology-supported service-learning.

Links

•Service-Learning and Community Engagement, a Vanderbilt Center for Teaching guide: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-through-community-engagement/

•Faculty Profile for Dr. Lassiter - https://healthsci.jmu.edu/people/lassiter.html

•Service-Learning in a Virtual World - https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-delivery-and-instruction/service-learning-in-a-virtual-world/

•Leonard, G., Lassiter, J.W., Hammill, R., & LeCrom, C.W. (2022). Service-learning and the development of interpersonal skills in pre-professional undergraduate students. Pedagogy in Health Promotion. DOI: 10.1177/23733799221074626

•Martin, T., LeCrom, C.W., & Lassiter, J.W. (2017). Hearts on our sleeves: Emotions experienced by service-learning faculty.  International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, 5(1), 41-56. https://journals.sfu.ca/iarslce/index.php/journal/article/view/273

•LeCrom, C.W., Lassiter, J.W., & Pelco, L. (2016). Faculty Feel it Too: The Emotions of Teaching Through Service-Learning.  Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education, 8(2), 41-56. https://discovery.indstate.edu/jcehe/index.php/joce/article/view/294

On today’s episode, we talk with Simon Howard, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, about his recent TikTok assignments. In his social psychology course, he was looking for new ways to engage and assess his students, and during the pandemic he landed on the very short video format of TikTok as a solution. Simon is a first-generation college graduate who completed his undergraduate degree at San Jose State University and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Tufts University. He now directs the Psychology of Racism, Identity, Diversity, and Equity, or PRIDE, Lab at the University of Miami, where he teaches a variety of psychology courses. Leading Lines producer Julaine Fowlin brings us this interview, where Simon Howard talks about his educational journey, the TikTok assignment, and engaging students with creative, technology-supported alternatives to traditional exams and papers.

Links 

• Simon Howard on Twitter, https://twitter.com/DrSimonHoward  

• Student-produced TikToks, https://twitter.com/DrSimonHoward/status/1314300480793849859   

• Student-produced spoken word, https://twitter.com/DrSimonHoward/status/1452437843964530691  

• Simon’s playlist assignment,  https://twitter.com/DrSimonHoward/status/1332082784404459528   

• Quarantine Rap, by Simon Howard, https://www.tiktok.com/@sihowthedoctor/video/6826779650748845318?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1  

• Sutori, https://www.sutori.com/en/  

• McNair Scholars, https://www2.ed.gov/programs/triomcnair/index.html 

• “Why Wordle Works,” Dan Meyer, https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/why-wordle-works-according-to-desmos

James Paul Gee wrote a book on games that pointed out how much learning happens when you play a game. Gee was writing about video games, but the same is true for analog games, like board games. Designing a game for players and designing a learning experience for students can run surprisingly parallel. In both contexts, you put together a sequence of experiences and interactions that are intended to guide the participants in certain directions. Gee pointed out that, since games can motivate and encourage a lot of learning by players, there could be design moves commonly made in games that could inform the design moves we make as teachers. This led to what’s sometimes called the gamification movement, adding game elements to learning experiences to help motivate and reward learners. In today’s episode, however, we talk with a professor who doesn’t borrow elements from games to use in his teaching—he runs game labs where students play entire board games as part of the learning process.

Patrick Rael is a professor of history at Bowdoin College in Maine. He specializes in African-American history, the Civil War era, and the history of slavery and emancipation. Patrick is also a gamer, a tabletop board gamer, to be specific. He brought together his expertise as a historian and his passion for analog gaming in a course he teaches at Bowdoin, a course called Historical Simulations. In this course, Patrick’s students play board games with historical settings as a way to understand and evaluate historical arguments. In the conversation, Patrick shares the origin of this interesting course, he talks about the ways games and play lead to deep learning in this course, and he argues for more scholarly work around the use of analog games in teaching and learning.

Links

• Patrick Rael’s faculty website, https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/prael/index.html

• Patrick Rael on Twitter, https://twitter.com/LudicaBlog

• “Playing with the Past: Teaching Slavery with Board Games,” Patrick Rael, AHA Perspectives on History, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/november-2021/playing-with-the-past-teaching-slavery-with-board-games?_zs=vLHXb&_zl=r1Po2

• Freedom: The Underground Railroad (2012), https://www.academygames.com/pages/freedom

• Lewis & Clark: The Expedition (2013), http://www.ludonaute.fr/portfolio/lewis-clark/?lang=en

• Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis & Clark (2015), http://www.ludonaute.fr/portfolio/discoveries/?lang=en

• Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection (2016), https://www.gmtgames.com/p-826-liberty-or-death-the-american-insurrection-3rd-printing.aspx

• Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game (2019), https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the-gerrymandering-game

• Reacting to the Past, https://reacting.barnard.edu/

Deep learning is the kind of learning we want form our students, but it’s also the hardest kind of learning to foster in our students. In today’s episode, we hear from Monica Sulecio de Alvarez, a learning experience designer based on Guatemala. Monica has taught for ten years in higher education on how to design for complex learning in online environments, and she’s created competency-based distance learning modules for organizations in a variety of fields, including nutrition, ethics, human rights, and banking, among others. Monica is passionate about fostering deep learning in her students and helping other faculty do the same. Leading Lines producer Julaine Fowlin, our resident instructional designer at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, brings us this interview. Monica and Julaine talk about the differences between deep and shallow learning, as well as pedagogies and technologies we can use to move our students into deep learning.

Links

•Monica Sulecio de Alvarez’s website, https://sites.google.com/site/nonstoppinglearner/•Monica on Twitter, https://twitter.com/monicaelearning•“Avoiding Educational Technology Pitfalls for Inclusion and Equity,” by Monica Sulecio de Alvarez and Camille Dickson-Deane, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-018-0270-0•“Shifting Paradigms from the Inside Out: Instructional Designers as Change Agents,” by Julaine Fowlin and Monica Sulecio de Alvarez, https://vimeo.com/showcase/3316648/video/172783950•Race to Nowhere, https://beyondtheracetonowhere.org/race-to-nowhere/•Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted Worldby Cal Newport, https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

In this episode, we continue our mini-series on bodies and embodiment produced by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. Leah has been interviewing experts who can help us understand why paying attention to bodies in teaching and learning spaces is so important. Leah talks with Susan Hrach, Director of the Faculty Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and Professor of English at Columbus State University.

Leah reached out to Susan because Susan is the author of the book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning, published in 2021 by West Virginia University Press. In the interview, Susan Hrach shares some core understandings of bodies from her research, how those principles play out in the classroom, and some very practical ways to enhance student learning and belonging through attention to bodies and the physical learning environment.

Links:

• Susan’s website - https://susanhrach.com/

• Susan’s Book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning - https://wvupressonline.com/node/866

• @SusanHrach on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SusanHrach

• Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind (2021) https://anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-extended-mind/

• On Being podcast with Bessel Van Der Kolk (2021) https://onbeing.org/programs/bessel-van-der-kolk-trauma-the-body-and-2021/

Learning is always hard work, but sometimes it feels easier and we’re more motivated to persist if there’s an element of play involved. What can we learn about learning in the context of games that we might use to foster student learning in higher education? That’s a topic we’ve explored several times here on the podcast, and I’m glad to share another discussion of this topic in today’s episode. Miguel “Miko” Nino is the director of the Office of Online Learning at the University of North Carolina Pembroke. He is also chair of the UNC Online Leadership Collaboration and serves on the review boards for the Journal of Online Learning Research, Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, and the Journal of Technology and Teaching Education. He’s also an old friend of Leading Lines producer, Julaine Fowlin. She sat down recently with Miko (virtually) to talk about the elements of games and play that we can bring into the learning environment. Miko talks about his passion for learning and games and reasons to “gamify” the learning experiences we design, and he shares lots of practical tools and strategies for doing so.

Links

• Miguel (Miko) Nino’s staff page, https://www.uncp.edu/profile/miguel-miko-nino

• Miko Nino on Twitter, https://twitter.com/miko_nino

• Mentimeter, https://www.mentimeter.com/

• Nearpod, https://nearpod.com/

• Quizlet, https://quizlet.com/

• Portfolium, https://portfolium.com/

• ForAllRubrics, https://www.forallrubrics.com/