Leading Lines

In this episode, Leading Lines producer Melissa Mallon interviews our podcast host, Derek Bruff, about his new book entitled Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. Melissa spends time talking with Derek about his seven principles that inform and inspire instructors interested in incorporating educational technologies into their teaching. He also shares with Melissa his writing process and gives some insights on how busy academics can fit writing into their lives.

Links:

• Derek Bruff’s blog on teaching and technology, https://derekbruff.org/

• @derekbruff on Twitter, https://twitter.com/derekbruff

• Derek’s new book, Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, available on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Derek-Bruff/e/B001KPCGT2%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Astronomy PhD student, Jack Madden and communication PhD student, Swati Pandita, talk about the results of their VR study they conducted, using VR to teach students how the phases of the moon work. They split students into three conditions: a VR simulation letting them explore the Earth-Moon-Sun system; a computer simulation of the same topic; and an old-fashioned physical simulation, involving a light bulb on a stick. Their findings? No difference in learning across the three conditions.

They share what they learned through their study about virtual reality and how it might help students build mental models, and they make some predictions for the potential of VR in education. They also provide perhaps the most discipline-specific answers we’ve ever had to our closing question about analog educational technology.

Links

• Swati Pandita’s website: http://swati.info/

• Swati on Twitter, @notheory15: https://twitter.com/notheory15

• Jack Madden’s website: http://hosting.astro.cornell.edu/~jmadden/

• Virtual Embodiment Lab at Cornell: https://virtualembodimentlab.com/

• Stowell, J. R., & Nelson, J. M. (2007). Benefits of electronic audience response systems on student participation, learning, and emotion. Teaching of Psychology, 34(4), 253-258. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00986280701700391

• Leading Lines Ep. 48 – Max Seidman: http://leadinglinespod.com/episodes/episode-48max-seidman/

In this episode, Vanderbilt librarian Melissa Mallon brings us an interview with another Vanderbilt librarian about his new book on open educational resources. Andrew Wesolek is the director of digital scholarship and scholarly communication at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries at Vanderbilt University. He is also the co-author, along with Jonathan Lashley and Anne Langley, of the new book OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians, published in 2018 by Pacific University Press. OER stands for “open educational resources.” These are educational resources, including but not limited to textbooks, that are published in ways that allow students and instructors to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute them, all for free. In the interview, Andy makes the case for the value of open educational resources to higher education, in terms of both affordability and student learning, and he offers advice for faculty and librarians interested in getting started using and creating open educational resources.

Links

• OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians (Pacific University, 2018), https://commons.pacificu.edu/pup/3/

• Digital Scholarship and Communications Office (DiSC) at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, https://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/scholarly/

• OpenStax, https://openstax.org/

• Directory of Open Access Journals, https://doaj.org/

• Leading Lines Ep. 36: Melissa Mallon, http://leadinglinespod.com/episodes/episode-36melissa-mallon/

On this episode of Leading Lines, we feature a conversation between a librarian, a faculty member, and a post-doc about a course two of them taught recently at Vanderbilt University focused on TEI, the Text Encoding Initiative. The course was team-taught by David Michelson, associate professor of the history of Christianity, and Michelle Taylor, a post-doctoral fellow in digital cultural heritage with a background in English literature. They’re interviewed by Leading Lines producer Cliff Anderson, who also happens to be the associate university librarian for research and digital initiatives. In Episode 11, Cliff also interviewed Kathryn Tomasek of Wheaton College about her use of TEI to teach her history students how to practice close reading. See the list below for a link to that conversation.

In this interview, David and Michelle share their experiences with TEI, the roles digital tools play in their scholarly work, and the challenges and opportunities of teaching a graduate-level course in the digital humanities.

• David Michelson’s website, https://my.vanderbilt.edu/michelson/

• @davidamichelson on Twitter, https://twitter.com/davidamichelson

• @mmtaylor87 on Twitter, https://twitter.com/mmtaylor87

• Text Encoding Initiative, https://tei-c.org/

• Syriaca.org, http://syriaca.org/

• “Preserving the History of Syriac Christianity in the Middle East,” Vanderbilt Research News, https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/02/08/preserving-the-history-of-syriac-christianity-in-the-middle-east/

• Leading Lines Ep. 11: Kathryn Tomasek, http://leadinglinespod.com/episodes/episode-011-kathryn-tomasek/

In this episode we talk with Chris Gilliard, Professor of English at Macomb Community College. His scholarship concentrates on privacy, institutional tech policy, digital redlining, and the re-inventions of discriminatory practices through data mining and algorithmic decision-making, especially as these apply to college students. Chris talks with Derek Bruff about some of the problems and concerns about educational technologies that may not be immediately visible to others.

Links:

• Chris’ website - http://hypervisible.com

• Follow Chris on Twitter at - https://twitter.com/hypervisible

• November, 2018 CBC Radio interview with Chris “Bad Algorithms are Making Racist Decisions” - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/412-1.4887497/bad-algorithms-are-making-racist-decisions-1.4887504

Leading Lines kicks off season six with an interview with Randall Bass. Randy is vice provost for education and a professor in the English department at Georgetown University. He was the founding director of Georgetown’s teaching center, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), and one of the first educators to explore the digital humanities through the multi-campus Visible Knowledge Project he directed. More recently, he moved into administration at Georgetown, where he leads the Designing the Future(s) initiative and the Red House incubator for curricular transformation.

Links

• Designing the Future(s) Initiative, https://futures.georgetown.edu/

• Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship, https://cndls.georgetown.edu/

• @RandyBassGU, https://twitter.com/randybassgu

We have something special for this final episode of the academic year. Usually, we talk with educators, researchers, and technologists about what they’re doing now, and ask them a question or two about where they’d like to see educational technology go in the next few years. In this episode, however, we’re going to camp out in the future.

The Vanderbilt Center for Teaching recently convened a faculty panel to discuss the future of digital literacies where we asked our panelists to gaze into their crystal balls and engage in a wide-ranging and wildly speculative conversation about the future of digital literacies.

You’ll hear from Doug Fisher, associate professor of computer science and faculty head of Warren College, one of Vanderbilt’s residential colleges; Corbette Doyle, senior lecturer in leadership, policy, and organizations; and Jaco Hamman, associate professor of religion, psychology, and culture.

This episode is a little longer than usual, but it’s worth it. And stay tuned after the panel for a couple of programming notes.

Links

• Doug Fisher’s faculty page, https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/bio/douglas-fisher

• @DougOfNashville on Twitter, https://twitter.com/DougOfNashville

• Corbette Doyle’s faculty page, https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/bio/corbette-doyle

• @CorbetteDoyle on Twitter, https://twitter.com/corbettedoyle

• Jaco Hamman’s faculty page, https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/jaco-hamman

• @JacoHamman on Twitter, https://twitter.com/jacohamman

• Growing Down by Jaco Hamman, https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Down-Theology-Nature-Virtual/dp/1481306464

• The Revenge of the Analog by David Sax, https://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Analog-Real-Things-Matter/dp/1610395719

How do you teach an earth science course entirely online? In this episode, we talk with Rodolfo Rego, senior instructor in the department of earth and environment at Florida International University. He develops and teaches online courses for his department, including courses on earth science, environmental science and sustainability, and earth resources. Rodolfo has won teaching awards at FIU for his creative use of technology and open content, and, in this interview, we talk about the challenges and opportunities of moving earth and environmental science courses online.

Links

• Rodolfo Rego’s faculty page, https://case.fiu.edu/about/directory/people/rrego.html

• Multimedia resources from FIU’s Earth and Environment department, https://earthenvironment.fiu.edu/about/resources/multimedia/index.html

• SeekBeak 360 virtual tour creator, https://seekbeak.com/

Back in Episode 52, Leading Lines producer John Sloop interviewed Chris Parrish, senior vice president and portfolio general manager at 2U. 2U is an online program management, or OPM, provider. They work with universities to develop, launch, and sustain online degree programs.

In this episode, John Sloop talks with John Katzman, who helped found 2U back in 2008, then moved on to start a different OPM provider, Noodle Partners, in 2010. Before that, Katzman founded the Princeton Review. In his conversation with John Sloop, Katzman talks about the problems he sees with for-profit education companies, the ways that his firm Noodle Partners approaches OPM work differently, and the future of online education.

Links

• John Katzman on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkatzman/

• Noodle Partners, https://www.noodlepartners.com/

• Leading Lines Episode 52: Chris Parrish, http://leadinglinespod.com/episodes/episode-52-chris-parrish/

Here on Leading Lines, we’re exploring the future of educational technology, and we have a team of producers who make sure that we consider all kinds of topics, including ones some of us may be skeptical about. Producer Gayathri Narasimham, associate director at the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning, is very interested in virtual reality and its potential in education. In this episode, she shares an interview with two Vanderbilt faculty—Bobby Bodenheimer from computer sciences and Ole Molvig from history—who co-taught a course on virtual reality. They discuss the challenges they faced in creating their course on virtual reality, and some of the lessons they’ve learned while teaching students an emerging technology.

• Bobby Bodenheimer’s faculty page, https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/bio/robert-bodenheimer

• Ole Molvig’s faculty page, https://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/bio/ole-molvig

• “Virtual Reality for Interdisciplinary Applications,” a University Course, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/strategicplan/undergraduate-residential-education/universitycourses-2017/virtual_reality.php