Teaching in Higher Ed

On today’s episode, I speak with Dr. Robin Paige about the potential impact of stereotype threat inside and outside of our classrooms.

When dealing with stereotypes, one of the things we can do on our campuses or in our classrooms is create a space of accountability but without saying “You’re a bad person for thinking that.”

Academic Paper by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson: Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans

Bonni:

Robin:

Today on episode #078 of Teaching in Higher Ed: The power of checklists

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything–a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps–the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.

A to-do list is what to do, a checklist is how to do it:

A checklist is a documented process for something you’ll do daily; a to-do list is something you assembled yourself that you need to do at a certain point of your day:

Philip Crawford, software entrepreneur on Quora, gives his definition:

A checklist ensures communication and confirmation among members of a team and catches errors.

There are Two kinds of checklists:

Advice for making checklists:

Read her article about checklists HERE

Atul Gawande lists things to consider when making a checklist:

Today I welcome to the show Dr. Terese Huston to talk about teaching what you don’t know.

Faculty Development Consultant, Seattle University

Seattle University faculty page: here

Therese Huston received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She was also awarded a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship with the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Therese was the Founding Director of CETL (now the Center for Faculty Development) and served as Director from 2004 to 2010. Drawing upon her background in cognitive science, she has spent the past decade helping smart faculty make better decisions about their teaching. Her first book, Teaching What You Don’t Know, was published by Harvard University Press (2009).

If I could go back to my 28-year-old self and give her one piece of advice, it would be to talk to a content expert.

I wish I had offered to take an expert to coffee once a week to brainstorm what I should be teaching.

Teaching is more than just knowing every single detail there is to know; teaching is much more about stimulating learning.

You have to be thinking, “I’ve got to do something that I know well, but if I’m going to be the best teacher I can be to my students I’ve also got to teach them some things that are perhaps outside of my comfort zone.”

No one can be an expert on this material, and what I’m going to be doing is to always look for the most recent, most important topic that I can be teaching you.

If I’m doing a good job up here, I’m going to be pushing the boundaries of what I know.

Teaching what you don’t know looks at it from two perspectives:

Things unique to people who experience minimal anxiety when teaching outside of their expertise:

You have just been assigned to teach a course outside of our expertise. What are the most important steps to take in preparing to teach it?

Bonni recommends:

Therese recommends:

In today’s episode, Doug McKee joins me to share about online courses. His Introduction to Econometrics class is taught about as close to an in-person as you can get, but without being bound by geographic barriers.

Associate Chair and Senior Lecturer of Economics at Yale

Website: http://dougmckee.net/

We weren’t lowering the price, but we were lowering the geographic barriers.

Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/

Bonni recommends:

On today’s episode, ten prior guests, as well as Dave and I, come together to celebrate 75 episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed. We look back at episodes that have had a big impact on us, take a listener question, and make recommendations.

1) Sandie Morgan

2) Michelle Miller

3) Scott Self theproductivenerd.org 

4) Josh Eyler (two coming up both mentioning Cameron Hunt McNabb)

5) Janine Utell

6) Jim Lang

7) Doug McKee

8) Jeff Hittenberger

Question: When seeking a professorship, how do you stand out from the crowd? Or, how do you find opportunities to the things you love in other career paths?

Dave recommends:

Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts:

Beth Buelow’s podcast:

Bonni recommends:

Podcast:

Books:

Cheating Lessons by James M. Lang