Teaching in Higher Ed

Emily Pitts Donahoe shares what we can learn about grades from an “emerging failure” on episode 588 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

They introduced a framework that attempts to identify the common features of alternative grading for growth systems that are meant to prioritize student growth and student learning over just grades and performance.

Those four pillars are marks that indicate progress, reattempts without penalty, clearly defined standards, and helpful feedback.

One of the most important functions of grades or marks given on individual assignments is to communicate to students about how they’re progressing in a certain subject. Traditional grades don’t serve this communicative function very well.

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M. C. Flux uncovers lessons for video creation from what he calls layered learning on episode 587 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I’ve also started creating these little quiz questions in them, but they’re not hard. They’re just to keep their attention going.

Many students seem to enjoy this and actually learn well from it, so I keep doing it.

I think these students struggle so much with attention that bringing them back with a really simple question just helps.

The fact that students have shorter attention spans is still something we need to pay attention to. I don’t think it’s as bad as people say, but it is actually still a big piece of how I design instruction.

A lot of students are used to rewatching things that they enjoy.

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Seth Offenbach shares about his article, Kindness and Community in an Online Asynchronous Classroom, on episode 586 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I had to recognize the reality that my classroom was never going to be the number one priority for people during the pandemic.

When we teach, why not be kind?

My goal is to challenge my students intellectually. My goal is not to stress them out.

We all miss deadlines.

In order to truly be kind, you have to create a safe space for the students where they feel that they can come to you, talk to you and learn with you.

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Bryan Dewsbury helps us explore what socially just teaching might look like across disciplines on episode 585 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I am not interested in being in a war with AI. I’m not trying to be a faculty detective to see who’s using ChatGPT or not, I didn’t sign up for that work.

I’m not your enemy. I’m not against you. I’m rooting for you every single day. I really mean that.

The things I say on day one are not going to mean anything over the course of the semester if I don’t give them feedback in a reasonable time or if I’m rude when they answer a question wrong in class.

The way in which we can interact around this material doesn’t have to be one that’s dictatorial.

You don’t have to be able to save the world, but you’re obligated to try, right? And so the whole key behind that is in trying, you almost by definition achieve more.

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Danny Liu shares a different way to think about AI and assessment on episode 584 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Our students are presented with this massive array of things they could choose from. They may not know the right things to choose or the best things to choose. And our role as educators is to kind of guide them in trying to find the most healthy options from the menu to choose from.

People want to give their students clarity. They want to give their students a bit of guidance on how to approach AI, what is going to be helpful for them for learning and not helpful for learning.

There is no way to really know if the rules that you’re putting in place are going to be followed by students, and it doesn’t mean that we need to detect them or surveil them more when they’re doing their assignments.

We need to accept the reality that students could be using AI in ways that we don’t want them to be using AI if they’re not in front of us.

Not everyone lies. Most of our students want to do the right thing. They want to learn, but they have the temptation of AI there that is saying, I can do this work for you. Just click, just chat with me.

Our role as teachers is not to be cops, it’s to teach and therefore to be in a position where we can trust you and help you make the right choice.

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James Lang shares about his latest book, Write Like You Teach, on episode 583 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Answers on their own are not interesting. They become interesting when we know the questions behind them.

When you take a reader on a journey, as the reader works through an essay or book that you’ve written, they spend a lot of time with you.

Be attentive to the person that you are on the page to the reader.

Start right now. That’s the most important thing.

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Adriana Aldana shares about Counterstory Pedagogy: Student Letters of Resilience, Healing, and Resistance on episode 582 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

One of our ethical obligations as social workers is to engage in self care to avoid burnout.

Their voice really comes through in the letter format in ways that I don’t see in other forms of writing. I encourage them to loosen up a little bit with what they think I am expecting them to write about or how to write.

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Alexandra (Ana) Kogl shares about her chaper in Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education on episode 581 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I didn’t expect to find joy in the classroom when I started teaching political science 20 years ago.

Joy isn’t something that we can coerce out of students.

They seem to expect to feel dead inside in the classroom, which is heartbreaking.

The opposite of joy isn’t suffering, it’s numbness.

People survive injustice and they thrive.

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Leslie Bayers discusses her chapter in Joy-Centered Pedagogy: The Joy of Embodied Learning on episode 580 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I certainly wasn’t taught body literacy in school, and what I mean by that is how to read the internal signals that the body might be communicating.

We feel and think better when we move.

I try to get students moving or engaged with sensory textures as much as possible to spark learning.

How we feel absolutely shapes if and how we learn. And many of us feel this in our bodies.

Learning is incredibly hard work. It’s one of the things that does drain the body of energy.

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Jennifer Baumgartner shares some lessons in love and learning from Mr. Rogers’ legacy on episode 579 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Mr. Rodgers was a very comforting influence as a young child.

Moving slowly or taking your time is a very key theme of Mr. Rogers neighborhood, and also Fred Rogers’ life and the way he lived it.

He didn’t shy away from talking about difficult subjects.

“Anything that is mentionable is manageable.”

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