Teaching in Higher Ed

Tricia Bertram Gallant and David Rettinger discuss The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI on episode 568 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

It is true that people cheat, and that’s the reason we have rules in the first place in our lives.

There are always going to be social, personal, and individual pressures on us that cause us to do things that either we didn’t realize were wrong, or that we perfectly well know that are wrong, but that in that moment seem like a reasonable trade off to our behavior.

Take care of yourself first, whatever that looks like. You’re never going to help somebody else if you’re not on firm ground yourself.

You can treat people with dignity and respect even as you’re calling out their mistake. You can challenge them while being respectful.

It is important for us to remember to give grace to ourselves.

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Therese Huston shares about Sharp: 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science on episode 567 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

As an instructor, there are multiple streams that you’re having to pay attention to and you’re switching between each one.

The research shows that listening to music that moves you will increase dopamine in your ventral striatum, so you feel a sense of reward.

Visualizing the process actually increases productivity. The neuroscience shows that you see five times more brain areas activated when you picture the process than when you picture a glorious outcome.

If you do just a 5 minute meditation right before you need to recall something, you can get up to a 75% improvement in your recall.

Eileen Camfield shares about Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education on episode 566 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I want to encourage folks to think about how vigor can go alongside rigor.

We really feel healed. We really feel like our suffering does not have to define us anymore.

Joy is a renewable resource because it does not get depleted.

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Jamie Moore shares about embracing anger to find joyful agency on episode 565 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

I was told that that if I showed emotion I would be seen as vulnerable, and my students would be ready to pounce on that vulnerability.

Invisible agreements shadow our classroom interactions and curriculum, capping the potential for connection, feeling, and joy in community with each other.

My favorite thing is learning with my students and humanizing myself.

Are you a living realization of your values and beliefs?

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John Warner shares about his latest book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI on episode 564 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

If we treat the output of large language models as writing, as opposed to syntax generation, which is how I characterize it, then we’re allowing the meaning of writing and the experience of writing to be degraded for humans.

Clearly, this is not feedback that is unique to human beings and unique to how we read.

There is no pivot for humanity. We’re going to be humans whether we like it or not, and we are going to live our life through a series of experiences which convey some manner of meaning to ourselves. We still have to live. We still have to have a day to day experience of the world. We still have to have access to our own minds. We still have to relate to other people. This is the stuff of being human.

Every human is a unique intelligence. Developing a unique intelligence is a work of teaching and learning. And honoring that is the highest calling of a teacher.

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Dr. Sunita Sah discusses her book, Defy: The Power of Saying No in a World That Demands Yes on episode 563 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Defiance is a practice, not a personality.

Defiance is a skill that’s available and necessary for all of us to use.

For many of us, the distance between who we think we are and what we actually do is enormous.

To defy is simply to act in accordance with your true values when there’s pressure to do otherwise.

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Jesús Campos shares his story as an undocumented undergrad/grad student and ways to support others in their educational pursuits on episode 562 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

There is some guilt students have because they feel like they’re not really pulling their weight, or they’re sort of a burden because they’re not producing an income.

Look at scholarships that are open to nonresidents. They’re out there.

It’s very important not to put yourself and your own experiences in your student’s shoes. Every student is unique and going through something entirely different.

Individuals from different countries go through different processes. It is not a one size fits all.

Students are each special and unique, and it is important we get to know them as such.

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Stephanie Cawthon shares about her book, Disability Is Human – The Vital Power of Accessibility in Everyday Life, on episode 561 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

We all have disability at one time or another, maybe just not right now.

I think that there is still a sense of surprise when a request is made for some kind of modification.

This idea that accommodations and accessibility is coming at some cost to the abled is a false pretense.

If you receive a whole bunch of feedback and you can’t do anything about it, that just makes you feel bad.

I was really trying to help us understand our assumptions about disability and accessibility.

Simon Cullen and Nicholas DiBella discuss how to equip students to dialog across differences using an AI Guide they’ve created on episode 560 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Most of my students have not heard cogent arguments on the other side of whatever their own position is because they’ve been so siloed.

In every one of these classes the point is to try and confront students with the strongest arguments I can find, ideally for the thing they don’t believe.

The first thing they hear from me is if you wish to avoid the risk of being offended, then you should probably not be taking this class.

In philosophy, we always embrace disagreement.

We have designed the guide to be as neutral as possible.

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Lauren Barbeau + Claudia Cornejo Happel discuss how to cultivate critical teaching behaviors on episode 559 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Being a good teacher or a good researcher is not something you’re born with. It’s something you learn. It’s something you can get better at.

Teaching doesn’t fall into nice, neat color coded boxes. We need something that represents the complexity and the messiness and the way that behaviors overlap and might fall into more than one category.

If we can’t reflect on our teaching, we can’t identify our strengths to start leveraging them, to start working on them.

If you’re looking for an entry point into critical teaching behaviors, start by reflecting on your teaching and take a look at the materials we’ve provided to help you do that.

Be kind to yourself because some semesters are harder than others.

It all comes back to caring about students, being transparent about what we’re doing in the classroom, explaining our purpose, and involving them in the conversation that is the learning together in the classroom.

While there’s no one thing that is more difficult than another, it really helps us to find a behavior that resonates with us and that we can use as a lens to think about our teaching more holistically.

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