Transform Your Teaching

In this episode, Rob and Jared kick off a new series on Competency-Based Education. They discuss the characteristics of CBE and how it compares with traditional educational practice. Join us on Flip with all your questions and reflections on the topics we cover. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

In traditional educational models, time is the constant and education is the variable. With Competency-Based Education (CBE) models, time is the variable and education is the constant. In the current educational landscape, CBE is commonly seen in apprenticeships and in trades. Typically, it involves an instructor coming alongside a student to help them achieve mastery of content.

Jared is currently apprehensive about CBE because it turns time into a variable. He still is concerned about the level of understanding that a student can reach in certain academic areas that require higher-level thinking if the primary variable is time. For example, since he comes from a language arts background, he is concerned about the level of synthesis and critical reading that may not be reached using competency-based education.

Competency-based education can already seen in more traditional education settings through some modalities (such as flipped classroom). In this series, Rob and Jared will learn from the experiences of others who have used CBE to shed more light on where it is being used and how faculty can use it to design some or all of their instruction the experiences of others who have used it.

Resources

What is Competency-Based Education? (SNHU)

Join us on Flip to discuss this series!

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with (Ret.) Lt. General Loren Reno, Professor of Management and Senior Advisor to the Office of the President at Cedarville University. Check out the episode to hear how he uses servant teaching to encourage and inspire students.

Join us on Flip with all your questions and reflections on the topics we cover. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

General Reno’s goal as an educator is to serve. He seeks to inspire his students instead of attempting to control their involvement in the learning process since educators can intrinsically motivate students through inspiration. With this foundation, General Reno provides several traits of a servant teacher:

• Listening – listening to the needs of students both in class and outside of class. General Reno shares his cell phone number with his students to help alleviate potential stress students have over assignments or course content
• Modeling – modeling the content, modeling affirmation, modeling high standards, modeling leadership
• Encouraging/Giving feedback – inspiring students to do better through the feedback you give them in assignments and during class participation

All these principles are based on approaching teaching with humility. General Reno shares that there are several ways that pride can be a barrier for teachers to acting in humility. In order to overcome this obstacle, teachers should give attention to their students, rather than placing attention on themselves.

General Reno challenges educators to know the needs of students, meet those needs, and show students that they care. When students feel that an educator cares, they are more willing to engage with class sessions and the content.

Resources 

We want to hear from our listeners, so we’ve launched a discussion on Flip – a video discussion platform. Join us with all your questions and reflections.   

Join Transform Your Teaching's Flip discussion group: https://flip.com/e5ea081d (if it asks for a join code, use e5ea081d) 

Generative AI Flip discussion: https://flip.com/84387b64 

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with Ryan Liming, a member of the Transform Your Teaching team, to discuss some of the work that goes into producing the podcast. Transform Your Teaching is also using a new tool to hold asynchronous video discussions with listeners. Join us on Flip with all your questions and reflections on the topics we cover.

Resources

We want to hear from our listeners, so we’ve launched a discussion on Flip – a video discussion platform. Join us with all your questions and reflections.

Join Transform Your Teaching's Flip discussion group: https://flip.com/e5ea081d (if it asks for a join code, use e5ea081d)

Generative AI Flip discussion: https://flip.com/84387b64

In this episode, Rob and Jared conclude the series on Generative AI Applied and reflect on the lessons they learned. They also announce the launch of a new tool we are using to hold asynchronous video discussions with listeners. Join us on Flip with all your questions and reflections on the topics we cover.  

Jared’s takeaways: 

1. Adapt or die; Generative AI is not going away. 
2. GAI should be treated like any other innovation. Users must have time to try it, and it must be seen as reliable and compatible with their work. The difference, though, is that the user must find the reliability and compatibility for themselves because GAI is a complex innovation.  
3. GAI is a standalone tool and also one that can be the backbone of bigger things. The next step for using GAI is to use it to create—treat it like a programming language or a medium through which to present content. 

Rob’s takeaways: 

1. Those working with GAI in education need to provide beneficial examples of AI use. 
2. Christian education needs a voice through control of its own GAI model. 
3. GAI use may erode trust on a larger scale than other tools in history. 

Resources 

We want to hear from our listeners, so we’ve launched a discussion on Flip – a video discussion platform. Join us with all your questions and reflections.  

Join Transform Your Teaching's Flip discussion group: https://flip.com/e5ea081d (if it asks for a join code, use e5ea081d) 

Generative AI Flip discussion: https://flip.com/84387b64 

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with Dr. Jodie Penrod who has a PhD in Educational/Instructional Technology from Ohio University and is the Chief Information Officer at Marshall University. They discuss how Marshall University has approached Generative AI and how other educators can use GAI to enhance teaching and learning. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

Marshall University has decided to embrace using Generative AI and harness it to fit their goals. Their advice for faculty in using GAI falls into three categories: open use, moderate use, and prohibited. They created these categories to provide a framework to get started. Faculty usage of GAI has varied, much like most technology adoption, but Marshall does want faculty to take the lead in the conversation around GAI.

A major area Dr. Penrod is working on is preparing Marshall’s foundational infrastructure for using GAI. This requires thinking through the challenges of access/equity, especially at a school like Marshall. Students’ access to GAI is also causing her to question the idea of the “traditional student,” and she is looking at how GAI can cater to all students, not just the 18-year-old who is just out of high school.  GAI can help meet students where they are and provide opportunities to get an education by creating access regardless of life circumstances. Dr. Penrod sees GAI's future making an impact on personalized learning and changing the educational landscape. However, she is concerned about information security. How do we educate our students on using their personal information with GAI and the risks involved with that?

Resources

Marshall University’s approach to GAI

Faculty Resources for AI (from Marshall)

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with Dr. Thomas White, president of Cedarville University. They discuss possible applications of Generative AI at Cedarville and in higher education at large.  Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

Dr. White sees how influential Generative AI will be on higher education and has explored it by using ChatGPT4 and plugins. While using the tools, he has found uses outside of education – recently using Generative AI to help book his family’s vacation. However, Dr. White’s main emphasis for Cedarville faculty is that they need flexibility and freedom to handle how GAI is used in their classes, but they need to set clear expectations for their students. He plans on continuing that stance this coming academic year.

Within higher education, Dr. White sees many possible applications of GAI in various areas. GAI can be leveraged to take care of smaller, lower-level tasks that keep faculty from spending time building relationships with students, researching, and completing other complex tasks. He sees GAI helping faculty with grading, answering common questions, and finishing mundane tasks that keep them from doing more authentic, enriching tasks. Dr. White also wonders how GAI could serve as a research assistant to help faculty with writing and publishing.

Dr. White recommends that both faculty and staff should look for ways to incorporate GAI into their workflow. For faculty, he advises them to think of one activity in the classroom where they can use GAI to expose students to it. From there, faculty can evaluate what GAI can do and if it is useful. For staff, he encourages them to think of a task they hate to do and find a way to use GAI to accomplish it, freeing up their time to do something else.

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with Kim Woodruff who is the Director of Instructional Design at Manhattan College. They discuss Manhattan College’s current experience with Generative AI and she provides possible applications that instructors can try. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

Manhattan College’s approach to integrating Generative AI (GAI) begins with conversations with their faculty to reach them where they are at. They do not want to push for innovation too quickly, so they provide tips and tricks based on sound pedagogical ideas. Kim often encourages instructors to be experimental and use GAI to perform authentic tasks.

Manhattan faculty have been adventurous with GAI in two areas: in the Communication department (to prepare students for it in the workforce) and in the Education department (there is a tendency to share information like lesson plans). Other innovators are interested in trying new things, including a professor using it in the game design program.

On the student side, Manhattan College has made minor wording changes to its academic integrity policy but is relying on faculty to create their own policy, rather than creating a campus-wide policy on it. Kim also tested student usage of GAI, asking them to use it in an assignment. Only a few students used GAI, which was unexpected. Those that did use it had a better product. Kim thinks students are using tools like Grammarly but are still apprehensive about tools that use GAI.

She has also used GAI as a student to help her understand articles/terms that seem to be wordy or overly complicated. She also asked ChatGPT to create a cartoon to help understand content. Kim recommends those interested in using GAI to integrate it into authentic daily tasks to get used to it and use it to simplify complicated information.

Resources
Designs for the Pluriverse: A Digital Story based on Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds by Arturo Escobar. When you click on the link, the presentation will start automatically.

A parody of Led Zeppelin’s “What is and What Should Never Be” called “What Is and What We Think Should Be” based on The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial by Herbert Simon.

Interactive Games with ChatGPT

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with Dr. Vladimir Bratic who has a PhD in Mass Communication from Ohio University and is an assistant professor of Media and Communications at Hollins University. They discuss how ChatGPT has gone from being a flashy innovation to an everyday tool. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

Dr. Bratic has noticed that over the past year, ChatGPT has gone from a flashy innovation to a normalized, embedded tool that influences the average person’s daily life. It is “coming to us and begging us to use it.” However, he notices that there are still obstacles to ChatGPT’s usage in education since instructors are still uncomfortable with ChatGPT. The solution to overcoming this is to practice and interact with generative AI; but at the same time, it’s hard to keep up because of the rapid innovation. He predicts that in the future, generative AI is going to be further integrated into our everyday lives so it can be accessed anytime, anywhere. For example, ChatGPT is already integrated into Microsoft products and is being used in image generation (like with DALL-E).

From his teaching, Dr. Bratic sees ChatGPT as a way of helping us use knowledge differently because of how much information is available to us. He encourages educators to ask, “What do I expect of students? What is the world they’re going to live in? How can I anticipate that world, and how can I prepare students for it?” The answers to these questions will impact how educators approach their teaching and could cause a change in their role.

In this episode, Rob and Jared continue their chat about the use of generative AI in Higher Education with faculty from Tiffin University. They focus on how instructors can employ Generative AI in their day-to-day teaching practices. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

The rapid changes of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT makes keeping up with them challenging. To combat this challenge, instructors learn how to use these tools better through training in prompt engineering. At Tiffin, they have recently hired someone to assist faculty in incorporating AI tools into teaching.

The Tiffin faculty also shared about an upcoming webinar on using AI in courses and course design that they are hosting for faculty and graduate design students. AI has a wide variety of uses that range from getting ideas to create lesson plans to uploading a student paper and rubric and having it generate initial feedback that the instructor then reviews and revises before giving it back to the student.

They also talk about how generative AI is well-suited for academic work and course design because of its origins. It can help to write content for online courses in a neutral way. And it can be used for specific activities as well – revising assignments to be more authentic or creating better discussion questions.

Even with all these benefits, the introduction of generative AI can cause instructors to think, “what am I needed for?” It’s important to remember that AI is just a tool. These kinds of tools can help faculty focus on higher order issues and let the AI make initial evaluations on things such as grammar, spelling, and low-level content. Additionally, ChatGPT can create a good lesson, but the human input of an instructor is still needed to question its validity, relevance, and alignment to courses. And that element of humanity is still needed in education for the personal connection between educator and student. ChatGPT doesn’t have the experience and personality that an instructor would and cannot foster those kinds of relationships.

Resources

Design Statements - Tiffin University
The Ethics of Using Generative AI Tools - Tiffin University

How Can You Use Generative AI Tools at Tiffin University

In this episode, Rob and Jared chat with two faculty members from Tiffin University about the use of Generative AI. Dr. Michelle L. Meadows, Associate Professor of Education, and Dr. Dan Clark, Vice Provost & Dean for the School of Education & Extended Learning, share about how Tiffin equips students and faculty to use AI well. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

Tiffin University’s approach to Generative AI is marked with innovation. They start with being transparent about how  Generative AI should be used, giving students an AI “toolkit” so they are aware of AI’s limitations and are able to use it ethically. Dr. Meadows, Dr. Clark, and Tiffin introduced design statements (statement that students include into assignments describing how they used AI to aid in completion) into their courses to monitor and guide student use of Generative AI tools. These design statements are a way for students to share their metacognitive processes and explain how they completed assignments, including their use of AI. The design statements encourage transparency and provide instructors with insight into how students use these tools.

As Tiffin University implemented these ideas, their faculty members have generally been supportive of incorporating design statements in their courses, but more training is needed for both faculty and students to effectively implement and assess the statements. They also highlight the importance of building trust between students and faculty when it comes to using AI, since some students were reluctant to disclose their use of AI tools.