Tea for Teaching

Academic Integrity

The global pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in online instruction. This was accompanied by an expansion of the use of online services that, in return for a fee, provide students with solutions to assignments and exams . In this episode, James M. Pitarresi joins us to discuss strategies that faculty can use to preserve academic integrity in their online courses.

James is a Vice Provost for Online and Innovative Education and the Executive Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is also a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Student Workload

College students throughout the country have reported substantial increases in their workload during the 2020-21 academic year.  Few faculty members, though, intentionally increased student workloads during this challenging year. In this episode,  Dr. Betsy Barre joins us to explore some reasons for student perceptions of increased workload.

Betsy is the Executive Director of the Center for Advancement of Teaching at Wake Forest University. In 2017 she won with Justin Esarey, the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education’s Innovation Award for their Course Workload Estimator.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Takeover

Tea for Teaching has been taken over this week by a couple of our favorite authors! Join our friends, Sarah Rose Cavanagh and Josh Eyler, as they interview each other about their current book projects.

Sarah is the author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing Education with the Science of Emotion and of Hivemind: Thinking Alike in a Divided World and numerous scholarly publications. She is the Associate Director for Grants and Research at the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, the Co-Director of the Laboratory for Cognitive and Affective Science, and also Research Affiliate at the Emotion, Brain, and Behavior Laboratory at Tufts University. Josh is the Director of Faculty Development and a lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi. Josh is the author of How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective Teaching.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Remote Proctoring

Faculty who rely on high-stakes proctored exams in their classrooms often attempt to replicate this approach in online instruction by using remote proctoring services. In this episode, Jessamyn Neuhaus and John Locke join us to discuss some of the issues associated with the use of remote video proctoring and suggest some effective and less problematic alternative methods of assessing student learning.

Jessamyn is the Interim Director of the SUNY Plattsburgh Center for Teaching Excellence and a Professor in the History Department at Plattsburgh. She specializes in the study of pop culture, gender studies, and teaching and learning. Jessmyn is the recipient of the State University of New York's Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. She is also the author of Geeky Pedagogy: a Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts and Nerds who Want to be Effective Teachers. John is the Coordinator of Technology Enhanced Learning and an adjunct instructor in Communication Studies, also at SUNY Plattsburgh. He recently received his doctorate in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in humanities and culture, and is currently working on a second historical novel.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

 

Pedagogies of Care: Ungrading

This week we continue a series of interviews with participants in the Pedagogies of Care project. In this episode, Dr Susan Blum joins us to talk about ungrading as a method to support and motivate student learning. Susan is an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame and the author of several books and articles on higher education. Her newest book, Ungrading: Why Grading Students Undermines Learning and What to do Instead, will be released as part of the West Virginia University Press series on teaching and learning in December, 2020.

 

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

A Motivational Syllabus

Do you wish your students knew what was on the syllabus? In this episode, Dr. Christine Harrington joins us to explore how we can design a syllabus that helps us improve our course design, motivates students, and  provides a cognitive map of the course that students will find useful. Christine is a Professor of History and Social Science at Middlesex College, and is the author of Designing a Motivational Syllabus (and several other books related to teaching, learning, and student success). Christine has been the Executive Director of the Student Success Center at the NJ County of Community Colleges.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

 

Video feedback

Have you spent hours writing comments on student papers only to see them end up in the trash can as student file out of class?  In this episode, Dr. Jessica Kruger, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior at the University at Buffalo joins us to explore how providing video feedback may help motivate students to hear, see, use, and understand your feedback.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

 

Assessment

Dr. David Eubanks created a bit of a stir in the higher ed assessment community with a November 2017 Intersection article critiquing common higher education assessment practices. This prompted a discussion that moved beyond the assessment community to a broader audience as a result of articles in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. In today's podcast, Dr Eubanks joins us to discuss how assessment can help improve student learning and how to be more efficient and productive in our assessment activities.

Dr. Eubanks is the Assistant Vice President for Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness at Furman University and Board Member of the Association for the Assessment of Learning and Higher Education.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Microcredentials

In this episode, we discuss the growing role of microcredentials in higher education with Jill Pippin (Dean of Extended Learning at SUNY-Oswego), Nan Travers (Director of the Center for Leadership in Credentialling Learning at Empire State College), and Ken Lindblom (Dean of the School of Professional Development at the  State University of New York at Stony Brook). Jill, Nan, and Ken are members of a State University of New York task force on microcredentials.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

The Active Learning Initiative at Cornell

In this episode, we discuss Cornell's Active Learning Initiative with Doug McKee, an economist at Cornell and a co-host of the Teach Better podcast.  This initiative, designed to increase the use of active learning in instruction at Cornell, provides funding to departments to hire postdocs to redesign courses relying on evidence-based active learning techniques.  Doug provides an overview of the program and a discussion of how this program is being implemented to transform economics classes. We also discuss Doug's plans to include two-stage exams and invention activities in his econometrics class.

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.