Tea for Teaching

Dead But Not Buried

Travel courses can provide an opportunity to experience a different part of the world through the lens of a particular discipline. In this episode, Dr. Kat Blake and Rebecca discuss the rich interdisciplinary learning opportunities that occurred when students in their anthropology and design classes traveled together to the Czech Republic to study bone churches. Kat Blake is a bioarchaeologist, a forensic anthropologist, and an assistant professor in anthropology at the State University of New York at Oswego.

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

 

 

Change in the Academy

Change in higher ed often occurs slowly. In this episode, Dr. Blase Scarnati joins us to discuss how community organizing strategies can be used to formulate changes that can be supported, or at least not resisted, by all stakeholders. 

Blase is a Professor of Musicology and Director of Global Learning and the Center for International Education at Northern Arizona University.

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

 

Open pedagogy

Imagine an academy that values a public knowledge commons and supports and recognizes the academic labor required to develop, maintain, build and evolve that commons. Imagine your students actively contributing to that commons. In this episode, Robin DeRosa joins us to discuss open pedagogy, free textbooks, and the building of such  a commons.

Robin is a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Plymouth State University, an editor of Hybrid Pedagogy, and co-founder of the Open Pedagogy Notebook.

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

First-year classes

The first semester of the first year is pivotal in helping students see themselves as scholars. In this episode, Dr. Scott Furlong, a political scientist and Provost at SUNY Oswego, joins us in this episode to discuss how first-year classes may be used to captivate student attention and ignite a passion for learning.

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

Teaching with comics

Looking for ways to increase student confidence in their ability to learn? Or their ability to see themselves as professionals in the field? In this episode, Carly Tribulli, a Biology Professor at SUNY-Farmingdale, joins us to discuss how comics may be created and used to meet students where they’re at, draw them in, and help them develop mental models of complicated processes and concepts. We discuss Carly's plans to create an OER biology textbook in which biological processes are represented using comic strips, her planned research on the effectiveness of instructional use of comics, as well the positive role model that she provides in Carly's Adventures in Waspland, an instructional comic that Carly created for the American Museum of Natural History during her graduate study there.

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

Transhumanism

Does teaching a course with a team of three instructors across two continents seem like an impossible task? Now imagine that same course examining how the boundaries between humans and machines are increasingly blurred? In this episode, Damian Schofield joins us to discuss an interdisciplinary intercontinental collaboration in which students from opposite sides of the globe examine what it means to be human.

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

Common Problem Pedagogy

Most colleges are organized as a collection of academic silos. Many challenging problems facing society,  though, are multifaceted. In this episode, Leigh Allison Wilson joins us to discuss the use of common problem pedagogy, an approach that allows students to address a problem from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

Leigh is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program and Activities Center at SUNY-Oswego. She is also the author of two collections of stories, one of which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, Grand Street, Harper's, The Kenyon Review, Smokelong Quarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Leigh teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. In addition to the Flannery O'Connor award, she has received the Saltonstall Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a Pulitzer nomination by William Morrow for her collection Wind. Leigh is a Michener Fellow of the Copernicus Society and is a Henry Hoyns fellow of the University of Virginia.

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

Student writing

Writing can be a struggle for students, especially when they do not see the value or relevance of the writing assignments. This perception is a barrier faculty often face in writing-intensive courses, including first-year English composition. In this episode we will explore how project-based writing can motivate students to want to write and revise in a writing-intensive course.

Stephanie Pritchard is a faculty member in the English and Creative Writing Department and Co-Director of the Creativity Lab. She is also the Writing Fellow for the School of Communication, Media, and the Arts at the State University of New York at Oswego. Stephanie was the recipient of the 2016 SUNY-Oswego Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence.

A transcript and show notes are available at teaforteaching.com