Tea for Teaching

Complaints about student writing are embedded in faculty conversations across disciplines. What if the issues with student writing, though, are not their fault, but ours instead? In this episode, Allison Rank and  Heather Pool join us to share suggestions about writing better writing prompts that provide student with explicit expectations. 

Allison Rank is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Oswego and Dr. Heather Pool is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Denison University. 

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

Do your students arrive in your classes with diverse educational backgrounds? Does a one-size-fits-all instructional strategy leave some students struggling and others bored? Charles Dziuban joins us in this episode to discuss how adaptive learning systems can help provide all of our students with a personalized educational path that is based on their own individual needs.

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

Learning is hard work. The most commonly used study techniques often provoke the illusion of knowing. David Parisian, a member of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at SUNY-Oswego joins us in this episode to discuss how he helps students overcome their misperceptions by introducing them to the science of learning.

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

 

Does reality sometimes fall short of your expectations? Perhaps it’s time to augment your reality. In this episode, Renee Stevens joins us to discuss the creation and use of augmented and virtual reality experiences that can increase our productivity, overcome cultural and language barriers, and provide a richer learning environment. Renee is an award-winning Interactive and Motion Designer and Assistant Professor and Associate Chair of Design at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. In addition to teaching, Renee also runs her own design studio, is an exclusive designer for Minted and the co-director of education for the upstate New York Chapter of AIGA, the Professional Association for Design.

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

 

You might think you have a heavy course load. Imagine being the instructor of record for approximately 5,000 students in a semester. In this episode, Dr. Kristina Mitchell, a faculty member and director of the online education program for the Political Science Department at Texas Tech, joins us again to discuss the design, organization, and management of high-enrollment online introductory political science courses.

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

 

Applied learning at the graduate level generally takes the form of traditional research projects, but other models can be successful. Linley Melhem, the Director of the International Teaching Assistant Program at Texas Tech University, joins us to discuss how service learning can challenge graduate students academically while building the capacity of an organization or department to take on a project or tackle a problem. The particular project discussed in this episode involves small teams of graduate students working with faculty and instructional designers to assist language faculty in transitioning existing face-to-face courses to a hybrid format.

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

Have you ever received comments in student evaluations that focus on your appearance, your personality, or competence? Do students refer to you as teacher or an inappropriate title, like Mr. or Mrs., rather than professor? For some, this may sound all too familiar. Kristina Mitchell, a Political Science Professor from Texas Tech University, joins us in this episode to discuss her research exploring gender bias in student course evaluations.

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

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.

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.

Big, complex, and messy problems provide rich learning experiences for students, but can be overwhelming if not properly scaffolded.  In this episode, Jeff Bradbury joins us to discuss a semester-long sound-replacement project that his students complete in a course on Sound for Television and Film.

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