Tea for Teaching

Sharing Disciplinary Pedagogies

Many faculty are either the only, or one of a few, at their institution who teach a particular course, which can feel isolating, especially as we troubleshoot and experiment with our teaching. In this episode, Bill Goffe joins us to discuss an easy way to connect with faculty at other institutions to share disciplinary pedagogy.

Bill is an Associate Teaching Professor in economics at Penn State, and a former colleague here at the State University of New York at Oswego. Bill is very well known in the profession for his resources for Economists on the Internet, which was one of the very first internet guides available for economists, and it's now hosted and sponsored by the American Economic Association. He is a member of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Education, the Secretary-Treasurer for the Society of Computational Economics, an Associate Editor for Computational Economics and the online section of the Journal of Economic Education. And he's also an editorial board member for Netnomics. You can also find Bill on many listservs devoted to teaching and learning. 

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

OSCQR

Many faculty are finding themselves teaching a fully online course for the first time this fall. In this episode Alexandra Pickett joins us to discuss how faculty can use the research-based SUNY Online Course Quality Review rubric, known as OSCQR, to help them design more effective online courses.

 Alex is the SUNY Online Director of Online Teaching and an adjunct professor in the Education Department at SUNY-Albany. Previously, she was the Director of the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching, and prior to that the Associate Director of the SUNY Learning Network for over 12 years and has directly supported and coordinated the professional development of over 5000 Online SUNY faculty.

 

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

Lessons Learned Online

Faculty new to online instruction often attempt to replicate their face-to-face learning activities in the online environment, only to discover that they don’t work as well in this modality. In this episode, Alexandra Pickett joins us to discuss evidence on effective online teaching practices, gathered from a quarter century of experience in a large public university system. Alex is the SUNY Online Director of Online Teaching and an Adjunct Professor in the Education Department at SUNY Albany. Previously, she was the Director of the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching and prior to that the Associate Director of the SUNY Learning Network for over 12 years, and has directly supported and coordinated the professional development of over 5000 online SUNY Online faculty.

 

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

Pedagogies of Care: Evidence Based Practices

This week we continue a series of interviews with participants in the Pedagogies of Care project. In this episode, Dr. Michelle Miller joins us to discuss how the use of evidence-based teaching practices can be an effective way of demonstrating that you care about your students and their success.

Michelle is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and a President's Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Miller’s academic background is in cognitive psychology research interests include memory, attention, and student success in the early college career. Michelle is the author of Mind’s Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and has written about evidence-based pedagogy in scholarly as well as general interest publications. She's currently working on her newest book, Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: What the Science of Memory Tells Us about Teaching, Learning, and Thriving in a Wired World, scheduled as part of the West Virginia University Press series on teaching and learning, edited by Jim Lang. The tentative release date is 2021. She is also a contributor to the Pedagogies of Care project created by authors in this series.

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

Developing UL Online (DUO)

As colleges and universities plan for the uncertainties associated with the fall 2020 semester, it is fairly clear that faculty should receive more training in online instruction than was possible during the rapid transition to remote instruction that took place during the spring 2020 semester. Most professional development programs, though, are resource intensive and cannot be easily scaled given current college and university budget conditions. In this episode, Dr. Darina Slattery joins us again to discuss the less resource-intensive professional development program she developed in which groups of faculty complete two days of training to prepare them to efficiently transition their courses to online instruction. 

Darina is the head of Technical Communication and Instructional Design at the University of Limerick. She is also the Vice President of the IEEE Professional Communication Society.

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

 

 

Convergent Teaching

New faculty often enter college classrooms with little training on how to best support student learning. While peer evaluations of teaching are commonly used, these evaluations are often conducted by other faculty who also have little training in the science of learning. In this episode, Aaron Pallas and Anna Neumann join us to discuss how we might build a culture in which we all continue to develop our ability to support our students’ learning. Aaron and Anna are Professors of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. They are also the co-authors of Convergent Teaching: Tools to Spark Deeper Learning in College.

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

Pandemic Planning

The sudden switch from face-to-face to remote instruction in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic caught many faculty, students, and colleges by surprise. Until a vaccine is available, regional or nationwide campus shutdowns may occur during the fall semester. In this episode, Dr. Josh Eyler joins us to discuss what faculty and institutions can do to help prepare for future transitions to remote learning. Josh is the Director of Faculty Development and a lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi. Josh is also 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.

Pandemic-Related Remote Learning

Over the last two weeks colleges across the U.S. have made the decision to shift all classes from face-to-face to remote instruction in an attempt to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In this episode, Flower Darby joins us explore the challenges and the opportunities associated with this transition.  Flower Darby is the Director of Teaching for Student Success, an adjunct instructor in several disciplines, and the author, with James Lang, of Small Teaching Online. She is also one of the developers of the Online Teaching Toolkit created by the Association of College and University educators (or ACUE).

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

The Missing Course

Graduate programs provide very strong training in how to be an effective researcher, but generally provide grad students with little preparation for teaching careers. In this episode, Dr. David Gooblar joins us to discuss what all faculty should know to enable us to create a productive learning environment for all of our students.

David is the Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Temple University, a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the creator of Pedagogy Unbound. He is also the author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching.

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

Persistence Scholars

A college degree generally results in higher incomes, more pleasant and more stable jobs, greater life satisfaction, and lower unemployment probabilities. Many students that enter college, though, leave without a degree, but with high levels of student debt. In this episode, Dr. Michelle Miller joins us to discuss an innovative program she helped develop at Northern Arizona University in which faculty members work together to discover ways of helping their students successfully complete their educational goals.

Michelle is the Director of the First Year Learning Initiative, Professor of Psychological Sciences, and President's Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Miller’s academic background is in cognitive psychology. Her research interests include memory, attention, and student success in the early college career. She co-created the First Year Learning Initiative at Northern Arizona University and is active in course redesign, serving as a redesign scholar for the National Center for Academic Transformation. She is the author of  Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and has written about evidence based pedagogy and scholarly as well as general interest publications. She has been working with a Persistence Scholars program at NAU for the past two years.

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