Tea for Teaching

Moving Forward

After a year of experimentation during the pandemic we can reflect on practices worth keeping. In this episode, Martha Bless joins us to examine what we’ve learned from this experience about building and maintaining a productive class community in multiple modalities. Martha is an Academic Director at the Association of College and University educators (ACUE). She has been working with us at SUNY Oswego to support our faculty in the ACUE program for the past two years. She's a member of the Education Department at Albertus Magnus College and Southern Connecticut State University.

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

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.

Teaching with Zoom

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an explosion in the use of remote synchronous instruction, a modality that was rarely used until March 2020. In this episode, Dan Levy joins us to discuss the affordances and the challenges associated with this relatively new modality. Dan is an economist and a senior lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University where he teaches courses in quantitative methods, policy analysis, and program evaluation. He is the author of Teaching Effectively with Zoom, A Practical Guide to Engage Your Students and Help Them Learn, which is now in its second edition.

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

 

Student-Ready Courses

College faculty sometimes complain that many of the first-year students who enter their courses are not “college ready.” In this episode, Natalie Hurley joins us to examine strategies that can be used to ease this transition and help ensure that our courses are “student ready.” Natalie is a New York State Master Teacher and a 2018 NNSTOY STEM Fellow who teaches high school mathematics in the Indian River Central School District in Watertown, NY. 

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

Talking Tech

Student use of mobile technology can enrich student learning experiences, but can also interfere with the focused attention that is essential for learning. In this episode, Michelle Miller examine how we can talk to students about technology in ways that will help them become more efficient in their learning and professional lives.

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. Her research interests include memory, attention and student success in the early college career.

Michelle is the author of Minds 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 and Learning in a Wired World, scheduled as part of the West Virginia University series on teaching and learning.

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

Super Courses

Students often see our classes as boxes that they need to check in order to graduate. By reframing our courses around fascinating big questions that students can connect with, we can help our students recognize the value of these learning experiences. In this episode, Ken Bain joins us to explore examples of courses that do this well.

Ken is an award winning teacher, the founder of the teaching centers at Northwestern, New York, and Vanderbilt Universities. He is the author of two very influential prior books, What the Best College Teachers Do and What the Best College Students Do. His newest, Super Courses, was released in March 2021

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

Model Online Teaching

The Society for the Teaching of Psychology has identified 6 evidence-based criteria for model teaching. In this episode, Aaron Richmond, Regan Gurung, and Guy Boysen join us to discuss how those principles translate into effective practices in both physical and virtual environments.

Aaron is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Human Development at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Regan is the Interim Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and Professor of Psychological Science at Oregon State University. Guy is a Professor of Psychology at McKendree University. They are the authors of A Pocket Guide to Online Teaching: Translating the Evidence-Based Model Teaching Criteria (2021) and An Evidence-Based Guide to College and University Teaching: Developing the Model Teacher (2016).

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

Engaging Students

As faculty we don’t always have the opportunity to talk to students about their overall learning experience and what has worked well for them as students. In this episode, Christine Harrington joins us to discuss what keeps students engaged, from their perspective, and how that ties to research on teaching and learning.

Christine is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at New Jersey City University and the author of Keeping Us Engaged (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 Council of County Colleges.

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.

Gender and Groups

When we sort students into cooperative learning groups, we often attempt to create balanced groups that reflect the diversity of the students in our classes. In this episode Olga Stoddard joins us to discuss her recent research that suggests that this approach can be harmful for female students in classes in which a majority of the students are male.

Olga is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Brigham Young University, a Research Fellow at IZA (the Institute of Labor Economics), and the Research Director at the Science of Diversity and Inclusion Initiative, and the Co-Director of the Gender and Civic Engagement lab at BYU.

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