Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning

Chris Hakala, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (CETLS) at Springfield College, joins us this week to dismantle a persistent myth about centers for teaching and learning. With over 30 years in faculty development, assessment, and the study of student learning, Hakala challenges the dead idea that a CTL’s job is to simply hand faculty a fixed set of best p...

Dr. Tommy Lee, a behavioral neuroscientist in Barnard College’s Department of Neuroscience and Behavior, joins Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning to challenge one of higher ed’s most persistent assumptions: that memorization is a low-level task standing in the way of real learning. Dr. Lee’s research considers how the brain forms episodic memory, including our memories of experiences and spaces....

Thomas Tobin, one of the foremost voices on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), joins us to preview his forthcoming book, UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning. Where his earlier work made UDL manageable for individual instructors, Tobin's new publication asks what happens when an entire campus — including administrators — advocates for and values universal design. Tobin first...

Thomas Tobin, one of the foremost voices on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), joins us to preview his forthcoming book, UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning. Where his earlier work made UDL manageable for individual instructors, Tobin's new publication asks what happens when an entire campus — including administrators — advocates for and values universal design. Tobin first...

For five years, Chris Gallagher, Kristi Girdharry, and Kevin Smith sat down each semester with the same set of twenty Northeastern University students. What began as an analysis of these students’ writing skills evolved into a book on how students often understand the learning process more clearly than faculty recognize.  Gallagher, Girdharry, and Smith's new book, Getting Learning Right: The Prom...

In this special bonus episode, we step away from our typical one-on-one interview format to share excerpts from a student panel that our host Amanda Irvin moderated at the recent "Reimagining Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI" Forum. This event was a joint effort coordinated by the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, the Data Science Institute, Columbia Alliance, the School of Engineer...

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Madisson Whitman, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Assistant Director of Curriculum Development at Columbia University's Center for Science and Society, and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. Drawing on her work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Whitman challenges one of the most pervasive assumptions of our moment: that AI in higher educa...

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Lucy Appert, Senior Director of Teaching Excellence & Innovation at NYU Arts & Science, and host of the new NYU Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation’s podcast, What Learning Looks Like . As an academic with 25+ years of teaching experience and a deep commitment to student-centered practices, Lucy shared with us her insights on what learning truly m...

In this episode, we talk with Mike Whitenton, Director of Academic Initiatives at Interfaith America (IA). Mike works at the intersection of rhetoric, religious narrative, and cognitive science to help educators create classroom spaces where students can engage meaningfully across differences. Our conversation explores what pluralism means in practice and how it intersects with existing research a...

Welcome to Season 11! In our opening episode, we sit down with Karen Costa, a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma awareness, and course/community design. Our conversation focused on her forthcoming book, An Educator's Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success , to be published in January 2026.  In this conversation, Karen challenges educators to...

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Robert Gray, Associate Professor of University Pedagogy at the University of Bergen in Norway, to explore a fundamental question about the purpose of higher education: should learning be an act of consumption or production? Maybe the best learning experiences don't simply ask students to absorb information—they invite students to actively re-write and co-creat...

This week, we have two guests on the podcast. We’re joined by Gene Flenady, Lecturer in Philosophy at Monash University, whose research concerns the structure and social conditions of human rational agency, including the implications of new technologies for meaningful work and tertiary pedagogy. Our second guest is Robert Sparrow, Professor of Philosophy at Monash University. His research interest...

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Phill Dawson about how and why college students “cheat.” Phillip (Phill) Dawson is the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. His research focuses on cheating, AI teaching assessments, and academic feedback tools.  What counts as cheating? How does cheating shortchange students in their learning jou...

Can you truly engage students in active learning when facing hundreds of faces in a lecture hall? We explore this challenge with Justin Shaffer, Founder of Recombinant Education, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, and Teaching Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering and Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Shaffer shares insights on managing...

Welcome to Season 10! In our opening episode, we sit down with Dr. Michelle Miller—Professor of Psychological Sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University—to explore the simple yet powerful practice of learning students’ names.  Drawing upon her research in memory, attention, and the impact of technology on learning, Dr. Miller shares how addressing student...

In the introduction of Liz Norell ’s new book, The Present Professor: Authenticity and Transformational Teaching (2024), she opens with two statements: “When you cannot be present, you cannot teach effectively” and “What’s good for students is good for us, too.” In this episode, Dr. Norell elaborates on these statements, and examines the importance of presence and authenticity in teaching and lear...

Kristi Rud enga , author of The Chronicle of Higher Education article, “ How to Rebuild a Broken Connection With Students ” (2024), writes that while intergenerational misunderstanding isn’t anything new, “the tumult of the past five years seems to have supercharged the disconnect between students and faculty members.” In this episode, Dr. Rudenga, Director of the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excelle...

How can instructors build trust, community, and a sense of belonging with their students to ultimately improve student learning? In today’s episode, we tackle this question with Peter Felten , Rachel Forsyth , and Kath Sutherland , authors of the two recent articles, “ Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education ” and “ Ex...

Welcome to Season 9 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! In this season, with our new host Columbia CTL Executive Director Amanda Irvin , we are exploring the dead idea that the world “outside” of the classroom doesn’t or shouldn’t influence the world “inside” the classroom—that students are exclusively intellectual beings when they step across the threshold (physical or virtual) of the classro...

In today’s episode, we say a bittersweet goodbye to our wonderful podcast host, Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Executive Director Catherine Ross , as she will be retiring from Columbia in June. Catherine sits down with Amanda Irvin , Senior Director of Faculty Programs and Services here at the Columbia CTL, who will be taking the helm as our next podcast host, starting in the fall...

In today’s episode we examine the systemic issues and dead ideas that underlie the hiring and supporting of contingent faculty. We speak with Kerry O’Grady , Director for Teaching Excellence at the Samberg Institute for Teaching Excellence at Columbia Business School. Dr. O’Grady discusses some of the “normalized” practices that often leave adjunct instructors with a lack of resources and support...

In this episode of 4 mini-interviews, we ask Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) staff John Foo, Jamie Kim, Rebecca Petitti, and Corey Ptak what’s been on their minds as they go about their work as educational developers. What dead ideas in teaching and learning are they encountering in their day-to-day work with instructors, in their reading and research? What are the underlying syste...

In this episode, we continue this season’s examination of graduate education, now looking into how institutions often overlook the need for preparing faculty to teach graduate students and graduate courses. We unpack the dead ideas that underlie this neglect with Leonard Cassuto , professor of English at Fordham University, and author of The Chronicle of Higher Education article “ Why is There No...

In this episode, we continue the conversation from our last episode on the topic of teaching development in doctoral education—this time from the student perspective! With co-host Caitlin DeClercq, Senior Assistant Director of Graduate Student Programs and Services at the Columbia CTL, we are joined by Columbia doctoral students Anirbaan Banerjee, Sara Jane Samuel, and Anwesha Sengupta. They share...

Welcome back to Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! In our first episode of Season 8, we speak with Drs. Benjamin Rifkin, Rebecca Natow, Nicholas Salter, and Shayla Shorter about their article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “ Why Doctoral Programs Should Require Courses on Pedagogy ” (March 16, 2023). Drs. Rifkin, Natow, Salter, and Shorter make the case for paying far more attention...