Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning

In today’s episode, Kevin Gannon , a Professor of History and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Grand View University, discusses how the pandemic has highlighted “bedrock” flaws in higher education systems, including in faculty evaluation processes. These flaws, based on dead ideas such as emphasizing equality rather than equity, disproportionately affect marginaliz...

Today we speak with renowned teaching and learning theorist and thought leader Laura I. Rendón , a Professor Emerita at the University of Texas-San Antonio and author of the book Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation (2009).  As the pandemic nears its end, Dr. Rendón believes we are now in “nepantla”, or a liminal space of inquiry an...

Welcome to Season 3 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! We begin this season by turning the conversation around: our guest today is Catherine Ross , Executive Director of the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, and host of Dead Ideas. Catherine, interviewed by Ian Althouse , Senior Assistant Director at the Columbia CTL, shares why she decided to start this podcast—including her own “ah...

In May 2020, two months after Columbia transitioned to fully remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we interviewed four Columbia undergrads about their experiences. Now almost a full year out, we wanted to check in again on the student experience and identify what dead ideas have surfaced in this extended period of disruption. In this episode, we speak with Sajan Bar, a junior in the School...

In his 1993 article, “Teaching as Community Property: Putting an End to Pedagogical Solitude”, renowned educational psychologist Lee Shulman argued that if teaching were viewed as community property, rather than something that happens behind closed classroom doors, there would be more value placed on teaching and more rigor in the evaluation of teaching. In today’s episode, we unpack this argument...

What are small steps instructors can take to teach inclusively? Where, when, and how should they be implemented? In today’s episode, we chat with the authors of the new book What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching (2021). These experts share approaches to conducting inclusive courses that are student-centered, community-based, and transparent, and...

What are the benefits of online education? What misconceptions or “dead ideas” do both instructors and students harbor about teaching and learning online? And how can online activities (both synchronous and asynchronous) benefit student engagement, community-building, and inclusion in the classroom? In today’s episode, we speak with Roxanne Russell , Director of Online Education at Columbia Univer...

Transcript What does the syllabus do? Who is it for? Why is it chronically unread? And how can it be written to foster an environment of trust and collaboration in the classroom? William Germano, Professor of English at Cooper Union, and Kit Nicholls, Director of the Center for Writing at Cooper Union, are authors of the book Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything...

Jesse Stommel, co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy, has not graded student work—in the traditional sense—in 20 years. Instead, he practices “ungrading”, a word which “...suggests that we need to do intentional, critical work to dismantle traditional and standardized approaches to asse...

Beginning In 2007, Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (VP&S) began to radically rethink their curriculum and assessment strategies for first and second year medical students. In today’s episode, we speak with Jonathan (Yoni) Amiel, Interim Co-Vice Dean for Education and Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs at VP&S, and Aubrie Swan Sein, Director of t...

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with Jenny Davidson , Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, to tackle the question of how much reading is enough in a literature course. Professor Davidson shares examples of how she balances assignment load with student learning objectives in her literature courses, and how she has had to adjust that balance during the COV...

On March 20, 2020, days after Columbia University transitioned to fully remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenny Davidson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, published an article in The Washington Post titled “ Forget distance learning. Just give every student an automatic A .” In this episode, Professor Davidson further discusses why she chose to give all of h...

In Spring 2020, Columbia students Mae Butler, Haya Ghandour, Jennifer Lee and Kalisa Ndamage served as undergraduate teaching and learning consultants as part of the CTL’s Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative. In this episode, these students share their experiences and perspectives on remote teaching and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss Columbia’s move to pass/fail gradin...

Carl Wieman, Nobel laureate and Professor of Physics and Education at Stanford University, has dedicated much of his career to addressing the problems and challenges of how universities teach science. In this episode, Wieman imparts the “aha!” moment that motivated his transition from physics research to science education research. He shares dead ideas that he encounters routinely in science teach...

Do we really only use 10% of our brains? Will using technology in my course improve my students’ learning and motivation? Are students nowadays “digital natives”? In this episode, we tackle these questions and others with Michelle Miller, Professor of Psychology at Northern Arizona University and author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology. Miller talks about her research and expe...

In our first episode, Diane Pike, Professor of Sociology at Augsburg University , discusses her motivation to write the article “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning”, which serves as the foundation of this podcast. Pike shares “light bulb” teaching moments from her career as well as how her thinking around “dead ideas” has evolved in the past 10 years since the article’s publication...

Welcome to Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning, a new podcast hosted by CTL executive director, Catherine Ross. Our mission is to encourage instructors, students, and leaders in higher education to reflect on what they believe about teaching and learning. In each episode, guests are invited to share their discoveries of “dead ideas”—ideas that are not true but that are often widely believed and em...