Tea for Teaching

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 As...

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 politic...

Dr. David Eubanks created a bit of a stir in the higher ed assessment community with a November 2017 Intersection article critiquing common higher education assessment practices. This prompted a discussion that moved beyond the assessment community to a broader audience as a result of articles in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. In today's podcast, Dr Eu...

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 proj...

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 explorin...

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 dis...

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 t...

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 .

New faculty often come out of graduate programs that have trained them to be researchers but not teachers. The transition into full time teaching can be stressful and overwhelming for these colleagues. Maggie Schmuhl, a new faculty member in the Public Justice Department at SUNY-Oswego joins us to discuss how she has embraced evidence-based methods in her practice as a teacher. A transcript of thi...

Most colleges are organized as a collection of academic silos. Many challenging problems facing society,  though, are multifaceted. In this episode, Leigh Allison Wilson joins us to discuss the use of common problem pedagogy, an approach that allows students to address a problem from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Leigh is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program and Activities Center at...

We all want to be more effective teachers, but face increased demands on our time. What can colleges and universities do to efficiently support faculty development? In this episode, we discuss these issues with Chris Price, the Academic Program Manager at the Center for Professional Development at the State University of New York. Before joining the Center for Professional Development, Chris was t...

Enrollment in online classes has grown steadily over the last few decades. Today, over 30% of college students enroll in at least one online course. In this episode, we discuss the evolution of  and possible future directions of online learning with Greg Ketcham, the Assistant Dean of the Division of Extended Learning at SUNY Oswego.  A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at htt...

Have you ever been told that to keep students engaged you should chunk lectures into ten minute segments? Neil Bradbury, a Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral studies at the Rosalind Franklin University of Science and Medicine, investigated the origins of this recommendation. In this episode, Neil joins us to discuss his review of the research on stude...

Real-world learning experiences come in a variety of flavors. In this episode, Allison Rank, a political scientist at SUNY-Oswego, joins us to discuss how she has built a course in which students organize and run a non-partisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaign. This project combines many of the best features of service learning and simulation. A transcript of this episode and show...

In this episode, we discuss the growing role of microcredentials in higher education with Jill Pippin (Dean of Extended Learning at SUNY-Oswego), Nan Travers (Director of the Center for Leadership in Credentialling Learning at Empire State College), and Ken Lindblom (Dean of the School of Professional Development at the  State University of New York at Stony Brook). Jill, Nan, and Ken are members...

In this episode, Rebecca Mushtare discusses how she has used community-based learning and simulation projects to provide authentic learning experiences in her design courses. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at  http://teaforteaching.com .  

In this episode, we discuss Cornell's Active Learning Initiative with Doug McKee, an economist at Cornell and a co-host of the Teach Better podcast.  This initiative, designed to increase the use of active learning in instruction at Cornell, provides funding to departments to hire postdocs to redesign courses relying on evidence-based active learning techniques.  Doug provides an overview of the p...

Smartphones, laptops and tablets can be useful learning tools in the classroom; they can also be a source of distraction. In this episode, we discuss alternative policies that faculty and students might adopt to facilitate learning. Recent research on the relative effectiveness of handwritten vs. digital notetaking is also examined. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at: http...

Tired of boring online text discussions? Looking for a way for students to annotate, critique, or analyze images, videos, presentations and documents? In this episode, we’ll examine how VoiceThread can augment class activities and assignments. Our guest is Jeffrey Riman. Jeffrey is a coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He's also a consultant...

We want to design courses that allow all of our students to be successful. Students, though, often face barriers that interfere with their learning. In this episode, we examine how we can use universal design principles to help remove some of these barriers and help facilitate learning by all of our students. Our guest is Kristen Flint, an instructional designer at the State University of New York...

Over the last few decades, textbook prices have been increasing 3-4 times faster than the overall price level. Responding to this, many students choose to either not buy textbooks or delay purchasing them until the semester is well underway. In response, a growing number of faculty, departments, colleges, and universities have begun to create and use open educational resources that are freely avai...

Writing can be a struggle for students, especially when they do not see the value or relevance of the writing assignments. This perception is a barrier faculty often face in writing-intensive courses, including first-year English composition. In this episode we will explore how project-based writing can motivate students to want to write and revise in a writing-intensive course. Stephanie Pritchar...

Effective teaching requires good classroom management skills, engaging public speaking skills, and the use of evidence-based teaching strategies. All of this can be particularly daunting while teaching large-enrollment classes. In this episode, Bill Goffe, describes how his instructional approaches in large economic classes have evolved over time, in response to findings from cognitive science and...

How can we address controversial issues such as gun control in our classes in the aftermath of a mass shooting? What can we do to help keep ourselves and our students safe? In this episode, we discuss these and related issues with Jaclyn Schildkraut, a public justice professor who specializes in research on mass shootings. A transcript and show notes are available at teaforteaching.com

Casey Raymond, the 2017 winner of the President's Award for Teaching Excellence at the State University of New York at Oswego, joins us again in this episode to discuss how he uses Excel spreadsheets to generate algorithmic questions in Blackboard Learn.  A transcript and show notes are available at teaforteaching.com