Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Hello, and
Ryan:welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles continue our series on online teaching practices by talking about the importance of collaboration. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Collaboration.
Jared:We're off to a great start.
Rob:Let's collaborate on this episode.
Jared:Let's collaborate, Rob, as we do all the time by talking about things on our podcast. We are not on an island. We sit together and we work together and we work through all the difficulties and the frustrations that we have with building a podcast and also all the successes that we have. So in essence, we are going to be talking about what it is that we do to prepare for this podcast in an indirect way because we collaborate. And we should also clarify at the top of this episode that collaboration in this case is not necessarily online student collaboration.
Jared:Correct.
Rob:That'll be another episode on community and Yeah, we're gonna
Jared:talk about that later on. This one specifically is on collaboration between instructor and instructor, instructor and departments like CTL, things like that. So let's get that out. Let's clear the air first.
Rob:So let's let our new listeners know fine. We've used CTL quite a bit, but let's just make sure if somebody's coming in for the first time Yes. CTL stands for Center for Teaching and Learning here at Cedarville University. If you look at lots of universities across the country, you'll see something like this.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:There'll be a center for teaching or a center for learning or like ours, center for teaching and learning.
Jared:They also are c t and l. They put the and in there every now and then, but.
Rob:Quite a few of them.
Jared:And some colleges don't have them at all.
Rob:That is correct. Yes. They usually end up being, like, one person if that, and they do all these things. That's correct. Basically, the premise for this episode today is collaboration is important for those who are designing as well as those who are helping to design Yep.
Rob:And those who are the content experts.
Jared:And those who are teaching.
Rob:Yeah. So that that has quite a few people involved. So you do have your SMEs. Most faculty, at least in higher ed, and I think through k through 12, and you can correct me here since you've had experience in k through 12.
Jared:But k.
Rob:Usually, if you come at designing a course, you do it by yourself. It's assumed that you have been trained as an educator, and so you're in charge of the content, you're in charge of the delivery Yes. You're in charge of the assessment, you're in charge of the technology, although you might have a technology person usually in a school building in the k through 12 setting.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:But in terms of having somebody who's in charge of media or creating media for you or helping you create media, that's all on the individual. Yes. That is correct. In higher education, it tends to be the same as well. And it became clear for a lot of these things, especially as higher ed went online, that a faculty member couldn't be all things, all people, and make the kinds of experiences, educational experiences that learners were expecting.
Rob:Yeah. So you have to be a great communicator, you know, really good at, speaking, and be a good presence online in terms of video. Right? You have good video. So there's a lot of work that goes into that.
Rob:And our point, I think, one of our major points is you can't do this alone.
Jared:That is correct. Quality education in an online space cannot be created in isolation. There's always going to be a gap that needs to be filled. You can be the greatest video editor of all time. You can be the greatest script writer.
Jared:You can be the greatest assessment creator. You could be the greatest grading feedback giver. I'm trying to come up with other fake terms and, like, things you can put on your LinkedIn or your resume. You could be a announcement giver. That's great.
Jared:But there's always going to be something that you're lacking or needs improvement on. Mhmm. You know, we're all not the greatest educators. We would like to be, but we are not. So it's important to and sometimes this requires a bit of self reflection on your part where you're like, okay, maybe I am not as great at this area, and I need to reach out and make a connection somewhere, either on my campus, in my department, or in an outside of my department, maybe an administrator, or even it's someone that you've made a connection with elsewhere.
Jared:Mhmm. Maybe it's a former like, I I can I can think of several of my peers through Boise that I could call on now to help me with game based learning? Mhmm. Like, I wanted to, I could read all the stuff, all the literature on it that I could and then ask Chad GPT for help to design something, but I'm my knowledge itself is very limited in that. So calling on someone else would be a tremendous asset to me, but I have to be willing to say to myself, I'm not that great at this to do it.
Rob:So this brings back that whole conversation we had the last time in terms of or in a previous episode where we talked about reflection. Right? You need to reflect on this process as well. What am I good at? Just like what you just said.
Rob:What am I not so good at? What's required of me in this course, in an online course? It just has a lot of elements that are in it. Organization. We've already talked about organization.
Rob:You've you need to be organized. If you're not, but you're really good at the content. It's like having an artist who is phenomenal at painting, let's say, really good at painting, man, it's amazing what they can paint. But then you come to them and you say, I see that you're a great painter. Could you teach me how to paint like you do?
Rob:Most of the time, I would say most great artists like that can't teach you how to paint like they do because you're not them. Yep. And they can give you some ideas. They could give you some pointers, but you're, you know, you're pointed in the wrong direction to begin with to say, one, I think you can teach me, and two, I wanna do it exactly like you. It's just not going to work out.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:But if you do find someone that can help you break down the steps, like a learning designer, some of what you and I do and our team does, and you have others who can help bring you along, maybe you've got somebody else who wants to learn too, and they can collaborate on this, you can move forward together and create something that's gonna benefit everyone. And I think that's really the power of online learning because it brings a lot of these things that would be separate and somebody's, you know, job description just assumed you've gotta do all these things. Or if you wanted to do them, then you had to go figure out and find people, you know, or pay someone. Right. Or you use this publisher's content
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Or the way they're doing certain things. So, you know, all that to say, online brings with it this idea that you can and should collaborate. And let me say this, you should collaborate on your face to face as well. I mean, genuinely.
Jared:Right. This episode is not limited to online learning.
Rob:It just I think it just underscores the need when you realize how much is involved in creating an educational experience.
Jared:It's also important to keep in mind that online education, and again, this is an assumption. I should probably do some research before I make this statement, but here we go. Online education is evolving quicker than face to face. Rob's not looking at me, so I'm not sure if it's Would you agree?
Rob:I think, yes. Education as a whole and its modalities is definitely
Jared:Probably as a result of generative AI growing the way it has.
Rob:Well, just technology in general.
Jared:Technology in general. Yeah. In in essence, online education, even though it's been around for, well Twenty years. Twenty years or something like that. Yeah.
Jared:I took my first online class twenty three years ago. As far as the lifespan of education, online education still in its infancy. So it's important to realize that a technique or whatever that you're using now may be irrelevant in two to three years. And as students change, as their, personalities change, we've talked about the generational difference between the current college student and the future college student. We talked about that in a previous series.
Jared:It's even more relevant if you consider that when they go into an online space. Something that you're doing to help online students now may not work in five to six years, but there are people if you surround yourself with experts in online learning or those who are like instructional designers or learning designers who are researching that and keeping up on it, you can partner with those people to because, you know, you don't let's be let's be real. There's only twenty four hours in the day, so educators aren't going to be able to do everything that they want and stay up on this research. They've got their own content to research and stay up on. So it's important to make these connections with experts or people within your circle.
Jared:Or you talked about concentric circles, in a bigger circle, to connect with, to keep you informed on these changes so that your content and your online courses remain successful and relevant to students.
Rob:Yeah. I can think of many people here at Cedarville that exemplify that. One that I think of would be doctor Chris Miller. Yes. Someone who has worked, you know, tirelessly on his information, but he's always pushing.
Rob:He's always connecting. He's connected with us on several occasions. He has done things where he's always looking to make it better. Right? And he knows that he can do so more with others than by himself.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:In that collaboration, he he he collaborates with so many, not just us, but other faculty members. He's always open to that. And I think, you know, I would say the one thing that will help our listeners is you have to have that attitude first. You have to be willing to be open and reflect on those things, like you said earlier, that you're not maybe great at and be honest with yourself.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:You know? I am I'm probably not great at this. And do the things that you're good at, but then at the same time, look for those people who can help you in those other areas. For Cedarville, that's pretty easy. We've put that into place with the Center of Teaching and Learning, but there are others.
Rob:So let's talk concentric circles, as you said Yeah. Just a minute ago, starting with yourself. What do you think is most important, you know, in terms of reflection on on your own abilities when you start there?
Jared:So I have I would start with either work or family. So which one do you want me to pick from?
Rob:Just do work. Work? Let's do work.
Jared:I would say it's the immediate department that I'm in. So CTL, I would say that's where I would say most of the people in CTL, I would keep in my concentric, my closest concentric. I'm looking at Ryan when I do this. Yeah. Know.
Jared:I'm smiling. I respect you, Ryan. I really do. I promise. And I guess now I'm thinking about how I would define the people that I put into the close sphere.
Jared:I'd say those have commonalities in our experience and in our education as well. And then from there branching out to maybe some sort of connection, but not nearly as connected as the ones inside the, I'm going way too deep into this now, into my concentric circle. But then going kind of outside of that would be other people in our department that don't necessarily have the same skill set or have the same education as I do or job occupation, but they're still relevant to my own sphere of improvement. And the outside of that would be, I guess within my closest concentric circle, then I'm gonna have to add some people that I went through, the doctorate program with. Let's see.
Jared:I don't know. I haven't thought that much through though, but there is that I have to sit down and define it. But I have an general idea of what who would go where, least in the first two.
Rob:Yeah. And I think if you if you if our listeners think about that most of the time, we don't think about it. And if we take some time, we think about not just those who are close to us, but then also thinking, well, who could I do who could help me potentially in these areas? And you start reflecting on that, then you can write some names down. And and like I say, if you don't ask, you already have your answer.
Rob:It's true. If you don't ask people, you already have your answer.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Like I said, here at Searville, we already have a process, right, in terms of how we enable certain folks, but, with especially with the online design. Right? But if you're doing something that maybe is not aimed at that and you've got something else going on, it's just still a good process to go through in terms of thinking through collaboration.
Jared:Yep.
Rob:Who should I be collaborating with? Who are the people that can fill in those gaps for me?
Jared:Or it could be people you don't know yet, but you want to know. Correct.
Rob:So it's it's more than thinking about a person. It's about thinking about a role.
Jared:So you could put a spot there, but make it like a friend request and be like, I'm waiting. Their their inclusion in my circle is pending their acceptance of my friendship or collaborations.
Rob:And but then that that keys you up. Right? You're thinking about that. It's it becomes forefront in your mind. It's like, I know to be successful, I need these people.
Jared:Yep. Right?
Rob:When we were doing this podcast, we didn't know everything we needed to be successful. Like, we didn't know we needed an executive producer like Orion. We didn't know we needed an executive executive producer like we do mister L.
Jared:Mhmm. So, I mean, there are other podcasts that take place on this campus.
Rob:Yeah. Mark Weinstein.
Jared:So Mark Weinstein has won the Cedarville Stories podcast, and we kind of picked his brain a bit to see what it is that they're doing. Gave us a lot
Rob:of great information. Did. And he does a great job with his.
Jared:You know, and some that we use and some that we were like, well, it doesn't really fit with what we're doing. Right. Because we have a different type of podcast.
Rob:But it's the process. Sure. Right? Collaboration. You sometimes it's easy, like, within your tight circle to just keep having those conversations, but you can quickly get into an echo chamber.
Jared:Right.
Rob:And that's why you gotta broaden that circle out. You gotta think, you know, you gotta think wider circles.
Jared:Yep. So we talked about in general a collaboration and kind of giving the reasoning behind it, but let's give an example specifically with this series talking about how collaboration could benefit your online courses.
Rob:So one of the things we do is we have kind of a set process that we take potential, what we call SME, subject matter experts, through. And it has a course alignment grid. We show them examples of media. We show them examples of assessment. We also show them examples of some of the output, you know, so I don't kill everybody with all of our our jargon that we use internally.
Rob:But we show them all these things. We show them examples, and we show them good examples. So there's a lot of showmanship, if you will, upfront that Ryan will do with these folks and with the instructional designer, be it yourself, myself, you know, doctor Yeh or or Jason Freeling. So we get in there. We show them that.
Rob:It usually takes, what, about thirty minutes?
Jared:Give or take.
Rob:Give or give or take. And then then we also have the project management side of things, which again, Ryan Ryan helps with in getting that organized for deliverables, deadlines, expectations in terms of specific things once we get done with the CAG, as we like to call it, the course alignment grid. And once we move past that, then in those conversations, we might ask them, is there something that you've seen out there that you think is really good? Let's take a look at that. Or did somebody do something that you thought, man, that really landed well?
Rob:Are there conferences? Are there you know, that's really far afield, but still, we're constantly looking to throw the net out to see what's working in the industry.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Right? And so that's the kind of collaboration that we do. It's internal between our team and the subject matter expert. And once we get all that together, we'll also bring in the media with Jacob and his area in terms of video, audio, graphics, anything that has to do with media. Mhmm.
Rob:He comes in and helps produce, whether that means he's gonna record, do some editing. We got script writing. We got somebody to edit. So there are there's a lot going on in doing a course.
Jared:And it it varies too, like, from the ID side of things, instructional design side of things. I I see different SMEs come in with different skill sets. Yes. So it varies on how I collaborate with them. Like, I'm working with a SME right now who did the course alignment grid on his own.
Jared:I just left some feedback, and he's also now doing all the building inside of our LMS Canvas, which is totally fine. I'm just coming alongside and just supporting. Whereas, there's other builds I've done where we have to do the course alignment grid together. So it helps a lot when a SME comes in with an understanding of what they know and what they don't know. Yep.
Jared:And I think that helps me as an idea as well because I don't know the content. 98% of the time, I don't know the content. I'm just assuming that what you're saying is accurate. The only time I notice is when it's like glaring mistake and I'm like, okay, that doesn't make any sense at all. For example, my wife is an accountant.
Jared:I am not. She takes care of the finances. I kind of do by asking things like, I buy this? That's how I contribute to the finances. So when I'm building accounting courses or I'm building finance courses, like, you know, I I built a microeconomics course and a macroeconomics course, and I still know the difference between the two.
Jared:So, like, there's there are certain situations where I'm like, even if I were to look at this, I would have wouldn't have any idea what this stuff is. But that's not my skill set. And if I need to do that, then that's great. But I'm looking at it from the assignment design side and how everything comes together. So, you know, if if I were asked to build an accounting course and provide the content and the assessments, then I definitely have to reach out to someone who knows that because I wouldn't know that stuff.
Jared:But it just depends on the, like I said, the the subject matter expert that comes in. It just it varies on my on our give and take as far as what how we collaborate on those things.
Rob:And that's that's right to the point. Collaboration isn't a one size fit fits all in the sense of you just do this one particular process
Jared:Right.
Rob:And everything's good. You know, you can guarantee the outcome. I think we've done a pretty good job of removing the variables. We continue to work. We continue to strive to do better just like we do here on the podcast.
Rob:You know, we've done a lot of collaboration just to refine our processes. And I think that's gonna continue. And the point really here in this conversation for online learning is find some sort of process. It doesn't have to be ours, but build a framework that works for you and just move through it. Keep cycling through it.
Rob:You know? Iterate. Yeah. Iterate. It's it's continuous process improvement.
Rob:That is the goal. Mhmm. Really? It's are you better today than you were a month ago or a year ago? You should see it doesn't have to be giant leaps.
Rob:No. It just needs to be iterative movements, you know, becoming better and better at what you're doing.
Jared:It could be something as small as when you go back and you're preparing for your next semester and you pull up a slideshow or your content delivery method, just take a look at it, analyze it, and say, k. What can I do better? Or I mean, this is where you start the self reflection process can be a daily thing because you can then leave notes for yourself for next semester and go, oh, that didn't land well at all. I need to fix this slide. But if you don't ever write that down, then you just repeat the process.
Jared:Right. And you're like, oh, right. Like, usually, it happened to me several times where I'd be in the middle of a lecture and I would remember, oh, this didn't work last year after I as I'm saying it. And then sure enough, it doesn't work. And I'm like, oh, I gotta fix that.
Jared:Then I'd forget again. So, you know, something maybe in an online course like that, keep yourself practically, keep yourself notes. Like, this didn't work or this didn't go well at all. This didn't do, you know, that stuff.
Rob:You can't do the next step, which is bring somebody else into the process if you haven't done this first step that you're talking about.
Jared:Right. Yeah.
Rob:Right? If you haven't evaluated your own work and been critical and when I say critical, I don't mean harshly. I don't mean meanly. I mean honest. Yeah.
Rob:Just honest with it. Did it land the way you wanted it to? Yes or no? You know who you
Jared:can ask about that too? Your students. Your students.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. Even with that, if you're not honest with yourself about your performance, you're not gonna take whatever your students have Mhmm. To say in the way that you should. Yeah.
Rob:You'll either take it one way or the other. You'll be like, meh.
Jared:They don't know. Don't what they're talking about.
Rob:The kids these days are just getting worse and worse.
Jared:And their iPads and their YouTubes.
Rob:Yeah. Or you become extremely self critical. Yeah. I can't believe I did that.
Jared:Yeah. That's me.
Rob:When in reality, it had nothing to do with that and the student is way off base. Yep. But you're not framing it properly. And it has to start from an attitude of willingness to fail to be wrong. And that is very difficult.
Rob:That can be one of the most difficult pieces of collaboration for successful collaboration is an openness that requires trust to know that the other person sitting across from you can say something that shows a gap in your performance or your knowledge or something, but yet they're there to help and not to harm you, which takes trust. And you have to have that same perspective as you look at your your own work before you can bring somebody else into it. But that is the next step, bringing someone else in.
Jared:So your major takeaways from this are really just to find someone within your first off, define your circles, which I need to go back and do. Define my concentric circles. I'm gonna put a big dry erase board in my office and just draw circles, figure this out. And then maybe as people grow in their expertise, I can move them. Maybe like Ryan could eventually end up in the inner circle.
Jared:But, you know, I have an inner circle now. This is great. But do that and then use that as a way of figuring out who it is you would like to collaborate with. Maybe it's people you already know, people that you wanna make a connection with, and not for the purpose of, hey, what can you do for me? But more of a with a sense of self reflection, say, I'm really weak in this area, I know you're an expert in it.
Jared:Could we partner and could you help me with help me to grow in this area so I can improve in x y z, whatever it is. Right. I really think that's the biggest takeaway. And then, you know, it could it could be colleagues, it could be, your CTL on campus or whatever it is. Make those connections and really start to, you know, first off, yeah, where can I improve and then iterate and then figure out from there, how do I continue to that?
Jared:Cause it doesn't stop. You can't be like, yes, I have finally arrived.
Rob:It's not one and done.
Jared:No, it's not. Constantly, it's a cycle. It's an iterative process.
Ryan:Thanks for joining us for this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you'd like to collaborate with us, we would love to hear from you. So please connect with us on LinkedIn, or you can shoot us an email at CTLPodcastcedarville dot edu. And don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.