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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.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles kick off a new series on online teaching practices. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Thank you, Ryan.
Jared:Yes, Ryan. Thank you. How are you today, Ryan?
Ryan:Great. I'm enjoying this affogato. Yeah.
Jared:We Is that
Rob:what it's actually called?
Jared:Yes. It's a espresso poured over scoop of ice cream.
Ryan:Yeah. And it's delicious. If I added some cinnamon, I agree, it would be reminiscent of tiramisu.
Jared:Yeah. I was burdened to find out that we had ice cream right before coming over here because I didn't want to have it before recording because I'd fall asleep. Yeah. So I'm upset. I'm not upset that we're doing the podcast.
Rob:You're happy.
Jared:I'm upset that there's ice cream. But if you And I can't have it until after the podcast
Ryan:is But if you did the affogato, the sugar plus the espresso, I'm, like, on cloud nine right now.
Jared:Climbing the walls. Energy. Looking forward to that happening in the middle of this. But we are launching a new series.
Rob:A new series.
Jared:Which is one of my favorite things that we do because it's like new page, new book, brand new things, more stuff that we can act like we know about, and end up going, wait a minute, that's completely wrong. Let's Not that we've ever done that before.
Rob:Let's talk a second about what's brought us to this occasion, and that is the things that we're doing here at Cedarville. We're bringing on new online undergraduate programs at Cedarville this coming fall. So when we started having those conversations with some of our faculty, there was this constant question that came up like, well, how do we know we're doing really good online learning? Yes. Great question.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:You know, CTL has lots of resources. We provided those, but it started a conversation amongst ourselves as well to say, this is probably an opportunity for us to just take a moment this summer and go over some finer points. We've been over online learning in the past. Yep. Lots of resources on our website.
Rob:But I think this time, we really wanna focus in on just a couple of areas. And one of those would be reflective practice and self assessment. And, Jared, you're gonna give us more of what's coming in the series later on. But this is what we're really focusing on today in terms of having that conversation.
Jared:Yeah. Because we wanna we wanna frame this series around the idea of reflective practice.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:It's not necessarily specific to online teaching or online learning, but the idea of reflective practice is an important aspect of being an educator who wants to continue to be effective in the classroom.
Rob:You know, we use the term lifelong learning and we wanna be involved in that. But specifically, what we want to be involved in is the changing of self, and the only way that happens is through reflecting through truth. What I would say, all truth is God's truth. So reflecting on the truth that we are presented with or that we go and we look at.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And this could be in our courses. It could be something that you choose. But we wanted to look at it from a teacher's perspective as well as, you know, what are things that a teacher can do inside of their course? So what can a teacher practice for themselves personally with reflection, but also how can they incorporate reflection and self assessment inside their courses? Right.
Jared:Yeah. And it's something that is notoriously difficult for educators. And I struggled with this when I taught. You have to be vulnerable and you have to be humble and you have to be willing to admit when something goes wrong. And it's super difficult to plan a lesson.
Jared:Like, I remember having, like, dreams like, oh, this is a great idea. And I go into the classroom and it just bombs. And I'm like, well, I just wasted a good two weeks of that. And it's, it's difficult to want to, look back at your own teaching, or like, you know, you know, some people, some educators will record themselves teaching. I remember I had to do that as part of the resident educator, stuff when I was in K 12 and it was terrifying to go back and watch it, even though I know the lesson would go well.
Jared:I was like, I don't want to go back and look at my own teaching. So it isn't I mean, it's something we realize is is we can't just be like, hey, reflect. Just do it. Okay? Because it is it is a very difficult process to go through.
Rob:Yeah. You you you definitely hit it well, I think, when you said humility is required. Right? And that's difficult for especially those of us who are in higher education or even those in k through 12 who carry a PhD. And I remember this is something that we really discussed with doctor Shultz with his servant teaching.
Rob:Right? In that sense of being willing to get things wrong
Jared:Oh.
Rob:And try it and be honest with those that you're serving and create this culture of mutual respect, but as well as continuing to move forward and and live up to the expectations that you've put in front of these these students. Mhmm. So let's talk a little bit about why we should do it. You know, you've talked about you need humility, but why why should we do it?
Jared:It helps you better understand teaching and learning as a whole, you know, being open to new ideas and being willing to improve what you've already done. I mean, we as educators know that there are people in our departments or our disciplines either in K through 12 or higher ed that have done the same thing for thirty years. And like, it ain't broke, so I'm not going to fix it. And that could be a bit of like, you know, looking through it with rose colored glasses and maybe not actually being willing to look at it. But dang it, my students are passing, so I'm not gonna change anything.
Jared:But being reflective allows you to encounter new ideas and be willing to, experiment, try new things. I was very fortunate to teach at a school where my administration allowed me to stretch a bit and I also had students that would let me do that too. And they weren't immediately going to be like, ah, this is awful. What are you doing? They were very forgiving of my, when I would try an app or, because I, you know, I lived in educational technology.
Jared:That's my hometown basically, in teaching and now in higher ed. So we try an app and it would be awful and it wouldn't work. I'm like, okay, well, I need to pivot here. So I'm very fortunate and so I recognize that. But like being willing to try out new things, is that's that's part of it.
Jared:I think also professional development, and that gets kind of a bad word in education. It really does because, know, how many different things are you like, how many different memes do you see of, you know, I get teacher memes all the time on Instagram. And it's like, you know, this could have been an email kind of a thing. Right. That mentality of why am I going to a PD session for someone who's never stepped foot in a classroom before?
Jared:Like, so but it there is some good PD. There are some good conferences, but it's just being willing to being open to that idea. And then we talked about before, like journaling or recording yourself or, just keeping notes of what happens in the classroom when you try to do something new or something like, man, something something weird is going on with my students. Like this worked three years ago. Why isn't this working now?
Jared:And that could be generational issues or it could be a difference in the caliber of your students. So just being open and willing to do that.
Rob:Here's one thing that goes through my head as we think about it is, you know, this idea of, well, shouldn't you just be content If you're doing well in a certain area, shouldn't you just be content? That's a biblical thing. Right?
Jared:Yeah. Yeah.
Rob:You know, be content in all things. But for me, I think it is not about contentment as much as it is about progress. Yeah. Because you can't you can't move forward. Number one, you know you're not perfect.
Rob:You know you're not doing it a % perfect. And then there's also just that wrestling. You and I have talked about that before is how much are you responsible for in that situation? Yeah. And if you're not even asking those questions or you're using reflective tools or reflective practices, it's really hard to be able to see where that, you know, thermocline is between what is the student's responsibility and what is your responsibility.
Rob:Mhmm. And maybe it's not even the right question, kinda like I've said, you know, in our conversations, like, maybe it's not what's my responsibility as much as as a teacher, I'm asking the question of how can I help? Yeah. How can I help? I see an issue.
Rob:Should I be helping? Can I help? Yeah. I mean, just having that question. That doesn't mean it's necessarily your job, but at least you've asked the question, and that can't help.
Rob:I don't think that can happen unless you are doing reflective practice.
Jared:It limits the response of kids these days. Right? Oh, kids these days, all they want to do is be on their phones or they want to, they'll just use generative AI for everything. I'll just put it the chatty bitty. Why am I even bothering doing this anymore?
Jared:Yeah. It makes you think, okay, well, and you've always asked me this, Robin, as a, as an ID and as a, worker, you've always asked, okay, well, what's the actual problem? Are you trying to treat symptoms of the problem? Or is there something deeper? And like you were talking about, you know, what can I do?
Jared:What are the things that, maybe I can affect? Because you can't hold a hand to your students, especially in higher education.
Rob:Right.
Jared:At this point, it's like either you do it or you don't this in some respects. But is there any kind of percentage that I can move the needle in some way based on what I'm doing? And I think another important part of this is doing this in a way that shows your students the importance of reflection.
Rob:You're modeling it.
Jared:You're modeling it to them. Like it's super important for them to be aware and see you because it, you know, it makes you more transparent to them. Yeah. You know, they can see that you're a human being. Like when you mess something up in class or you totally are lax in your grading, it's okay to tell your students, Hey, I'm really behind on this.
Jared:You know, I was sick last week. My kids were sick last week. Whatever it was, be open and transparent. Or like, if you mess something up, hey, this, assignment is wrong, and the student brings it to your attention. Like, the directions are wrong here.
Jared:You graded this wrong. It's okay to be like, hey, you know what? I messed that up. That's my fault. And it shows that vulnerability, it shows that you're being reflective, and it shows the importance of it to your students as well.
Rob:Well, and I think the next step to that is is after that vulnerability or that honesty comes the corrective action. Right? You decide, here's how I'm gonna fix that. You know, I messed up here. Here's how we're gonna fix it.
Rob:Or even say, how could we have done that better? How could this have landed better for you? Because I don't feel like it did. And that takes some honesty on your part and, like you said, vulnerability. And as we we talked about in terms of modeling, I think, you know, we're in a good spot where we can get to talking about how do we do these things.
Rob:Yeah. How do you and I do these things? Yeah. And what are the tools that we use on a daily basis to push ourselves and to not be okay with yesterday, not judge ourselves, but move forward into the into the future. Like, okay.
Rob:I did that. That didn't work out or I missed it or I didn't hit my deadline. Okay. What led me there? You know, I say explore the gap.
Rob:After you explore the gap, then you figure out, okay, well then how can I make this better? What do I need to practice?
Jared:Mhmm. So we as educators have our own way of doing it, but as a podcast as a whole, we've also spent time in this reflective process. Oh, yeah. I mean, think about how the different ways our views have changed towards the content we've talked about. Like, I'll use me for example.
Jared:I won't talk about how you've learned things because you probably haven't because you're a genius.
Rob:No, I definitely have.
Jared:And I
Rob:am not a genius.
Jared:Okay, that's fair. But active learning was one thing that, you know, I had to eat some humble pie when it came to that, not realizing just how much, or just how incredibly cool it was. Like, I was already a fan of it, but I was like, we need to do this. And then Rob famously, I still remember this, he looked at me and goes, do you actually know what that is? Not exactly in those words, but it's what it felt like.
Jared:And I was like, yeah. Keep using that word.
Rob:I don't think it means what you think it means.
Jared:But that, and then the biggest one probably as far as a thought shift was competency based. And I was like, there's no chance of this ever working. This doesn't work.
Rob:Yeah. We flip flopped on that.
Jared:Yeah. I know.
Rob:It's great. Because, you know, I was like, oh, you know, gung ho. I've been, like, gung ho on on competency based education for years. Yeah. I mean, I've tried to get programs in the different schools that I've been at.
Rob:You know, we're talking now on twenty years ago.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:But here I am listening thinking, you know, like, I'm listening to doctor Wolverd
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:With you. You were saying, I need it to be community based. I need it to be community based. Yeah. I'm like, well, competency based education really isn't community based.
Rob:I don't think you can do it that way. Right? Uh-huh. And we have doctor Wolverth on Esteeved. Distinguished.
Rob:Yes. I mean, you know, I I can't say enough Fantastic. Enough accolades for doctor Wolverd. And he goes, oh, yeah. That's the only way we do it.
Rob:I just remember when he said that I was sitting there looking at you and I was like, I don't even know what to say right now.
Jared:I'm sorry. It's
Ryan:something you could have
Rob:said, which you chose not to. Yeah. I think I did at least say, well. Yeah. There goes that or something to that effect.
Rob:Yeah. Yep. But I think that's part of it. You know, we don't sit here and beat each other up. No.
Rob:We just explore. We do ask questions. We do push on each other, and we do that in the podcast as well when we meet outside and we just keep working this through.
Jared:Right.
Rob:But there's never this idea of, oh, I've gotta win.
Jared:Yeah. I wanna win.
Rob:I wanna win. But I think the same thing, you know, goes for what we want to talk about today, and that's tools that we use for educators. Here's some ones that we use. Yeah. Why don't you start us off with, one that you've learned from our esteemed colleague?
Jared:So our our good friend Dave Mulder, introduced me to the idea of the florologium and, he brings it up in his episode. I forget which episode it was. We'll put it in the show notes. He talks about the floralegium as an idea of going through and reading literature and then taking parts out of it to, create a new document or a summary or almost a word cloud, and then using that to look back. And so I've used that myself in my writing.
Jared:I use it in my, also all the literature I was reading leading up to my, dissertation. But I've used it to look at my own writing and what I've been reading and kind of synthesize and reflect on what did I mean by this? What how do I explore this more? How do I best say this? So the Florilegium is is great for for that.
Jared:So that's one that I've used myself. What about you, Robert?
Rob:I I like using, your most loved tool, free writing.
Jared:Has that made it to the podcast, my disdain for free writing?
Rob:It probably has. I don't know. If it if it hasn't, it has now.
Jared:Okay. Well, anyway So I'm not taking anything away from it. I just don't get it.
Rob:No. It's it's just a way of reflecting on themes or reflecting on open ended statements in such a way that you it's time bound, so you give yourself a limited amount of time. You don't worry about errors, spelling errors, grammar, how large your letters are if you're using pen and paper. I I tend to use just a keyboard, and I just keep going. Sometimes I miss spaces.
Rob:Some you know, sometimes I capitalize, sometimes I don't. You just keep going. You just move your hands, and you try to flow with whatever thoughts are coming through from the prompt that you created. So when I went to design my business ethics course, I used free writing to to basically think through what I wanted students to feel, think, and do. So I'd say, I want students to be able to dot dot dot, then gave myself five minutes, and I just started writing.
Rob:And I had some things I didn't even have complete sentences. It doesn't even matter. It's just whatever's flowing through my head, then it starts coming to me. I go from one idea to the next, and I just keep going as fast. And I don't, again, don't care about anything.
Rob:For some people, this is really difficult, especially writers who are used to writing and editing themselves Yeah. At the same time Mhmm. Which I think you are one of those.
Jared:I can't I can't let typos or grammar things
Rob:So that really bothers you. So if you can't shut that off, it becomes difficult. But if you practice it, you you can. If you get yourself in a little box and you say, I'm not gonna worry about it, and you just do it. Once you do it, you know, it it works right.
Rob:I came upon free writing with a book called Accidental Genius by Mark Levy. And great little tool. I've used it. I've used it with the team. I use it in my own personal life.
Rob:It's something that I tend to go back to. It's just a really quick way because sometimes I have a hard time just sitting without any kind of pressure. I need I need some pressure.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:And so I provide that through the time and it helps me out tremendously.
Jared:To each his own, I suppose. Another one I like is, and I've used this before, more to, outline, but I also could use it in some or I can see its usefulness in reflective practice is mind mapping. One of my favorite apps to use is MindNode, and it allows you to literally just do a mind map as you're thinking through certain things, which I've done. And you get a really cool looking organization out of it and you're like, wow, this is and then you like kinda pull it up on a big screen and stare at it and be like, where was my brain going? And where do I want to explore more?
Jared:Like, why did my why did my brain go this direction
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:In this way? And so I guess it's like free writing, but it's
Ryan:I don't
Rob:know. It's a little bit more visual. It's a visual way of kinda doing it and forcing yourself into connections, but you do allow your brain to go different ways and you end up making different connections and Yeah. Yeah.
Jared:Big fan. Mhmm. And you could also, you know, with some popular ways now is doing vlogging or, blogging is still a way of doing that. That's there's a sense of accountability there as well. If you got people following you, you wanna keep up that practice, through social media or blogging or whatever, you wanna do.
Jared:So there's there's plenty of things that you can use, tools you can use. And just the good old Diary?
Rob:Yeah. Just the diary. Yeah. Just the good old diary.
Jared:Good old journal.
Rob:Good old journal.
Jared:Yeah. That's good.
Rob:For those who like pen and paper. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be something super extravagant.
Jared:Of course not.
Rob:It just needs to be something more than what you were doing before or an adaptation or or a change Mhmm. That you think, I think if I did x with my current process, I think it might make it better. And then you try it out and you evaluate. Again, a form of self assessment and reflection.
Jared:Right. So I'd say a three part process would be the plan, implement, and then evaluate. Mhmm. Yeah. You know, plan I'm really good at planning part.
Jared:The implementing part, I'm okay with too. Then the evaluation part was where I struggled, but that's the most important one, especially in teaching. I struggled with that, but evaluating your own work. And if you're willing to, have a peer evaluate your work as well. But that can even be more daunting.
Rob:Well, it can be tough too. Right? Some of us tend to be our own worst critics
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:And and very harsh with what we see. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. It can push you to do to do better and do more, but it can also be off. Right? Your view of yourself is not clear.
Rob:Right. So having others involved, you know, obviously someone you trust, someone who's gonna speak honestly to you.
Ryan:Mhmm.
Jared:Someone you respect is also helpful too.
Rob:Yeah. I think that makes a world of difference.
Jared:So we are starting a new series, so we're going to apply this idea of reflective practice to a series on online teaching practices. Online learning has grown as a result of the pandemic. We've talked about in the past where we want to spend this series really reinforcing the ideas. And like Rob said earlier, it's a priority on our campus as well. So in this series, we're going to be doing several episodes.
Jared:The next one is going to be student reflection, kind of a part two of this one where, you know, we talked about earlier modeling it for students. Now we're gonna talk about how specifically you as an educator can, incorporate reflection, self reflection for your students in your We're also gonna talk about the importance of organization in an online course, the importance of collaboration, you collaborating with your peers, another episode on clarity. You know, we've talked before about having clearly defined objectives and guidelines and such and rubrics, but now we're really gonna drill down to the importance of it in an online course Community, which is something that, you know, if you recall from our episodes with Daniel and Lauren, community is really up in the air for me right now. So I'm really looking forward to diving more into it because all the instructional practices that we see in research that are best practices for it, according to them, are not working.
Rob:Well, it's a big word too.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Is huge When you say community, it seems rather amorphous to me. Yeah. And so it's like, I think if we can, in our discussion, really bring it down to what do we mean
Jared:Really define it.
Rob:Define it for what's effective for a given course, then I think maybe that would be effective Yeah. Moving forward.
Jared:You know, community is challenging in an online course too because literally there's We define community for the most part as being together in the same room and having some communal bonds with the people in our proximity. But an online course, you're living in the same house with someone else in the course, like my daughters are both taking a health class this summer online, they're together. So I guess that's a sense of community. It's hard to you can't replicate a face to face community in an online course, but we're gonna discuss ways of kind of putting that together.
Rob:Yeah. It's gonna be a course appropriate modality appropriate community.
Jared:Sure. Yeah. And then, we'll talk about media as well. I might have Jacob come in and talk about that a bit as well. Mhmm.
Jared:Make him actually do some work. Yeah. And, have the importance of media, well aligned to the content, well aligned to your objectives, and well paced professional, no cameras up the nose. Please don't do that. That's just a sneak peek of what we'll talk about in this series.
Jared:And, yeah, I'm looking forward to
Rob:it. Me too. This is gonna be a good summer series, I believe, and I hope our listeners enjoy it as much as we will.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. As we go through this series on online teaching practices, we would love to hear from you. So if you wouldn't mind, please connect with us on Linked LinkedIn. You can find a link to that in our show notes. We'd also love to get an email from you just to hear what you're processing and thinking through as we go through this series.
Ryan:So email us at CTLpodcast@cedarville.edu. And also, don't forget to check out our blog. We have a ton of resources there. You can find it at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.