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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.
The expectation is you are becoming an expert in the field. And what I'm here to do is to help you get to that point. I come with some things that I can share with you, but ultimately it's up to you to learn.
Narrator: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. Today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles chat with Doctor. Wes Baker.
Ryan:Dr. Baker served at Cedarville University for forty years in the Department of Communication. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Rob, it's a privilege to have Doctor. Wes Baker on with us. Doctor. Baker-
Rob:The illustrious.
Jared:The illustrious. As you know, he was a faculty member here at the university for decades, and he taught me and he's taught many students taught Mr. L, all these students, so we're privileged to have him join us today to discuss some all the things, it seems like.
Rob:We're super excited to have him here.
Jared:He remains I believe I don't if I've talked about this on the podcast, but he is the one who told me not to use impact as a verb. To this day, every time I see someone saying, this impacted blah blah blah, I hear doctor Baker in my head go, no. It's make an impact. Yep. You're not crushing someone's sternum.
Jared:That's what an impact is. Yes. Oh. You are making an impact.
Wes Baker:So learned that well.
Jared:Yeah. I'm not sure what else stuck, but that definitely stuck.
Rob:Do you wanna go ahead and, ask him the first question?
Jared:I think what I wanna start with talking about your flipped classroom stuff.
Wes Baker:Okay.
Jared:And, you've done a lot of research in that. You wrote something or you presented something a decade or so ago. Well, so it started in '95. So three decades.
Wes Baker:Yes. Okay. Right.
Jared:Yep. Now let's now we're thirty years later. If you were to write that now, would you write it differently, especially with generative AI going on and we're post COVID now? How would it look differently to you now if you were to start it?
Wes Baker:Well, I think the principles or the concepts that was based on, which was the idea of trying to make the best use of the time a faculty member is in the classroom with the student. And as a result, doing just rote transfer of information where you're lecturing or presenting slides and they're just copying it down. You know, that's not an effective use of that time. And to instead move that information outside the classroom so that the time in the classroom could be spent in working on discussion and clarification and practice and those types of things, application. You know, that was the basic concept.
Wes Baker:And I think that concept still holds. That that's what's important is getting the student to be a learner, getting the student to think and apply and not just parrot back information. Those were the things that that led me to that. Because I I can vividly remember the day I was in class in '95, we had just started CedarNet, and I was teaching a class for which there was no textbook available. There was almost no literature available.
Wes Baker:It was on doing graphic design for computer screens and for the Internet. And there was nothing out there. And so I had done a lot of work to try and take traditional graphic design principles and apply them to the computer screen and things like that. So I had just masses of information. And one day in class I was clicking through the slides and I stopped and I said, this is stupid.
Wes Baker:I said all that's happening here is you're copying down what's on the screen. It's not going through either of our brains. All this is available on CedarNet. Just go get it there. Let's not waste time in classroom copying slides down.
Wes Baker:And after I left class, I can remember exactly who I was. When it suddenly hit me, I just gave away all my content for the rest of the term. What on earth am I gonna do? You know, so it was out of that that then it was like, okay, so what do I do? And came up with this kind of four part, idea of what to do in the classroom that then became the classroom flip.
Wes Baker:And I think that those kind of principles, again, student as learner, trying to have the faculty member there to to help the student in seeing, do you understand this? Do you know how to apply it? That those are are still, valid. What's changed, of course, as you alluded to, is that the technology has changed. Yeah.
Wes Baker:When I was doing that stuff back in the nineties and early two thousands, I mean, it took a lot of work to come up with the programming and trying to hack the course management systems to do what you wanted them to do and things like that. And now with things like generative AI, a lot of that stuff is is much more facilitated by the technology. You can do it more easily. And I I always felt that we never quite got while I was teaching, we never quite got to that thing that I had been trying for since really from the eighties. And that was how can we deliver content to students in an interactive way so that you can assess, are they understanding this?
Wes Baker:Do they get it? Do they need remediation? Or can they be allowed to skip ahead because they already know this? So why go
Jared:over it? Right.
Wes Baker:And I think the new technologies that are emerging now really facilitate that. I mean, it would be interesting to go back and do a class now. And obviously I'm out of the classroom for a while. Right. But to use AI and see how it can be used in that way.
Rob:It seems like what you're saying is we need to focus on getting to a golden moment with the student.
Wes Baker:Mhmm.
Rob:That time where we're making that use to steal steal a statement from from the apostle Paul, making the most of every opportunity. Mhmm. Right? Because the days are evil, and why spend it trying to shove content into somebody's head Mhmm. When you need them to own it on their own, be motivated to engage you
Wes Baker:Yes.
Rob:And engage others with it.
Wes Baker:Yep. Another thing that the approach does is helps eliminate the debate between the people who are saying active learning is the key thing that we need to do and the people who say content is what we need to present. Because as I started doing workshops with faculty members, I ran into that on both sides. Where, for example, people in nursing were saying, we have content we have to deliver because it's gonna be on the tests. Right.
Wes Baker:And they can't get qualified unless they pass these tests. So we don't have time to do that kind of stuff in our classroom. And what we're able to work out on that was, well, if you can deliver the content outside of the classroom, now you can do things in the classroom. And for the nursing department to say what they did, or to commend them for what they did, they really jumped into it. And once they got the concept and realized that was a possibility, used it a lot, at least in the early years when when I was involved in it.
Wes Baker:And so that helped bridge that gap in which you had people it was an either or kind of approach, and it became both and. We can do both. We can both cover the content and help students think and apply and practice and those things.
Rob:So a follow-up. What would you say to faculty when the students look at them and they go, well, what am I paying you for?
Wes Baker:Yeah. Oh, yes. Right.
Rob:You know?
Wes Baker:Bringing into that a lot.
Rob:Right. How can how can faculty make this case to students to say, look. What I'm doing for you is actually better? What would you say to them?
Wes Baker:Well, I addressed it pretty directly. So almost like first day of class when they came in, if they hadn't had me before, it was this is not gonna be like it normally has been. That the expectation is you are becoming an expert in the field. And what I'm here to do is to help you get to that point. And, I come with some experience and background and things that I can share with you.
Wes Baker:But ultimately, it's up to you to learn. I can't make you learn. I can deliver content, but I can't make you learn. I can't make you think. Those kinds of things come into play.
Wes Baker:And so that that came up a lot. And I when I was doing, faculty workshops, that issue came up a lot in which the students were saying, well, you know, again, what am I paying you for? Eventually, once the students bought into it, then they realized, oh, this is really beneficial now. I understand now why you're doing it the way you're doing it. And sometimes it took a while to get to that point, and sometimes it you maybe never got to that point with a particular student.
Wes Baker:But that's the way to address it. I always said just address it directly. Recognize that mentality is there and talk about it.
Jared:So I have something along the lines of students. I would say the most important aspect to make flipped classroom work is that the students interact with the content outside of class. Yes. I. E.
Jared:Doing the homework. Yes. Now I'm not saying it wasn't a problem back in the early two thousands when I had it.
Wes Baker:Is this confession time?
Jared:No, definitely is. I'm starting
Wes Baker:to feel like it.
Jared:A lot of that stuff. But, you know, you can look at data that less and less homework is being assigned in k 12. So now students come into, undergrad, and if someone's expecting them to do this stuff outside of class, they may either not want to do it or aren't familiar with it. So how would you address that concern as well? I mean, how did how did you address it besides the buy in aspect?
Jared:Because even then you can say, you're responsible for this. You need to read this content. But then I'm going home reading a 30 page document that with language that's way over my head or I'm not familiar with. How how would how
Wes Baker:did you handle that? So the main the main thing, you know, you've got a carrot and a stick. Yeah. And the stick on that was to do daily quizzes over the material. And they had to then answer the questions that they could only answer from having read the material.
Wes Baker:Right. And that was primarily just there to try and ensure that they did it. Did some students still blow it off? Yeah, I'm sure. But that was a way to try and get at it.
Wes Baker:And one thing that I always was trying to get, again, was that notion that you present the content and then you do an assessment of some kind to see, are they getting it or not? And what was difficult early on, for example, in doing the online quizzes, is trying to do it so that if they gave a wrong response, to figure out why did they give that response, provide them with feedback that said something like, oh, you're not understanding this concept. Or you missed this statement on such and such a page in the textbook. That would try and drive them back to it. And then they had a chance to come back and do the quiz again.
Wes Baker:And they could repeat it even a third time if they needed to. And in that case the caret was the highest score is the one that's recorded for you. Okay. So that even if you had trouble at the beginning, ideally by the time you got done doing it a second or third time, had a better understanding and it caught those things that you had missed.
Jared:Makes sense.
Wes Baker:Another thing that I ran into was then pushback on the quizzes. The people would say, well, what if they wait and they don't do the reading until they take the quiz? You know? And so there were a couple of things there. One was to limit the amount of time they had to answer the question, So they didn't have time to page through the book.
Wes Baker:Yeah. But the other thing I always said was, what we're trying to get them to do is read the book. Yeah. So if the quiz is a prompt to get them and read the book, well, mission accomplished.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. You're getting the material in them.
Jared:Yeah. In some way or another.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. You're gamifying material ingestion.
Jared:Yeah. I
Rob:would be interested to know, have you used AI?
Wes Baker:No, I have not. I'm Okay. A neophyte.
Jared:Well, there goes half of the rest
Wes Baker:of my Yeah.
Rob:Futurecasting off the table. No. No. Off the table.
Wes Baker:I've read about it. Okay.
Jared:So That doesn't surprise me. Yeah. That doesn't
Wes Baker:surprise And I'm encouraged by some things. I'm fearful of other things when it comes to AI, for sure.
Jared:You want to elaborate?
Wes Baker:Well, yeah. Thank you. Here's your platform. So I think one of the main concerns is the idea that you use AI to simply deliver the right answers. I don't think that helps.
Wes Baker:Again, you're not helping the student think and work through things. But there is an approach to AI, for example what Khan Academy has done, where the AI is set up to provide prompts. So when the student says, I don't know how to do this, well it starts saying, well, what would you do here? And what would you do at this step? And things like that.
Wes Baker:It doesn't deliver the answer. Right. But it helps the student think through things to get to the answer, which I think is incredible to do that kind of thing. I mean, that's ideally what we wanted to do from the beginning. But the technology didn't allow us to do
Jared:that kind of thing before. Sure.
Rob:So like a Socratic
Wes Baker:exactly. Content tutor? In fact, you look at some of the Khan Academy things, they'll refer to Socratic as part of their process.
Jared:Have you read Brave New Words by Sal Khan? I have not. Definitely. We have a we have an episode about that.
Wes Baker:Oh, okay. We reviewed it. I have to look
Jared:that up. It's it's exactly what you're talking about. He has a whole his whole philosophy on using generative AI, and then he goes into how they've put it into practice.
Wes Baker:Okay.
Jared:Using Conmigo as a way of like a Socratic and seeing them as a tutor or as a partner with the student and coming coming through that process.
Wes Baker:Yeah. And I remember one of the difficulties was trying to adapt to different kinds of students' ways of learning. Yeah. That was really difficult in trying to deliver that again with the tools we had at the time. And it seems like generative AI accommodates that kind of thing.
Wes Baker:I mean, one thing I used to say was that the computer is an infinitely patient tutor. It'll keep going as long as you need it to go. Whereas a teacher has a finite amount of time to deal with each student. And so those kinds of things are helpful based on the learning style of the student and how quickly or slowly they can deal with the material.
Rob:So doctor Baker, since you mentioned ChatGPT, let me show you a little bot that I created for US history and give you some experience with it.
Jared:This will be difficult to do in a podcast.
Wes Baker:Should we
Rob:just provide
Wes Baker:the screen? We should what I'm seeing now is
Rob:A white screen. But let's let's just do this. Hey. I've got doctor Wes Baker here with us, and we're showing him how the history tutor works here that we've created. Could you just introduce yourself and then also just give us a good place to start with US history one?
Wes Baker:It's thinking.
ChatGPT:Welcome, doctor Baker.
Wes Baker:Welcome.
ChatGPT:A great place to start with US history one is the first lecture on Native American civilizations. For example, students often assume European settlers arrived in an empty land. But what evidence do we have that contradicts that assumption? And how did the complexity of societies like the Mayans or Aztecs challenge European views of civilization? That opening unit sets up foundational themes, cultural encounters, misperceptions, and the consequences of colonization.
ChatGPT:Would you like to unpack any of those with an example or question that students often struggle with?
Wes Baker:I would like to deal with a question of the treaties with the Indians.
ChatGPT:That's a rich and important topic. When we think about treaties between the US government and Native American tribes, one key question is, what did both sides think they were agreeing to? For example, Native understandings of land and ownership often differed sharply from European American legal traditions. So here's a starting point. What assumptions about land ownership and sovereignty shaped early treaties, especially from The US side?
ChatGPT:And how did these assumptions clash with native perspectives? You might go back to the lectures on early colonization or Washington's assimilation policies. What do they suggest about how The US viewed native nations?
Jared:Now I will tell you that if I had that for media law, I mean, that would have been imagine a student sitting there and going, I really have a question about what this case you know, I've read this
Wes Baker:case. Uh-huh.
Jared:I'm now looking for the application. Can you help me with that? Mhmm. Oh, yeah. For sure.
Rob:Well, and then it transcribes it.
Wes Baker:Oh, nice.
Rob:So it's all sitting. It's right there.
Wes Baker:Mhmm.
Rob:It's a Socratic tutor. Kind of a quick thing that I created for doctor Mac.
Wes Baker:Nice.
Rob:Took his transcripts, put it in, and then I created an instruction set that would keep the GPT in the bounds of being a Socratic tutor. Much like you were talking about with Khan Academy.
Wes Baker:Yes. Right. Having some guide rails on there.
Rob:Yeah. So it took about five minutes to create. It took about twenty five minutes to get the data actually in so that it could actually refer to the things to point you back towards where you needed to look.
Wes Baker:Nice. Very nice. Yeah. I I wish I had had that years ago.
Jared:But your your concerns are are valid. And, you know, if if I think that what we've talked about in the podcast is just a way, like you've said, of using it in a Socratic way or as a support instead of just using it as something to I mean, a story I told about is I saw a student in Chuck's just had one window was ChatGPT, the other window was their quiz in Canvas and they were copying the questions from the quiz into there, not even reading the answers, just copying and pasting and moving on. Right. So obviously that's a legitimate concern. Yeah.
Jared:Oh, yeah. But something I think the stance we've taken is let's use it as support and let's show students ethical ways of using it in teaching and learning. Yeah.
Rob:Yeah. I think I think we have a lot of opportunity coming ahead of us here. And I'm definitely excited, but I'm also, you know, I think curious to hear what you think now that you've experienced it.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:Right? And give us some ideas. Where do you think things might head? What do you think faculty might need to prepare themselves for?
Wes Baker:Well, among the things they need to do, obviously, is learn how or what the capabilities of the technology are, what the potential problems with the technology are, and how, as we've said a couple of times here, how to create those guardrails to keep the program as a tutor and not a teacher, as it were. Again, don't give me the answer. Doesn't help me. Help me think through what I need to know or what I need to figure out in order to find the answer for that. And it's gonna probably take some work.
Wes Baker:It's not gonna be simple. I know it certainly wasn't years ago to work through this, and it probably is still difficult. And part of the danger at this point might be that idea that's kind of out there on this is like God speaking. You know? This is the perfect solution to everything, and making assumptions that we shouldn't be making about the technology.
Wes Baker:So use it in a way that really helps the student and be cautious of the things that could be, what, dangerous for the student in lots of different ways.
Rob:So it sounds like you're saying embrace the technology, but do so with guardrails, keeping your wits about you in terms of who we are from a biblical perspective.
Wes Baker:Yes. Right. And forget the humanity that's involved here.
Rob:Correct. Yeah. But I'm also excited because I think it has the potential, especially I kinda believe that for us as believers, we have a better opportunity to have golden time with students
Jared:Yes.
Rob:Than anybody else. That's my personal belief because of who we have living inside of us.
Jared:Right.
Rob:And if if the student on the other side also has the spirit of God living inside of them
Jared:Yes.
Rob:Then then I think there's that opportunity even more so to to use what's in creation, what God has supplied. Mhmm. You know, because he is sovereign over all things, and he has allowed these things to come to be.
Wes Baker:Yeah.
Rob:He created the individuals who put this technology into being, and he has a plan for it.
Wes Baker:Kind of connected to that is the whole whole idea that God created us as relational beings. And so we have to be careful that the technology does not take the place of relationships, human relationships. I mean, obviously you look at all the research that's been done now on the anxious generation and those types of things, Where repeatedly what the issue is, is a loss of relationship or substitution of artificial relationships for real relationships. And it's causing it's just devastating on what it's done to kids.
Rob:Yeah. But I think we by using this, we are also we have the opportunity of having these conversations, of being able to say, this is how you use it. If you find yourself doing this or you find yourself having to go and ask it anything and everything because you can't make up your
Wes Baker:mind Yes. Right.
Rob:Then maybe maybe it's no longer a tool to you. Maybe it's a god to you. Mhmm. Mhmm. But you definitely have that with anything, but you're not wrong, I think, of any tool that we've ever had on this planet.
Rob:This is one Yeah. That has that potential.
Wes Baker:And to go back to the flip analogy, the flip side then is, so what are you doing in the classroom? Right. I So know
Jared:that question.
Wes Baker:Yeah. I mean, that's the question that hit me going back to my office. It's like, what on earth do I do in the classroom? And so I came up with this four part question that I tried to implement at the beginning of class every time to say, look, if what I need to do here is answer your questions to clarify things, then that's what we'll do. What whatever we need to do in the classroom.
Wes Baker:I mean, I have other things planned, but we'll do what we need to do to help you. Now again, you can hold me on.
Jared:You can keep
Wes Baker:me honest here.
Rob:Did he do
Wes Baker:that? I did always, unfortunately. Yeah.
Jared:I definitely, the two courses or actually three four courses? Media you honest. Yeah. Know. Right?
Jared:Media I remember media law. I remember ARMC, media convergence, and, did you teach electronic media research as well, EMR? Yes. Okay. So four then.
Jared:I remember it more vividly in media convergence, think, because it was a smaller class. There was five of us
Wes Baker:in there. Right.
Jared:Right. Media law, it wasn't as much because I feel like you could ease something else that Flip does that I like is, as a student, you can't really hide. Mhmm. If you don't know the content or you're not prepared, it's going to show up at some point. Yeah.
Jared:Yeah. However, with media law, there were so many of us, felt like you could hide a bit. Yeah. In that. But with the other classes, was painfully obvious if you weren't ready for it because Doctor.
Jared:Baker would call you out on it. Jared, what did you think about chapter eight?
Wes Baker:Well, and it's interesting because I talked to a student recently that's what he said. He was talking to his wife and he said, I learned so much from his class. And it was because I knew I was accountable. Yeah. And had to come into class prepared.
Wes Baker:Yeah.
Rob:So you said four questions. What were those four questions?
Wes Baker:Oh, golly. Okay. So the first was clarify. So what do I need to clarify that you still don't understand? And then expand.
Wes Baker:And the expand, I was trying to get the students to think of themselves as kind of nascent scholars, nascent professionals in the field. So by expand, I meant what kind of experiences maybe of you had. Perhaps you were in an internship and the question of copyright came up. So how can you expand on what was in what you read? And then next was apply.
Wes Baker:Okay, so here's a situation. Now, on what you read for today, apply those things in trying to figure out what's going on. So, we did, for example, in media law, there would be a thing where, is this a legitimate parody based on how the courts have ruled on what a legitimate parody is? Things like that. And then the last part was practice.
Wes Baker:Was there an opportunity? And that was especially for some of the more hands on classes. Like that first class where I was teaching how do you design a computer screen. So I would give them a screen and say, okay, improve on this. Apply those skills.
Wes Baker:Make it better than this. Those kinds of things. So those were the four things that I would try and do. Again, not always successfully.
Rob:Well, I think we should have him back again. I'm sure at some point you're gonna use Chad GPT.
Wes Baker:I'm gonna try and figure out how to get into it and play with it some. Yes.
Rob:Yeah. We might be able to help you out with it.
Wes Baker:Oh, I am sure.
Jared:We'll make a Jared bot so I can always be with you.
Wes Baker:Oh, there you go. Just just
Rob:what he needs. Just what he wants. I don't wanna take Jared with me forever. Yeah. But definitely get your responses, get your thoughts.
Rob:We we cherish the work that you've done. We appreciate the seeds that you've planted over the time you were here at Cedarville. I know Jared does. I never had you directly, but when I came to CTL, I inherited a lot of what you plowed ground for.
Wes Baker:Oh, goodness. Thank
Rob:you. So, you know, thank you.
Wes Baker:Yeah.
Rob:Thank you for your faithfulness.
Wes Baker:Thank you.
Rob:But I would like to have him back if if he is so willing.
Jared:If he's willing to. Sure. Absolutely. I would appreciate it. Thank you so much, doctor Baker.
Wes Baker:Okay. Big fan. Thank you.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Remember to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Please also, if you have a comment or a question, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out our blog, cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.