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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.
Hello, Transform Your Teaching listeners. It's Jared. Whether you are new to the podcast or have been around since day one, we want to hear from you. Please take a minute and fill out our quick survey and help us make the podcast even better. Click the link in our description.
Jared:We'd be very grateful if you did. And for participating, you'll be put into a drawing for a handcrafted transform your teaching mug. And we're doing a drawing in the month of October, November, and December. So be sure to participate and help us out. We'd be grateful if you did.
Jared:And as always, thanks for listening.
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.
Jared:Welcome back to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast on the campus campus of Cedarville University. My name is Jared Piles, and across from me is doctor Rob McDowell. Hello, doctor McDowell.
Rob:Hello.
Jared:It is the end of our second year doing the podcast.
Rob:Yeah. It seems like we just started. But at the same time, I also feel It's
Jared:been two years.
Rob:It's been two years.
Jared:Yeah. On the way over here, was thinking, like, if if if Robert asked me how I thought this year went podcast wise, I'm
Rob:like Jared, how do you think this year went podcast wise?
Jared:Well, there you go. Yeah. I feel like, you know, I thought it was a great year. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And we'll go into more details about that, but I guess I could ask you the same question.
Rob:I've been surprised that I would enjoy it as much as I have. And I think the reason why is not because I like hearing my own voice, because I don't, but the folks that we've interviewed along the along the way. And I'm just kinda blown away, you know, as I look at the lists of folks that have agreed to come on, you know, and and interview with us, and some of them a couple of times.
Jared:And Yeah. We've had a couple repeats.
Rob:And they have been extremely insightful. I think I've learned so much just from this opportunity over the past couple years.
Jared:Yeah. It's it's been a lot of fun. We've made a lot of great connections and just had some great conversations. So we have some analytics here if we wanna talk analytics about how the podcast has grown over this year. And again, I'm completely humbled.
Jared:I'm sure you are too with how this podcast has grown. We didn't expect this at all. This really became a or it started off as a pet project for me. This is something we were talking about doing several years ago, and we were like, oh,
Rob:let's just do it. Yeah. It's been, I think, like, what, four or five years in planning? Because we put this together, or the idea for it was sparked in one of our off sites vision moments that we had. And that was one of the things after our mission vision values statement that we we started looking on.
Rob:What are we gonna do? How are we gonna put this stuff into practice? And this was this was one of those.
Jared:Yeah. And then COVID hit, then we stopped, and then we picked it back up once felt like it was back to normal.
Rob:Although COVID probably would have been a great time to actually start it when I think about it, but, you know, we were a little busy.
Jared:Yeah. It was not a good time. It would have been us just yelling. So anyway, let's go over some analytics. In 02/2023, our total downloads were 3,389.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:But in this year, to date, we have 6,292. We're on pace to be around 7,000 this year, which means we have doubled the downloads from 02/2023.
Rob:That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Which means we've had to have doubled our listenership to some degree probably. Yes. I would think so.
Jared:I I think we have. If you look at the first off, we have listens in all 50 states. We've officially done it. We've done that achievement.
Rob:We finally got New Mexico.
Jared:We finally got New Mexico. Thank you, New Mexico listeners, for finally showing up. We appreciate we love you in New Mexico. We have some updates on followers across platforms. Apple, we have a little over 300.
Jared:In 02/2023, we only had 104.
Rob:Wow. That's a big Almost 200.
Jared:Spotify, we've also grown from 22 in 2023 to 49 this year. Altogether we have That's a double over? Altogether we have doubled. We had 126 in 2023 and we gained two nineteen to be at three fifty two.
Rob:That's pretty amazing. So cool. So we have 50 a little over 50 connections in LinkedIn.
Jared:Yeah. We just started our LinkedIn at the end of this year. We've already grown that much as well.
Rob:That's really cool.
Jared:It's really cool. Most popular episodes, competency based education, our first.
Rob:The first episode.
Jared:What is competency based education? 192 downloads. Our most popular series is active learning with over 1,400 downloads. That one kind of surprised me. Really?
Rob:A little bit. Yeah. I thought AI would outpace those because it's such a, and still is, a hot topic. But Yeah. The active learning piece, I guess, was surprised that it it generated as much interest as it did.
Jared:Yeah. That surprised me as well. Generative AI, I feel like based on, you know, you heard before we started this discussion, we've been doing a survey. Mhmm. And generative AI hasn't been the most popular of topics amongst respondents.
Rob:That doesn't actually surprise me now. Yeah. It doesn't.
Jared:Why? Because I think I have a reason why, but I don't wanna hear yours.
Rob:My reason is I think, one, it either scares the fool out of everybody and or they're too busy. Ah. And it's a it's a technology. And I'll you know, here's where I'll defer to my colleague here who has been studying technology adoption.
Jared:Yeah. I that's
Rob:You know, it's it's a technology that is, I think, so far beyond in terms of what it offers and what it forces you to think through. Like, it's not a simple step. Right? We've gone from Microsoft Word, social media to something that could potentially do your job. Yeah.
Rob:I mean, that's a massive step from you cranking out stuff in Word and you writing your own, you know, emails and text messages to this. Yeah. It's quite overwhelming.
Jared:It is. I mean, it is. I I think that's the biggest barrier. It seems very complex on the surface and it can be if not utilized correctly. So it's the first technology, I think, in a long time that has this barrier in front that seems very overwhelming, but you have to just kind of try it yourself first.
Jared:Right. But I think there's also been a lot it's the first technology I've seen where there's been a lot of just like unknowns and there's been a lot of like horror stories. Yeah. And I think that's also keeping people hesitant from doing that. Sure a lot of opinion leaders in these social networks of people are either all for it or all against it.
Jared:And the ones that are all against it are the people who like, I'm not touching that based on what I've heard.
Rob:Yeah. But it's I mean, in the in the business sector, it is growing. I mean, the number of businesses that are using it or they're in the process of implementing something, it is it's going. And it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Jared:Yeah. I think there's also privacy issues with it as well. Right,
Rob:we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Jared:We're going way ahead of ourselves. Let's talk about the different topics. We just talked about generative AI. That's how we started our year. Yeah.
Jared:Now that we covered this year. We talked with, I mean, at this list of guests, man. This is incredible. Doctor. Jules White, Doctor.
Jared:Michelle Meadows, Doctor. Dan Clark from Tiffin University, Doctor. Vladimir Bratich, who's been a repeat friend of ours, Manhattan College's own Kim Woodruff, our president, Doctor. White, and Marshall University's CIO, Doctor. Jody Penrod.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:Came on. I mean, that's an awesome list of guests. It is. It's humbling for
Rob:sure. Yeah. When we go back and we look at this and then I even think about the changes since we've talked to them at the beginning of the year. Yeah. You know, it's like night and day different already.
Jared:And like the episode specifically I think of is the one with Doctor. Meadows and Doctor. Clark about Tiffin and their approach to generative AI. It would be nice to go back and
Rob:talk with them again and see how are things going.
Jared:A study that was just published about using ChatGPT to do a course, like that was where I first talked with Doctor. Meadows at AECT when she was talking about they put ChatGPT, they play the role of a student in different courses and that just recently got published. That'd interesting to have them back on to see what that was all about. Other big series, competency based education. That was that's probably my favorite one of the year if I had to pick one.
Jared:Yeah. Because I came in myself with so much hesitancy and doubt. I didn't believe in it.
Rob:You were a doubting Thomas.
Jared:But I left the series more towards wanting to adopt it. And then I started immediately myself incorporating it into my daily practice in a course I was designing. And I was like, Oh, I get it. Okay. So and I want to do it more now.
Rob:Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Think probably the one that was the most shocking about that for me was doctor Boulevard. Oh, yeah. And what he had to say and and how he's been using CBE in a way that I hadn't really thought of.
Rob:So that's still churning the brain, still churning the thoughts.
Jared:Yeah. His take was kind of a hybrid one when it came to it because he's like, no, they're still together in a cohort. And I think Doctor. Alita Chen, when she came on to talk about CBE and the pharmacy world and here specifically at Cedarville.
Rob:She was kind of saying the same thing.
Jared:Yeah, it's kind of a cohort feel, which I thought was super interesting. Yeah. And would like to look at that more. Our other big series was active learning. I feel like that one we could revisit
Rob:Oh, we're gonna have
Jared:to. A couple more times. Yeah, we're gonna have to. Then we talked about after CBE, we went into active learning, which I think we both were hesitant about going into for different reasons. I was more of the, yeah, let's talk about it because I think active learning is the future of education.
Jared:And then you were like, but what do you mean by active learning? And I was like, I don't know, stop asking me stupid questions. But then I was like, you know, that's a really good question. You made me read a book, Uncommon Sense Teaching.
Rob:Yeah, that was a good book.
Jared:Blew me away. We need to review that next year.
Rob:We do. I think that would that and some other things would probably be really good to to have and have some more folks, especially here on campus, who who've been, you know, trying some different stuff.
Jared:Yeah, we talked to some of our colleagues over at Purdue, Doctor. Tracy Birdwell and Doctor. Chantal Levesque Bristol, some incredible insights from them. I mean, Doctor. Levesque Bristol with her thoughts on self determination playing a role into active learning, that's still ingrained in my head.
Jared:And I'm thinking about, okay, self determination, that plays a huge role in not just active learning, but Right. And we've talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation several times, but man, it's just stuck in my craw and I'm like, dang it. You're not gonna think about this now.
Rob:Yeah. Intrinsic motivation is the superpower of education. If you can tap into that and you
Jared:can That's a quote right there.
Rob:You can get somebody to believe in something, You don't need to really it's it's more like you just put the things out there. And not only will they go after it, but they'll find other things as well.
Jared:We need to pour more into active learning, I think Yeah. And talk about it. I should note, our good friend, Evan, our student worker who's been doing research for our podcast, he threw in here that during the active learning series, we did an episode with student perspectives where he was interviewed. And he said it's the best episode that we ever did.
Rob:Yeah. I don't think so.
Jared:I don't think he's right. We love Evan. We do. We do love Evan.
Rob:But just by the numbers, it wasn't
Jared:the best. Number stats don't lie, Evan. Sorry.
Rob:Let's see. Although, I gotta say that I really thoroughly enjoyed talking with our college students. Oh, yeah. That was so much fun.
Jared:Yeah. That was the biggest you know, that was our series we ended the year with, was talking about understanding the new college student, and that was
Rob:Lalitha, Noah, Nathaniel, Deidre, Anna, Kalen.
Jared:They were so good.
Rob:Yeah. I thought you and Kalen, that was that wasn't we had a a moment there where
Jared:we were dude, man.
Rob:I wanna hang
Jared:out with Kaelin more often. But, yeah, those were great. And getting that perspective, from doctor Ariel Horan about rural and first gen students, I still think we need to I mean, and we're gonna bring this up more when we do our second half of this series at the start of the new year on understanding the new college student and serving the new college student.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:Going back and discussing these various areas.
Rob:Well, yeah. And we're gonna really need to start talking not only about that, but age as well. Because more and more, we're getting, you know, folks that are coming into Cedarville as what we would usually call first time freshmen.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Like, they're here at Cedarville for the first time. They're not freshmen by credit hour anymore. Right. So, you know, that kinda, like, gives you this wait a minute. Then that's not probably a good way to understand development of students.
Rob:Where are they? You know, yes, they have this many credits, but does that necessarily mean they're a typical freshman or a typical junior in terms of just physical development and emotional intelligence
Narrator:as well.
Jared:We're gonna have to start differentiating between academic maturity and personal maturity.
Rob:I think so. Yeah. So that gets us really into where do we wanna head next, like, next things. You have three, and I have three. You do.
Rob:So well, I
Jared:I think we've already hit on them kind of a little bit. I put more explicitly. I'd like to explore competency based and active learning more. Yes. I think we need to do that wholeheartedly, not only because from a selfish standpoint because it does really well.
Jared:It does dummy numbers as the kids say, as far as listenership goes. But I'm just curious with how that plays out in a more defined role. And I like to be able to go through it without the dissertation hanging over my head. Now that I have more clear air, I feel like I can explore it and be more invested in it. Got this idea from Boise State's Center for Teaching and Learning does student partners where they have students that partner with faculty members and the faculty member bounces ideas off of them and the student gives a student feedback on doing that stuff in the classroom.
Rob:Oh, that's that's pretty cool.
Jared:So I thought we could fine tune that in a way and actually have bring more students in. Yeah. Have them be honest and throw some of these academic research best practices at them. What do you think? They could go, That's a great idea, but I'm kind of hoping they go, That's horrible.
Jared:Because I wanted that challenge. I want that idea of thinking, you know, what what do the students actually think about doing group work or a think pair share reflective time? I really want to get into that and figure it out because I wanna I wanna hear from them.
Rob:I think it depends on their motivation.
Jared:Well, maybe I have to find that out.
Rob:And the
Jared:last thing I wanna do is, like we mentioned before, doing book reviews. You have a couple books that we both read, and I think spending some time in some a couple episodes talking about these books Yeah. Would be really interesting. Those are my goals. Cool.
Rob:Well, for me, it's advanced CBE with AI. I see the two of those pairing really well together. Matter of fact, I think from what I've understood about generative AI and and where things are and where they're going, you will have a Socratic tutor. Like, if you actually use the most recent version of ChatGPT that you can get that you pay for Mhmm. They've now enabled search.
Rob:So live search. So I've been able to, like, dig into things at a very deep level, certain topics that I like to think about and and work with. And I would not have been able to do that with anything that's out there right now. Not like this to to the level that I've been able to. And then that's just been giving me more and more kinds of thoughts that would have taken me a whole lot longer to get to, a lot more referential material to try to filter through and find.
Rob:So I found it extremely helpful. And and I know Moore's coming.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Right? So I know Moore's just around the corner, and it shows no signs of stopping. So I think education most certainly will change because the finances of continuing to do it the old way, they're not sustainable. So it'll be interesting to see how higher education, k through 12 education, just education in general, adopts, starts making use of some of these tools. Cool.
Rob:So I'm kinda looking forward to that. Yeah. Having that conversation. And then on top of that, AI agents, education, their use in education. I'm kinda curious as to what that's going to do because that's really 2025.
Rob:Mhmm. That's what 2025 is gonna be from my from my perspective. Yeah. That was the age of AI agents. And then, you know, really for me, and we've talked about this before, is just because we can doesn't mean we should.
Rob:Yep. So this idea of what's ethical. Right? Yeah. To quote the apostle Paul, everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.
Jared:Our new mini series at the start of the year is talking about ethical usage of AI. What should we do? What should we do? And then we're gonna get real into the philosophy, which to me was like really deep water for me. But this was my idea, I have to live with it.
Jared:Yeah. You let me loose. Yeah, I did. I did. And we're gonna talk about with some people like Dave Mulder, we've had on before, Doctor.
Jared:David Slade from Barry College and Doctor. Ross Perkins from Boise State and just get into the idea of, okay, you say ethical usage, but where does the ethics definition come from for you? So we're gonna have some really good conversations there. Yeah. Well, it's year two.
Rob:It's been a great year.
Jared:It's awesome. So to you that have listened from day one, we love you and we appreciate you. And if you just started listening with this episode, you might wanna go back a couple, Unless you just like listening to review episodes of podcasts, you can do that, I guess, if you want to. But, thank you for starting to listen.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:We appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun. And that's gonna do it for us on the Transformed With Teaching podcast. Be sure to follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on our LinkedIn page. There's more information on that in our show description.
Jared:Since this is the end of the year, I hope you have a great 02/2025, and thank you for listening.