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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.
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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. In today's episode, doctor Rob McDole and doctor Jared Pyles finish our series called Have You Tried? By talking about what they tried. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Well, Rob, we are finishing another series. This is the culminating episode of Have You Tried? And in full transparency, we have been recording these and banking them as I'm pretty sure that's fairly normal in the podcast world to record and then bank. And I said I wanted us to end this, series in real time, and we are recording this the same week that it is going to air. So apologies to Jacob because he has to turn around and I told him we make this as uneditable.
Jared:In other words, he doesn't have to edit it as much so that his We're already gonna edit it. I don't
Ryan:think so.
Jared:His end his end product won't be as long of a haul to get to. But I wanted to record it the last week of the semester, which coordinates with the last week of this series, and call this one, yes, we tried. Because it's one thing to, as you know, when you go to a we just got back from a conference at OLC and, in Orlando and, you know, you go to these conferences and people have all these great ideas. But inevitably someone's going to ask, well, what have you done to put it into practice? And sometimes they go, well, I haven't actually done it, you know, so, but we thought we would put boots to the ground and call this one, yes, we tried to show that we did practice what we preached, which I always feel like should be practice what we prot because you don't say teach, you say taught.
Jared:Anyway, and, go through how we utilize gamification, music, storytelling, and mind mapping this semester. What do you think? Is that good?
Rob:I think that's great.
Jared:Alright. We should do that. Here we are doing it now.
Rob:We're doing it. Well, we also had some some good guests on too. You know, we had doctor Singletary, doctor Lane, doctor Quentin Schultz. And so they also helped us out in that, especially storytelling with doctor Q, music with doctor Lane, and then gamification with doctor Singletary. We had doctor Larry Cox the second on when we were down at OLC.
Jared:Mhmm. Talk about mind mapping.
Rob:Yeah. And that was after we had recorded ours Mhmm. On mind mapping. Yep. That was a great episode as well.
Rob:You know, the thing we looked at was approaching these tools wisely. We've talked about AI to such a degree where we were just kind of burnt out a little bit on Yeah. On that. It's there. It's not going away.
Rob:We get it. We'll probably have some more things to say about it in, you know, the weeks and months to come. I don't doubt it. But we were looking at some things that we hadn't thought about. So that's the have we tried or have you tried or
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:So this is the yes, we tried episode. Yeah. And so we've done some small tests. I've done some iterative changes as well, and I think you have as well in your class. So let's be specific to our listeners.
Rob:Both Jared and I were teaching this semester. We still are while we're
Jared:Wrapping up.
Rob:Wrapping up this not only the series, but wrapping up the semester. And so let's start with just a review, summarize what we've done in terms of definitions and our findings, and we'll go from there. So you wanna take gamification?
Jared:Yeah. So the big thing with gamification was, and Doctor Singletary helped us out with this, is differentiating between gamification and game based learning. And he made it clear to us that gamification is adding game elements to non game context. So examples would be a badge system in a math class or doing reward points or unlockables, anything that's like game elements to non game context. So anytime you're using that in your course would be considered gamification.
Jared:Game based is where you're using games to review or present content like using a Jeopardy to review or which is always like the one that everyone talks about is using Jeopardy in that way. So that would be game based where we're talking about gamification, which is adding those game elements in there. We also talked about music, which I wouldn't really have to define that, but using music in a context where it's enhancing learning or it's helping students focus. We talked about how many beats per minute to help with focus and concentration and Doctor. Daforia Lane helped us with that aspect of it and help us figure out what kind of music will work.
Jared:Should it be music they're familiar with, music they're unfamiliar with? And of course we had storytelling with Doctor. Q who helped us with that. And that's something that Rob and I have talked about at length with storytelling. The idea of using metaphor to help explain new concepts or help students review.
Jared:Having students then using storytelling to then review content or present content a different way. And then our favorite was mind mapping. You wanna talk about mind mapping?
Rob:So when we talked about mind mapping, mind mapping is a way to organize information visually. It's not as specific as, like, graphic organizers or concept mapping, which usually has particular tools. So it has a certain set of boundaries that you're supposed to work within
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:With those things.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Graphic organizers are a little bit more flexible as well. And usually, you actually do have graphics. Mind mapping, you can use graphics, but it's usually just you brainstorming, getting what's in your head out of your head. That's one way. You can also do, like, what we saw with doctor Cox Yeah.
Rob:How he was using it to explore systems and explore how certain things took place that he was a part of.
Jared:Right. Right.
Rob:And especially, like, instructional design is what he was looking at. But for us, we've been using mind mapping in many different ways. And so those were the main ones. Mind mapping, storytelling, music, and gamification. Those are the four things that we really looked at.
Rob:So what are some of the results from our, especially our interviews?
Jared:Yeah. So as we typically do when we do these end of series episodes, we like to talk about lessons learned. We're do that, but we'll do it a little bit differently this time around. We're gonna talk about some themes that we came across and, kind of synthesizing everything from this series. One of the big ones that we saw with many of our guests is and it all comes back to the idea of knowing your students and understanding your students.
Jared:So with doctor Singletary, we he talked about, you know, find out what your students like to do best, find out what their preferences are when it comes to if you're gonna use gamification, find out what hits them best, what helps them best, and play to that. The same with Doctor. Lane talking about music, you know, she recommended finding music they were unfamiliar with to help provide the background noise to them as they study. Also, you know, look for their own preferences, help them with that. And then, of course, with Doctor.
Jared:Q, talking about storytelling, knowing your students is tantamount because you want them to be able to understand the metaphor that you're presenting. If you're using dated terms or, you're talking about, a CRT, you know, most students don't know what a CRT is. I actually had that in my class, earlier this year. Was talking about how I, you know, I collect, retro games, and I'm always on the lookout for Nintendo and Super Nintendo. And I said I really could use a CRT and maybe about two heads nodded.
Jared:The rest of them were like, what are you talking about?
Rob:Cathode ray tube.
Jared:Yeah. Because they want the good CRT TVs to play NES and Super NES or Genesis too.
Rob:Because you wanted to burn it in the back of your retina.
Jared:Yeah. I want I want what's crazy is I finally found one, and then my now my kids are like, it's so loud because of the ringing that, you know, we were so used to. They're like, they hear the ringing in the background. So understanding, you know, we're talking about approaching wisely, you know, using these as tools, not as the end all or hoops or one size fits all techniques that were are going to help with everything. You know, that that's true with any kind of tool you're using in education or any kind of methodology that you're using.
Jared:Approach it wisely. Have a purpose and an outcome when you're using it.
Rob:Yeah. And then the then the last thing, which was probably the thing that we wanna stress the most with our listeners is small tests. Do baby steps. Try it. Right?
Rob:Yep. You know, try it, reflect on it, get some feedback from those whom with you tried it, try again in the sense that failure is feedback. Right? If it didn't work, okay, that's great. Try something else.
Jared:It doesn't mean we abandon it.
Rob:No. Right. Just do different things. Don't do things that are gonna, like, shake the foundations of your your course without doing some, you know, small trials along the way. Yeah.
Rob:So instead of building a course on a new methodology, do some little pieces here. Try to use storytelling a little bit here if you're not in the if you're not in the habit of doing that, don't go out and revamp your entire course to be just one big, huge, long story.
Jared:Yeah. It's
Rob:probably not gonna go well.
Jared:Probably not.
Rob:So, you know, those are the the real themes that we saw. Know your audience. Approach it wisely. It's a tool. Right?
Rob:Pay attention. Mhmm. I think one of the things that also came back from it is like and I've heard you say this is like, don't use something you don't know how to use.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Right. You need to make sure you train yourself on whatever that tool is before you, you know, use it in front of your your students.
Jared:It's funny you said that because as soon as you said that, I thought back to the conference we were at and one of the hesitations, according to the research that one of the studies that I attended, they were presenting their findings and found that one of the biggest barriers to technology adoption, regardless of what it is, is the fear of looking stupid and fear of failure in front of others. Right. Which you see that in, Diffusion of Innovations with Rogers and everything else. But that could be something where you could mitigate that if you practice ahead of time and you You know, we have sandboxes, our quote unquote sandboxes in Canvas where we add each other to our courses and we try things and test stuff out and get the student perspective and our own perspective on it. You know, use that opportunity, find a colleague, find someone that you can, Hey, I'm going to create this, act like my student, and tell me what happens when I send you this.
Jared:If it's through Mentimeter or some plugin that's in Google Slides, try that out and, give me your feedback. Let me know what you think of it. Yeah. Just something small like that would be useful to help out with. Again, small iterative changes, try reflect feedback, try again.
Rob:So let's talk about how it went for us.
Jared:Sure. Let's do it. Yeah. Here's the actual yes, we tried portion of the program.
Rob:You have now made it to yes, we tried.
Jared:Congratulations. After the ad break.
Rob:So for me, you know, I I basically tried three different things. Music, storytelling, and that was, again, small. I only did storytelling once, and I did it in one class period. Gamification, I used it one time in Mentimeter.
Jared:And
Rob:like I said, like we just said a little bit ago, right, small steps. So I wanted to make sure that I didn't overdo things. With music, I decided to focus in on the beats per minute. Okay. To see if there was something to what doctor Dufoury Lane had said.
Rob:So one class, as they came in the first class, 08:00 in the morning, I was playing a 120 beats per minute. Non it was I think it was like some sort of lo fi music, 120 beats per minute. It was upbeat energetic. Right? And usually that class is very, very slow to get going in terms of, you know, just interaction, getting feedback from them.
Rob:And that time, I actually had to tell them to stop talking. It's the first time that I've ever had to say that to that particular 8AM class. So that that kind of shocked me. Mhmm. As well as I saw that the thinking wasn't as deep.
Rob:And this is anecdotal. You know? Sure. It's just from my own observations of my students' responses.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And it was in the middle of the year. So I I felt like I already had a pretty good idea of where they were as a class
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:In terms of dealing with philosophical content. So that went really well. The 60 beats per minute was very helpful. I used that in free writing, a free writing exercise that I had them do as part of their paper
Jared:Sure.
Rob:Development, and a lot of them love that. I got a lot of feedback from that. Storytelling, I did get some feedback from that one as well when I I gave them a personal story from my own life that was reflective of the topic of the day.
Jared:Okay.
Rob:And, again, positive feedback on that. I had actual students come down and talk to me after class.
Jared:Oh, wow.
Rob:You know, several. Cool. Instead of just one or two, I had, like, four or five. And then Mentimeter gamification, that one kinda went off the rails.
Jared:Oh, really?
Rob:Yeah. As soon as you start, like, doing points
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:You know what I mean? It kind of, like, has it can have a way of taking things over.
Jared:And
Rob:especially if you have some that are, like, super game conscious.
Jared:Yeah. Sure.
Rob:They just
Jared:Competitive by nature.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. They just wanna win.
Jared:Right? Sure.
Rob:And then the constant tapping of the
Jared:The thumbs up?
Rob:Thumbs up. Yeah. So
Jared:If you use Medimeter, you know what we mean.
Rob:Yeah. Mind mapping, I didn't get to. I I'll just be honest with our readers.
Jared:Really? See, I
Rob:feel like
Jared:that would be something you could really tap into with your ethics course.
Rob:Yeah. You're not wrong. I know. The problem is I was already, like, when I started thinking about, okay, how am I gonna put this in the class? I couldn't find couldn't find an easy way.
Rob:And when I say easy way, I I mean, it was difficult for me to find a place to put it that far into the class. Had I had it earlier on
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:I could oh, yeah. You should try that. Especially, like, framework, building a framework and just have them do that. That's honestly where I'm actually headed with my course instead of having them do a paper. Oh.
Rob:I think I'm gonna have them do a mind map.
Jared:Like a decision tree?
Rob:Something like that.
Jared:Kinda like Larry Cox the second was saying?
Rob:Yeah. Try to, one, put all the pieces that they hold their beliefs in certain areas because I've already got the outline, so I can give that to them. And then go ahead and put what they believe and reference it.
Jared:And it
Rob:doesn't need to be in huge prose where they're just filling up Mhmm. You know, words. Mhmm. And it's a lot more actionable, I think. Yeah.
Rob:So I think that's where I'm headed with
Jared:with that. Next semester we try?
Rob:That is a next semester we try. So that's it for me.
Jared:So I will say that I use almost all of them. Music's probably the weakest one. I think I mentioned this in the music episode. I just, it was hard for me, again, adding it in halfway through. I didn't want to do that.
Jared:If I wanted to add it, I probably should have done it at the very beginning. The only thing I did was whenever we were doing deep dives in class and I had them work individually on some assignments or homework that I gave them a head start on and wanted them to practice while we were in class. I allowed them to wear headphones if they wanted to, to help them focus. I don't know what kind of music they were listening to. I didn't say anything like, hey, only 60 beats per minute.
Jared:Or I said, listen to music you're not familiar with because I feel like that would have been bad. Something I might try is playing some music this week. That's a review week for the final. Maybe do some lo fi in the background and ask them at the end of the week what they thought of it, if they even noticed anything was different, and would it be something we would consider for the final exam? But I'm not sure.
Jared:Maybe like you said, with mind mapping, it might be too late. Storytelling was another weak one for me. Like I used some personal stories to kind of teach as like a metaphor to illustrate a point. The course itself was literature. So I guess you could say that the course itself was storytelling, but I feel like storytelling is more direct and it's more, has an end goal.
Jared:It has like a, almost like a, like a fable would, like a moral of the story, idea or presenting new content to students through storytelling. So I didn't use that one specifically as much in my teaching practice.
Rob:Well, you used the red shirts.
Jared:I did use the red shirts to help with illustrating the point that people around the hero always die, in an epic or any kind of, story really. So I guess there was the red shirts.
Rob:The Star Trek red shirts.
Jared:Remember that. Was
Rob:there the day that
Jared:you Yeah. You were there. I remember that.
Rob:You used that.
Jared:Yeah. Mind mapping, I used a ton, but again, I didn't use the, traditional and I talked about this when we had Larry Cox the second on, I don't follow the mind mapping rule of like, well, it's gotta be like this and because you're you seem to be very much like, no, you're using a graphic organizer. You're not using mind mapping. To me, anything you put out on a page and you draw circles and arrows stuff, to me, that's mind mapping. I I know it falls under either it's a graphic organizer or a a mind map or a decision tree or whatever.
Jared:I don't really care. To me, as long as ideas get out on a page, to me, that's mind mapping. So I use it a ton. I had we did multiple assignments. We called it craft day in my class and students, again, freshmen, sophomores, juniors in college, absolutely loved craft time.
Jared:I just pulled out white sheets of paper. There was a happened to be a tub of markers in the classroom. It was like go nuts. And they developed some things. So we used it to track symbols and track characters in Macbeth and Gatsby.
Jared:The one that I use a lot every day in class was Mentimeter. And Mike, you talked about having it kind of take over. To me, using Mentimeter to help them review for the text that they were supposed to come into class to have read and adding a point system to that was incredible. I even tried to, like, trip them up and make some questions wrong. Immediately, they were like, no, that's that's wrong.
Jared:This one's right. Because it had to do with their points. Like, you said this, and so I had to, know, fix it and adjust it. But to me, Mentimeter is an incredible way of using gamification, adding points to something, even the clicking of the it still happens repeatedly. Yes.
Jared:I know who does it. And honestly, it's like, I've told them, I hope your mouse bar on your laptop completely breaks because of how much you do it, but it's still it's just there and I'm okay with it. But to me, the gamification has been an incredible asset, for me. So, yeah, I I guess, if I were to right now, my enrollment's too low in my spring section, so I may not get to teach again in the spring. But if I did, think I would use more gamification.
Jared:Might try to introduce music early on and, also do some more storytelling like the red shirts ideas. So, yeah, that's what we did this semester. Well, Rob, this was a great series. Very thankful that we got through it and that, thankful for this this year of podcasting. It's been a I know we'll have a year interview episode coming up, but it's just it's been good here in December to reflect on what we've done and it's pretty cool.
Rob:Yeah. It's been a it's been a delight.
Ryan:It's been a joy. Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about today's episode or this series, feel free to reach out to us at CTLpodcast@cedarville.edu. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn, and don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.