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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.
Just because you're in the space doesn't mean you're actively learning. So I think it's so much more heavier on the instructor side of the responsibility to formulate the course in an active active learning way. And then your space just enables that experience.
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 to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. My name is Jared Pyles, and with me is Dr. Rob McDole.
Rob:Good afternoon.
Jared:We are continuing our series on active learning, and we are talking about active learning spaces. And part of that is looking at where colleges are and universities are converting some of their spaces or creating new spaces for active learning. And we had this guest on earlier when we talked about generative AI. Yep. And she happened to mention on LinkedIn when we were talking about how, oh, we just did this entire active learning renovation on our campus.
Jared:We should talk about that too. And I said, sure. Why not? Yep. So joining us again, the CIO of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, the home of Chad Pennington and Randy Moss and Byron Leftwich, Dr. Jodi Penrod.
Jared:Hello, Dr. Penrod.
Dr. Penrod:Hi. Good to be back.
Jared:Welcome back.
Rob:Yes. Welcome back. You've joined
Jared:the elite club of repeat guests. Yep.
Dr. Penrod:Alright. Is it, like, Saturday night live after so many, and I get a jacket after so many?
Rob:We might send you a coffee cup, a bespoke coffee cup.
Jared:Do you drink coffee?
Dr. Penrod:I I don't. I drink tea, but, you know, I still would need a cup.
Jared:It it still works.
Dr. Penrod:There we go.
Jared:You can still put it in there.
Rob:You can put tea
Jared:in it. Yeah. It's fine.
Rob:So, Jared, just mentioned the fact that you had the Brad d Smith Center for Business and Innovation, and you you did some renovation there specifically towards active learning. At least we were discussing that. Give us a little rundown, if you will. What was the motivation behind that? What's the thinking?
Rob:What's what's Marshall trying to do with it?
Dr. Penrod:Sure. So I'm gonna also kind of take you back a little bit even before my Marshall days and give a little bit of context there too. So a little bit about the Brad d Smith Center. You know, Brad Smith is our our president, and we were lucky enough before he was president, he had committed to be a major donor for the new College of Business Building. So that was in the works before I became CIO at Marshall University.
Dr. Penrod:In fact, whenever I was in the process of accepting this position and and kind of doing my transition, I got the blueprints for the center and, had a lot of opinions about it. You know? When you're like, oh, I wish they would have waited for me to do this. Uh-huh. You know?
Jared:Uh-huh.
Dr. Penrod:Kind of to take a step back, whenever I worked at Ohio University, the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, I was actually very involved in the creation of their new medical education building. And we made that, and Their curriculum was all based on active learning. So there's three different campuses, and we created all of the classrooms to be active learning classrooms that connected to each other. So that was a really cool experience, and that laid the foundation for my experience with active learning, classroom design, hybrid learning. And then, of course, I was in the middle of my dissertation doing that on active learning and hybrid learning.
Dr. Penrod:I have a lot of opinions about it all. And I don't know. And so here we are today. So part of the Marshall strategy is an in demand, on demand curriculum. So our hope is is that we get to a point where we're offering flexibility for our students.
Dr. Penrod:And, you know, I hate this phrase because I feel like people use it a lot, but I'm gonna say it, is to meet them where they are and and be, you know, flexible. Really, in West Virginia, our students half of our student population are first generation students, so that means they're working at the same time that they're going to school. And I mean, let's face it. I got my PhD when I was working full time and a mom and all of the above. I wouldn't have been able to do it if I didn't have that flexibility.
Dr. Penrod:So after COVID, I think we're moving it's almost surprising to me that we're moving backwards a little bit now back to on campus experiences. My hope is that we'll continue to move towards much more flexible learning and hybrid learning. And since that was so much part of our strategy, that really laid the foundation for how we wanted to design the rooms. So like I said, going back to November 2022 now, I got the designs for the building and said stop. We're gonna relook at these and make sure this is really where we wanna go.
Dr. Penrod:I also looked at the budget, and it was not quite where we wanted it be. So we sort of did a, you know, a kind of a scrap and replace plan for and that was one of our major challenges, just reworking that entire plan into the timeline. Because at that point in time, we had we were gonna open the buildings to the new building in January. So we basically had to redesign and replan for all of the classrooms and be ready to roll in January the 2024. So that was a it was a major project.
Jared:I am intrigued about the whole strategy of it. You know, what are those other facets that came into it when you looked at those plans and said, okay, we gotta come up with something, especially in this six month period to get this thing done?
Dr. Penrod:Yeah, so I had previously, with the OUHCOM project, I worked with a company called T1B. So I partnered with them. I had an integrator that I partnered well with. They're up in Cleveland. They're called Root Integrated Systems.
Dr. Penrod:So I had these two partners that I trusted implicitly with everything because I had worked so great with them in the past at the OUH Crom project. Active learning is one of those things where that's the way people should be learning. That's the way it's proven that that's the way people learn in a much more flipped classroom environment and being actively engaged instead of that traditional lecture kind of experience. However, we also know that the pedagogy sometimes doesn't catch up with that, and so you have to sort of allow It's almost one of those build it and they will come sort of mentality. Way that I sort of worked through this experience is that we incorporated We had 13 classrooms in the building, and I think there's four or five of them that are active learning classrooms using this technology called T1B.
Dr. Penrod:The thing about T1B, it's all software based technology where you can essentially share out to the student stations and then the students can connect to their stations and then you can bring their stations back up to the instructor and then bring it back out again. So there's so much flexibility with how you can engage with your students using technology. So that's what was really important for us was that, one, that it was a very flexible experience where the faculty saw the value in how much they could teach and engage with their students using it. And then the next step of this was, you sort of have to take a stance, like as a technologist, like, or provide some thought partnership and feedback back to faculty to say, listen, if a student is having a hybrid experience or a remote experience, you writing on a whiteboard is not good for them. So looking at technology that is more digital and instead of relying on whiteboards and the traditional classroom experience.
Dr. Penrod:Because I think a lot of people for COVID, they just put a bunch of webcams in and there you go, they have hybrid, but that's not necessarily a good hybrid experience. What's really difficult is making a good hybrid experience and a good active learning experience and then bringing it together.
Jared:Sure. Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:So that's what we're trying to do with with the rooms that we've built in the Smith Center.
Rob:So what is your definition of active learning?
Dr. Penrod:My definition is just that much more engaged, like, part of the process kind of learning. I think it utilizes that flipped classroom approach where you do all of your prereads. So I would say much like how we should all go into a meeting together, we preread, we do our due diligence before you get to the class, and then you can take that class period or the meeting or whatever and have discussion that furthers and deepens your understanding of the content. So, you know, as opposed to the traditional lecture where you're just learning content and someone's just feeding it to you, you sort of have the opportunity to prework that and then have much more meaningful conversations around it. So it helps you learn the content that much more.
Dr. Penrod:Especially for learners that learn that way, you know, I think that that's that's a much more valuable experience than your traditional lecture modes.
Rob:So it sounds like you're differentiating between what I would call a one way delivery model to a multi feedback kind of model where you've already done due diligence, as as you said, and then you're interacting with the professor and probably other students as well to reflect on on what you've learned and what's important with some guidance, I
Jared:would imagine, from the professors. That sound right?
Dr. Penrod:Yeah. And I think, like, as we and I'm gonna drop in a little AI talk here too while we're on it. But I don't know if you all have read Sal Khan's new book, Brain New Words. It's a great read. I highly suggest you read it only for the fact that it gives you so much more context around how AI is going to impact education from a personalized learning experience.
Dr. Penrod:So in his book, he basically says, We'll see this flipped classroom approach even more. The value of education and the instructor is even more important now because we're going to see the content come in this more of a flipped classroom approach, and then students are gonna be able to engage with AI in that more simulated or conversational type of way to learn material and then be able to come to the classroom and apply it in a in a more experiential way than they than they would have before. So I think we're gonna even see this more and more as people dive into more innovative pedagogical methods of how you handle some of these things.
Jared:So we were remarking that we just built a new business building and it looks like very similar to what the Bradley Smith Building is as well.
Rob:There's a lot of openness to it, a lot of modularity. There are some of those classrooms where it seems like there's stuff bolted down, but for the most part, I think it's pretty modular in a lot of those Yeah. A lot of those classrooms.
Jared:Jody, that that's something that keeps coming up. So, Jody, tell us about the furniture that's in that building.
Dr. Penrod:So there's always a challenge, right? So people like when you want an active learning classroom, you want flexible furniture, but then you have something called power that becomes a problem.
Jared:Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:You know? And so the hard part is, is like you're going to The way that I look at it is, is that you build a classroom with as much flexibility as you possibly can. However, if you try to build a classroom that can be anything to anyone, you're not doing a good job because it's never good at anything. It's sort of good enough, but it's never a great classroom. So that's the thing.
Dr. Penrod:It's like you can have mobile flexible furniture, but if you have students that have laptops and things like that, they're gonna want powers, the power to the table. So how are gonna do that in a flexible way? And most times you'll find out that, like, while it is flexible furniture, most people don't take unless you have a dedicated team to go change the way the furniture layout, it's never gonna get changed. That's my personal opinion. I mean, I will say this.
Dr. Penrod:Whenever I was at OUHCOM, we built that classroom as flexible as you can probably make a flexible classroom for 150 students. The classroom only got changed once every month, and that was for an assessment. And then it got changed back to exactly the way it was before.
Jared:Wow.
Dr. Penrod:And so you spend a lot of money getting this flexible experience. And then if you don't have the right infrastructure and support around it, it never really pans out the way you really want it to. So I always try to, like, do things that are on winggills, but I also am realistic enough to know that it's probably gonna stay the same way it is for the most part.
Jared:I wonder if with technology advancing We have MacBooks here in our department, with the advancements in battery life, is there a point where a student can sit through a fifty minute lecture as long as they charge their MacBooks or their laptops ahead of time? The the need for power seems to be going further away. So I wonder if eventually there's going to be not as much because, yeah, one of the things I talked about in our episode about designing actual learning spaces is the need for outlets. Like, you need outlets. You have to consider that, like you said.
Jared:But I wonder if eventually a student can sit through an hour or two hour lecture without having to charge or being concerned about that.
Rob:Well, I'd say, you know, the laptops that you and I have right now could do that. I've I've used my laptop all day and not had it plugged in and and done video, you know, Teams meetings, word processing, surfing the Internet, watching video, listening to music, all those things. So the battery life has gotten a whole lot better on these things. And Apple especially has become really, really good at sipping, you know, electricity and getting more efficiency out of their, you know, their silicon and whatnot. It's interesting to me, though, when you look at these things, and I don't think she's wrong because in even in the K-12 sector, like my wife, you know, they have that one to one initiative for a lot of K-12 all through different states, West Virginia being the same as as Ohio, and I'm sure.
Rob:And one of the biggest problems that my wife faces as a teacher is students coming to class without charged notebooks or or whatever they may be or, you know, they left them somewhere, obviously, but still that that idea of being able to charge your notebooks. And these new schools that they're building here in Ohio, like she has, and and there's several here in the area, in the Dayton area that have been built most recently, they're not putting a lot of electricity and electrical outlets in their classrooms. And I think there's
Jared:still this understanding that the kids will charge their stuff at home and bring it with them, and that's just not
Rob:that's not happening. So I think the same thing is probably gonna happen in the college and university setting, and and Jody's probably can speak to that as well. It's like, they come thinking and expecting that you're gonna have power right where they need it. Is that what you're seeing?
Dr. Penrod:Yeah. And an another thing that we're seeing on on the university standpoint is is that different from K-12 where they are issued a device, I think most people are issued a device, we have a computer requirement for them, but they might come with whatever device they were issued when they were a freshman in high school. By the time they get college, this is a five year old device that they've had. So we get an assortment of devices that people have. So that also is one of those things where battery depending on the I can tell you honestly, most people, if they do bring a laptop, it's usually not a brand new one or close to being a new one.
Dr. Penrod:It's a good point to make about how much we should be planning for power in these buildings. It's almost like I was having this very same or similar conversation about how many network ports do you wire into a building now when Wi Fi is just as or better than wired. Right? So I think it'll get to a point where we kinda cut down on that, but I don't think we're there yet.
Jared:Yeah. I wonder if SES also plays a factor in, devices as well, like socioeconomic status of the students that come in. I guess that comes with the research that you do about where your students come from
Rob:as well. Well, they could even have money but still decide not to buy something of of of value there.
Jared:That's true
Rob:mentality where, like, you know, I'm not gonna get a Cadillac. I'm gonna get a Chevy. Why? I can afford both. But
Jared:So, really, the real question is just put more outlets in your room. That's the real not the question. That's the answer. Put more outlets in your room.
Rob:I think she's right.
Dr. Penrod:I think at this point, you you have to have a a power solution in the room. Sure. Right? Whether whether it's a wired in the floor power solution or you buy those sticks that you
Jared:know? Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:You just have to think about that in in an active learning situation, really in any classroom at this point, but more so, I think, in active learning when people are using their devices more.
Rob:That reminds me. When we do getting started week here, one of the things Campus Experience does now is that they have mobile power units that are big, huge batteries that are on that are on wheels. And they roll those things into the different folks who are doing presentations, so people like continuing education. Right? We set up our screens.
Rob:We set up all those kinds of things. And instead of plugging into the wires in the field house, instead of them running wires and stuff and running drop cables and all those kinds of things, they just roll in these battery packs that they've been charging. And they roll in and they fit underneath the table And they plug into that and they use that all day, and they have extra ones out there in case, you know, yours starts it needs to be replaced. They've got extras, then they just roll those in and roll them out. And so I wonder at some point, we ever get to the place where you have robots, power robots that can just travel around from room to room.
Rob:And when they need to be recharged, they go and place themselves in a charger somewhere and then, you know, come back to your room.
Jared:Mean, OSU already has those robots that will deliver things to people. No. Yeah. Yeah. Does Marshall have those yet?
Dr. Penrod:No. But I tell you what, I went to my alma mater, which is down in Florida, and I like, literally, those little robots were everywhere delivering food to everybody. And I'm like, what?
Jared:Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:This is crazy.
Jared:Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:You know? Well,
Jared:make that part of your next initiative as some
Rob:Yeah. We wanna talk to you robots taking over education.
Jared:Jodi Pinrod, the robot. Robot initiative, that kind of a thing.
Rob:The robot initiative.
Jared:I I I wanna touch on you mentioned that you have specific rooms that focus on hybrid and HyFlex. So talk with me about how, again, like maybe you may reemphasize it a bit. How are those different from the other active learning spaces? Because I know you've done a ton of research on hybrid and HyFlex. When we do a series on that, we gotta bring her back Oh, yeah.
Jared:For a third time to talk about that.
Dr. Penrod:Getting closer to my jacket.
Jared:Yeah. You're getting closer to the we'll get you a girl scout badge that says three time you know? But, tell me specifically about what what's what differentiated those Hyflex and hybrid rooms versus the other rooms?
Dr. Penrod:Yeah. So so what we have at Marshall is we in the past, they called them techy rooms, which was technology enhanced something where instructional spaces. I don't even know what the acronym stands for anymore. But that that's essentially their response to COVID. Basically what it was was you have the camera on the instructor, the instructor joins Teams, then it flows through to the room, and that's it.
Dr. Penrod:So to me, that is not a good hybrid. I mean, while that's a hybrid experience and you have the capability, it's also like have you ever tried to join a meeting and the meeting is a room full of people, but you're sitting at home joining and you can't hear everybody, you can't see what they're writing. So it's a hybrid experience, but it's not a good hybrid experience.
Rob:Right.
Dr. Penrod:So that's what we wanted to create. Right? So in our new building, we have two camera shots. So, you know, camera of audience that tracks. It's, you know, zone tracking based on who's speaking so that students can engage with other students regardless of where they are.
Dr. Penrod:And then we have a camera on the instructor so that they if the instructor is traveling and kinda moving while they speak, then the the shots stay on them. We utilize the digital whiteboard solution, which I said before was t one b. So with t one b, you can extend the like, kind of, like, build upon that experience. So they have an instructor station, which we use in all of our traditional setups where it's just that infinite canvas. It's not really an infinite canvas, but I think it's 16 times the size of the screen that you can work with.
Dr. Penrod:You could have multiple pieces of content. You can remotely access the device. You can engage with your audience. It's a really powerful softwarehardware experience that we can put in the room without a lot of kind of AV, your traditional AV equipment.
Jared:Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:So really that's it. It's just like and then we have a Teams device in the room. And so All of our classes have their own sort of Teams, so it joins the meeting in the room. The instructor can either wirelessly share their laptop or iPad or they can plug into the device. We really built a room so if you're an instructor that just literally wants to go through a PowerPoint presentation, you can do that.
Dr. Penrod:But if you wanted to do so much more, could do that too. So there's a lot of capabilities there, but that to me is what differentiates from the other room just because you have a much better audio experience. I think with hybrid, audio is everything.
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Dr. Penrod:So that's where we spend a lot of time just trying to get it right, like where students can hear each other kind of speak and that you're able to see that visual throughout the room. And then we have screens that, like, you know, two in the front, two in the back, and depending on the room setup, on the sides as well.
Jared:So we talk about spending money on these rooms and these spaces. Right? I think there's a sliding scale between making active learning the room on one end and the instructor on the other end. So my question is, where does an ideal active learning happen? Is it is it relying on the room or does it rely on the instructor?
Jared:And where does that slide go on that scale? If you know what I mean.
Dr. Penrod:Yeah. I mean, just because you're in the space doesn't mean you're actively learning. Right? Like, they can use the space as a traditional lecture room or whatever. So I think it's so much more heavier on the instructor side of the responsibility to formulate the course in an active learning way, and then your space just enables that experience.
Dr. Penrod:Right? So it's so much more on the faculty member to sort of set it up that way and then utilize the space in a way that complements it more than anything. That's my opinion.
Jared:So you side more with the instructor.
Dr. Penrod:For sure.
Rob:That makes sense.
Jared:Yeah. It does. That's the best answer I've heard so far.
Rob:Yeah. So you don't have the tail wagging.
Jared:Yeah. Academy High School. That's where that
Rob:comes from.
Jared:That's where that comes
Rob:There you go. So what would you tell those who are listening and and thinking about active learning spaces? What would you tell them? Where would you tell them to start? What would you tell them to look at?
Rob:Kinda give them some homework.
Dr. Penrod:I would say, first, before you under understand the space, understand the pedagogy. Right? Like, understand why that type of space works better than the traditional format. So understand flipped classroom, understand active learning and what that means, and then I think maybe look at some spaces. There's a whole website, I forget what it's like.
Dr. Penrod:There's a whole website of just different people's spaces that they've created for active learning.
Jared:Oh, really?
Dr. Penrod:So before you Woah. I can can send it to you guys. I just need to be like, I'll send it to you guys after this, but there's a lot of work being done about this. And, you know, even going to, like, different conferences and and things like that. You know what?
Dr. Penrod:I just went to a conference called IntroCall. I don't know if y'all are familiar with that, but it's by Avixa, which is much more like a technology integration AV type of conference, but they're they're really thinking about learning spaces a lot and how to build learning spaces for the future. And I think this is where we sort of get into this. You really have to understand the strategy of what of your organization too. Is this part of the strategy?
Dr. Penrod:Don't build it just to do it. Right? Build it if it's going to be supported by the university. Because some universities are against hybrid learning. Some are owning it, and some are just saying, let's do everything online.
Dr. Penrod:So I think before you spend all that money on technology, you have to have a solid approach to, you know, the modalities that the university will support with the faculty support. So it's gotta all start from the faculty's opinion, in my opinion.
Jared:Yeah.
Dr. Penrod:And read this read this book, the Sal Khan book. It's amazing. It's I mean, it'll give you an it'll just give you a whole another way to think about education and incorporating technology into education.
Jared:Yeah. We're gonna put that in our show notes or whatever for that. Resources.
Rob:For sure.
Jared:I may have to purchase it as soon as we're done here. Well, Doctor. Penrod, again, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Penrod:Thank you, guys. Been great to see you and looking forward to number three.
Jared:Yeah. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Thanks so much, Jody. That's gonna do it for us on the Transformer Teaching Podcast.
Jared:Be sure to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Send us an email if you have questions or concerns or comments or praises Yep. To CTLPodcastcederville.edu . And make sure you follow us on LinkedIn. We are now on LinkedIn.
Jared:And make sure you are also checking out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.