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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Jared:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. My name is Jared Pyles, and with me is Dr. Robert McDole.
Rob:Good afternoon.
Jared:Good afternoon. We are wrapping up our series on active learning.
Rob:Woo hoo.
Jared:We've been talking about active learning, then we've talked about active learning spaces, plenty of conversation with experts in the field. And this is our lessons learned episode that we usually do at the end of these series. You and I have three lessons learned, and then we're gonna share them. We haven't shared them with each other. This will be the first time we hear them.
Jared:And, yeah, you go first.
Rob:Okay.
Rob:My takeaway is the one from the philosophy that Dr. Leveque Bristol brought to the table. That one kinda surprised me. Mhmm. Self determination theory. So, you know, some of the things behind that autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Rob:Those were the three main main tenets to the self determination theory and that that was in her mind key to active learning. And as you sit there and you think about those things that they have they do have some biblical background. We're created in the image of God, so there is a desire to create, and and there is this idea of autonomy. You don't wanna feel like you're being controlled by someone else. You wanna feel like you have agency.
Rob:Right? Even in our own lives when we submit to the Lord, it's still something that is really key. It's our relationship with him. Like, not your relationship through me with him. It's your relationship with him, my relationship.
Rob:So that autonomy comes through to me anyway pretty loud. And that was something as I thought about. I'm like, wow. I really need to think about how I do my coursework. How am I engaging the image of God and those that I'm trying to bring with me in this particular topic.
Rob:So and that sounds like servant, you know, servant teaching. We've heard that before from Dr. Schultz and but it's still it's just one of those things that was I was surprised that came out from someone who probably doesn't have the same, you know, worldview
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:That that we do. Mhmm. But yet, they're finding it. They're seeing it. They're like, yeah.
Rob:Here it is.
Jared:Yeah. My first one comes from, when we started talking about active learning spaces, I posited the question of either is it the room or the instructor that makes active learning? And I equated it to the guitar discussion where I was looking to buy a guitar and the guy was like, you can make any sound you want to out of any guitar as long as you know what you're doing. Then he tried to sell me a $1,500 guitar, and, he didn't win. I went and bought that guitar later just out of almost like spite of the commission idea of, you know, you just told me I didn't have to spend this much, and now you want me to spend this much.
Jared:But I feel sorry for that guy now, I guess. So I asked everyone that question, and the results that I got were pretty much in the middle. And I think that's where I'm planting myself as well. I think, Dr. Penrod summed it up best where she was like, you can put a teacher in a state of the art classroom and not get good results. Right.
Jared:You can have all the technology in the world that you want to. Mhmm. But if the teacher or the instructor is not motivated or knows how to use it, then it's going to be pointless. So while I think the discussion of active learning spaces is important, I wouldn't weigh as heavily on the technology as I would the instructor. And I one of the purposes of doing this series is for me to have an answer to that question.
Jared:And I think it weighs more towards the instructor solely on the purpose that you can have all the cool tools that you want to, but if you don't know how to use them, it's like putting me right now in front of a car and saying, here are all these state of the art hydraulic or even better example. Put me in an F1 paddock and say, hey, we gotta we put this thing through the wind tunnel. It's giving us this result. Here's all these state of the art tools and machinery for you to fix it. Go ahead.
Jared:And I'm like, well, I've watched two and a half seasons of F1 , and I've watched drive to survive, and I follow some accounts on Instagram. That doesn't make me an expert at doing this stuff.
Rob:But you should know what kind of apparel to wear.
Jared:Oh, I do. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And I've had to change my wardrobe now because Carlos Sainz is now at Williams, which is I can't wear Williams stuff.
Jared:No. Anyway, that that's my number one. It's kind of in the middle. It's not always the room. It's not always the instructor.
Jared:It's kind of an in between, but siding more towards the instructor.
Rob:Well, mine kinda my second one kind of, like, pings off of that a little bit because what I think you are talking about is relationship relationship between the instructor and the student and then the relationship of the whole process, the teaching learning process to the room that they're in. And you've sided with the facilitator or the teacher. Mhmm. And so that's really was my second big takeaway. And, again, from, I think, our interaction with doctor Leveque Bristol was this idea of relationship.
Rob:I know the tenant I said earlier was relatedness, but I I like to think of it more as relationship. And the relationship that you have and or build with another individual and you have some sort of autonomy in it, building off of the first one, makes all the difference. I mean, if there's a connection between you and another brother or sister and you're going through this together and you're learning together, just like scripture says, iron sharpening iron. Right? And I think you and I have had those.
Rob:I mean, this has been a learning process for me just I think just as much as it has been for you.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:And hopefully our listeners as well. And those relationships, I think, are what move us beyond just the academic and help us see how we might be able to use this in our everyday lives. And once you start using something in your everyday life, it totally changes you.
Rob:Your behaviors change. And and I think that's really what every professor, at least here on this campus, wants to see. Right? Transformed lives. Yep.
Rob:Obviously, for the gospel and for Christ, and that's really the the under the underpinning. If you don't have those relationships, you're not gonna have I don't think you're gonna have that opportunity for transformation in the same way.
Jared:My number two is spur of the moment because I thought of something better than my previous number two.
Rob:Okay.
Jared:This is from Tracy Birdwell when she came on. This one has stuck with me throughout the entire series. Every time we've we've recorded, I think about this. And she talked about the importance still of lecture in active learning. And that it still works and it still happens in an active learning space.
Rob:Yes.
Jared:Active learning does not mean you stop lecturing. The bigger lesson, the more specific lesson from that is her talking about when you are introducing new material, you keep your lecture short. And it all goes back to Uncommon Sense Teaching. The idea we should do a book review episode of Uncommon Sense Teaching. You know, we start doing book reviews.
Jared:We should you know, we should call it. I just came up with this title right now, Proof that we read. And I think we should do book titles, proof that we read colon uncommon sense teaching.
Rob:That's the
Jared:first one.
Rob:That's good.
Jared:Ryan, write that down. We're gonna do that.
Rob:He's got it.
Jared:He's got it. Alright. Sweet. But she was talking about if she's going to attend a lecture on something that she is knowledgeable of or has an interest in, she's going to be able to listen longer Yeah. Because of stuff she's but or it's stuff she's familiar with.
Jared:Anything that's brand new, it's hard to comprehend those concepts for longer periods.
Rob:Right.
Jared:So think about your students when they come in, especially if you're teaching, you know, freshmen, sophomores in in college or even freshmen and sophomores in high school, all brand new material. Right?
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:So you can't expect them to be able to comprehend and process. It's not because of their attention level, it's because of their brains. All this new information coming in, you've gotta give it to them in sizable chunks. So the more time you can spend giving them breaks or time to reflect on that new content, you can go you can cover thirty minutes of lecture material, but you have to break it up into nice little chunks. You give them time to reflect.
Jared:Yeah. That was a huge takeaway and something that's going to stick with me because of what she said about lecture.
Rob:So that's your number two?
Jared:That's my number two. Yeah.
Rob:So number three for me kind of pings off of your your number one.
Jared:Keep pinging off of
Rob:Yeah. You know, the thing that I just keep going back to is the idea of lighting. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Rob:So lighting seems to me to be much more important than we really understand. And how much lighting you have in a room, the color of the lighting. You can take, you know, you can take a nasty, ugly room and make it more conducive to learning, I think
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Based on how you light that room. Yeah. You know, like, right now, we're inside of a very nice studio. It's got can lighting above us, and there's a nice warm glow, and it's very conversational.
Jared:Mhmm. I wanna take a nap.
Rob:Well, you borderline wanna take a nap. Yeah.
Jared:It's just a very cozy.
Rob:Yeah. It's very cozy and the lighting provides that. Yeah. Right? And what really brought that to to my mind was when we were having the conversation with Jim Stevenson.
Rob:Yep. And he was talking about oh, he said so many things and that's Yeah. I need to go back and actually listen to it again. Yeah. But one of those was, you know, thinking about how things how people see it and the lighting that comes into it.
Rob:I mean, their their space there is very there are a lot of windows.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And they actually have windows between full glass between classrooms as well. They do have classrooms, but they actually have full glass between it so that other students can see what these other folks are doing, like the seniors are doing these kinds of projects. And the juniors are over here in this room doing their projects and vice versa. The seniors can see what they're doing. And then there becomes this kinda like, oh, what are they doing?
Rob:You know, curiosity. You're looking over the fence and you're going,
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:What's going on over there? And it also he talked about the he talked about the vertical and more about the vertical than the horizontal. And that was kinda new to me as well. And so I was just thinking through that with lighting and thinking about, oh, okay. Maybe I should pay more attention.
Rob:So, like, I'm getting ready to do a course on business ethics, 08:00 in the morning in the new building. Right in the center is like that big amphitheater classroom where they have three different sections. Well, mine is in the center. So I'm not gonna have any windows. No windows, but I can control the full out of the lighting.
Jared:Yep. You change the color of the lighting?
Rob:I don't know. I was that's something I was gonna go check-in on. I went and looked at their classroom just trying to get a feel of, you know, how does this feel when you're gonna walk into it? The only thing I haven't done is walk into the room Yeah. At that time in the morning to kinda get a vibe as to what our students gonna feel like when they walk into this room.
Rob:You know? Mhmm. And just try to get an idea. I'll probably be way off.
Jared:The best thing you could do is just livestream outside the room, like outside facing the lake, and just connect that to the projector and just show that up on the
Rob:I wouldn't even thought about that.
Jared:I mean, that's
Rob:That would be interesting.
Jared:And turn all the other lights out and just have that glowing the entire time.
Rob:Then they're all gonna like, I wanna go outside.
Jared:Not at eight in the morning.
Rob:No. That that's the other concern is, like, I gotta think about, you know, blood sugar levels, whether they're awake or not.
Jared:Yeah. To talk more about ICC, which is what Jim Stevenson helps run over there in Dublin, Ohio. We went there. I took the kids on a little tour
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:To see the facility.
Jared:I was again just struck with, like you said, it's just a lot of open space, a lot of windows facing the outside, a lot of outside light coming in, natural light. It's just an invite inviting fun space to be in.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:It's really, really cool. So, yeah, props to them.
Rob:So that was my last one.
Jared:Alright. Well, my last one is boring. Yay. But it all comes back to regardless of what you're doing with active learning, you've gotta have clear objectives.
Rob:Amen.
Jared:And you have to have an idea of where you're heading because you can, again, just like putting someone in a room with all the great technology or great tools and you need them to revamp an F1 car, if you don't have clear expectations going into if you're having this discussion or you're doing an interactive quiz in groups, if you don't have a clear goal of it we talk about module level objectives, and we could even do lecture level objectives if we wanted to. If you don't have that goal at the end of it, the activity will be cool, but there's no payoff. Right?
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:And then sometimes your students will also pick up on that too, where they're like, why are we doing this?
Jared:And at the end, you're like, so what'd you think of the activity? Cool, Alright. See you later. So all that cool stuff that you had them do, there was no actual application for it. So having a clear goal in mind.
Jared:And, you know, sometimes active learning will fit that objective and sometimes it may not. But if you have a clear objective and you wanna do some active learning, it's gonna make a world of difference. Yeah. It's gonna keep you grounded and keep your students grounded in that. So boring, but objectives are important.
Jared:Like like we never talked about that before.
Rob:So so I also have a I do have a bonus. It was like a
Jared:Oh, three and a half?
Rob:Yeah. And since you said what you said, I feel like I can I can bring that in?
Jared:Oh, okay.
Rob:Starting with the end in mind is super important, but active learning is learning.
Jared:Okay.
Rob:And that's something that I realized. Like, what we're talking about is actually just learning and active. I mean, I'm sorry. This sounds really, like, super, like, well, then why in the world did you spend all this time talking about
Jared:That sounds like a sound bite. If we were had a video element, we would just put that, and that would be our highlight for the week or something.
Rob:Because we when we first started this series out, I was still trying to figure out what in the world do we mean by it. You know? And even after getting into it, the definitions were just many and varied.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:There were some who thought, oh, well, it's just it's not lecture.
Rob:Right? Yeah. And, you know, you've already kinda debunked that.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And others have as well.
Rob:But it's really about that that process. Learning is about the process of give and take where you're taking something, you're interacting with it, and hopefully, you're bringing something back out to the table. But if you're never given that opportunity, we usually, like, force that through assessments. Right? We ask questions.
Rob:I just said something. Did you hear me? You know, our wives do that with us all the time.
Jared:Yes. They do.
Rob:And and so there's active learning strategies going on, I think, all the time. Mhmm. And what we've been trying to do is just make them explicit. Take the things that we've been taking for granted and just bring them up and kinda highlight some of those things.
Jared:We do wanna talk about the future of active learning spaces and active learning. But off the cuff, I want you to tell me, you mentioned that you're teaching a course this semester. Are there any takeaways that you can apply to your course this semester?
Rob:I would say what I am applying is finding out and trying to get these students involved and motivated in business ethics. One, find out what they know about it already.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And then two, take ownership. So having them do case studies, I think, in class, I'm gonna flip it where we're doing the things that they should know and the readings that they should know and have quizzes and stuff. So, yeah, I'm doing that, But I really wanna use our class time in group settings, doing reflection, but also case study review, multiple case studies where they you know, different groups can pull different ones and then and then share where they where they came and then just kind of riff off of that. But the whole point is to get them interested. And I think one of those is also, you know, to have them bring cases to the table.
Rob:So that's one of the things I think as seniors, they should be able to do. Right?
Jared:Senior senior students?
Rob:Should be. Should be. This is generally a it's a
Jared:4,000 level?
Rob:4420
Jared:Okay.
Rob:Is the business 4420. So they should be able to bring that to the table.
Jared:So ownership.
Rob:Yeah. So ownership of it for themselves, asking why, you know, and then thinking through their particular majors. You know, not just business. They got management. We got finance.
Rob:We got accounting, marketing. I think I've I think IT is in there as well. How do you see ethics playing into where you're headed? Yeah. You know, what what do you see out there?
Rob:What have you experienced? Because I think most of them have probably had internships of one kind or another.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:So they may already have some experiences that, you know, they can they can surface and then we can talk about and, you know, take through a biblical framework.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:And basically say, you know, was what happened right?
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Because that's essentially what ethics is.
Jared:So You're gonna do it you're gonna do it through active discussion and Yeah. Group work and stuff like that.
Rob:Yep. Okay.
Jared:Cool. I'd take that class, except it's at eight in the morning. Then I won't take
Rob:that class. 09:00 session.
Jared:You have a 09:00 session? Are they back to back?
Rob:They are back to back. Oh, man. So I'm gonna my poor 08:00 folks are gonna be my guinea pigs. Sorry,
Jared:folks. Hey. Oh,
Rob:hey. I'm doing something different in the 09:00 section. You should come back.
Jared:Alright. Future of active learning spaces. I think we we talk about this a bit off air. We have goals and aspirations, what we'd like to see, but I'll let you start.
Rob:Oh. Yeah. I would like to see more collaboration spaces. We had a really good conversation with the folks in the library. Yep.
Rob:Josh, Michael, Kirsten Setzkorn. And they were great. What they're doing in the library is phenomenal. And I think we just need more of that. We need to be thinking about that in every space from an educational standpoint, in a relational standpoint.
Rob:I'm not saying it hasn't been, so please don't hear me say that because I think it has. Obviously, this stuff's going on at Cedarville.
Jared:Right.
Rob:I just think we could do so much more. The BTS is a good example, I think, of of design that has followed that. The student center. I mean, one of the biggest places where students go and congregate is at the cafeteria, and it's got some of the most, you know, floor to ceiling, like, glass that we have, I think, on campus.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:You know, very, very nice to be in.
Jared:It's there's always a lot of students.
Rob:And there's always a lot of natural light. And you take something like a cafeteria and you make it not bad.
Jared:That BTS Building, by the way, is a biblical studies building.
Rob:But a lot of glass there. Yeah. You know, it's it's definitely different than, say, the old science and engineering part of the Science And Engineering Building.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:Right?
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Where it's lot of block, very heavy brick, not a lot of, like, windows in many of the classrooms, if at all.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:So overhead yellow lighting that hums. Yes. So that may sound like I'm just nitpicking and me, you know, like I said.
Jared:Learning still happens in those spaces.
Rob:Most certainly. But I'm just saying if you chose where you wanted to have a class
Jared:Right.
Rob:I guarantee you it probably would not be in some of those classrooms. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, the hope is we just continue down that path of of really thinking through the form that it follows the function that we want it, you know, to accomplish. And I think the business building, the new business building does that as well.
Jared:I agree.
Rob:There's a lot of glass in there.
Jared:Yeah. Yeah. I I think our our new business building has a lot of those active learning style classrooms.
Rob:They got some movable tables in certain areas.
Jared:I I would like to see more buildings go in that direction. I think building or renovating with like you said, this is this is happening where they're building with education in mind.
Rob:Oh, yeah.
Jared:But really having an intentional design that's based around active learning, I think would be interesting to see. Maybe even, we've talked about this, an innovation space where you can trial and error stuff with students.
Rob:Oh, yeah, and faculty. And faculty.
Jared:Just come in and let's try this out, and if it doesn't work, or get feedback or whatever, I think that would be cool. You know, because a lot of the apprehension behind starting anything new is just like you go in blind sometimes when you go into
Rob:Right.
Jared:You can do all the prep work you want to for a new activity using a new tool, then you go into the classroom and the Wi-Fi doesn't work, or a student raises their hand and says, mine won't connect.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:And stuff like that. So giving a practice space that's also an active learning space.
Rob:You're making a good point. You have to have a place where anybody and everybody can come because creativity isn't just one person's, you know, domain. It's Sure. We've learned. You and I have learned together and in our team that we've learned.
Rob:The more we have around the table thinking about creative ideas, the better they get. Yeah.
Jared:Right.
Rob:Instead of me just sitting in a silo trying to come up with all the ideas, you get more people around it and it just you get a vision that you all share.
Jared:Mhmm. Yeah. Are you good?
Rob:I'm good.
Jared:It was fun. I think we'll revisit this plenty of times. That's gonna do it for us on the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Be sure to like and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Send us an email if you have any further thoughts on active learning.
Jared:CTLPodcastcederville dot You can connect with us on LinkedIn. The link is in our description. And be sure to check out our blog, cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.