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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.
Hey, Transform Your Teaching listeners. We want to hear from you. And so we are currently running a survey, and at the end of the survey, you'll have a chance to enter to win a book giveaway for Uncommon Sense Teaching. So please take some time, fill out our survey, and it'll help us make better episodes in 2026. Thanks.
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, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles reflect on 2025. They discuss some of the series that we talked about, some of the big highlights and guests that were on the show, and talk about some of our analytics from this past year.
Ryan:Thanks so much for joining us.
Rob:Well, Dr. Pyles, we're here to do an episode that we have now this is going to be, I believe, our third year in review.
Jared:It's insane.
Rob:Yeah, is. Year. Third year.
Jared:It's insane.
Rob:Is it third?
Jared:Yeah. Well, it'll be year four in January.
Rob:Is it really? Yeah. Oh, goodness. It's been really fun. It just came in the ass.
Rob:I've learned a ton.
Jared:Oh, yeah. Especially this year.
Rob:That's the technical terminology. A ton.
Jared:If you could measure that, it would be a ton.
Rob:It would be a ton.
Jared:2,000 pounds of learning this year.
Rob:That's right. Twenty twenty five, man. It has been a whirlwind. We've had some really great guests. Yep.
Rob:Some really amazing topics.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And today, we're just gonna kinda go back over those a little bit. And I think one of the things we might find, you know, just having looked at some of our themes that we've touched on over the past year
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Is we're kinda still in the same groove, though. The message seems to be the themes seem to be fairly common and frequent. So we're gonna get into that. But before we do Sure. You know, where do you think we should where think we should start out?
Jared:Let's start with the stats. Let's just go with stats. So, total downloads in 2024.
Rob:So that was the year before.
Jared:Yes. That was the previous year. Right. 6800, sixty eight fourteen to be exact. This year, 2025, to date, and we are recording this in, November 7827, forecasted to be on pace for almost 9,000.
Jared:8,700 to 9,000. That's an increase of more than 30% this year, which is nuts. At the end of the year, we'll be sitting around 19,000 downloads since the show began.
Rob:And I I just wanna say thank you to the Lord Yeah. For that. Because, I mean, I have to be honest, and probably it's still this way. Like, when we started, I'm like, what in the world are we gonna have to say to people? But yet, we felt like there was a gap, especially for our faculty.
Rob:We tried to find something where we could encourage, we could provide some things that might help them innovate, do something different, not that they would not go on without us, but how could we, you know, be an added encouragement or resource for them? Yeah. And so it's definitely a different way of serving. Mhmm. And so I'm just very thankful for the time.
Rob:I'm thankful for what I learned, what I've been learning, and and I'm looking forward to even more. I've been really super surprised this year in terms of just how many downloads we've had. That's just kinda like
Jared:crazy. To me, also can track locations where people are listening. Last year, we reached listens in all 50 states. As of recording this, we had now have listens in 95 countries, including The United States.
Rob:And still in all 50 states.
Jared:And still in all 50 states. Yeah. Top performing countries underneath The United States, The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Spain.
Rob:Do you
Jared:think so? Which means Carlos Sainz is listening. Thank you, Carlos. Gracias. Thank you, Carlos.
Jared:I appreciate you.
Rob:His off days.
Jared:No. While he's while he's in the while he's in the car for Williams us.
Rob:You listen to us. Get in
Jared:the zone. He's gotta know. You know? He's gotta know this pedagogy.
Rob:I gotta know.
Jared:Thank you, Carlos. I appreciate you, buddy. So
Rob:let's go over some of our outlets that this show goes out of. So we got Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Think in 2024, we picked up LinkedIn in terms of using it as a way to get the word out. Correct?
Jared:Yeah. That's correct.
Rob:And so in 2024, we had three zero three followers in Apple. In Apple. Yep. And now how many do we have?
Jared:Well, to date, 526, which is an increase a 73% increase this year. Wow. I mean, we increased 223 total followers.
Rob:Just an Apple Podcast.
Jared:Just an Apple Podcast. And then Spotify, we went from Spotify see, I always thought Spotify would be the big one for us because I maybe it's because I bias. I use Spotify to listen to podcasts. I don't use anything else. But, yeah, we went from 49 last year to 65, which means between Apple and Spotify, we have 591 followers.
Jared:That's a 67% increase over the course of this year.
Rob:Well, and then to kind of I'm sure LinkedIn is maybe maybe it's garnered some more of these followers for us. Yep. Like, you know, in 2024 when we finished up, we only had about 50 connections in LinkedIn, and now we're sitting at a 114, which we're small numbers. Let's just be clear.
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:I mean, this but to us, we've had we've had growth. And for us, any amount of growth, we're gonna be thankful for.
Jared:Sure. Yeah. Any kind of improvement, we we we don't deserve of and we're just humbled by. Yeah. For sure.
Rob:Well, and we're thankful to the Lord also for just continuing continuing to provide us with phenomenal guests. Yeah. I feel like this year, we've had some real, you know, amazing ones. But funny enough, like, of all the guests that we've had Mhmm. Doctor White, Barbara Oakley
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Doctor Schultz or some other big ones you can think of.
Jared:Doctor. Baker. Doctor. Baker. Doctor.
Jared:Dafoya Lane. Oh, yes. Amy Lommelini, our friend Dave Mulder, our good friend Dave Mulder, David Slade, Ross Perkins, Terry Buchi, and we have Dave Leach, our friend Dave Leach here at the campus.
Rob:But of all those, you would think one of those would have been our most popular. Yeah. But it wasn't.
Jared:No. That's what's insane.
Rob:It was the student perspectives. Perspectives. Lauren and Daniel. Lauren and Daniel. Lauren who now works for us
Jared:here Yes.
Rob:As a assistant instructional designer student instructional designer, I think. Yeah. It's what we call them. Mhmm. Sid.
Rob:And that discussion on group work and student to student interaction on 02/21/2025. 361 downloads.
Jared:Yeah. It just shows that we have listeners that wanna hear from our students because we love Lauren and Daniel, but they're not going to their friends going, Hey, listen to the podcast I was on with these two old guys.
Rob:No. You
Jared:know, no one's doing that. So it's just genuine people, listeners, I think this echoes across, this echoes somewhere else as well, another, our most popular series this year was Serving the New College Students. So to me, I know this isn't in any way scientific or anything like that, but it seems just based on those, our most popular episode or most popular series, people wanna know how to serve the next generation of college students.
Rob:Yeah. So Well, and, you know, doctor White, our interview with him and the campus wide chat GPT was the next largest Mhmm. Performing episode that had 237 downloads. Now, obviously, that one came later. So in terms of just overall importance and how many came from that, and that's only been what, three months ago?
Jared:Yeah. Right.
Rob:You know?
Jared:Then you look at I mean, the next one is doctor Baker's with we talked had him on talk about flip learning setting timber, and that one's doing, as the kids say, dummy numbers as well. So and of course, we started book reviews this year. That was one of our goals from last year, so we checked that off the list. But our next performing episode was our book review of Uncommon Sense Teaching. So
Rob:Well, and we did do three other books. We did Brave New Words, Intentional Tech, and then most recently, we've done Teach Like a Human by Dave Mulder, a good friend of ours. And so I think some of those, hopefully, we'll do some more. We've also had some discussions as of late. Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself, so I probably should just back off of that.
Rob:But I was gonna say, you know, we've had some discussions about bringing some coffee drops back Yeah. We have. Because we've we've made some improvements to our ability to record.
Jared:Yes. We have upskilled.
Rob:Upskilled? So,
Jared:you know I hate that. Can I just say I hate that term? I almost make sure we say that every year. Upskill is awful.
Rob:But I wanna go back to the statement you made about just reflecting on this idea of serving the new college student. I think that continues to be not only for higher ed, but k through 12. Right? It's changed. And they've seen especially since COVID.
Rob:Post COVID, I think there's been a a change for the students and then how that's filtering up as they progress through the grade levels. I'd be curious to go back now. You know? Because before this year, we had had some conversations back, I think, in 2024 with some k through 12 teachers, specifically math. That was the of this year.
Rob:Yeah. Oh, was it? Uh-huh.
Jared:Yeah. I understand I understand the new college student we talked with, homeschool, private school, and public school.
Rob:That's been that
Jared:Yeah. It's been a long year,
Rob:my friend. It so much. Okay. So I feel like I'm just in this year time, though. I do wonder.
Rob:Yeah. Because we've started a new school year since we recorded some of those episodes in the spring of this year. I'm curious. Have faculty have some of these folks seen any changes? I think that would be an interesting revisit.
Jared:Because they were also green horns as well.
Rob:Yeah. I'd like to go back and see
Jared:Or if they're still teaching.
Rob:Did, you know, did they sign up for a year or two?
Jared:Can we still find them?
Rob:Yeah. Will they even talk to us? You guys were right. But, you know, it's just been a blessing to have those conversations. I know my wife and I have had a lot of good conversations from some of the guests that we've had on.
Rob:And we've received a lot of feedback. At least I have received feedback from folks that are like, we really love the guests. They obviously, they love the students, the student guests. The numbers tell us that. And I'm looking forward to what we have coming up in the next year because hopefully, we can have some notable people back, and we're looking forward to it.
Jared:So what we did was we to close this episode, we if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead.
Rob:No. You go ahead.
Jared:To close this episode, we took our transcripts from this year's episodes, threw them into, surprisingly. Have you guys heard of this thing called ChatGPT?
Rob:Oh, what is it?
Jared:I don't know. It just shows up and I do things. So we threw the transcripts in there and I had it use create a frequency table based on the words and I had it go ahead and now this is some clearly some flawed coding or whatever. I didn't actually go in and define the codes. I didn't, you know, go through that whole process.
Jared:I just said create a frequency table based on the transcripts, come up with your own categories and everything else. And I think it did a pretty decent job. So here and I don't think this is any surprise to us. I'll just read the top five ones because it also it gave me a title, then it gave me a summary. Number one for us this year, mentioned a 145 times in 42 different episodes, servant teaching and pedagogy, and summarize it as discussions emphasizing servant leadership, humility, and teaching as service.
Jared:Number two, generative AI and Chad, GBT, and education. Mhmm. Mentioned a 122 times across 38 episodes, and the summary being themes around AI, large language models, and their educational impact. No surprise there. Nope.
Jared:Number three, faith, ethics, and formation, exploration of faith, ethics, moral development, and Christian worldview in learning context, mentioned a 117 times in 35 episodes. Number four, something we want to push more into in '26, Cognitive Science and Brain Based Learning, references to Cognition Neuroscience and how the Brain Informed Learning Design, that was in 33 episodes this year. And number five, instructional design and pedagogical strategies, focusing on curriculum design, pedagogy, and effective instructional practices mentioned 101 times across 31 episodes. I mean, there's no surprise there to me. I mean, especially, it's good to see that servant teaching, you know, that was what we wanted to do from day one, was emphasize the servant teaching idea, and it remains what we talk about the most, which is pretty cool.
Rob:Well, and I think not just servant teaching, but also faith, ethics, and formation still find themselves up there because that's really the backdrop to our servant teaching. And anyone who talks to us, I hope knows that. Yeah. And so it's been a wonderful year. I think it's difficult for me sometimes because we go we start in the spring.
Rob:It's the calendar year, but it's actually two different school years for us. Right? Mhmm. So we're finalizing the twenty four, twenty five year in terms of school here at Cedarville. And then we're moving into twenty five, twenty six.
Rob:And so we're finishing up this calendar year and this time of recording. And all I can say is thank you to our listeners. Yeah. Thank you to you, Doctor. Piles.
Jared:Thank you, Doctor. McDowell.
Rob:And to our team who have been so wonderful behind the scenes. I think of of Jacob and I think of, you know, we've had now a change and who actually audio does the audio production. You know, we've we had mister L and he has he retired and now we have Eric. And then can't go without Ryan Lyman and his just amazing work behind the scenes to help us stay on track, get our guests.
Jared:Yeah. Ryan is the the glue.
Rob:Yeah. Just For sure. He's doing a phenomenal job.
Jared:If it weren't for Ryan, who knows what they're
Rob:Jacob Jacob in the post edit, though, I've just been blown away by how he can make me sound good.
Jared:Jacob makes us look very smart and sound oh, not look. Jacob has nothing to do
Rob:with that. Yeah. He wouldn't take on that job. No.
Jared:Jacob makes us sound very smart and very thankful for that. Because we say some dumb stuff that
Rob:never makes sense. He gets edited out.
Jared:Also Lauren too. Mean, Lauren has an incredible job keeping us, and, you know, Ryan and I go through and we write the description and stuff for the podcast episodes. And we just we're like two trained monkeys just banging on keyboards.
Rob:And then Lauren comes in.
Jared:And Lauren comes in and makes it sound intelligent. So yeah, very thankful for Lauren. And of course the rest of the team here at the Center for Teaching and Learning, they don't directly help, but they do tolerate us, Mary, Jason, and Doctor. Ye as well. So very thankful.
Jared:Another year done, Doctor. McDowell.
Rob:Yeah, it's been wonderful.
Jared:Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to what 2026 brings. We have some great stuff planned. I'm not gonna reveal it. We'll wait and reveal that in an episode in 2026. But yeah, very, very thankful the way that God has blessed us to keep doing this.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments or you just wanna reach out to us, feel free to connect with us at c t l podcast at cedarville.edu. You can also reach out to us via LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.