Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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, this is Jared from Transform Your Teaching. We are starting a newsletter, and we are going to include in it some feature articles from some of our guests or some of our hosts. We are also going to share some previous episodes and maybe some behind the scenes stuff and also preview our upcoming series. You can subscribe by clicking the link that's in our description.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching Pod cast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Rob:Well, welcome to another episode of Transform Your Teaching here on the campus of Cedarville University. My name is Dr. Rob McDole. And with me today, because Jared is out sick, with me today are two of our beloved colleagues, Ryan Liming. Hello. And we're interviewing Jacob Lashuay today.
Jacob:How's it going?
Rob:Yeah. It's good to have you here, both of you here. I'm sure Jared would be very, very sad not to be in the studio today talking with you both, but we're gonna do it anyway. So welcome.
Jacob:Thank you.
Ryan:And in his absence, I just gotta say, Jared, we miss you.
Rob:Wow. That was heartfelt.
Jacob:It was very heartfelt.
Rob:That was heartfelt. So the reason why we're doing this is because we wanna let our listeners here, the folks that are actually doing a lot of the hard labor and hard work behind the scenes making this podcast possible. And Jacob most certainly carries a heavy load in terms of taking what you hear every week and making it sound really great, taking out all the errors that I make and that Jared makes and making it fit within the time period that it needs to instead of often the thirty or forty minutes that we go on and on. So, Jacob, tell us a little bit about what you do and how you make that process, that magic happen.
Jacob:Yeah. So for one, I'm normally on the other end of all production, not in front of the mic, so it's a little bit It's a
Rob:little daunting?
Jacob:A little daunting, yeah. Yeah, behind the scenes is where I'm most comfortable, but it's fun to be here for sure. So what I do is I serve as the instructional media producer at the CTL and I do all the editing for the podcasts. I take the raw files that we have from here and sync them together, edit them all up, clean them up and ship it out.
Ryan:And do you enjoy doing that?
Jacob:I do. It's fun. It's a good time. Get a listen to the episode again, hear all the great things that you all don't get to hear. But sometimes we like to send a little blooper reel, you know, amongst ourselves.
Jacob:So it's a good time.
Rob:Yeah.
Ryan:So Only a few of those. Only a few. Maybe one or two.
Rob:What? Every minute or so?
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:Well, as you've done this for what now? At least a year.
Jacob:I'm coming
Rob:up Has it been pretty close to a year?
Jacob:Yeah. A little over a year.
Rob:Yeah. What's been your favorite episode
Jacob:Oh.
Rob:To edit?
Jacob:Yeah one of the earliest episodes that I did because actually Jared was the editor for a while and then he shifted responsibilities over to me, was the roundtable with you guys and Dr. Miller and Dr. Sternberg. It was fun to be able to listen to them and their inputs on AI. And I don't know, as the editor, I get the chance to come through it again to be able to really thoroughly listen and gain some perspective.
Jacob:So that was a fun one. I like that one.
Ryan:And that was from our AI summer, summer series.
Rob:Yeah. That was the original. That was the first series we did on AI.
Jacob:Mhmm. Cool. Mhmm.
Rob:It's it's interesting to me. This morning, we gained another listener in a different country
Jacob:Mhmm.
Rob:In Ghana. So we currently have quite a few listeners all over the world, which was very surprising. And, you know, I had a conversation with a friend who happens to be friends, I should say, who happens to be missionaries in The Middle East, let's just say it that way. And they let me know some of those countries that were we we have listeners in, which kinda shocked us. Right?
Rob:They said, well, that makes sense because the gospel is growing there the most right So, you know, to our friends that are listening, you know, I'm saying thank you. But I think the thing I wanna hear from you, Jacob, is knowing that, how does that make you feel in terms of, like, what you do? That it makes a difference and that there are people, like, in Ghana or, you know, Alask do we have Alaska yet?
Ryan:We do have Alaska.
Rob:In Alaska.
Jacob:Ghana and Alaska. Let's go. We have officially got Alaska.
Ryan:We're still waiting on New Mexico. Come
Rob:on, New Mexico. But we do have Alaska. You know, that there are people all around the world that are listening to this. Mhmm. Like, give me some insight.
Rob:Give me some you know, how does that make you feel?
Jacob:Well, it's a humbling experience to say the least, for sure. That the the content that, you know, I get to contribute on, that we all get to contribute on and participate in, is reaching people. But definitely in all these countries around the world, almost every state in The United States. And so it's a really, really cool experience for sure. And I like to think that because I work more behind the scenes that I'm a piece of the puzzle, if you will, for what we do at the CTL and at Cedarville University at large, being able to impact and reach people ultimately for the gospel, as well as for educational purposes too.
Jacob:Yeah, that's just been a cool experience.
Ryan:Obviously there's a good amount of production quality. That's where your training has been, at least at your undergraduate degree. So I'd like to hear a little bit more about some of the technical components of what it takes to produce an episode.
Jacob:I use a program called Adobe Audition. It's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. So some of the other programs we use for other work, especially video production, is Premiere After Effects. Of course, you have Photoshop and Illustrator. But anyway, so I use that.
Jacob:I guess the way to try to simplify it, you know, the audio is on a a timeline in Audition. I can see the different WAV files. Right? And I'll just do cutting, basically. Work you know, listen to it in real time, work my way through it, and and cut out anything that I need to and whatnot.
Jacob:And then we'll overlay the music at the beginning, at the end. Sometimes we'll add a little teaser at the beginning. And then I export it at first rendition, first draft for the team to listen to. Right? We give feedback and whatnot.
Jacob:We have an official meeting on Wednesdays where we kinda go through it, have a debrief, and then make any last edits or whatnot. And then I'll produce the final version, and we'll upload it. So that's kind of a brief little walk through of how it goes.
Rob:So what's your favorite in terms of hardware? Like, you're recording, so not only editing, but and we've got some pretty, I would say, nice mics. At least they all look like they're the same. I'm assuming they're the same. You know, if you were to set it up, what would you what kind of hardware would you use?
Rob:And then, you know, what what's your hardware that you like to use for editing?
Jacob:Well, see, the problem is there's many things that I'd love, but you kinda you kinda hold the end of the rope on that one.
Rob:I hold the purse strings is what you're saying.
Rob:That's true. Fair.
Jacob:If conversation you about getting some of these mics for us?
Rob:There it is. Well, I just opened the door up for that.
Ryan:Can of worms.
Rob:Boom.
Jacob:Yeah. So as far as hardware that I use on the computer side, I'm a Mac user, which is the correct computer to use.
Ryan:Amen.
Jacob:Yeah. So definitely love Mac. I've even had I mean, I've loved Mac since I was, you know, a young teenager and I've never gone back. It's the it is the way to go.
Jacob:At least for content creating. Right? You can make an argument to maybe have Windows for for other things. Right? But I still think that Mac is far superior.
Jacob:They're built to last. They they work. Right? It doesn't have an update randomly when I'm working on something. Yeah.
Jacob:I could keep talking about that. But Mac is the longest
Rob:what's the longest that we've had? The oldest machine that we've had in our office. Remember the Mac Pro that we had?
Narrator:Yeah. How old was that thing?
Jacob:It was there before I I came in.
Rob:It was a trash can Mac.
Jacob:At least Just or seven years old. Yeah.
Rob:Well, it was 10 years old.
Jacob:Was it? Yeah. Yeah.
Rob:Before we finally took it out last year.
Jacob:No way. Yeah. And it was still running.
Rob:It was still working just fine.
Jacob:Yeah.
Rob:We didn't have any issues with it.
Jacob:And for someone who's not working in media production, it still would have been more than adequate of a machine. It's just for us and the different files, especially video files that we use and whatnot and rendering time. Yeah, it was just in need of an upgrade, I guess.
Rob:Yeah, and we upgraded to?
Jacob:Mac Studios with M2. So they're nice Yeah. To say the least.
Ryan:They're very nice.
Rob:Yeah. So thank you. To give our audience a comparison, like, you were gonna, you know, render a video, say it's 40 minutes long. If you did it on the old machine, how long would it take?
Jacob:I mean, sometimes it'd take depending on, you know, what we shot it at, right, if it was what type of resolution we shot it at, it could take just as long, forty minutes. It could take a half hour potentially. And with these new Mac Studios, it takes five minutes.
Ryan:Wow.
Jacob:Less sometimes.
Rob:Oh my word.
Ryan:That's called efficiency.
Rob:That's called that's called a lot of power is what it's called.
Jacob:That's right.
Rob:Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah. They're fun for sure.
Rob:Yeah. They should last just as long as that trash can
Jacob:Mhmm.
Rob:I I would think. So what about, you know, hardware in terms of just input like mouse or keyboards?
Jacob:Well, I like to use Apple products in that regard, right? I have the Magic Mini Mouse, which a lot of people hate on, but I like it. It's kind of the trackpad and the mouse built in one. But many other content creators I know are not a fan, but it does just fine for me, right? I can scroll through well.
Jacob:I also have this little device that we got last fall or last summer called a Creator Micro. And so what it is is it's a device where you can program the keys to kind of whatever you want, different shortcuts. It has a little scroll wheel for zooming in and out of the timeline. I have different shortcuts added for different keys, so I can press a button to cut, I can press a button to delete. I can press a button to copy, to paste, to do just those various shortcuts that are really helpful for working with video and whatnot, not using the mouse to do every single thing.
Jacob:And it's all right there just on my left hand, and so I don't have to be like moving my hands all over the keyboards either. It's just right there stationary. I can just work a lot more faster, lot more efficient. So that's a particular one that I have, Creator Micro. There's lots of other brands too.
Jacob:I haven't explored very many of them, but all I know is I'm not gonna go back to what I had before. It's been really efficient and I recommend for sure.
Rob:Okay,
Ryan:cool. You mentioned the educational experience. Obviously our mission is innovative teaching and learning practices, right? So that's the purpose of this podcast. We seek to be a resource to our listeners in that regard.
Ryan:You actually are currently in your Master's program, and I believe it's called a Masters of Arts in Innovation, unless I'm mistaken.
Jacob:You are correct.
Ryan:Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about that. I mean, have you found some, I guess, cross pollination between that degree and some of what you do on the podcast?
Jacob:For sure. Yeah. So I actually started that degree last fall. It's through Cedarville as well as through the International Center of Creativity located in Columbus, Ohio. And it's been a fun experience.
Jacob:I can thank Rob over here for highly motivating me to pursue that.
Ryan:Classic.
Jacob:And it's really been good to help stretch myself and apply these new principles into what I do even now as a media producer. I think that there definitely is crossover between innovation and media production. I'm always trying to think of new and, I mean, innovative, new and different interesting ways to engage with our audience.
Jacob:Right? Our audience primarily, well, other than the podcast, I mean, what I do is I create media content for faculty to use in their courses primarily. So the audience is students, right? Undergrad students mostly, but though graduate students as well. And so I'm always trying to think, you know, how can we make our educational material as interesting, engaging, and fun as possible?
Jacob:Something that students will really learn from, but also be really interested in and be able to engage with well. And I think that we accomplished that pretty well, but there's always continued growth in that area and always more innovation that can take place. And so the principles that I'm learning now are definitely applied to what I'm doing here. And it's been fun to be able to to learn those things and to to hopefully implement them into what we're doing.
Rob:Yeah. He dropped the mic on us, you know, after we were walking back from lunch, telling us that you because you had a particular issue that you were dealing with at home.
Ryan:Yes. I'm trying to build a fence.
Rob:And he has asphalt in the area in which he wants to build a
Ryan:fence. That's correct.
Rob:And you told him that your problem was you needed a fence. Right? And that's what I said. And then what did he what what did you say?
Ryan:Yeah. And and his this mister innovative here, what'd you say?
Jacob:I said get to work!
Jacob:No, I'm just kidding. I Well, I mean, to be all formulaic about it, I was Let's open up the book. The first stage of the innovation process is problem identification, right? The way that we often identify problems is empathizing with people, with audiences, learning the problem that they have and letting that drive us to dig deeper into that and to see how we can ultimately find a solution to that particular problem. So you start first with problem identification, and then defining what the problem is, and conducting significant research on the problem, understanding your problem well before jumping straight to a solution.
Jacob:And then from there is the next step of ideation, idea generating, if you will. And whether it's with you or with others, right, I just for my class this semester led a workshop a couple of weeks ago where I facilitated others, brought others into that workshop so that I could hear their input and their perspectives on the problem, and it was really helpful. So hearing input from others, getting a team together to be able to do that. And then from there, moving into prototyping, right, doing some testing, some experimentation first, and then ideally after that, you were moving into solution implementation.
Ryan:And that was my problem. I came in with a solution.
Rob:You you already had a solution in mind, and he was like, wait a minute, sir.
Ryan:Let's talk about
Rob:this. Let's talk about whether you've identified the actual problem.
Jacob:That's what they've taught us in class. You can't jump straight to the solution. You have to
Rob:Ryan was like, I have done my due diligence.
Ryan:Yeah.
Rob:And I need the asphalt gone.
Ryan:It needs gone now. It's gone. So, well, no, that's helpful. It's nice to hear kind of how that process for you has developed, not only for, you know, things you've maybe never even thought of, but for your specific discipline in terms of media production. That's cool.
Ryan:I think from my perspective, media, and that's part of why we're doing this podcast, is a huge, I guess, plus or Jared's not here, but it's a way to upskill, right?
Rob:Right.
Ryan:It's a huge benefit to academics because there's so many ways to make content more accessible to people. I mean, that's the We purpose of a exist to provide innovative teaching and learning strategies, but we're making it more accessible by giving it in a different format than maybe most can access. So, yeah.
Rob:Because we we look at right? We we did do that. We we look to see where are these people most likely be able to to consume what we have. It's one thing to have something that's helpful, but it's a whole another thing for them to actually be able to use it.
Jacob:Yes. Well, we know that, you know, modes of receiving communication change over time. And right now podcasting is really popular, especially with millennials, Gen Z And so reaching people where they're at is really critical in that regard.
Rob:Well, and it's easy to do. Right? Podcasts are easy to consume. It doesn't you can listen while you're on the road.
Jacob:Yeah. I mean And it's true for me. That's what I do most of the time when I'm driving.
Rob:So So I'm driving. I'm either listening to a book or I'm listening to podcasts. Yep. Now, I wasn't a very big consumer of podcasts, but I've I've got a couple that I listen to now. Obviously, I listen to ours, but I do that because you tell me I have to, Jacob.
Rob:I have to do edits Yeah. That's true. To make sure that, you know, we have the right things in there. But, yeah, I it it's been an interesting ride. It's been great to have you doing the editing.
Rob:I think you do a super job. No. Thanks.
Ryan:Well, and it's interesting you seeing him doing a super job. I would agree with that. But it's cool to see kind of the progress we've made because, like Rob said, you know, the hosts, we ask them to evaluate the content that's left there in the episode. And by and large, I think recently, it's been pretty smooth, to say the least. I think part of that's a credit to the hosts, but also to the work that you've been doing, figuring out I think your tool has been sharpened in a sense to know, hey, what's important to cut, what's important to leave.
Ryan:And so there's been several episodes recently where Jared and Rob have said, nope. Looks good. Mhmm. Maybe tweak this little itty bitty piece, and and that's pretty much it.
Rob:Yeah. The the number of edits you know, save this one. Right?
Jacob:Mhmm. Mine is this.
Rob:Because we know he's gonna be listening to himself the entire time, and Jacob's gonna
Narrator:be yeah. No. I gotta keep And we
Jacob:all know that nobody likes listening to themselves talk.
Ryan:Yeah. I don't wanna switch gears too much, but part of this discussion, I think, has to involve your personality. And so one of those things, in my opinion, that stands out about Jacob is his affection for Star Wars.
Jacob:There it is.
Ryan:I personally appreciate Star Wars. Don't get me wrong. I think that Star Wars is a good sci fi type show.
Jacob:Saying that much proves you're a fake fan.
Ryan:So anyway, let me continue.
Ryan:We often have this discussion on which is the superior franchise, which in some respects is not fair, but we often compare just because it's fun to argue. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Obviously, one's fantasy, one's science fiction. They both can coexist.
Rob:They're both a couple of fantasies.
Ryan:Yes. They are definitely fantasies, that's for sure. But, yeah, so we often will have discussions about this. And for Jacob, he insists insists upon Darth Vader's status in terms of villains in comparison to Sauron. So Jacob, could could you speak
Jacob:to that a little bit? Well, for one, thanks for exposing our nerdiness on the podcast. You're welcome. Appreciate that. Yep.
Rob:It's out there for all the world to
Jacob:hear. People
Ryan:in Ghana. But you know what?
Jacob:I will own it.
Rob:Hopefully, we do not lose we don't lose listeners up for this.
Jacob:Here's what I gotta say.
Rob:That's okay.
Jacob:You ask anyone on the street, who's Sauron? Oh, maybe you get some answers or whatnot. Everyone will tell you they know who Darth Vader is.
Ryan:Wow.
Jacob:Without a doubt.
Rob:I think That's a statement.
Ryan:That is a statement. I almost think we need a poll of some kind.
Rob:I feel like we need to go out on the street and ask.
Jacob:And, hey, I love Lord of the Rings. They're great. Right? But Star Wars stands the test of time.
Ryan:So then the question becomes, is popularity the greatest definition of excellence? So just because something's popular and people have notoriety, does that mean that it's good?
Rob:Deep thoughts here on the podcast.
Jacob:It's like take the Oscars. Nobody watches those. They watch everyone watches a big blockbuster Marvel movie, or at least they used to before they kinda fell off a deep end.
Ryan:Yeah. That's true.
Jacob:Don't open that can of worms. Yeah. Leave that alone. Just leave it alone.
Ryan:But but everybody watches a blockbuster. That's fair. I totally understand. Doesn't matter how many Oscars it's won. If it's not popular, it's not gonna get watched.
Ryan:Yeah. But regardless.
Rob:It's interesting to watch YouTube debate between
Jacob:And this was a mild question.
Rob:Lord of the Rings and oh, yes. I I know. I've I've heard it several times.
Jacob:Mhmm.
Rob:On the way to lunch. On the way back from lunch.
Ryan:During lunch.
Rob:During lunch. Yeah. Well, Jacob, it's been great having you on the podcast, hearing what you do in the background, how you make things happen for us, and you get it up. I mean, your consistency and quality is is really good. And so we're just thankful to have you on the team, and thank you for being willing to serve.
Jacob:Yeah. Well, thank you. And thank you guys for the opportunity to be a part and to be able to to edit this podcast, but learn from it, as well as the lots of other opportunities that I've had at the CTL. It's been fun. It's a great place to work.
Jacob:I've loved the innovative nature of our department, not just because of the class, even pre existing the class. We're a really innovative department here at Cedarville, and it's a lot of fun to be able to explore new things, to be able to learn from you and from Ryan and Jared and the rest of the team, and yeah, to be a part of it. It's been a lot of fun.
Rob:That's great. Well, that's gonna do it for us in this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Don't forget to like and subscribe. If you have any questions that you'd like to ask us, feel free to email us at ctlpodcast@cedarville.edu. And if you really want to mix it up with us, we do have our Flip discussion board.
Rob:Please feel free to get in there and ask us questions, and we'd love to interact with you. Thanks for listening.