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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.
Welcome to 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. We seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices. Thanks for joining our conversation.
Jared:Welcome to the first episode of the Transform Your Teaching podcast. First off, my name is Jared Pyles, and with me is
Rob:Dr. Rob McDole.
Jared:We are both members of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. I am an instructional designer for the department. A little bit about me is that, I came from well, I originally came from radio, which is weird that I'm back doing this after so many years. But I went into K-twelve education after that, spent five years there, and then started working here at Cedarville as a media producer, and then found my way into instructional design, which I've been doing now for the last, four years, I guess, almost five, which is insane.
Rob:And you're currently working on your?
Jared:I am currently working on my doctorate, doctor of education, through Boise State University. So if anyone from Boise is listening, shout out to that awesome crew. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. Rob, tell the people about yourself.
Rob:Yeah, so back in 02/2001, after graduating from seminary at Columbia International University, I got involved with their distance education program as a grader. And then the Lord started moving me more into online, so I helped them do their first online course back in 02/2001. And from there, went to a school called Mountain State University, which is no longer in existence, Beckley, West Virginia, and worked as an instructional technologistdesigner, and did that for about five years. CAU asked me to come back and lead up lead their online learning program, which I did. And then I ended up leading their distance education program.
Rob:And from there, got a phone call from school out in Portland, Oregon, the name of Multnomah. They asked me to come out and start their online program. It sounded like a great adventure, so we went. Eighteen months, God brought us back South Carolina. And on the way back, my wife said, well, hey, have you looked at Cedarville?
Rob:Maybe they've got something. Check it. Check it and see if there's something there. So I check and sure enough, this job that I'm in right now was open. And so I said, Okay, I'll apply, see if that's what the Lord has, and he did.
Rob:And so I've been blessed to be here since end of twenty sixteen. And so, just enjoyed working with my colleagues, you and others. It's just been a real blessing.
Jared:Well, let's talk about, with this being the first episode, let's talk about what the purpose of this podcast really is going to be. We have been talking in our office for a couple years now about how we wanted to develop a podcast that talked about, innovative teaching strategies, innovative teaching methods, and it's really to serve you as an educator, a higher educator or a K-twelve educator even. Just some ideas of how to further your instruction, help that face to face or online or blended learning, whatever it is you find yourself in. We want to provide to you some innovative, strategies to help you out with that. And because we are situated on a campus of Cedarville University, you know, our primary audience, really is the instructor here at Cedarville.
Jared:But it's universal in the stuff we're gonna be talking about. We do come with a different lens, a different focus, depending on our beliefs and our faith, but really what we're talking about is a benefit to any educator to improve their teaching. And really it's just about, you know, this could be like, I happen to be a big fan of using technology in education, and I really started to feel, educational technology as I was going through k 12. And some of the methods and practices we're going to talk about do lend themselves to using technology, but there are a lot that are without technology as well. Just some ways that we can help you, the educator, not always have to depend on technology integration to help out, but also just as a way to further your instruction, whether you're in the classroom with, you know, everyone's got a laptop and an iPad and a smartphone, and you yourself have six or seven different devices going at once, or you're just doing the old school lecture and you're talking to students with a PowerPoint or slides or just nothing at all, We want to be able to help you out and further your instruction in different ways.
Rob:It's also going to be a little bit about pedagogy and andragogy. We actually put those together and we call them bothogogy. Bothogogy. Bothogogy. So we're going to look at some stuff that will handle adult education and then we'll also look at strategies and innovations and best practices for K through 12 as well.
Rob:And as we make those connections and we start discussing these, we're going to bring in experts from the field. We're going to look at blended learning. We're going to look at flipped learning, hybrid learning.
Jared:Believe it or there are differences between those three. A lot of people get those all kind of together, but there are just distinct differences
Rob:in those We're going to go into that. And then I know one of Jared's favorite topics, and so it is for Doctor. Yeh, technology integration. Get some strategies there. And then we'll look at assessment strategies and probably one of my favorites that I'm really wanting to dig into is competency based strategies or competency based instruction.
Rob:And our purpose, Jared?
Jared:Yeah, so the purpose is really and this may sound really cheesy and if it is, Rob, just please throw it back at me and say, come up with a better idea. But our purpose is to affirm or inform your teaching. Is that any good?
Rob:I think that's good.
Jared:Alright. We'll work with that at least. Yeah. It's just a way of, you know, it could be that you're already feeling that you're set up and you're ready to go. And in that case, we'll be just affirming your teaching.
Jared:Or it could be informing and maybe to push you in areas that maybe you've never thought about before. Or maybe you've realized that, Man, I really can't get my students to do X, Y, and Z in the classroom or outside the classroom. There could be some strategies that we talk about that help you with that. And, you know, we have to consider also that while we're talking about higher education, that term both egogi really kind of fits in the idea of we don't necessarily our higher education students, they come in as adults sometimes, but let's be real, a lot of our higher ed students are still acting like children. So there could be a bit, cognitively development, that some stuff in andragogy may not fit in with those students.
Jared:So the idea of pedagogy is, you know, both egogy is really something we want to kind of hit on there a little bit.
Rob:Yeah, especially given dual enrollment in so many sectors across, or universities I should say, across The United States, dual enrollment is huge. And here in Ohio, you essentially could have an eighth grader taking a college level If they pass all of the entrance requirements, know, you can have an eighth grader. And we've had a couple of eighth graders here at Cedarville University in dual enrollment courses. So you have a huge developmental, you know, stretch between eighth grade on up to graduate school. Right.
Rob:And
Jared:it's not necessarily important to we're not saying you should tailor your freshman level course to fit the needs of an eighth grader. That shouldn't be something that you do universally all the time. But if you have a dual enrollment course like that, where you've got a freshman in high school coming in who is ambitious and they've met all those benchmarks like you're talking about, consider that student as someone where you need to bring in some more pedagogical ideas. So we're not saying full bore, your courses now need to be K-twelve and higher ed. They need to be more just be aware of those things that could happen.
Jared:And here's what's exciting, is that our episodes are going to be fifteen to twenty minutes once a week. Now for some of us that's going to be difficult because we have to synthesize information in a fifteen to twenty minute segment. And I'm real I'm going to struggle with that, especially with areas that I really like to talk about, is that I'm going to try to synthesize well, I guess that's also a plus of me being the editor of this podcast, is that I can also just kind of edit down as much as I can. But we're going to create episodes that are fifteen to twenty minutes so that you can quickly listen to an episode while you're on your way into work, or you could be have a longer commute like I do, my commute's about an hour, into campus. So if you want to bank a couple and read and listen to them all in one time, you can do that as well.
Jared:So let's talk about our first series that we're going to be going into. Rob, you wanna give us a 10,000 foot view of the model of servant teaching?
Rob:Yeah, I'm really excited about this. One of the strategies or one of the emphases here at Cedarville University is this idea of servant leadership. And General Reno and a lot of the other administrators will talk about Philippians two:three-four, not looking to your own interests, but looking to the interests of others before yourself. And that idea applies to serving I mean, it applies to teaching as well. And it's a great place to start.
Rob:You have to start somewhere. And we are the Center for Teaching and Learning, and we focus on teaching and learning. So what's the best way of doing that? And I think it's a biblical approach. I think it's bringing the mindset of Christ to that.
Rob:And in so doing, we've already identified some folks internally, which we won't share those names right now. Hopefully those will be a surprise and a delight to others. But we can share one name of a gentleman who has already written a book on servant teaching. His name is Quentin Schultz. And Doctor.
Rob:Schultz just has some really good practical ideas about how we, as Christian educators, can renew those ideas or renew servant teaching to make what we implicitly believe become explicit in our classroom, and just to be real. And when I say classroom, mean whether that's face to face, whether it's online, wherever you find yourself, there are strategies that he brings forward and I think that we can discuss in this podcast series. So I'm really excited about that.
Jared:Yeah, I'm excited too. I first discovered servant teaching kind of by mistake. We were talking about student teaching in our office, and tend to put words in my mouth that I don't mean to say, like kind of a what's in the brain doesn't always come out. I'm sure no one else can empathize with that.
Rob:You're shaking your head. Nope, doesn't happen to me at all.
Jared:But I said servant teaching, and then we started looking at it, and it's actually a practice. And it comes from servant leadership, which is a very popular leadership style. So if you've heard of servant leadership, you've already heard of servant teaching, you just haven't realized it yet. So that's what's coming up. I hope to ask Quentin Shultz about his book Internet for Christians as well, because that is an incredibly hilarious you know, if you think back to the mid nineties when the Internet was starting to blow up and computers were starting to become more and more common in homes and in classrooms, Just think about how that impacted Christians at that time.
Jared:And he has some great questions that are hilarious that I'm hoping that I can bring. I'll ask him first, obviously, but I do want to ask them some of those questions because they are hilarious.
Rob:When should you dial up?
Jared:Yeah. Stuff like that. Like, how do I get on the Internet? You know, it's great. I'm really looking forward to it.
Jared:So that is going to be our first series we go into, the servant teaching. We're gonna talk, first about some basic philosophy and foundations for servant teaching, and then we're gonna talk with Doctor. Quentin Schultz, and then bring in some, like you mentioned, some of our own faculty here to discuss, servant servant teaching. So we hope you'll join us, for those coming episodes. Thank you for, joining us today, and we hope to, have you back here with us next time.
Narrator:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcast platform. For more information, you can email us at ctlpodcastscedarville dot edu. Please consider subscribing to our blog, Focus, found at cedarville.edu/focusblog.