EdSurge Podcast

It’s still popular to prize students who have “grit,” who overcome tough odds to succeed. A book by Alissa Quart called “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” looks at why this narrative is so hard to shake — and proposes more community-minded alternatives that could improve equity. This episode first ran in 2022, as the final installment of our Bootstraps series on who gets the best opportunities in American education. For more on the series, see: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/bootstraps-a-podcast-series

The Rhodes Scholarship was designed to forge a network of people who would go on to rule the world. So who gets this opportunity? And how is the oldest and best-known graduate scholarship dealing with the legacy of its founder, who used ruthless and racist practices to build the diamond empire that funded the effort? This originally ran in 2022, as part of our Bootstraps series on who gets what educational opportunities in America. Find show notes here:https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-03-02-power-prestige-and-the-world-s-most-famous-scholarship

The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective colleges don't want them. Can the rise of test-optional policies lead to a new, more equitable era of college admissions? | Guest reporter: Eric Hoover, of The Chronicle of Higher Education | This originally ran in late 2021 as part of our Bootstraps podcast series.

Our current grading system can be a way for kids to prove themselves and win college scholarships, or admission to selective colleges. It can also be a barrier, in sometimes surprising ways. What might a world without letter grades and GPAs look like? This first ran in 2021.

Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate. This first ran in 2021.

What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education. This first ran in 2021. Find out more on this episode and the rest of the series at: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/bootstraps-a-podcast-series

What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. This is the first episode in our Bootstraps podcast series on merit, myths and education. This first ran in 2021.

As momentum grows to limit smartphone use in schools, some educators say that the education system can do even more to counter the negative health effects of social media. One award-winning teacher has changed his lessons and the way he teaches to try to help students learn to better focus — even reserving class time for quiet reading away from the distraction of phones.

As more students question the value of college, more high schools are bringing college options into their walls. In the latest installment of our Doubting College series, we visit a high school where students can earn a two-year degree without leaving the building, and where students can also get a jump on other career options that don’t require higher education.

Should AI chatbots be used as tutors? Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, has become one of the most vocal proponents of the idea, and he and his son are featured in a recent demo of ChatGPT’s latest version. But some teaching experts say tutoring should be reserved for humans who can motivate and understand the students they work with. For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we talked with Khan to hear more about his vision of AI tutors and the arguments from his recent book.

Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. This week we’re rebroadcasting this episode that was reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing. The episode recently won a national award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

One author who spent years researching what brain science says about adolescent learners says their behavior shouldn’t be seen as “deviant” or “immature,” but as a “time of possibility.” And this researcher, Ellen Galinsky, has strong feelings about how to address phones and social media in schools. Read a partial transcript and see show notes at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-05-21-what-brain-science-says-about-how-to-better-teach-teenagers

Today’s high school students are asking more skeptical questions about whether to go to college, or when to go. For this week’s podcast, we visited a career fair at one public high school to ask about the changing ways that high school counselors and education leaders are presenting those choices, and what these students think about their options.

Some educators are trying a different approach to guarding against AI cheating — a “linguistic fingerprinting” technique that borrows a page from the playbook of criminal investigations.

Felecia Russell was born in Jamaica but moved to Los Angeles as a kid. It wasn’t until she started to apply for college that she learned that she was undocumented, which she worried could derail her dreams. She tells her story in a new book, “Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education,” which she hopes will help “diversify the narrative” about immigration and education.

When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media. This is a reissue of an episode that first ran in November.

Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of building a virtual realm for education to see where they see things going now that the hype has faded.

The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s Innovation Center and a leading voice about where VR is headed. Hear her insights in this new interview. Find more details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-05-how-vr-can-be-an-empathy-machine-for-education

There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A new book hopes to start a national conversation about the issue. More details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-02-is-it-time-for-a-national-conversation-about-eliminating-letter-grades

Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social studies education in schools?

There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, argues Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University. See show notes and partial transcript at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-03-19-what-new-research-says-about-fostering-a-sense-of-belonging-in-classrooms

There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how to counter that narrative.

A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people with deeply different views on issues that are most dividing school communities these days and uses depolarizing techniques to try to model repairing such breaches.

Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record and teach some key practices of his tribal elders using VR video.

In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how students are thinking through their choices after graduation.

A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed need to change what it teaches to respond?

Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling? That was the argument of philosopher Kieran Egan, whose educational writings have recently gotten attention.

It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks at why.

There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI?

Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to others and made it harder for people to be present, argues a Georgetown University professor.

Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights? This is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2023.

What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re digging into in the coming year.

“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements. This episode originally ran this summer.

Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president after the academic year, and he talks to EdSurge about online education, about how he responds to critics who worry that the university has borrowed too much from for-profit universities, and about why his next project involves rethinking teaching with AI.

When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew criticism. These days that sort of skepticism of college is far more mainstream. We dive into the history and impact of the program on the first episode of our new podcast series about changing public views of higher ed, called Doubting College.

Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts about missed assignments. And that can make it hard for students to learn to solve their own problems, argues Devorah Heitner, an author who advises schools on social media issues.

Schools of education are working harder at recruiting these days, in response to enrollment declines. Can more people — and more people from a variety of backgrounds — be convinced to join the teaching profession in this particularly trying time?

It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals. This is a rerun of an episode that first ran in June.

The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what those changes could mean for education — and what steps should be taken to bring out the best of the tech while avoiding pitfalls.

When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting approach is spreading through classrooms, helped by teachers sharing examples on social media.

More educators are wondering whether the grading system hinders many students rather than helps them learn. For this week’s podcast, we’re rebroadcasting an episode from this summer diving into alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.

It’s statistically harder to get into a selective college these days, and who gets in and why can feel like a mystery. So students are turning to TikTok and other social media platforms to fill the void, in what some admissions folks call a “toxic” trend. We talked to a TikToker and an admissions counselor on how to help.

Since winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, Carl Wieman has devoted the bulk of his energies to trying to improve teaching. That has led him to promote active learning – and to look for better ways to evaluate teaching. Will they catch on?

Students these days are terrible at sorting facts from misinformation online and on social media. But they can improve with just a few simple strategies, argues information literacy researcher Mike Caulfield. And he says those skills are even more important with the emergence of ChatGPT.

Can educators continue to teach troubling but worthwhile texts in this time of polarization and culture wars? And how can instructors make classrooms a welcoming place for debate as schools and colleges grow more diverse? This week’s EdSurge Podcast dives into the thorny issue of encouraging viewpoint diversity in classrooms.

What if Rodin’s famous sculpture of the thinking man sitting holding his chin gives us the wrong idea about how people think? A growing body of research suggests that thinking is influenced not just by what’s inside our skull, but by cues from our body movements, by our surroundings, and by other people we’re interacting with. And that has implications for educators.

Could cutting-edge virtual reality tech help to spread classical education models and alternatives to traditional public schools? That’s what one proponent is hoping, and she’s started a new online charter school delivered largely through VR headsets to try it.

A mockumentary web series made by undergraduates makes some timely observations about college admissions, and about student life after the pandemic — when students sometimes struggle to make social connections after high school experiences spent on lockdown.

The pandemic has sparked more-nuanced conversations about kids and tech, getting away from simple questions of how much screen time to allow. Now, one researcher argues, it’s time to provide better guidance on how to match tech to what children need, and can reasonably handle, at each stage of their development.

EdSurge recently took a microphone to a university campus and asked several students to share their group project horror stories. Every student we talked to had one. Then we ran them by a teaching expert to get his advice on how to avoid such scenarios.