EdSurge Podcast

When the pandemic hit, the traditional final exam just didn't seem to fit the moment for one physics professor. So she decided on a community-service project instead, and says it has made a more lasting impact on students than any blue book would have. She's one of several educators replacing final exams with "epic finales." This is an encore of an episode that originally ran in July 2020.

On this week's episode, we look at how colleges talk about diversity—and about why they embrace it—and how that language ends up affecting students.

What is going on inside the brain as students sit in classrooms? That has always been something of a mystery. So what if you could strap on an EEG machine on students in a classroom setting and analyze brain waves during learning. Researchers are increasingly doing just that, and doing other research at the intersection of Mind, Brain and Education.

There's plenty of anxiety these days about what the internet and smartphones are doing to our brains, memories and attention spans. But what does learning science say about how technology is impacting the human memory, and about that plays out in teaching? EdSurge talked with Michelle M. Miller a psychology professor at Northern Arizona University and author of a forthcoming book, "Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology."

As a high school student, A.D. Carson dreamed of becoming a rapper. And he has, in a way he hopes will inspire others. After being a K-12 English teacher and now a professor, he created the first rap album to be published by a university press.

What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. Introduction to our new Bootstraps podcast series on merit, myths and education.

Many colleges aren’t asking for SAT and ACT scores this year, and students often can't tour colleges to see what campus is like. A new podcast by a high school senior in New Jersey gives candid reflections on what the college application process is like during the pandemic.

So what do today’s students, whether in K12 or in college, need to know to be prepared for the world they’ll graduate into? That's the topic of a new book by Stephanie Krauss, called Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. EdSurge connected with Krauss to ask her about her book, and how it was shaped by her own educational journey.

When Norwich University started the spring semester with an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, the campus went on strict lockdown. The university's president, Mark Anarumo, decided to take the unusual step of moving into a dorm on campus, to get a better sense of the mental health effects of social isolation—and it led him to rethink the approach to future pandemic response.

In the 1960s and '70s, an experimental form of teaching made a big splash at colleges. It was called PSI, or the Personalized System of Instruction. And it's largely forgotten, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a new book on the history of college teaching in America. Here's what today's colleges can learn from the fad.

What if the way we think about testing and how we measure students is broken? That’s the argument made by our guest today, Todd Rose, author of the bestselling "The End of Average," who has researched the history of grades and standardized tests, and argues for a new way to think about them.

What is the purpose of education? It's a question that William Shakespeare raises in his comedy "Love's Labour's Lost. And the playwright's own training—in rhetoric, craftsmanship and conversation—reveals the answer. That's the premise of a new book by Scott Newstok, an English professor at Rhodes College.

Over the past year the pandemic has dramatically altered college teaching, and one side-effect seems to be a rise in exam cheating. In some cases, students are using homework help sites, including Chegg, to get answers during exams. The company has taken steps to respond, but critics say more change is needed. And some say it’s professors who need to change their testing strategies.

In his Inaugural Address, Joe Biden spoke at length about unity, calling on Americans to “listen to one another, see one another, hear one another and show respect to one another.” But what would it really take to do that? Mylien Duong, a clinical psychologist and social-emotional learning research scientist, explains why listening and empathy are so complex and elusive.

An online course at Concordia University is being taught by a legend of Canadian art -- well, by video lectures he recorded years ago. But a student in the course said he was surprised to find that even though the professor died in 2019, he's still listed as the teacher on the syllabus. What can we learn from this unusual moment in online teaching?

With COVID-19 vaccinations rolling out across the country, there's hope that more schools in the U.S. will soon go back to in-person learning. But there is also a sense of added urgency. But new strains of the coronavirus are emerging, bring a new sense of concern. Asaf Bitton, a physician, public health researcher, and executive director of Ariadne Labs, talks about how soon he sees a chance for kids to have "just a regular boring school day" again.

Teachers are becoming stars these days on TikTok, that social media platform for sharing short videos. Some of them say the platform serves as a kind of virtual teaching lounge during COVID. But is it a good thing for the teaching profession that classroom instructors are part of a site known for dance crazes, jokes and other irreverent content?

Last semester was historic: the first full term under the shadow of COVID-19, and nobody really knew what to expect or how well various teaching adaptations would work. So what are some lessons from the fall semester? We talked with the professors and students who participated in our Pandemic Campus Diaries podcast series in the fall for their takeaways.

This week we talk with a history professor who thinks that not only can colleges do more to encourage civic education that could prevent future crises like the mob storming the U.S. Capitol last week, but that higher education is partly to blame for last week’s events.

On this episode we’re going to revisit some of the most memorable moments from our podcast in 2020 -- and some bonus material that we wanted to get on but just didn’t quite fit.

The disruptions in the job market caused by COVID-19 mean colleges and employers will need to rethink the relationship between the workplace and the classroom. That’s according to Michelle Weise, who makes the case in her new book, Long Life Learning.

Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. That's one of the surprising truths about how the brain works in the new book "Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn." We talk with the book's co-author, Sanjay Sarma, a professor and the vice president for open learning at MIT.

Some colleges were committed to doing as much in-person teaching and activities as possible this semester, even during this health crisis. While other colleges decided early on to focus attention online and pretty much shutter campus for now. For our series finale of the Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we ask: which decision was the right one for students and professors?

How can educators make their teaching more inclusive? For perspective and advice, we recently talked with José Vilson, co-founder and executive director of #EduColor, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to issues of race and social justice in education and author of “This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education."

This week's guest, John Warner, has just released a timely book with fresh arguments on how to frame this larger question of who should pay for higher education -- and even how we should think about college’s place in American life. The book is called “Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education.”

Residencies are the new trend in teacher education. What are they teaching about race? Victoria Thiesen-Homer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation, embedded herself in a no-excuses and a progressive residency school for her new book, “Learning to Connect: Relationships, Race, and Teacher Education."

This stressful and disrupted semester is leading professors to rethink how they teach, and helping students learn about themselves. But are there things that will stick even after the health emergency ends? Hear views from six campuses on the latest installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series.

Other than their parents and caregivers, children spend more time with their teachers and school staff than with almost any other adults. So when something is wrong or seems off, educators are often the first to notice. As a result, educators end up detecting a significant number of child-abuse cases each year. But with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, these situations where trouble might be noticed have disappeared overnight. To get a sense of where this issue stands seven months into the pandemic, EdSurge connected with Bart Klika, chief research and strategy officer at Prevent Child Abuse America

Today is Election Day in the U.S. And for this installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we are focusing on how the election and social unrest have been playing out on campuses during this pandemic semester. Students seem to be voting this election season like never before. But some professors are struggling to hold productive discussions of political issues in this polarized time.

Students these days are distracted. Devices and social-media notifications constantly beckon, and in this time of COVID-19 and widespread remote instruction, the distractions have multiplied. So what are educators to do? EdSurge connected with James Lang, author of the new book "Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It."

This week we’re focusing on who is disappearing from higher education due to the pandemic, and what professors are doing to try to keep students going in these challenging times. It's kind of a mystery story because it's incredibly difficult to determine who is missing when the people involved don't even see each other in the real world, and everyone is so focused on their own socially isolated bubbles.

Research shows young citizens are motivated to vote. But they don’t always make it to the polls. Why not? To find out, we interviewed Sunshine Hillygus, political scientist and co-author of the new book “Making Young Voters.” She shares surprising insights about what kind of K-12 and higher education actually influences youth voting behavior. Hint: It’s not civics class.

What is studying like this semester when teaching is strained by safety measures like plexiglass barriers and masks in classrooms and online classes taught by so many professors who are new to the format and clearly struggling to figure out what works. Are students learning?

Scientists around the country have been teaming up with band educators to test what is and isn’t safe when it comes to music education, and what kind of protective gear or PPE works. We talk to a musician who has worked in so-called clean rooms to measure just what particles come out of various musical instruments.

Getting the balance between safety and openness right is a continuous challenge during the pandemic. And much has clearly been lost in terms of social interaction this fall. Can colleges find a way to stay open and offer meaningful extracurricular activities?

At this point the Zoom call has almost come to define learning and working in the age of COVID-19. A few months ago, people began realizing that all these video calls were making them tired—exhausted even—more so than a day of in-person class or all-day meetings. The phenomena even has a name: Zoom fatigue. And it’s backed by some pretty interesting brain science.

Classes are back in session at colleges around the country. Well something like college classes are happening. But in this fall semester like no other, with a pandemic reshaping so many facets of our lives, can colleges pull off effective teaching that’s also safe? And if they can, does it feel like college?

Howard Gardner has made a long and influential career exploring the mind and how to think about it. This month Gardner came out with a different kind of book, one where he looks inward. It’s a memoir called A Synthesizing Mind. He argues that we need to encourage more synthesizing thinkers in this challenging moment of polarization and pandemic.

We’re doing something different on the podcast this week, and throughout this semester. We’ve enlisted professors and students at 6 colleges, and we’ve asked them to share audio diaries of college life in this unprecedented time. On this first installment of the series: Why this is not just about inconveniences of plexiglass barriers in classrooms and masked teaching. The stakes for this semester are high, and so are tensions.

Large employers like Walmart and Chipotle are spending more time, money and effort investing in training programs to prepare workers for what they see as the jobs of the future—at least they were before COVID-19 hit. On this week’s podcast, we hear from Rachel Carlson, CEO and co-founder of Guild Education, a company working to set up these education programs.

First-year teachers already face many challenges. The job is unpredictable, and for newcomers, that can be intimidating. Over the summer, EdSurge interview teachers whose first years were interrupted by COVID-19 last spring. On today’s podcast, we hear from three of the teachers we spoke to about the highs, the lows and the lessons learned from their first year teaching—face-to-face and from a distance.

On this episode we look at what colleges can do to keep students on track even during the health and economic crisis of the global pandemic. We recorded this conversation live at the LearningMan virtual conference hosted by Arizona State University last month.

The college textbook publishing industry is offering colleges a new kind of deal: Order digital course materials in bulk at a discounted rate, then pass the savings on to students, who are automatically billed for subscriptions to online versions of their textbooks. These arrangements, often called “inclusive access” programs, tend to stir up controversy—and sometimes even lawsuits—when colleges adopt them. On this episode of the EdSurge Podcast, we examine why that is.

Jamaal Bowman started his career as an elementary school teacher. Then he became a high school guidance counselor and dean of students. After that, he founded his own public middle school in the Bronx and served as its principal for 10 years. In what has been called a stunning upset, the progressive Bowman defeated a 16-term incumbent in the U.S. House of Representatives. On the heels of his victory, Bowman spoke with EdSurge about the perspective he hopes to bring to Congress, what it will take to reopen schools safely and the role of educators in addressing systemic racism in America.

When the pandemic hit, the traditional final exam just didn't seem to fit the moment for one physics professor. So she decided on a community-service project instead, and says it has made a more lasting impact on students than any blue book would have. She's one of several educators replacing final exams with "epic finales." (One even involved trained chickens.)

Information literacy has long been hard to teach—let’s face it, the landscape of online platforms changes so fast these days. And during this COVID-19 pandemic, it can seem harder than ever to sort out reliable information from falsehood, rumor and conspiracy. This week we're talking to two experts working to help educators and others sharpen their info literacy and critical thinking skills.

A new book, The Merit Myth, argues that selective colleges have become places that block social mobility, and instead “fast-track the elite to ever higher status.” One of its authors, Anthony Carnevale, makes the case for why higher education needs to be more accessible.

Zipporah Osei is a first-generation college student who wants to fill in knowledge gaps about navigating colleges for others like her. So she started an email newsletter called First Gen. The project can help educators and school and college leaders get a clearer picture of what the college experience is like for those who have no family experience with higher education.

In the 1960s and '70s, an experimental form of teaching made a big splash at colleges. It was called PSI, or the Personalized System of Instruction. And it's largely forgotten, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a new book on the history of college teaching in America. Here's what today's colleges can learn from the fad.

The coronavirus pandemic is the latest example of why math literacy is key to daily life, as people struggle to understand health statistics and attempts to "flatten the curve." Our guest this week, Conrad Wolfram, says that the education system has done a terrible job preparing us to live in a world where number crunching is more important than ever. He has a new book out this week called The Math Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. In it, he proposed a new way for schools to think about math education, and what even needs to be taught and why.