Teaching in Higher Ed

Teddy Svoronos describes how today’s agentic AI changes what and how we teach on episode 617 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode An AI agent is an LLM that runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal. -Teddy quoting Simon Willison’s definition The process of having a task, write a report, use a tool, web search, and do it over and over again until you feel like you’ve gotten the full sort of spectrum of things—that I think is what an agent really is. -Teddy Svoronos These LLMs are now becoming like this intermediary between me and the actual content. And so I’m optimizing in a different way than I used to. -Teddy Svoronos I think there’s an analogy with these tools that I’ve been thinking of as cognitive debt, which is that as you offload to them, there are things that they’ll do that you won’t quite understand. -Teddy Svoronos Resources Agentic Everything: How the latest set of models changes things, by Teddy Svoronos Course Corrections: Redesigning my course for AI, by Teddy Svoronos Pray, Mr. Babbage, by Teddy Svoronos Episode 590: Deep Background – Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield Episode 234: A New Lens for Learning Outcomes with Maria Andersen José Antonio Bowen’s AI Detector False Positive Calculator Episode 605: Teaching with AI – The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Future with José Bowen MacWhisper The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande

Nancy Chick, Peter Felten, and Katarina Mårtensson share about The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning on episode 616 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode We see SOTL as simply inquiry into teaching and learning for the purposes of improving teaching and learning in context and then contributing to what we know about teaching and learning in support of the broader aims of higher education. -Nancy Chick What I usually say when I speak to colleagues and academics who are sort of starting a SOTL journey is to start small, small steps, and whatever is a low threshold. -Katarina Mårtensson I can’t go through this book and say who wrote this sentence or this section or whose idea this part was, because it really is a product of the three of us. -Peter Felten Resources The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, by Nancy L. Chick, Peter Felten, and Katarina Mårtensson Human Synergistics Dan Bernstein, Nancy Chick, Pat Hutchings, and Gary Poole Share Strategies for “Going Public” with SoTL Book Resources (Including a Reading Guide) I Lost My Job, by Robin DeRosa Harold Jarche’s PKM Posts A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education Drawing Digital: The Complete Guide for Learning to Draw & Paint on Your iPad, by Lisa Bardot The Illustrator’s Guide to Procreate: How to Make Digital Art on Your iPad, by Ruth Burrows The Correspondent: A Novel, by Virginia Evans The Academic Imperfectionist Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks, by Janice M. McCabe Poll Everywhere

Matthew Mahavongtrakul and Bonni Stachowiak have a conversation about being kind to our future selves on episode 615 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Not everything that comes your way is an emergency. Not everything that comes your way has to demand your immediate attention. -Matthew Mahavongtrakul Once you are comfortable with your system and you’re iterating, it actually starts to become second nature, not only to professional life, but to personal life as well. -Matthew Mahavongtrakul An exercise that I did with my supervisor once was to actually go through each of these tasks and to see what I thought was high priority, was it actually high priority for the job that I was in? -Matthew Mahavongtrakul Resources Karen Costa’s LinkedIn Post About the Ink & Volt Planning Dashboard Notsu Eisenhower Matrix Episode 407: Unpacking Resilience and Grief with Chinasa Elue, Laura Howard, and Este Jordan (they share about each of their “pandemic dirty words” on this episode) Goblin Tools – Magic ToDo Ink and Volt Dashboard Deskpad Gettin’ Air: The Open Education Network with Robin DeRosa and David Ernst, by Terry Greene Asana

Bonni Stachowiak shares how to keep your Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) real simple with RSS on episode 614 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Rather than get that overwhelmed feeling of how hard it’s going to be to keep up, I don’t have to, and neither do you. Enter RSS, Real Simple Syndication. -Bonni Stachowiak It’s pretty spectacular how, if somebody knows about RSS, and they’ve subscribed to a blog or a website, how you can find people that you have a lot in common with, and get going with your curiosity. -Bonni Stachowiak It’s amazing what happens when, before we start trying to lecture or share information, we ask people to predict something. Even if they end up predicting incorrectly, there still is that connection where we’ve piqued their curiosity. -Bonni Stachowiak Resources Why Isn’t RSS More Popular By Now, by Bonni Stachowiak Real Simple Syndication, by Harold Jarche Inoreader Unread App The Indispensable Digital Research Tool I can Say, Without Lying, Saves Time, by Alan Levine (aka CogDog) RSS in Plain English, by Common Craft MiniRoll This Cozy Reading Life with Katie Linder The Transformers: Imagining the Future of the Teaching of Writing NASA Image of the Day McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Poll Everywhere

Marc Watkins shares about cultivating skepticism and curiosity in an age of AI on Episode 613 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode I do think online education is going to be the focal point for this next year, and how it can survive with an agentic AI. My feeling is, we need to be offering students more embodied experiences and disembodied spaces. -Marc Watkins Every technology has its affordances and the things that are negative about it too; your cell phone, the computer, the fact we’re talking about this right now on the systems that we are using, cloud computing, that all has a cost. -Marc Watkins For an incoming freshman student in college to take 4 or 5 classes and have 4 or 5 very different AI policies, 4 or 5 very different understandings of what AI is, it is incredibly confusing. -Marc Watkins Resources Sesame Street: One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others) What We Give Up When We Let AI Decide: Automation Is Easy. Judgment Is Not, by Marc Watkins Working with AI is more Mindset than Skill, by Marc Watkins Civics of Technology’s Privacy Week Resources The Opposite of Cheating The Transformers: Imagining the Future of the Teaching of Writing, by Anna Mills, Jon Ippolito, Maha Bali, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Annette Vee, Marc Watkins

Lynn Meade uncovers how to make learning visible with portfolios on episode 612 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Quotes from the episode An ePortfolio is basically a curated collection of student work. It includes reflection, and it’s usually across the college experience. -Lynn Meade Anytime I teach portfolios, it’s really big that we talk about audience and purpose. Who is your audience and what is your purpose? -Lynn Meade There’s something particularly lovely about seeing student or faculty members’ written comments about my work. Both the critiques and those comments that build me up, and how very powerful they are, and how much they mean to me. -Lynn Meade It’s not about the tech. The most important thing is, am I writing? Am I able to think about myself? Am I able to reflect about myself? -Lynn Meade Resources Building a Professional Portfolio (OER Book) by Lynn Meade University of Arkansas Student Portfolios (portfolio.uark.edu) Award-Winning ePortfolios Highlight Student Talent and Career Readiness Fulbright College Team Outlines ePortfolio Initiative Multiple New U of A ePortfolio Resources Available for Students and Faculty Beyond a Resume, Part One: ePortfolios in Higher Ed (podcast) Beyond a Resume, Part Two: ePortfolios in Higher Ed (podcast) ePortfolios Overview (AAC&U ePortfolios Topic Page) Poll Everywhere Reese W. is Here to Boost My Writing Career, by John Warner The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns Nancy Duarte on LinkedIn Video on Box Breathing

Danny Mann shares about fostering peace, joy, and community in teaching and leading on episode 611 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Great teaching, and I think great life, is this adaptive, responsive thing, pulling out the bugs or getting things back in balance. -Danny Mann Peace and joy are really interrelated, and I gravitated a lot towards these, as I spent time studying and practicing mindfulness practices. -Danny Mann If you discover your why, you could basically feel much more energized and joyful about what you do, if you align your life with that. -Danny Mann Giving students space to speak and share ups and downs. So the ironic leading by listening. -Danny Mann Resources University of California Irvine’s Division of Teaching Excellence & Innovation Find Your Why, by Simon Sinek How to Debug Your Life, by JA Westenberg Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices, by Thich Nhat Hanh Pedagogical Wellness | UCI Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz How to Debug Your Life, by JA Westenberg Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Mike Cross shares about his experiments (big and small) in teaching and learning on episode 610 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode The reason I did it is because I just wanted to better understand what my students were going through. -Mike Cross I love that, that idea of tiny experiments. I think that that is absolutely critical because we’re all so busy. -Mike Cross Anytime you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes, it makes you a better person, right? Whether that’s a better teacher, a better spouse, a better friend, a better citizen, anything. -Mike Cross Resources Episode 106: Undercover Professor with Mike Cross Snow College Coaching for Leaders Episode 747: How to Get Out of a Rut, with Anne-Laure Le Cunff What Baby George and Handstands Taught Me About Learning, created by Mike Wesch Francesca and the Genie of Science, by Mike Cross Living with Grief: A Poem for Those Who Are Grieving, by Christy Albright The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley The Midnight

Theresa Duong on episode 609 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode “All we’re really trying to do is create these conditions that can help our students flourish and thrive within our classrooms while maintaining the rigor of our work.” – Theresa Duong “I felt like I could thrive in my PhD program because I had these people who kept pushing me to go and kept pushing me to take care of myself.” – Theresa Duong “Pedagogy, the formal definition in my mind, is this art and science of teaching and learning.” – Theresa Duong “To me, wellness is really about thriving and flourishing in the work that you’re doing.” – Theresa Duong Resources Pedagogical Wellness | UCI Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation Pedagogical Wellness: A New Direction in Educational Development by Theresa Huong (Theresa) Duong, Andrea Aebersold, + Matthew Mahavongtrakul Okanagan Charter UCI Health Promoting University Pedagogical Wellness Day Artmakers Club with Lisa Bardow Calm Strips Forest App