The Conversation

Clara and Aaron talk to two international students, Grace and Yan, about their experiences with remote/online learning. Both of them are taking courses that have had to make a sudden pivot to remote learning. They are also enrolled in an online course designed to be delivered online. That course also happens to be about online learning, and for that class, they had to design an online mini-unit. ((insert Inception theme)). In our conversation, we ask them to compare their experiences and to share their perspectives about what worked and didn't work for them.

In this episode, we chat with Nafiza, alumni of our Educational Technology program, and now working as Educational Technology Specialist at Teachers College, Columbia University. Together, we discuss tips that we think may help anyone new to online course design and instruction. Our topics include: How is online teaching different from face-to-face teaching? What communication tools work best for us? How do we build community? How do we design discussions? How do we present instructions? What mistakes did we make?

Our guest this week is Brandon Dove, the Coordinator of Virtual Campus and Online Services at the Learning and Writing Centers. Brandon discusses what these centers are, and how students can take advantage of them to succeed and become better learners.

Our guests are Professor Matthew Wright, chair and professor of Adelphi's physics department, and two of his students, Carissa and Ravyn. We focus on the importance of getting support from our peers, and of fostering a community in an online class. We discuss the different ways that the instructors stay in touch with students and share ideas on how to best communicate with peers and colleagues. Should instructors put up a front of strength or show students their own struggles? How do students feel about that?

Aaron and Clara are joined by Adelphi University professors Devin Thornburg, Ionas Sapountzis and Lisa Minicozzi on the topic of social-emotional learning (SEL) in this time of remote teaching. Our guests offer perspectives as school psychologists and educational leaders on how we might be able to support children and parents during this time of crisis.

After listening to all the case study analyses from the students in my Technology and Instructional Design class, Professor Clara Bauler returns to share her thoughts on their ideas. We discuss the highlights from the analyses and the practical concerns on implementation.

In this episode, Clara and Aaron talk to Ming, a professor at Adelphi University, Paige, a student at Adelphi and a teacher, and Diego, an eighth grade student. Clara, Ming, and Paige also share their perspectives as parents having to deal with this transition to remote learning and how it has impacted their daily lives.

In last week's episode, Professor Clara Bauler presented a case study for my students to respond to. This week, the students have listened to the episode and provided their own recommendations. Will they embarrass me in front of Professor Bauler? Or will they make me proud? Tune in and find out!

Our first episode of Season Three is a conversation between Aaron and one of the new co-hosts, Professor Clara Bauler. In this discussion, we talk about how we think of technology use in teaching and learning. Clara also presents a case study for the students of Technology and Instructional Design to listen and respond to in an upcoming episode.

In our season finale, Brooke and Krissy join the podcast to discuss rubric, feedback, and using social media for teaching. Our readings were Chapter 8 from Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design and Rothwell et al's chapter on analyzing the potential use of existing and emerging technologies for instructional design. Towards the end we also discuss how Season Three of the Conversation might evolve and be incorporated into the clas.

This week, Jeanell and Shannon join me to talk about productive failure, a topic that has recurred in our in-class discussions on embracing failure. We picked articles from a Special Issue on failure from Thinking Skills and Creativity. We also talked about assessment from Chapter 7 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

For this episode, Christine and I started with a chapter from Warren Berger's "A More Beautiful Question". The chapter was "Why We Stop Questioning." After that we discussed how to start instructional planning using core ideas, standards, and essential questions. In addition to Berger, we also discussed Chapters 3 and 5 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

In this bonus episode, I talk to Ryan Sobeck, an alumni of the educational technology program at Adelphi University and currently an instructional design at the Faculty Center of Professional Excellence at Adelphi. Ryan shares his experience taking the course and what it's like to be an instructional designer at an institution of higher education.

Yi-Hsin (Novia) and Shannon join the Conversation to talk about what it means to understanding something. Our readings are: Chapters 2 and 4 from Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

In this episode, I talk to Brandon, who is a musician, about how experts and novices learn, and what constitutes being an expert, especially in the field of music. Our readings are: Our readings are Chapter 2 of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) How People Learn and Chapter 2 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice.

In this episode, I talk to Tanja, back again from the first episode, and Xingyue, an international student from China. We discuss what happens to the brain when learning occurs. Our readings are: Chapter 5 of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) How People Learn, Chapter 3 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice, and Shane Parrish's interview with Barbara Oakley on learning how to learn. Special thanks to Brandon Dove and Kristina Linacre for composing the intro and outro music!

Welcome back to Season Two! This week, Tanya and I discuss misconceptions in education, most notably learning styles, as well as others such as digital natives, multitasking, and self-education. Our readings are: Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013) Do learners really know best? and Dembo and Howard (2006) Advice about the use of learning style, and the 2015 TED Talk by Tesia Marshik titled "Learning styles and the importance of critical self-reflection." A special thanks to Brandon Dove for composing the intro and outro music!

We are back for Season 2! A special thanks to Brandon Dove for composing the music!

In our season finale, Emily from Episode 7 returns to discuss an article about "Alexis Wiggins," a high school learning coach who, after 14 years of teaching, was asked to shadow a student for a day. We also discuss the chapter "Pulling threads" from Bransford and Donovan as a way to revisit one of our first readings on the three learning principles they introduced.

This week, I am joined by Danielle to discuss the design process, cross-disciplinary essential questions, and other big picture guidelines from Wiggins and McTighe. Our readings were chapters 11 and 12 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

This week, Alessia joins me to discuss ways to design good, engaging units, using guidelines from Wiggins and McTighe. Our readings were Chapters 9 and 10 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

This week, I am joined by Xuemeng and Wendy, students from China and Taiwan, respectively, to discuss the six facets of understanding described by Wiggins and McTighe. We also return to UDL and consider how to implement it as part of effective instructional design. Our readings were Chapters 4 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design and Chapter 5 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice.

In this episode, Kelly returns to join Brianna to talk about assessments. We start the conversation reflecting on the future school and its implications on the teaching profession. Then we discuss assessments, why they are important and how we can make them properly measure what they are intended to measure. Our readings were Chapters 7 and 8 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

Welcome back from Spring Break! In this episode, Emily and Shahee join me as we begin to think about instructional design using backwards design by Wiggins and McTighe. We discuss the importance of standards and essential questions, and how they inform and shape our instructional design. Our readings were Chapters 3 and 5 of Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design.

In this episode, I am joined by Kelly and Candice to talk about Universal Design for Learning, or UDL. We talk about all the challenges of using UDL in K-12 and higher education. Our readings were Chapters 4 and 6 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice.

In this episode, Brittany returns to talk about models of technology integration that can inform our decisions on what technologies to use for teaching and learning. We discuss Mishra and Koehler's TPCK framework and the SAMR Model, Chapter 8 of How People Learn II on digital technologies, and Silver (2018) Why edtech is trapped in Ben Bloom's basement.

In this episode, I talk to Brittany, a math teacher, about how experts learn and what implications that has on how we teach. We discuss the important differences in how experts approach their areas of expertise and how that differs from novices or even teachers of that content area. Our readings are: Our readings will be Chapter 2 of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) How People Learn and Chapter 2 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice.

In this episode, I talk to Jonathan, who teaches math and STEM in Brooklyn, and Jennifer, who is a media specialist in Florida. We discuss what neuroscience tells us about what happens to our brain when we learn, and why our brain can sometimes cause us to misperceive the world. Our readings are: Chapter 5 of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) How People Learn, Chapter 3 of CAST (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice, and Shane Parrish's interview with Barbara Oakley on learning how to learn.

In this episode, I talk to Angela and Marina, elementary school teachers at Queens, New York. We talked about various myths and misconceptions in education, including learning styles, digital natives, and self-guided learning. Our readings are: Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013) Do learners really know best? and Dembo and Howard (2006) Advice about the use of learning style, and the 2015 TED Talk by Tesia Marshik titled "Learning styles and the importance of critical self-reflection."

In our debut episode, I talk to Nicole, a graduate student in the speech-language pathologist at Adelphi University about two readings: Chapter Eight from Samuel Arbesman's "The Half-Life of Facts" and the Introduction by M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Bransford's in "How Students Learn." Coming up next week: Misconceptions! Tweet your questions at us using #askedt503.

This podcast is based on readings and discussions from the course Technology and Instructional Design, in Adelphi University's Educational Technology program. New episodes every Wednesday at 9 AM. Stay tuned for our debut this Wednesday, January 30th!