00:00:00 Alex
I think honestly the best way we could start this topic is just let's do a food review food review.
00:00:07 Alex
Our South by Southwest experience.
00:00:09 Camie
I'm actually fine.
00:00:10
Would you want to go first?
00:00:12 Camie
The instant mashed potatoes that I had from [redacted] were just, you know, 3 out of 10.
00:00:17 Alex
How was the salad at [redacted]? Was it delicious the second?
00:00:20 Camie
She was delicious. Thank you.
00:00:28 Alex
Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In this episode, Cami, Emily, and Alex will discuss their recent visit to the South by Southwest Edu Conference in Austin, TX. Stick around.
00:00:42 Amalie
So we all did the week at South by Southwest Edu, which is.
00:00:48 Amalie
Nerd South by Southwest the week before cool South by.
00:00:51 Amalie
South.
00:00:52 Alex
I bought a T-shirt there while we were at the conference and they had T-shirts for cool South by Southwest and Nerd South by South.
00:00:52
West.
00:01:00 Alex
West and the Nerd ones born as cool. So I bought one of the cool ones.
00:01:04 Amalie
And no one needs to know.
00:01:06 Alex
When I was wearing it.
00:01:07 Alex
Tuesday and took my daughter to her.
00:01:12 Alex
Parent, teacher conference and the teacher asked. Oh, were you? Were you just there and I go? Well, I'm.
00:01:16 Alex
Cheating.
00:01:17 Alex
I wasn't at the I wasn't at the festival part as they they've done this 15 years now, right? This South by Southwest Edu, this was the 15th year, they said.
00:01:25 Alex
They started it as a.
00:01:27 Alex
Just single session alongside the week of the festival, and they did a couple education topics and it was well received. And so the next year they spun it up into a actual pre day pre like several day conference not a whole week before 8.
00:01:39 Camie
And now it's a huge conglomeration of everything you can never.
00:01:43 Alex
8000 attendees? Is that what I?
00:01:43 Camie
Hit all the all the.
00:01:45 Alex
Remember, I'll someone sessions.
00:01:45 Amalie
Something like that. It was, it was.
00:01:48 Camie
One of the founders was in.
00:01:51 Camie
The session I went to on space exploration and then he after people asked a few more questions, he made a pretty emotional speech about, you know, how it started and and then how.
00:02:05 Camie
It it's grown and just how proud he is of the growth and the collaboration that he sees and the way that people are able to look at and think about innovative topics.
00:02:17 Amalie
I think that's what was.
00:02:19 Amalie
What I probably enjoyed the most about it was the the whole thing. It's very big ideas and it's not a ton of granular in the weeds.
00:02:29 Amalie
This is how you will accomplish this particular idea on Blackboard or canvas or whatever tool you're using. It's about the the big concepts and I like to take those big concepts and think about the ways that I can apply them in the classes that I'm teaching or building or or working on.
00:02:48 Camie
Well.
00:02:48 Camie
And in some of the more workshop oriented sessions then you did get to talk with educators at all levels across the country and you talked about some of those practical applications and we're really able to.
00:03:03 Camie
Go. Oh, hey, they're using that in this context, how can I apply it to?
00:03:06 Amalie
My own the collaborative nature was really cause there were it was industry. It was higher Ed. It was K12. It was private. It was, yeah. It was all across the map.
00:03:17 Alex
Yeah. I think one of the encouraging yet also.
00:03:22 Alex
I don't want to call it pessimistic, but realistic understandings was obviously a big topic. Was AI and just.
00:03:29 Alex
The broad spectrum at which everybody's still figuring out.
00:03:33 Alex
What does this look like? There's everything from the alliance. The AI alliance session that we went to, which was a it's a partnership of several major companies like IBM and Meta, with a consortium of public and private universities and some nonprofits spinning up.
00:03:52 Alex
Examples of how to incorporate.
00:03:55 Alex
AI curriculum into different levels of learning and it's a it's a really neat resource that I think would be really helpful and I'm thinking through how to.
00:04:06 Alex
Deploy these these concepts of fluency, proficiency, expertise, and mastery. These different, durable competencies, which are more of those soft, skilled ways to think through AI and then technical competencies, machine learning.
00:04:18 Alex
Logic, which programs and and university life are going to need to employ this, but then so there's one side of the spectrum and then I go to a workshop and I've talking to some K through 12 educators and some other learning technology specialists from higher Ed. And they're asking me and we're asking each other, what are we getting from?
00:04:39 Alex
Different levels of leadership of how to incorporate this and and deploy it in our in our trainings and our learnings and everyone's kind of still in the weeds and figuring it out. And there's just this this feeling of the Wild West in some ways, which is really exciting.
00:04:59 Alex
And so I'm curious to see how.
00:05:01 Alex
It continues to who's going to become?
00:05:03 Amalie
The sheriff, the Wild West had a lot of dysentery too.
00:05:05 Alex
Yes.
00:05:05 Amalie
Though.
00:05:06 Amalie
That's what I did like about the guide was that it maybe helped give us some ways to think about how to approach AI for different.
00:05:17 Amalie
Use cases or different audiences. So like some of my you know, some of the students in humanities courses are going to need very specific things versus students going into management or going into sciences. They're going to need a different level of of each of those competencies and of.
00:05:38 Amalie
Even the the sort of the bigger category of those competencies.
00:05:42 Alex
Absolutely. I think this is also a clear indication of the shift.
00:05:48 Alex
Is focused much more, at least it was at this conference compared when I went to two years ago where I was still. I mean it's still very emergent, but.
00:05:57 Alex
The discussion was less on AI and academic integrity or AI, and learning integrations, and much more.
00:06:07 Alex
How are we using education to prepare?
00:06:11 Alex
Learners for an AI driven workforce.
00:06:13 Camie
Right.
00:06:14 Alex
And an AI driven world thinking beyond just the how do we manage it in our immediate scope and sphere? But how do we prepare for the jobs that are going to exist 10 years from now or five years from now for these students at that K through 12, higher Ed, all these different levels?
00:06:30 Alex
And that's a big shift that I think is really starting to come down the pipeline. So that was good that those conversations are happening. The question is going to be how do we in our institutions really adapt. I heard in another session, higher education does a great job preparing students for 1994.
00:06:46
That's.
00:06:47 Alex
And unfortunately, that's that's true in some ways it's it's not true in other ways. That's a whole different rabbit trail. But I think in this regard, we could, we could unfortunately fall into that trap with.
00:06:47 Camie
All.
00:07:00 Alex
AI moving into curriculum integration. So that's where I'm really I'm I'm trying to think of. I want to like 10 different sessions. So what are the? I can't obviously deploy or think through.
00:07:10 Alex
Do all of those ideas in my day-to-day like what are the two streams or two or three streams that I really?
00:07:13
So.
00:07:16 Camie
Want to focus on getting back? I think it's funny because we are very first AI episode almost two years ago that was well, the question that we talked about was how do we manage?
00:07:28 Camie
The balance of.
00:07:30 Camie
Students still learning and also gaining this as a new kind of literacy, where they're going to have to be able to use those skills, but also both of those things that you mentioned, you know the how do we.
00:07:35
Yeah.
00:07:45 Camie
Use this in a practical way in the classroom and kind of manage it when usage is so everywhere and it's hard to know how students are using it.
00:07:57 Camie
And also prepare them for the future at the same time, when writing your own paper is still maybe a skill that you should have, because it does perpetuate a certain.
00:08:09 Camie
You know, type of knowledge and learning and and it again in our first episode on AI we we talked about that how even like handwriting actually increases long term retention of your knowledge.
00:08:23 Camie
Are there ways that you can learn from? I absolutely. But does that negate the learning that should happen? You know, more manually or just more?
00:08:34 Camie
Self driven or self created.
00:08:39 Amalie
I did go to one session that talked about the ways that we are going to need to rethink basically the entire ecosystem of school in terms of of how AI fits into it. One of the things that they.
00:08:55 Amalie
I actually wrote down the children are our future so.
00:08:59 Amalie
Apparently they said something about that early on.
00:09:02 Amalie
But they thought about.
00:09:03 Amalie
One of the things they said was to expect AI use by our students by default. Just assume it. Assume that they're going to be using it and sort of the way when the flipped classroom became a thing.
00:09:18 Amalie
To really think about this, in a flipped classroom sort of way, assume they're going to be using it outside of class, but spend your your contact time with your students.
00:09:30 Amalie
Working on those higher order thinking sort of things and and even in an online course, that's where you can have them do that through oral presentations, through oral exams through.
00:09:44 Camie
This is exactly what I said yesterday in my.
00:09:48 Camie
Conversation about this.
00:09:50 Camie
I mean, because at this point.
00:09:53 Camie
That really is our option and I will say online asynchronous courses.
00:09:57 Camie
They are more difficult with AI because you don't have that in person element where you can say OK, let's come to your writing in class or you know let's have this discussion in class and so you have to be creative with how you're asking students to present information while still maintaining your skill set.
00:10:17 Camie
That you're wanting the students to gain in your course.
00:10:20 Amalie
And I think a lot of the things that you have to shift to are asking students.
00:10:23 Amalie
To.
00:10:23 Amalie
Really synthesize the concepts with their own lives and with their own experiences. Because lived experience is the one thing AI does not have.
00:10:33 Alex
Right. So that's, that's where I think in the asynchronous environment customizing the actual learning experience.
00:10:42 Alex
Not just and it's going to vary so much based on the content and based on the level is this a intro?
00:10:48 Alex
Level course versus an advanced.
00:10:51 Alex
Graduate level or senior level course.
00:10:54 Alex
But integrating the learning material in such a way that personalizes it to the direct student experience and is customized as much as possible to the actual unique content that the instructor themselves is putting out there. And that isn't just grab bag from the Internet that an AI system.
00:11:14 Alex
Is going to pull from and so.
00:11:18 Alex
Getting creative with.
00:11:20 Alex
The learning delivery I mean you you gave the example you shared this morning, which platform was at Moodle, getting worked through.
00:11:27
Yeah.
00:11:28 Alex
By by a GPT.
00:11:28 Camie
10 AM.
00:11:30 Alex
That someone had spun up and in in 5 minutes they were able to answer all the writing prompts was like 7 or 8 writing.
00:11:36 Camie
Prompts. I don't know if.
00:11:37 Camie
You.
00:11:37 Camie
Noticed but I was going to mention this.
00:11:40 Camie
In the in the.
00:11:42 Camie
Example there that they were using.
00:11:44 Camie
So the student actually had this, you know, remember, you're an undergraduate student who loves dinosaurs, and they were able to, it answered, you know, like and. And I think one of the problems was something like, what is your most valued possession or something else like this dinosaur fossil that I got. So it related everything back to dinosaurs because the kid was like, oh, I really love dinosaurs or whatever.
00:11:49 Alex
Not sinosaurus I saw that.
00:12:04 Camie
They can create and that's why I'm wondering, can it generate or at least fake a lived experience perhaps?
00:12:10 Alex
It could, but that that's where I will.
00:12:13 Amalie
Yeah.
00:12:14 Alex
Put it back. The onus on the instructor to how is your learning material? Because that example didn't, it only worked off of.
00:12:23 Alex
Demonstrated writing prompts that were integrated directly into the Moodle. It didn't work off of customized videos that the instructor created, where they're putting specific references to specific components that might be unique to their teaching or learning experiences that they want to facilitate.
00:12:30 Camie
Right.
00:12:37 Camie
But if a student can download the video and upload it to the AI.
00:12:40 Camie
OK.
00:12:42 Alex
And then there becomes the question that maybe I can play devil's advocate with when we're then thinking through the future workforce, that's also a skill that the student is developing. That's a skill I utilize when I'm customizing and creating low stakes testing interventions in my courses, I'm downloading the instructor transcripts and synthesizing out.
00:13:02 Alex
Basic questions from reading comprehension that then can be deployed back into the exam that's that's a technical skill that I'm.
00:13:09 Camie
Blackboard Ultra has a tool for that.
00:13:13 Alex
I think that GPT does a better job still at this point. Maybe it will one one day, but far from perfect.
00:13:16 Camie
I'm probably.
00:13:17 Amalie
It it is.
00:13:19 Alex
Yes, but that's a different technical skill that, again, could be more of a norm in the workforce. All that to say, I'm not saying that synthesizing information from it's all going to depend on and that's where I think this implementation of a of a guided.
00:13:34 Alex
Curriculum across disciplines and across.
00:13:37 Alex
Just different. Like matters. Yeah. We're going to have to know. OK, what fluency level or proficiency level does a student need in English and in marketing and in accounting with these different models? And some of it's going.
00:13:39 Camie
Like throughout your whole departments, throughout your whole program matters.
00:13:46 Camie
Yeah.
00:13:52 Alex
To be very.
00:13:53 Camie
Right.
00:13:54 Alex
It's going to be very unnecessary or less necessary or differently necessary, and that's not being.
00:13:57 Camie
And I agree with you that that is a skill that students need to have. My question, though about it is.
00:14:07 Camie
If students haven't first learned to synthesize themselves, how they know if it is done well or accurately, and if we then raise generations of people who come up, and the people who have learned to sympathize are, you know, we're so retired out because we don't want to talk about the other thing, then you just have a whole.
00:14:17
Yeah.
00:14:27 Camie
Population who doesn't know when when that's a thing.
00:14:32 Amalie
Well, one of the things that that, that particular the the session that I went to where I learned that the children are our future.
00:14:41 Amalie
She talked about how important it is for the importance of reteaching, the importance of learning for the sake of learning.
00:14:49 Amalie
And so really engaging in more deep conversation and encouraging more speaking because the writing component.
00:14:58 Amalie
Is starting to be taken out of our hands a little bit, the way a calculator took.
00:15:04
So.
00:15:05 Amalie
Long Division, long division out of our hands. But we still need to know whether you need to divide here or multiply here or do these. I mean, so really asking, shifting our focus on what's going to be the most important and it she also talked about there being kind of a confidence crisis in students that.
00:15:07
Yeah.
00:15:26 Amalie
That leaning on AI is in part because because a lack of confidence in.
00:15:29 Camie
They lack confidence to be the word.
00:15:32 Camie
And I think.
00:15:33 Camie
Students are more expected, at least of themselves, to be perfect the first time around, and we talk about this a lot like failure is learning, but it's not something that.
00:15:44 Camie
But.
00:15:45 Camie
Like that concept isn't passed down a lot and also I just want to comment that I'm old enough that I did. Still, even though calculators were out, I had to do long division by hand.
00:15:55 Alex
Oh, I do. Yeah. I'm the youngest 1 here and I still had to do it by hand.
00:16:00 Alex
And that's that's the important thing is that and that is maybe dovetails into some other concepts that were talked about a different sessions that concept of being what does it mean to be college ready versus what does it mean for the college to come alongside students of various levels of experience and readiness and equip them for success no matter.
00:16:19 Alex
What? They're coming.
00:16:20 Alex
And with but for the workforce. And that was the big thing too, is how how is the Academy, you know, in the broad tent sense, really thinking through its role.
00:16:21 Camie
For the workforce.
00:16:22 Camie
Right college ready and workforce ready.
00:16:30 Alex
And are they really focusing on those higher they? I like the someone made a shift of not calling them soft skills, but higher ordered skills because really that's what they are. You need these at every discipline. You need these in every major and subject matter. And also when we're thinking about the workforce readiness, one of the the important points that was brought up was.
00:16:40 Camie
Yes.
00:16:51 Alex
Some workforces and industries they want you to have as a student, a base level of technical.
00:16:58 Alex
Ability, right? If you're computer science, you have to know back end, front end, full stack development, you have to know all these things. But.
00:17:07 Alex
They're going to onboard you at specific companies into their processes and their.
00:17:13 Alex
Ways of doing things, and so is the university and Academy really, because an instructor is big into research in this thing. Are they taking students broad, like from the broad level, way down into their way of doing things, and that's actually hurting when they get into the workforce. And so workforces are actually saying it's better to have that.
00:17:29 Amalie
Lunch. Yeah.
00:17:34 Alex
That baseline technical competency, but we want them to have the higher ordered skills of.
00:17:40 Alex
Of emotional intelligence, empathy, adaptability, critical thinking skills.
00:17:41 Amalie
To be able to adapt into.
00:17:44 Camie
And a little bit of like self determination so that they can, they can drive themselves to learning the new things.
00:17:46 Alex
Yes, so right.
00:17:50 Alex
And so how is the Academy itself truly engaging in the needs of the society? Or is it operating as an outlier, observing the society? That's that's attention.
00:17:55 Camie
I also.
00:17:59 Camie
I also brought this up in my a conversation yesterday. I just wanna say like all these topics I talked about yesterday, it was fun.
00:18:04 Amalie
Well, and one of the one of the.
00:18:05 Camie
See, I didn't even do a session.
00:18:08 Alex
You didn't have to come to the conference.
00:18:09 Camie
Didn't have to come to conference.
00:18:10 Camie
I'd have to be near it for to absorb.
00:18:14 Amalie
So that was that kind of leans into one of the several of the the sessions that I went to were about student agency and about students sort of being in charge of driving their their learning and they talked about it being kind of on a quadrant and there's passenger mode and most students default into passenger mode.
00:18:33 Amalie
Where they are just.
00:18:35 Amalie
Cruising through and allowing school to kind of happen to them.
00:18:41 Amalie
And then there's the achiever modes, the students who just are, are completely obsessed with getting it right, but it ends.
00:18:49 Amalie
Up.
00:18:49 Amalie
Sort of backfire. It can harm them psychologically, emotionally, and they're not picking up those softer skills that they that you would.
00:18:58 Amalie
Thing and and then there's like they. Then the 4th. They're the third one was they called resistors. The students who have lots of agency, they're just not directing it to their learning, which were always my favorite students because I felt like those were the easiest to then steer into what they called Explorer mode, right where.
00:19:18 Amalie
It's doing more of that sort of experiment based, which was our keynote speak, so that that was one of those other tracks that I thought was really great talking about students as.
00:19:29 Amalie
Having as needing agency and universal design for learning has incorporated student agency as a major, major part of their most recent rewrite of of their guidelines.
00:19:43 Alex
And I think that's that's a good connection to. And Laura Lakoff, I think I got her name.
00:19:50 Alex
Her. Yeah. Keynote speaker. The first day her book is tiny experiments. It's going to be on my next.
00:19:55 Amalie
Audible download it just came out a couple of days.
00:19:57 Alex
Ago I think and so.
00:19:57 Amalie
Yeah.
00:20:00 Alex
The big component on that was she's a scientist finishing up her PhD in neuroscience, talking about scientists. Success is learning something new and it's not self blame. It's not self judgment. It's curiosity being more powerful than than certainty and almost sudden. And I think we we touched on this a second ago. It's understanding failure.
00:20:14 Amalie
Said the servants.
00:20:19 Alex
As a part of that process and failure is a key component of learning, and a scientist stays curious when you do an experiment and you don't get the outcome. Maybe you predicted that's not a I failed. I'm such a bad scientist. No, you you take that data, you take that information.
00:20:36 Alex
And you reframe your hypothesis, or you take that data and then you learn something different. And so just I I loved she she. Yeah. You broke it down to. She broke it down to three points. Really well, developing experimental mindset. Systematic curiosity. The head, heart. Hands evaluation was my my head I.
00:20:45 Camie
No results are results.
00:20:56 Alex
Don't want to do this. My hands. I don't feel like doing.
00:20:58 Alex
My or?
00:21:00 Alex
My head, my head. I don't want. I don't think I can do this. The hands. I don't know how to do this. The heart. I don't feel like doing this. But probing yourself and and being curious about that, not just pausing and stopping. And then continuous iteration that self anthropology. So I framing it.
00:21:17 Amalie
Provides that the self anthropology.
00:21:18 Alex
Yeah, framing it. And then the way of a tiny experiment, I will do XYZ for.
00:21:23 Alex
So it was. I'm going to post for X number of days on Instagram reels live like unscripted, just talking so should get better at public speaking, right. And at the end of that 10 days, OK, I'm just going to evaluate and see how that went and learn from it.
00:21:41 Alex
And building that, that's an explorer mode mindset of learning.
00:21:45 Amalie
Where there isn't an assumed outcome, there's a.
00:21:48 Amalie
There's a an out. There's a hypothesis, but there's not an assumed outcome. Yes, and you're just looking at all the you're observing as it plays out, kind of.
00:21:57 Camie
And to address imposter syndrome, doing to address procrastination, doing like the do that that little small step of do like that.
00:21:57 Amalie
In front of you.
00:22:06
Yes.
00:22:08 Camie
Is the cure for those things in general.
00:22:10 Alex
She framed it as completing those tiny experiments. The doing removes the knowledge from assumptions to clearer answers, right? And that's that's so helpful from a.
00:22:21 Alex
Personal growth mindset, but also in the learning and education sphere. That's what real learning.
00:22:23 Camie
MHM.
00:22:30 Alex
Is and so how do we develop that that freedom to fail and the facilitation of?
00:22:37 Alex
Design failure as part of the learning process is so key, but it's so anti what we've built the academic system to be.
00:22:44 Amalie
And I I watched one session that and we'll put links to all these people's books and and things.
00:22:54 Amalie
This one was and I can't remember his name, but he just wrote a book that's coming out called Productive Failure. That is all about how to leverage intentionally leverage failure in your courses to improve learning outcomes.
00:23:11 Amalie
And he took a course that normally had a 55% pass rate.
00:23:17 Amalie
And yeah, it was.
00:23:19
It was low.
00:23:21 Camie
That does not sound like a well designed course.
00:23:22 Amalie
It was A and it was a math course, but they they took a look at the course, established what were the 10 most important.
00:23:30 Amalie
Concepts that the students needed a depth of understanding in they built in 30 to 45 minutes for each of those of.
00:23:40 Amalie
Sort of some.
00:23:42 Amalie
Some very carefully designed problems that would allow students to that really that open the doors for students to fail all over the.
00:23:51 Amalie
Place.
00:23:51 Amalie
With them and then and then would go back into the learning, so it they just used it kind of as a primer for each of these concepts as like an introduction.
00:24:01 Amalie
Turner and ended up with a 75% pass rate that it has maintained, so he's really looking at the ways that you can.
00:24:10 Amalie
Can vary. Intentionally leverage these things and the more you can make that part of your culture part of what the course is about. That's the goal. The goal is to find out what isn't correct, that you can really, really leverage that.
00:24:27 Alex
Yeah, the language we already have, I think built into.
00:24:32 Alex
Our stream of consciousness with learning.
00:24:35 Alex
And then also it's it's.
00:24:38 Alex
Built into Blackboard itself is incorporating more of that formative assessment, and that formative piece that really then builds, and that's the space where if students understand that and that's framed well at the start of say like an asynchronous online course, hey, I'm going to build a lot of formative assessment in here for you. I'm going to build a.
00:24:54 Alex
Lot of knowledge.
00:24:54 Alex
Checking and a lot of opportunities.
00:24:57 Alex
It's really just meant for you to get that things that we talked about before retrieval practice, spaced repetition, because we know from the data that these things help your retention, help your knowledge base grow.
00:25:10 Amalie
When you get it right and.
00:25:10 Alex
But right, right, because every time you're then thinking about it, you're pulling it back in your mind and you're reframing it and and working with.
00:25:11 Amalie
When you get it wrong.
00:25:17 Alex
It over and over.
00:25:19
Or.
00:25:19 Alex
But so much of the time we we we try and make that that bargain with the student of like, well, I'm only going to give you something if it's attached to points. And that makes things immediately higher stakes. But that's that's how. Yes. And that's how I incentivize you to actually get the work done.
00:25:27 Amalie
Puts it into the achiever mode.
00:25:32 Alex
But.
00:25:32 Alex
We need to what is the way to reframe this so that students?
00:25:37 Camie
Are well, and students have to take ownership of their education and if we're not encouraging them to be the drivers of their own learning, then we're doing them a disservice.
00:25:40 Alex
Absolutely.
00:25:47 Amalie
Yeah.
00:25:48 Amalie
And that's one of the students in a session in the UDL session actually said that she was, I think.
00:25:59 Amalie
Maybe a junior in college now, but she said, you know, when COVID was happening, she completely it sort of erased her identity as a learner and that really stuck with me. That that was something that I hadn't thought about being a fallout from COVID because students were taken so far out of.
00:26:19 Amalie
The educational environment.
00:26:22 Camie
That's interesting because I environment has never mattered to me in terms of learning.
00:26:28 Amalie
But I mean, if they're not, if if.
00:26:30 Alex
Be fair. Look at your job and what you do now. It's kind of like we're kind of naturally inclined to be lifelong learners when we.
00:26:32 Camie
I know I'm a nerd, OK, but.
00:26:36 Alex
Work in this area.
00:26:37 Amalie
I mean, if if you're 1515 years old and you suddenly are no longer going to school, you're no longer engaging with other people in an environment that is all about learning well. And at 15, I was much more social, right? I was much more into talking to my friends than learning, but also really loved to. So I would say. And some students love to read and love.
00:26:52 Camie
I.
00:26:53 Camie
Green.
00:26:55 Camie
So that was my problem.
00:26:57 Amalie
Do all that.
00:26:57 Amalie
Kind of stuff. Some students have have parents who read a lot. Some students have have a.
00:26:58 Camie
No problem.
00:27:05 Amalie
An environment that has fostered an identity as a learner, young and other students get that identity from school, and when they've been taken out of that, and so on. The one hand I was like, that's the saddest thing I've ever heard. And then the other part of me thought this is a wonderful. This is a wonderful opportunity.
00:27:19 Camie
Sad and sweet.
00:27:23 Amalie
If we can look at it as a as a lot of blank slates coming in the door that we can, we can really rethink how we approach things and stop making the the bargain with them with points.
00:27:38 Alex
Well, and that that also too I think that type of shift.
00:27:43 Alex
Is something.
00:27:45 Alex
I mean, we this isn't. We're not prepared to talk in, like, the history of higher education and the Academy.
00:27:51 Alex
But.
00:27:52 Alex
That's really there is almost this.
00:27:55 Alex
Cultural moment where we can begin to shift and think through, OK if.
00:27:59 Alex
How do we reframe what the goal of coming into higher education is? Because that was another session I went to was do students in society still value higher Ed? There was a lot of it was Gallup, one of the representatives, was from the Gallup organization doing all these polls, they said, to be fair, a decline in confidence across all institutions is happening right now.
00:28:19 Alex
Yeah, it's not just higher education or.
00:28:20 Alex
Society as a whole is becoming more anti institution, but the three main things when they pull this data gathering from folks were the the number. The three main reasons. Number one was the reason.
00:28:33 Alex
This fear of propaganda and political agendas.
00:28:35 Alex
That's a whole.
00:28:36 Alex
Black hole. We're not going to explore right now. Maybe another episode, but #2 lack of skills being adequate or applicable I think is huge. And then #3, which is another separate conversation was cost, but I think #2 is really a lot of the stuff we're talking about here. Lack of skills being adequate or applicable.
00:28:54 Alex
People are kind of seeing.
00:28:55 Alex
OK. Is the four year degree.
00:28:57 Alex
The does my learning approach really fit that with my goals? My identity as a learner? What is that coming into? Maybe at through my high school experience? I don't.
00:29:09 Alex
The way that learning and being a learner is framed for the four year degree.
00:29:14 Amalie
No transactional.
00:29:15 Alex
Is transactional and meant for a certain segment of people, and maybe I feel like I don't fit that.
00:29:21 Alex
And that probably needs to change a lot from the higher education communicated back towards the students that are coming up. But also there's just going to be I think a growth of avenues that are coming up. I went to different sessions that talked about internship programs and nonprofits that are focusing on that but also short term.
00:29:41 Alex
Credentialing and and workforce development, I mean that's that's a whole Ave. that is being explored and so.
00:29:50 Alex
It just we have to look at the higher education used to be viewed as this necessary good and now it's viewed more as a like.
00:30:00 Alex
Private benefit for people because it's a luxury good. At this point, it's priced as a luxury good, but we're still telling students.
00:30:07 Alex
It's necessary, but then I think people are wising up to it and saying, oh, I can get credentialing or I can get experience in other ways. So how is how you're?
00:30:16 Alex
Going to adapt.
00:30:17 Camie
Well, and workforce has really exploded, you know, especially with the certificate programs and things like that, that universities and colleges across the United States have been offering.
00:30:27 Camie
And I think that's one way that people access those because a lot of times employers will pay for that.
00:30:34 Camie
So the one session that I absolutely loved that I got to out of the you know, handful that I went to was the one on civil discourse and only you were in there with me. But it was we were at different tables. So, you know, yeah, the worst things. OK.
00:30:49 Amalie
They separated us when we came in.
00:30:54 Alex
No friends allowed.
00:30:54 Camie
Look, let let your students be with their friends. Just saying that out loud.
00:31:01 Camie
But.
00:31:03 Camie
They did and they not. They modeled their strategies for civil discourse in the classroom and at my table. I had people from other universities and people from high schools elementaries a home, school mom from a home school Co-op. So.
00:31:19 Camie
Lots of different levels. Also, there was a I think a.
00:31:22 Camie
Private.
00:31:25 Camie
University and then some tutoring.
00:31:28 Amalie
I had some private stuff, some like arbitrators and things like that. I mean people who, yeah, who do a bunch.
00:31:31 Camie
Yeah, like nonprofits.
00:31:34 Amalie
Of different and.
00:31:35 Camie
We just got to share, you know how we approach civil discourse, what strategies we use, what are the biggest barriers to incorporating that within our classroom?
00:31:48 Camie
I think especially now and not now, as in this specific moment but now over the last 10 years, even this has become an increasingly important skill to include in our classrooms and I know it can be scary to talk about controversial topic.
00:32:09 Camie
But of course, one of the strategies they talked about was to incorporate these things slowly so that your students are building that rapport with one another and those relationships so that, you know, you start small and then you tackle, you know, harder concepts as you go in the course. And Amy and I, I think did another.
00:32:29 Camie
Podcast episode specifically on civil discourse, where we lay out some strategies so you can hit that up and every strategy we talked about in there, we talked about that session, but I love that they not only.
00:32:44 Camie
You know, we were able to talk strategy but also they used modeling.
00:32:49 Amalie
Yeah, we experienced the the techniques that they were suggesting.
00:32:52 Camie
Right. And could evaluate them based on that, because as you heard earlier and I may not use all the same strategies in terms of grouping students together as they did, but it's important to explore and I think that's what I value the most is just.
00:33:11 Camie
We talked about earlier is these little mini explorations even for the.
00:33:15 Camie
There's, you know, and we have things like TFSC here that emulate that sometimes and some of the sessions we get at teaching camp or the Winter Teaching Symposium. And I think it's so important for instructors to be able to come together and have those moments. Well, I got to spend my time at the table. They ended up.
00:33:36 Amalie
I helped. I discussed some strategies I had from when I taught high school in face to face with a guy who was.
00:33:43 Amalie
From a high school. But then the rest of the the table helped me think about ways that we can improve civil discourse and build community in the online asynchronous space. And so we talked about things like breaking the the large group of the class into smaller groups where they form tighter bonds throughout the.
00:34:04 Amalie
The length of the course where they do creative things, where they're all working on the project so everyone has ownership and a shared endpoint and you know all these things. So they were all different.
00:34:15 Amalie
It was great to have all these different perspectives from people and getting to just have like a brainstorming session with.
00:34:22 Camie
Right. With other educators. Yeah. And that's what? That's what I mean. I think that's.
00:34:27 Camie
The thing I appreciated most about the conference I got to see if the conference and I don't think we said this out loud. I got violently ill when I first.
00:34:38 Camie
Got to the company.
00:34:40 Camie
And the stranded in my hotel room. And luckily I had Amy and Alex with me. I don't know what I would have done if they had not been there. So thank you again guys.
00:34:49 Camie
For your assistance because.
00:34:49 Alex
Yeah. You're welcome.
00:34:52 Amalie
We luckily I didn't catch it so.
00:34:55 Camie
And I was very grateful that I did not pass it on to either of you because.
00:34:56 Amalie
So was I. Trust me. Yeah, I.
00:34:58 Camie
I would have felt terrible.
00:35:00 Alex
Kind of. I think I I worried for about 12 hours. Yeah, OK. I think I'm gonna be in the clear. Nothing feels weird. It's it's all.
00:35:02
Me too.
00:35:07 Camie
Mental when I was conscious, I also worried about you.
00:35:12 Alex
I appreciate that, but you just needed to worry about yourself.
00:35:18 Alex
Thanks for joining us today on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe so you get new episodes. See you next time. Thanks.