Intentional Teaching

Derek Bruff

Intentional Teaching is a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. Hosted by educator and author Derek Bruff, the podcast features interviews with educators throughout higher ed.
Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

#8 in the Top 100 higher education All time chart

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Top 10 Intentional Teaching Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Intentional Teaching episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Intentional Teaching for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Intentional Teaching episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

AI's Impact on Learning with Marc Watkins

Intentional Teaching

06/04/24 • 39 min

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Worried about your students asking ChatGPT to write their essays for them? That's so 2023. Generative AI technology is changing fast, and now these tools have the potential to disrupt many different aspects of learning, from reading to notetaking to feedback.
To help us explore those changes, this episode features a conversation with Marc Watkins, lecturer in writing and rhetoric and academic innovation fellow at the University of Mississippi. Marc's blog, Rhetorica, is a must read, and his workshops on teaching and AI for UM faculty have been incredibly helpful.
Marc has a new series on his blog called “Beyond ChatGPT” that explores the many ways that generative AI is affecting learning—far beyond the now-typical use of having ChatGPT write an essay on behalf of a student—and we talked about those changes to the learning landscape.
Episode Resources

Rhetorica, Marc Watkins’ blog, https://marcwatkins.substack.com/

Marc Watkins’ website, https://marcwatkins.org/

ChatGPT 4o demo reels, https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/

Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI, https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252495087/openai-pulls-ai-voice-that-was-compared-to-scarlett-johansson-in-the-movie-her

Explainpaper, https://www.explainpaper.com/

Student Notetaking for Recall and Understanding, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2848

Why Use Sketchnotes in the Classroom?, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2902

Mike Sharples’ May 2022 essay on AI in teaching and learning, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/05/17/new-ai-tools-that-can-write-student-essays-require-educators-to-rethink-teaching-and-assessment/

AnswersAi, “School on Easy Mode,” https://answersai.com/

DevinAI, “The First AI Software Engineer,” https://www.cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching
Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.

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Higher Education Beyond COVID with Regan Gurung and Dwaine Plaza

Intentional Teaching

01/24/23 • 34 min

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Regan Gurung is associate vice provost and executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State University, as well as a professor of psychology. Dwaine Plaza is a professor of sociology at Oregon State, and the two of them are editing a forthcoming book titled Onward to Better: How Facing a Pandemic Will Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century. Regan and Dwaine are in the interesting position of having read about two dozen chapter submissions for the book, all about lessons learned from teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic authored by faculty, staff, and administrators, including a healthy amount of teaching center directors. Full disclosure: I am one of those contributors! I wrote a chapter on our experiences with pandemic teaching at Vanderbilt University.

I asked Regan and Dwaine on the podcast so I could pick their brains about what they’ve learned reading and editing all those chapters. What lessons has higher education learned from such a challenging time? What lessons should higher ed learn? And how can we get ready for whatever challenge comes next?
Episode Resources:
Regan Gurung’s faculty page, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/regan-gurung

Dwaine Plaza’s faculty page, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/dwaine-plaza

Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State, https://ctl.oregonstate.edu/
Music:
"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Talking about Inclusive Teaching with Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy

Intentional Teaching

08/22/23 • 40 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

In March 2023, educators Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy wrote a piece for the Chronicle titled “How Can ‘Inclusion’ Be a Bad Word?” At the time, they both worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and they had been asked by North Carolina state lawmakers to provide data about DEI programming at their institution. In their op-ed, they wrote:

“How does it feel to have your work in this kind of political spotlight? Frustrating. In large part because of the disconnect between how these topics are discussed on social media and on the news versus what we know to be true about them based on evidence, research, and practice.”

I reached out to Viji and Kelly to ask them about that disconnect and about how they communicate with a variety of audiences, including with their own students and with faculty colleagues, about inclusive teaching. Kelly Hogan is a professor of the practice of biology at Duke University, having recently moved there from UNC-Chapel Hill, and Viji Sathy is the associate dean for evaluation and assessment at the Office of Undergraduate Education at UNC-Chapel Hill as well as professor of psychology and neuroscience. The two are authors of the 2022 book Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom and speak frequently at colleges and universities about inclusive teaching and student success.

The three of us had a wide-ranging conversation about inclusive teaching and what it looks like in practice in higher education. I hope you’ll listen to it and share it with friends and colleagues who are interested in a practical understanding of this work.
Episode Resources
“How Can ‘Inclusion’ Be a Bad Word?” by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy, https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-can-inclusion-be-a-bad-word

Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy, West Virginia University Press, https://wvupressonline.com/inclusive-teaching

Viji Sathy’s website, https://sites.google.com/view/vijisathy

Kelly Hogan’s faculty page, https://scholars.duke.edu/person/kelly.hogan

inclusifiED, Kelly and Viji’s joint website, https://sites.google.com/view/inclusified

DEI Legislation Tracker, Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/here-are-the-states-where-lawmakers-are-seeking-to-ban-colleges-dei-efforts

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Active Learning with Melinda Owens

Intentional Teaching

11/30/22 • 34 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see an analysis of how much time you spent on active learning, right after class ended? DART is a tool created by a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional team of education researchers. DART stands for Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching. All you have to do is record your class session with your phone and upload the recording to the DART website. DART’s machine learning algorithms will then analyze that audio and let you know how much of your class time was spent on lecturing versus active learning.

I first heard about DART a few years ago, and I’ve been wanting to learn more about it ever since. I reached out to Melinda Owens, assistant teaching professor in neurobiology at the University of California San Diego and one of the lead developers for DART, and she was excited to talk with me about DART. Melinda shares a bit about her journey into education research, the origins of DART, and how college faculty can use DART to better understand and improve their own teaching.
Episode Resources:
Melinda Owens’ faculty page, https://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/mtowens.html

DART website, https://sepaldart.herokuapp.com/

“Classroom sound be used to classify teaching practices in college science courses,” Melinda Owens et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114:12, https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1618693114
Music:
"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Deconstructing Calculus with Amy Langville and Kathryn Pedings-Behling

Intentional Teaching

04/05/23 • 38 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Picture a calculus textbook. You’re probably picturing a hardback book an inch and a half thick, full of mathematical notation. The traditional calculus textbook can be intimidating for students, like five and a half pounds of pure confusion.

On today’s episode, I’m excited to share a conversation with two mathematics faculty at the College of Charleston: Amy Langville, professor of mathematics, and Kathryn Pedings-Behling, adjunct instructor of mathematics. Amy and Kathryn have designed a very different calculus textbook which they call Deconstruct Calculus. It’s one part textbook, one part journal, and part activity book, and I’ve never seen anything like it in higher ed.

Amy and Kathryn share the inspiration for Deconstruct Calculus, the activities and visual design the book uses to engage students and help them learn, and teaching principles from Deconstruct Calculus that can apply to any discipline.
Episode Resources:

· Deconstruct Calculus, https://www.deconstructcalc.com/

· Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith, https://kerismith.squarespace.com/books

· Small Teaching by James Lang, https://www.jamesmlang.com/books

· Leading Lines interview with Remi Kalir about annotation, https://leadinglinespod.com/uncategorized/episode-114remi-kalir/

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Teaching Students with ADHD with Cathryn Friel

Intentional Teaching

07/11/23 • 36 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

If you’ve taught in higher education for any length of time, you’ve probably had one or more students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD, in your courses. You might not have known it, however, since some students with ADHD haven’t been diagnosed yet and some choose not to disclose it to their instructors. This type of neurodivergence can be a little invisible to instructors, which is why it’s important we learn more about it and how we can design and teach courses that support these students.

Cathryn Friel knows a lot about teaching students with ADHD. Catt is a senior instructional designer at Missouri Online, and she completed her PhD last year with a qualitative study examining the experiences of students with ADHD in online courses. I reached out to Catt to learn more about her study and her own experiences as a student with ADHD. I learned a lot from our conversation about how students with ADHD experience and cope with college courses and about how instructors can make their courses, especially their online courses, more welcoming to neurodiverse students.
Episode Resources:

· “Experiences of students with ADHD in online learning environments: A multi-case study,” Cathryn Friel, https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/91567

· “What I wish my instructor knew: How active learning influences the classroom experiences and self-advocacy of STEM majors with ADHD and specific learning disabilities,” Mariel Pfeifer, Julio Cordero, and Julie Dangremond Stanton, https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0329

· “Supporting ADHD Learners with Karen Costa,” Teaching in Higher Ed podcast ep. 384, https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/supporting-adhd-learners/

· Distance Teaching & Learning (DT&L) and Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable (SOLA+R), https://conferences.upcea.edu/DTL-SOLAR2023/

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Transparent Teaching with Mary-Ann Winkelmes

Intentional Teaching

01/10/23 • 44 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

In this episode, I talk with Mary-Ann Winkelmes, a longtime colleague in the world of educational development. Mary-Ann has worked at teaching centers at Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and Brandeis University. She’s also the founder and director of the TILT Higher Ed project. TILT stands for “transparency in learning and teaching,” and the project works with instructors and institutions to practice transparent course and assignment design. With all the conversation in higher education today about rigor and flexibility, I thought this would be a perfect time to talk with Mary-Ann about transparency in teaching and learning.
As you’ll hear, Mary-Ann has a lot to say about the value of transparent design and how instructors can make small changes in their teaching that have outsized impact on student learning and student success.
Episode Resources:

TILT Higher Ed: Transparency in Learning and Teaching, https://tilthighered.com/
TILT Examples and Resources, https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources

Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership, Stylus 2019, https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620368237/Transparent-Design-in-Higher-Education-Teaching-and-Leadership

“A Crowdsourced Rubric for Evaluating Infographics” on Derek’s Agile Learning blog, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2081
Hausmann, Leslie R. M., Feifei Ye, Janet Ward Schofield and Rochelle L Woods. "Sense of Belonging and Persistence in White and African American First-Year Students. Research in Higher Education (2009) 50, 7: 649-669.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. "A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes among minority students." Science 331 (2011): 1447-1451.

Brady, S., Cohen, G. Jarvis, S., Walton, G. "A brief social-belonging intervention in college improves adult outcomes for Black Americans." Sciences Advances vol. 6, no. 118 (20 April 2020).

Music:
"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Design Thinking and AI with Garret Westlake

Intentional Teaching

09/19/23 • 39 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about “assignment makeovers” in this new age of AI, and a key part of rethinking assignments is exploring what we and our students can do with AI technologies in our fields.

To help in those explorations, I reached to Garret Westlake. He is the associate vice provost for innovation and executive director of the da Vinci Center for Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University. I know Garret because I helped the da Vinci Center build and launch an online short course on design thinking and human-centered design. I learned that Garret has been actively exploring the use of AI technologies in design thinking, and I was really interested in hearing from Garret how AI might serve as a catalyst for creative thinking and a supportive tool for entrepreneurship.
If you’re interested in teaching creativity or critical thinking or having students tackle open-ended problems, I think you’ll get some great ideas for integrating AI into your courses from my conversation with Garret.
Episode Resources:

· Garret Westlake on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/garretwestlake/

· Garret’s TEDx talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXuhHB093I

· da Vinci Center for Innovation at VCU, https://davincicenter.vcu.edu/

· Introduction to Design Thinking, a free short course from the VCU da Vinci Center, https://davincicenter.catalog.vcu.edu/courses/introduction-to-design-thinking

· Assignment Makeovers in the AI Age: Essay Edition, https://derekbruff.org/?p=4105

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Instructional (Re)Design with David Hinson and Shawndra Bowers

Intentional Teaching

03/26/24 • 38 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

David Hinson is the R. Hugh Daniel professor of architecture at Auburn University. David teaches a course in professional practice, a course that covers such things as running a business, marketing and communication, and professional ethics. When he realized that his lecture course needed an overhaul, he reached out to Auburn’s center for teaching and learning, the Biggio Center, for an instructional design consultation.
Shawndra Bowers is the associate director of learning experience design at the Biggio Center, where she manages a team of 40 people who support online education at Auburn. Shawndra has her hand in a variety of interesting teaching projects at Auburn. She started working with David to take his onsite lecture course and turn it into an active learning course that leverages the best of online teaching and learning.

In the interview with David and Shawndra, we talk about what motivated David to redesign his course, the big changes David and Shawndra made to the course, how the two have leveraged student feedback to continue to improve the course over time, and what its like to work with an online education unit to redesign an onsite course.
Episode Resources
David Hinson's faculty page, https://cadc.auburn.edu/people/david-hinson/
Shawndra Bower's staff page, https://www.auburn.edu/academic/provost/bios/shawndra-bowers.php
Auburn Biggio Center, https://biggio.auburn.edu/
"Blurring the Lines for Faculty Development," Derek's recent UPCEA blog post, https://upcea.edu/blurring-the-lines-for-faculty-development/

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Grading for Growth with Robert Talbert and David Clark

Intentional Teaching

06/20/23 • 42 min

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Robert Talbert and David Clark are both mathematics faculty members at Grand Valley State University and authors of the forthcoming book Grading for Growth. They are both incredibly thoughtful and effective teachers who share their experiences, insights, and advice widely. Their new book based on dozens of case studies from instructors across the disciplines who are questioning some of the assumptions baked into higher education and finding better ways to assess students—and to help them grow.

In our conversation, we discuss some of the problems with traditional grading systems, the ways that teaching college students is not like competitive gymnastics, the four pillars of alternative grading that Robert and David inferred from their case studies, and strategies for putting those pillars into practice. I also ask them if maybe it’s possible to not hate grading so much?
Episode Resources
Grading for Growth (Routledge, 2023), https://www.routledge.com/Grading-for-Growth-A-Guide-to-Alternative-Grading-Practices-that-Promote/Clark-Talbert/p/book/9781642673814
Grading for Growth blog, https://gradingforgrowth.com/
Robert Talbert's website, https://rtalbert.org/
David Clark's website, https://sites.google.com/mail.gvsu.edu/clarkdav/

Podcast Links:

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

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FAQ

How many episodes does Intentional Teaching have?

Intentional Teaching currently has 55 episodes available.

What topics does Intentional Teaching cover?

The podcast is about Higher Education, Learning, Teaching, Podcasts and Education.

What is the most popular episode on Intentional Teaching?

The episode title 'AI's Impact on Learning with Marc Watkins' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Intentional Teaching?

The average episode length on Intentional Teaching is 40 minutes.

How often are episodes of Intentional Teaching released?

Episodes of Intentional Teaching are typically released every 14 days.

When was the first episode of Intentional Teaching?

The first episode of Intentional Teaching was released on Oct 21, 2022.

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Intentional Teaching

Derek Bruff

Top 10 Intentional Teaching Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Intentional Teaching have?

What topics does Intentional Teaching cover?

What is the most popular episode on Intentional Teaching?

What is the average episode length on Intentional Teaching?

How often are episodes of Intentional Teaching released?

When was the first episode of Intentional Teaching?

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