A Conversation with Professor Jeff Simon

In this episode, Rob and Jared talk with Professor Jeff Simon, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of Communication at Cedarville University. Professor Simon, Rob, and Jared discuss student learning, creative assessments, and tech integration. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources. We would love to get your feedback! Please fill out our survey to help improve our podcast and serve you better.

Professor Simon shares how he has adjusted his teaching practice over his 13 years in higher education to match the learning needs of his students. He creates more open-ended assignments focused on concepts and processes so students obtain a set of tools that will aid them to be creative problem solvers. In this process, he assesses students based on their proposed solution so he can provide feedback along the way. The ultimate desire for his assignments is that students will develop unique skill sets so they will be successful in their careers.

Student success is important to Professor Simon, so he includes a plethora of resources and tools. To aid learning, he provides exemplars to show the range of submissions from acceptable to excellent. Professor Simon also makes quick tip videos for students so they can have immediate help for completing assignments anytime, anywhere. In addition to those resources, he recently used Simternship—created by Stukent—which allows students to simulate an internship experience during the course. Students responded well to the use of this tool, so he plans to keep including it. In his opinion, if a tech tool will make a student’s life easier, he is willing to give it a try.

Resources

Stukent Simternships

How to Use OBS for Screen Recording