Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning (Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning)

How can assessment motivate students to focus on learning as opposed to grades? Can it still be rigorous if it’s not high stakes exams? Today we speak with Maryam Pate and Olivia Schmitt, two Columbia University undergraduate students who serve as Teaching and Learning Consultants as part of the CTL’s Students as Pedagogical Partners Initiative. Maryam and Olivia reflect on their experiences with different types of assessment and the impacts on their learning. 

What does rigor look like in a healthcare setting? How can instructors achieve both excellence and equity in teaching in such a high-stakes area as healthcare education? In this episode, we speak with two faculty members at Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Associate Dean for Medical School Professionalism in the Learning Environment, and Associate Director for Clinical Services and Director of the Washington Heights Community Service at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Hetty Cunningham, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Director for Equity and Justice in Curricular Affairs, and co-director of the Anti-Racism Coalition at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Drs. Alves-Bradford and Cunningham answer these questions and discuss how they and their colleagues have been transforming their instruction and medical care by embracing values such as humility and collaboration, while also maintaining standards and evidenced-based, scientific practices. 

Welcome to Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning, a new podcast hosted by CTL executive director, Catherine Ross. Our mission is to encourage instructors, students, and leaders in higher education to reflect on what they believe about teaching and learning. In each episode, guests are invited to share their discoveries of “dead ideas”—ideas that are not true but that are often widely believed and embedded in the pedagogical choices we make. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast/

In our first episode, Diane Pike, Professor of Sociology at Augsburg University, discusses her motivation to write the article “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning”, which serves as the foundation of this podcast. Pike shares “light bulb” teaching moments from her career as well as how her thinking around “dead ideas” has evolved in the past 10 years since the article’s publication. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Do we really only use 10% of our brains? Will using technology in my course improve my students’ learning and motivation? Are students nowadays “digital natives”? In this episode, we tackle these questions and others with Michelle Miller, Professor of Psychology at Northern Arizona University and author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology. Miller talks about her research and experiences with misconceptions about the mind, brain, and learning, with a focus on neuromyths related to teaching with technology. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Carl Wieman, Nobel laureate and Professor of Physics and Education at Stanford University, has dedicated much of his career to addressing the problems and challenges of how universities teach science. In this episode, Wieman imparts the “aha!” moment that motivated his transition from physics research to science education research. He shares dead ideas that he encounters routinely in science teaching, including those that are magnified by the shift to remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

In Spring 2020, Columbia students Mae Butler, Haya Ghandour, Jennifer Lee and Kalisa Ndamage served as undergraduate teaching and learning consultants as part of the CTL’s Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative. In this episode, these students share their experiences and perspectives on remote teaching and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss Columbia’s move to pass/fail grading in the Spring 2020 semester, how we can use technology more intentionally in classrooms, and what they would change if they could reinvent higher education. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

On March 20, 2020, days after Columbia University transitioned to fully remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenny Davidson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, published an article in The Washington Post titled “Forget distance learning. Just give every student an automatic A.” In this episode, Professor Davidson further discusses why she chose to give all of her students an A in Spring 2020, and why, even outside of a pandemic setting, she has long been resistant to the conventional practices of grading. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with Jenny Davidson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, to tackle the question of how much reading is enough in a literature course. Professor Davidson shares examples of how she balances assignment load with student learning objectives in her literature courses, and how she has had to adjust that balance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Welcome back to Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning. When we began this podcast, our mission was to encourage instructors, students, and leaders in higher education to reflect on what they believe about teaching and learning. Now, almost a year into the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it remains a difficult, uncertain moment for higher education. But in that uncertainty, we have a profound opportunity to confront the many dead ideas that have been exposed by the move out of our traditional classrooms and to challenge what teaching means and how it happens. This podcast is a space for reflection, transformation, and learning. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Beginning In 2007, Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (VP&S) began to radically rethink their curriculum and assessment strategies for first and second year medical students. In today’s episode, we speak with Jonathan (Yoni) Amiel, Interim Co-Vice Dean for Education and Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs at VP&S, and Aubrie Swan Sein, Director of the Center for Education Research and Evaluation and Associate Professor of Educational Assessment at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Jonathan and Aubrie discuss the changes they have implemented and the dead ideas they have encountered— especially around assessment—and how things have turned out thus far. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Jesse Stommel, co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy, has not graded student work—in the traditional sense—in 20 years. Instead, he practices “ungrading”, a word which “...suggests that we need to do intentional, critical work to dismantle traditional and standardized approaches to assessment.” In this episode, Jesse unpacks why he supports ungrading (as well as the dead ideas that it challenges), and explains how it promotes student learning. He also shares steps that listeners can take towards ungrading in their own classrooms. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Transcript

Transcript

What does the syllabus do? Who is it for? Why is it chronically unread? And how can it be written to foster an environment of trust and collaboration in the classroom? William Germano, Professor of English at Cooper Union, and Kit Nicholls, Director of the Center for Writing at Cooper Union, are authors of the book Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything (2020). In this episode, they tackle these fundamental questions about the syllabus, and discuss how it serves as a starting point for addressing larger dead ideas about teaching, learning, and student engagement. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

What are the benefits of online education? What misconceptions or “dead ideas” do both instructors and students harbor about teaching and learning online? And how can online activities (both synchronous and asynchronous) benefit student engagement, community-building, and inclusion in the classroom? In today’s episode, we speak with Roxanne Russell, Director of Online Education at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, about all things online, including what she has learned from her students and the “aha” moment that inspired her to start her career in online education. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

What are small steps instructors can take to teach inclusively? Where, when, and how should they be implemented? In today’s episode, we chat with the authors of the new book What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching (2021). These experts share approaches to conducting inclusive courses that are student-centered, community-based, and transparent, and discuss why these approaches are important—as well as the dead ideas that they debunk. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Authors:

• Tracie Marcella Addy, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Lafayette College (PA)

• Derek Dube, Associate Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Student Research and Creative Activity at the University of St. Joseph (CT)

• Khadijah A. Mitchell, Peter C.S. D’Aubermont, M.D., '73 Scholar of Health and Life Sciences and Assistant Professor of Biology at Lafayette College

• Mallory SoRelle, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University

In his 1993 article, “Teaching as Community Property: Putting an End to Pedagogical Solitude”, renowned educational psychologist Lee Shulman argued that if teaching were viewed as community property, rather than something that happens behind closed classroom doors, there would be more value placed on teaching and more rigor in the evaluation of teaching. In today’s episode, we unpack this argument and its underlying dead ideas with Columbia doctoral students Thomas Preston, Diana Newby, and Ami Yoon—all who have worked in multiple teaching capacities at Columbia University. They discuss how their experiences have led them to believe that collaboration has a range of benefits in teaching and learning. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

In May 2020, two months after Columbia transitioned to fully remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we interviewed four Columbia undergrads about their experiences. Now almost a full year out, we wanted to check in again on the student experience and identify what dead ideas have surfaced in this extended period of disruption. In this episode, we speak with Sajan Bar, a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Michelle Yao, a junior in Columbia College, who both serve as undergraduate teaching and learning consultants as part of the CTL’s Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative. They discuss community building, study practices, grading and assessment, and share what they hope will remain and what will be left behind as we move towards more face-to-face settings. Learn more at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Welcome to Season 3 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! We begin this season by turning the conversation around: our guest today is Catherine Ross, Executive Director of the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, and host of Dead Ideas. Catherine, interviewed by Ian Althouse, Senior Assistant Director at the Columbia CTL, shares why she decided to start this podcast—including her own “aha” moment—and what motivates and inspires her to continue the work of unpacking implicit assumptions in teaching and learning in higher education. Catherine also gives listeners a sneak peek of this season’s upcoming guests. 

In Season 3, we will focus on teaching and learning systems in the academy, and how they need to be changed. Topics include beliefs about rigor, the value of undergraduate education in research universities, how to generate systemic change in institutions, issues of equity, and how faculty are evaluated.  

Today we speak with renowned teaching and learning theorist and thought leader Laura I. Rendón, a Professor Emerita at the University of Texas-San Antonio and author of the book Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation (2009). 

As the pandemic nears its end, Dr. Rendón believes we are now in “nepantla”, or a liminal space of inquiry and possibility, regarding the future of higher education. As we return to campuses and classrooms, we need to deeply question what “normal” should be and make sure our pedagogical choices offer a “better” normal for all students, and especially for underserved populations. We need to ask ourselves what kind of an education students now need to help society and to solve our complex problems. We should be mindful of centering equity and inclusion in all of the learning experiences that students encounter.  

Dr. Rendón discusses some of the entrenched beliefs that dictate the current culture of teaching and learning, and how they could be shifted to embrace a new vision of higher education. Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Resources

• Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation (2009) by Laura I. Rendón
• The Four Agreements (1997) by don Miguel Ruiz 
• Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (2020) by Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert 
• “Dead Ideas: Reflections for Post-Pandemic Learning” (June 2021, Inside Higher Education) by Catherine Ross, Amanda Irvin, and Soulaymane Kachani 

In today’s episode, Kevin Gannon, a Professor of History and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Grand View University, discusses how the pandemic has highlighted “bedrock” flaws in higher education systems, including in faculty evaluation processes. These flaws, based on dead ideas such as emphasizing equality rather than equity, disproportionately affect marginalized groups. Dr. Gannon elaborates on the destructive potential of returning “back to normal” in these systems after the pandemic, and offers steps that faculty can take to best move forward. Gannon, author of the book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (2020), also shares what keeps him inspired and why he believes we should remain hopeful about the future of higher education.

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Resources

• Faculty Evaluation After the Pandemic (June 9, 2021) by Kevin Gannon, The Chronicle of Higher Education 
• Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (2020) by Kevin Gannon

While much public discourse argues over the value and the future of higher education—whether it really “pays off” or how we can leverage technological tools and big data—what’s often missing from the conversation is the importance of good teaching. Aaron Pallas and Anna Neumann, professors of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, believe that good college teaching matters—so much so that they wrote a book about it! In today’s podcast episode, Drs. Pallas and Neumann discuss their book Convergent Teaching (2019) and share three pedagogical moves to convergent teaching, as well as dead ideas that it debunks. Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Resource: 

Convergent Teaching (2019) by Aaron Pallas and Anna Neumann

Today we speak with Joshua Kim, Director of Online Programs and Strategy at Dartmouth College, and Edward Maloney, Executive Director of The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. In their recent book Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education (2020), Drs. Kim and Maloney write “We have no shortage of knowledge about how learning works and how this knowledge can be applied to advance teaching. What we lack is an understanding of the conditions in which learning science propagates through institutions to change organizational structures and teaching practices.” 

In this episode, Josh and Eddie discuss the disconnect between many institutions’ mission and the work of innovating teaching and learning, as well as the need for an institutional-wide strategy to implement such innovations. They suggest steps for how those in higher education leadership can think about systemic changes that would help higher education teaching and learning evolve over time for changing workforces, demographics, and environments. Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Resources:

• Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education (2020) by Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney
• The Low-Density University: 15 Scenarios for Higher Education (2021) by Edward Maloney and Joshua Kim
• Listeners can save 30% on both books with the code HTWN at press.jhu.edu.

In 2020, Denise Cruz, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, worked with the CTL through a Provost’s Innovative Course Design Grant to transform her large lecture course in Asian American Literature into a blended format. Today, we speak with Denise about the profound impact the new course format has had on student engagement, motivation, and collaboration in her class, and the dead ideas in teaching that she confronted as she designed and taught it. Spoiler alert: the redesign was so successful that Dr. Cruz was awarded both the Presidential Teaching Award and Mark Van Doren Teaching Award. Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Resources

Denise Cruz presents her course redesign project at Columbia’s 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium: https://youtu.be/_QA9FdiYNfE

Speaking from the Heart: An Instructor and Her Student Reflect 

with Dr. Karen Phillips and Yarin Reindorp 

Today we speak with Yarin Reindorp, a junior in Columbia’s School of General Studies, and her former teacher in organic chemistry, Dr. Karen Phillips, who was a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Chemistry at Columbia. Dr. Phillips shares teaching techniques and philosophies that she employs in her courses—techniques that tackle dead ideas about collaboration, student empowerment, and equity. Yarin, 

who also serves as a student consultant for the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, then discusses her experience as a student in Dr. Phillips’ course and the profound impact it had on her learning. 

In October 2021, Beth McMurtrie, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote an article titled “The Damaging Myth of the Natural Teacher”. The piece explores how, despite decades of research showing otherwise, teaching is often considered an innate talent rather than a skill that can be learned. The article highlights how damaging this belief is for professors, students, and higher education in general. In today’s episode, Beth shares how and why she wrote this article, and discusses the cultural, structural, and economic reasons that the “teaching as an art” myth persists in the academy. 

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast.

Resource: “The Damaging Myth of the Natural Teacher” by Beth McMurtrie, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2021

Columbia University graduate student, Aleksandra Jakubczak, shares her reflections on her journey to become a more informed and confident teacher, and how that journey took her so much further than she initially expected! Listen to find out what changed in her teaching, but also discover how her engagement with the Columbia CTL’s Teaching Development Program changed her conception of teaching and its place in her career—exactly the kind of change called for and highlighted in Beth McMurtrie’s article, “The Damaging Myth of the Natural Teacher” (our previous episode).

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

What is anti-racist pedagogy and how is it different than inclusive teaching? Is it a new pedagogy? How can instructors enact anti-racist practices in the classroom, and what structural changes should universities make to support these efforts? In today’s episode, Frank Tuitt, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Connecticut, helps us answer these questions. Dr. Tuitt also shares his own journey in the work of anti-racist pedagogy, as well as the dead ideas he has encountered along the way, and what keeps him inspired and motivated to believe in the possibility of change. 

Resources 

• Race, Equity, and the Learning Environment (2016). Edited by Frank Tuitt, Chayla Haynes, and Saran Stewart
• “Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Action: First Steps”. Resource from the Columbia CTL.

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Today we speak with Drs. Chavella Pittman and Thomas Tobin, authors of the article “Academe Has a Lot to Learn about How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors”, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2022. In the article, they write, “A key tenet of inclusive teaching asks faculty members to intentionally give up or share some of their power and authority in the classroom, so that students can experience a greater sense of ownership and choice over their own learning. Advocates of this approach tend to assume that every instructor has plenty of authority, power, and status to share. But what if you don’t?” In this episode, Chavella and Tom compare their experiences of student resistance to their use of ungrading and flexible deadline teaching practices. Along with co-host Rebecca Petitti of the Columbia CTL, they discuss why they wrote the article, and share what they believe are the most important action steps that can be taken to address these inequities. 

Resources

• Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice by Maryellen Weimer 

“Academe Has a Lot to Learn about How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors” by Chavella Pittman and Thomas Tobin

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Today we speak with Susan Hrach, author of the book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning (2021), which “shifts the focus of adult learning from an exclusively mental effort toward an embodied, sensory-rich experience, offering new strategies to maximize the effectiveness of time spent learning together on campus as well as remotely.” Along with co-host Caitlin DeClercq, Assistant Director at the Columbia CTL, Professor Hrach expands upon how movement and space impact cognition and learning, and discusses some of the dead ideas this research debunks. 

Resource: Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning (2021) by Susan Hrach

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Over the past two years, Columbia students have made multiple transitions between online, hybrid, and in-person learning during the pandemic. In today’s episode, Emma Fromont, a senior at Columbia’s School of General Studies, and Victor Jandres Rivera, a sophomore at Columbia College, discuss how these different modalities and contexts have shaped them as learners. Emma and Victor share dead ideas they have discovered in topics such as learning with technology, building community, and grading. They also share strategies that their instructors have used that have been particularly helpful in their learning. 

Resource

• Resources and reflections developed by the Undergraduate Student Consultants on Teaching and Learning with CTL staff, as part of the Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative

Transcript available at http://ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

John Warner, educator and author of the Inside Higher Ed blog, “Just Visiting”, wrote in a May 2022 post titled “You Can’t Ignore That a Pandemic Happened”: “I am concerned that the understandable desire to get beyond the extreme challenges of trying to educate in the midst of the worst period of the pandemic is interfering with some deeper questions, some more nuanced conversations we should be having about teaching and learning.” In our first episode of the fall semester, we discuss with John the debate over the “return to normal,” and what will happen to the practices that teachers engaged in as we move away from pandemic teaching conditions.

John Warner is a writer, editor, speaker, researcher, consultant, and author of eight books, including Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins UP) and The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (Penguin), which is widely used in writing classrooms from middle school through college. John has become a national voice on issues of faculty labor, institutional values, and writing pedagogy. John is an affiliate faculty at the College of Charleston, and his most recent book, Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education (Belt) is now available.

Is rigor necessary to teach more inclusively? What is a deficit ideology and how does it affect students? In this episode, Jamiella Brooks, director of student equity and inclusion initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and Julie McGurk, director of faculty teaching initiatives at Yale University’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, answer these questions, and discuss three principles that instructors can use to reframe their thinking about rigor.

This discussion stems from a session hosted by Drs. Brooks and McGurk, “Rigor as Inclusive Practice: Beyond Deficit Models,” presented at the Fall 2021 POD Network conference. This session was also written about in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, “The Redefinition of Rigor” (March 2022). 

Note: at the time of recording, Jamiella Brooks served as an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania.

Resources:

• “10 Dysfunctional Illusions of Rigor.” To Improve the Academy (2010). Craig E. Nelson. Volume 28, 2010. 
• “Readers Respond on Rigor” (February 2022). Matt Reed in “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” Inside Higher Ed. 
• The work of Uri Treisman, executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin 
• Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (TILT)

What does rigor mean in a science course? How can it encourage learning and engagement? And how can we support students while maintaining standards of excellence? In this episode, we dig further into the topic of rigor with David Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for 45 years, who served nearly half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. Professor Helfand answers these questions and shares his thoughts on everything from curving, to what inspires him to believe in the possibility of change in higher education teaching.

In today’s episode, we approach the topic of rigor from the lens of social work instruction with Elwin Wu, Professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work (CSSW), and Kelsey Reeder, a Clinical Social Worker and PhD student in Advanced Practice at CSSW. We dive into the tensions between rigor, skill development, and providing care and compassion, and how instructors can maintain rigor while also seeking liberation. 

Rigor as Skill Building with Larry Jackson

How can academic rigor be defined and enacted in humanities courses to promote learning and skill building? How can we engage and challenge our students while also supporting them? In this episode, we tackle these questions with Larry Jackson, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia College. Columbia’s Core Curriculum comprises the required courses for Columbia undergraduates in literature, philosophy, history, music, art, and science.

Have Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) actually created change in higher education teaching? Have they been able to demonstrate this change? How have their strategies evolved and how are they connecting with institutional priorities for larger scale changes? Today we speak with Mary Wright, Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning at Brown University and author of the newly released book, Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape of Higher Education (2023), for which she surveyed over 1,200 CTLs in universities across the U.S. In this episode, Dr. Wright helps answer these questions and dispels other dead ideas about CTLs. 

Resource

• Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape of Higher Education (2023) by Mary Wright, published through JHUPress. Use promo code HCTL23 in the check-out for a discount (active through 7/7/24). 

Over the past few months, Cynthia Alby, Professor of Teacher Education at Georgia College, has been focused on developing practical solutions in teaching and learning in response to the sudden emergence of generative AI. Through this work, she has realized that AI has, in one fell swoop, rendered an entire constellation of dead ideas in teaching and learning officially obsolete. The ideas that she has advocated for throughout her career, and in the book she co-authored, Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education (2020), are becoming increasingly essential, and she believes that change is imminent. In this episode, Dr. Alby discusses why she believes AI will be the catalyst for the extinction of four big dead ideas in teaching and learning and how that will happen. 

Resources

•  Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education (2020) by Cynthia Alby, Karynne Kleine, Julia Metzker, and Caralyn Zehnder
• Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI: Considerations, Resources, and Opportunities from the Columbia CTL

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, a question was posed by journalist Beth McMurtrie as to whether or not institutions of higher education truly value teaching, and she offered a list of “red flags” that signal the undervaluing of teaching. In response, Michelle Miller, Professor of Psychological Sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University, wrote a post in her “R3 Newsletter,” adding to McMurtrie’s list of red flags and offering her own. In this podcast episode, Dr. Miller discusses her list, which can be reverse engineered to serve as a helpful starting point for those who want to change the institutional culture around teaching at their university. 

Resources

• “Teaching: Does higher education value good teaching?” (July 6, 2023) by Beth McMurtrie in The Chronicle of Higher Education 
• “Bonus post: Is your IHE truly teaching-focused?” (July 11, 2023) by Michelle Miller in R3 Newsletter
• Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology (2014) by Michelle Miller
• Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World (2022) by Michelle Miller

How can we improve teaching AND support all the instructors who teach science courses for undergraduates? Today we discuss this question with Marielena DeSanctis, President of the Community College of Denver, and Cassandra Volpe Horii, Associate Vice Provost for Education and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University, who are co-authors of the article titled, “An Instructional-Workforce Framework for Coordinated Change in Undergraduate Education” (2023). Drs. DeSanctis and Volpe Horii discuss their framework—based on principles of justice, equity, and inclusion—which proposes treating all instructors (Visiting, Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Adjunct, Teaching Professor, TT/Tenured, Lecturer) as a unified workforce. Using the levers of governance, professional development, and reward systems, they offer institutions a path to significant improvement in the teaching of undergraduate science courses. 

Resource

• “An Instructional-Workforce Framework for Coordinated Change in Undergraduate Education” (February 1, 2023) by Mark Lee, Cassandra Volpe Horii, Ann E. Austin, Leanne Avery, Marielena DeSanctis, Noah Finkelstein, Emily Miller & Barbara Schaal in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning

Josh Eyler, author and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, recently posted a rebuttal on LinkedIn to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which he wrote, “Grade inflation is a monster that is often trotted out by folks who wish that grades were objective, accurate measures for both learning and rigor in the course. They're neither.” Today we speak with Josh to unpack this provocative quote and other persistent dead ideas around grading and grade inflation.

Resources

• LinkedIn post by Josh Eyler
• How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (West Virginia University Press, 2018) by Josh Eyler
• “A Century of Grading Research: Meaning and Value in the Most Common Educational Measure” in Review of Educational Research (2016) by Susan Brookhart et al.  
• Forthcoming book: Scarlet Letters: How Grades are Harming Children and Young Adults, and What We Can Do about It (Johns Hopkins University Press) by Josh Eyler

While there is extensive research on the use of student surveys in the evaluation of teaching, the recommended practices are often not utilized. How does this negatively impact innovation in teaching? How do these evaluations perpetuate bias against women and faculty of color? What can we do about it? Today we tackle these questions with Joanna Wolfe, Teaching Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, who wrote the January 2022 Inside Higher Ed article, “Let’s Stop Relying on Biased Teaching Evaluations.” Dr. Wolfe offers three helpful strategies that universities can implement to mitigate some of the potential harm that student evaluations can cause.  

This is our final episode of Season 7 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! We will be back in January 2024 with Season 8, continuing to unpack systems and systemic changes that are needed to improve higher ed teaching and student learning! Happy Holidays to all of our listeners!

Resources

• “Let’s Stop Relying on Biased Teaching Evaluations” by Joanna Wolfe (January 2022, Inside Higher Ed)

Welcome back to Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! In our first episode of Season 8, we speak with Drs. Benjamin Rifkin, Rebecca Natow, Nicholas Salter, and Shayla Shorter about their article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Doctoral Programs Should Require Courses on Pedagogy” (March 16, 2023). Drs. Rifkin, Natow, Salter, and Shorter make the case for paying far more attention to developing teaching skills in doctoral programs. They share research they conducted to examine the “disconnect between what we are trained to do in graduate school and what we are expected to do in the college classroom,” and offer four next steps to better prepare Ph.D.s to teach. 

Benjamin Rifkin is Professor of Russian and Interim Provost at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rebecca Natow is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, and Director of the Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies program at Hofstra University, Nicholas Salter is Associate Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Hofstra University, and Shayla Shorter is a Clinical Collaborative Librarian and Assistant Curator for the Medical Library at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. 

Resource

• “Why Doctoral Programs Should Require Courses on Pedagogy” (March 16, 2023, Chronicle of Higher Education) by Benjamin Rifkin, Rebecca Natow, Nicholas Salter, and Shayla Shorter

In this episode, we continue the conversation from our last episode on the topic of teaching development in doctoral education—this time from the student perspective! With co-host Caitlin DeClercq, Senior Assistant Director of Graduate Student Programs and Services at the Columbia CTL, we are joined by Columbia doctoral students Anirbaan Banerjee, Sara Jane Samuel, and Anwesha Sengupta. They share their experiences, thoughts, and advice on all things teaching development in doctoral education.

In this episode, we continue this season’s examination of graduate education, now looking into how institutions often overlook the need for preparing faculty to teach graduate students and graduate courses. We unpack the dead ideas that underlie this neglect with Leonard Cassuto, professor of English at Fordham University, and author of The Chronicle of Higher Education article “Why is There No Training on How to Teach Graduate Students?” (May 8, 2023).

In this episode of 4 mini-interviews, we ask Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) staff John Foo, Jamie Kim, Rebecca Petitti, and Corey Ptak what’s been on their minds as they go about their work as educational developers. What dead ideas in teaching and learning are they encountering in their day-to-day work with instructors, in their reading and research? What are the underlying systemic issues perpetuating these dead ideas? And how are these developers addressing these challenges? Listen in to hear their responses. 

Resources

• Columbia Science of Learning Research Initiative (SOLER)
• Columbia Office of the Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grants
• "The Tyranny of Content: ‘Content Coverage’ as a Barrier to Evidence-Based Teaching Approaches and Ways to Overcome It" (Petersen et al., 2020) in CBE—Life Sciences Education
• “Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM Instructional Practices: An Analytic Review of the Literature” Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011) in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 
• “Four Categories of Change Strategies for Undergraduate STEM” (Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011) in Accelerating Systemic Change in STEM Higher Education 
• “Chemistry and Racism: A Special Topics Course for Students Taking General Chemistry at Barnard College in Fall 2020” (Babb & Austin, 2022) in Journal of Chemical Education 
• CTL Teaching Transformations Reflection from Rachel Narehood Austin

In today’s episode we examine the systemic issues and dead ideas that underlie the hiring and supporting of contingent faculty. We speak with Kerry O’Grady, Director for Teaching Excellence at the Samberg Institute for Teaching Excellence at Columbia Business School. Dr. O’Grady discusses some of the “normalized” practices that often leave adjunct instructors with a lack of resources and support for their teaching. She then provides research-based recommendations that can help adjunct faculty feel more valued and empowered, as noted in her letter to the editor in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in response to an article titled, “Adjunct Professors Face a ‘Constant Struggle to Not Give Up,’ Report Says,” (October 26, 2023). 

Resources

• “Adjunct Professors Face a ‘Constant Struggle to Not Give Up,’ Report Says” (October 26, 2023, The Chronicle of Higher Education) by Amita Chatterjee
• “How to Help Adjuncts Not Want to Give Up” (November 29, 2023, The Chronicle of

Higher Education) by Kerry O’Grady

In today’s episode, we say a bittersweet goodbye to our wonderful podcast host, Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Executive Director Catherine Ross, as she will be retiring from Columbia in June. Catherine sits down with Amanda Irvin, Senior Director of Faculty Programs and Services here at the Columbia CTL, who will be taking the helm as our next podcast host, starting in the fall 2024 season. Catherine and Amanda reflect on their “favorite” dead ideas and episodes, as well as dead ideas that have yet to be discussed, and how this podcast has impacted our Center’s work internally. 

We’d like to thank Catherine for her passion and leadership as our podcast host over the past four years, and for her unfailing dedication to changing higher education teaching!

This will be the last episode of Season 8 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning. We will be back in fall 2024 with Season 9. Thank you for listening! 

Welcome to Season 9 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning! In this season, with our new host Columbia CTL Executive Director Amanda Irvin, we are exploring the dead idea that the world “outside” of the classroom doesn’t or shouldn’t influence the world “inside” the classroom—that students are exclusively intellectual beings when they step across the threshold (physical or virtual) of the classroom space. 

In our first episode we speak with guest Cate Denial, the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and author of the book A Pedagogy of Kindness (2024). Cate’s new book argues for the strength and capacity instructors and students gain when they meet each other as whole human beings. Dr. Denial discusses her book and shares suggestions for instructors everywhere on how to implement a pedagogy of kindness in their own classrooms. 

Resource: A Pedagogy of Kindness (2024) by Cate Denial  

How can instructors build trust, community, and a sense of belonging with their students to ultimately improve student learning? In today’s episode, we tackle this question with Peter Felten, Rachel Forsyth, and Kath Sutherland, authors of the two recent articles, “Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education” and “Expressions of Trust: How University STEM Teachers Describe the Role of Trust in their Teaching.” Drs. Felton, Forsyth, and Sutherland share ways that teachers can consciously build trust with their students—a previously under-explored topic—through what they call “trust moves.”

Kristi Rudenga, author of The Chronicle of Higher Education article, “How to Rebuild a Broken Connection With Students” (2024), writes that while intergenerational misunderstanding isn’t anything new, “the tumult of the past five years seems to have supercharged the disconnect between students and faculty members.” In this episode, Dr. Rudenga, Director of the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at Notre Dame, discusses her article and shares why human connection is essential, both for an instructor’s own job satisfaction and as an important precursor to student learning. Kristi shares practical, simple strategies that instructors can use to help build connections with students.

In the introduction of Liz Norell’s new book, The Present Professor: Authenticity and Transformational Teaching (2024), she opens with two statements: “When you cannot be present, you cannot teach effectively” and “What’s good for students is good for us, too.” In this episode, Dr. Norell elaborates on these statements, and examines the importance of presence and authenticity in teaching and learning for both instructors and students. Dr. Norell, who serves as Associate Director of Instructional Support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, also shares tools for cultivating self-knowledge, and discusses how they can positively impact teaching. 

This will be the last episode of Season 9 of Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning. We will be back in spring 2025 with Season 10. Thank you for listening!

Despite the large body of research on effective teaching and learning practices, such research is often ignored or unknown by instructors and students. Instead, many “dead ideas” in teaching and learning continue to be enacted worldwide. Why is this the case? In our first episode of the season, we discuss many possible reasons with John Mahoney, senior lecturer at Australian Catholic University and the University’s Academic Lead for HELTA, the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Academy. Dr. Mahoney, a psychologist by training, is also one of the founders of INSPIRE, an evidence center designed to curate and summarize best-available empirical evidence in higher education. 

Resources:

• “Why the Science of Teaching Is Often Ignored” by Beth BcMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education. January 3, 2022.
• The work of psychologist Susan Michie
• INSPIRE

Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy, award winning instructors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and authors of the book, Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom (2022), have found a way to communicate the large volume of research behind equitable and inclusive teaching to a national audience. In this episode, we ask Drs. Hogan and Sathy how they approach the use of learning research and translate it to their audiences. They discuss the structural impediments in higher education that often prevent bringing this research to practice, and how these practices might be changed. 

Kelly Hogan is Associate Dean of Instructional Innovation and a STEM Teaching Professor in Biology, and Viji Sathy is Associate Dean for Evaluation and Assessment and a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill.

Resources

• Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom (2022) by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy
• The L Word (Inside Higher Ed, December 16, 2022) by Jody Greene 
• Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Network 
• The work of Kimberly Tanner 

What does engagement require of your students behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively? Why is it essential to get to know your students, and how can you do this in large classes? Hear advice from Alfredo Spagna, a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Columbia whose research focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms of attention, perception, and mental imagery. Dr. Spagna shares how he engages students in his courses, and what he has learned from them over the years.  

Dr. Spagna is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychology and teaches both introductory and advanced seminars in Neuroscience. He also serves as the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Major.

Resource

• “The Power of Relationships in Undergraduate Education” (January 2, 2023) by Steven Mintz, “Higher Ed Gamma” column in Inside Higher Ed  

How should we educate students on the science of learning? Does this require systemic change? And do faculty have a moral obligation to teach students the processes necessary to succeed in college, in addition to the content in our fields? In this episode, we discuss these questions with Todd Zakrajsek, Associate Professor at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Director of the International Teaching Learning Cooperative, and author of The New Science of Learning, 3rd Edition (2022), a book for students on the science of learning. 

Resources

• The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony With Your Brain, 3rd Edition (2022) by Todd D. Zakrajsek
• Teaching At Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, 5th Edition (2023) by Todd D. Zakrajsek and Linda B. Nilson

Tara Harvey, Founder of True North Intercultural, defines Intercultural Competence as “the capacity to communicate and act appropriately, effectively, and authentically across cultural differences, both locally and globally.” In this episode, Dr. Harvey discusses how the research behind intercultural learning is unknown by many. She explains why intercultural development is so important in higher education, especially nowadays, for both faculty and students, and how it can be taught. 

Resources

• True North Intercultural Resources
• The Intercultural Development Continuum
• Education in a VUCA-driven World: Salient Features of an Entrepreneurial Pedagogy (2022) by Varghese Panthalookaran

How can instructors use research on teaching and learning to create change and tackle challenges in their courses? What can learning analytics tell us about student engagement and motivation in our courses? In this episode, we ask Samantha Garbers, Associate Professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, with guest host Adam Brown, Program Director of Columbia’s Science of Learning Research Initiative (SOLER). Professor Garber received a Provost's SOLER Seed Grant to work with Dr. Brown to explore how students are engaging (or not!) with course materials and resources.

In our final episode of Season 6, we speak with two undergraduate Columbia University students, Emily Glover and Kyle Gordon, who serve as Teaching and Learning Consultants as part of our Center’s Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative. Through the initiative, Emily and Kyle have immersed themselves in the research on teaching and learning, broadening their understanding of how learning works, and of the many pervasive dead ideas in higher education. In this episode, they reflect on how this knowledge has changed them as learners, including how they think about student engagement, assessment, learning styles, and the benefits of being “uncomfortable” while learning.