When papers and projects are due at the end of the term, students often procrastinate even when the projects are carefully scaffolded. In this episode, Michelle Kukoleca Hammes joins us to discuss how a series of infographic assignments, combined with peer and instructor feedback, provide an engaging and productive learning experience. Michelle is an associate professor of political science and a CETL Fellow for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at St. Cloud State University.
Show Notes
Transcript
John: When papers and projects are due at the end of the term, students often procrastinate even when the projects are carefully scaffolded. In this episode, we discuss how a series of infographic assignments combined with peer and instructor feedback provide an engaging and productive learning experience.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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Rebecca: Our guest today is Michelle Kukoleca Hammes. Michelle is an associate professor of political science and a CETL Fellow for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at St. Cloud State University. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle: Hi. Nice to be here.
John: We’re looking forward to talking to you. Today’s teas are:… Michelle, are you drinking tea?
Michelle: I am. I don’t always drink tea, but I made sure this morning I did. And so I’m actually just drinking a green tea, a milk tea. It’s not quite as good as others I’ve had. I have a colleague from Wales who makes the best green tea, but it’s good this morning.
John: …and Rebecca?
Rebecca: I have a Hunan Noir Tea, which is very tasty.
John: You left out the Pinot.
Rebecca: I know. [LAUGHTER]
John: Okay. And my tea is a black raspberry green tea.
Michelle: Sounds nice.
Rebecca: So we’ve invited you here today, Michelle, to discuss how you’ve been using infographic assignments in your online comparative politics classes. When you first started teaching this course, what kinds of assignments did you use?
Michelle: I use a variety of assignments. I’ve been teaching this course for 27 years now. And then this is mainly for my intro level comparative course. But I’ve adapted it for upper levels too, so mainly traditional assays early on. As I moved to the online environment, I would still have them do a major paper of a country study. And so pretty traditional assignments for the most part, but I wanted to make some changes for the online environment especially.
John: So what made you decide to change to infographics?
Michelle: Well, a few things. One is I felt that students were doing these papers that were quite lengthy in their country studies, and they would turn them in at the end of the semester. And we never really had a chance to talk about the elements of them in depth prior to that. And so I really wanted to change that. So it wasn’t just the end of the semester. And they weren’t sharing them with each other, because of the format of them as just being a lengthy paper, it wasn’t the kind of thing that they would be interested in exchanging with each other. And then frankly, I was getting a little bored, [LAUGHTER] the format, not so much the content or their insights, but the format just became very boring. We all know that when you’re working with one individual paper, it can be really exciting to have that dialogue with the student. But when you have a stack of papers, it suddenly becomes too daunting. And so I was just looking for a way to make us all happier, actually.
Rebecca: That sounds like a good motivation. [LAUGHTER] Can you talk a little bit about what the infographic assignment is?
Michelle: So I will talk about in terms of that intro level comparative politics class. One of the things that there’s not time to do in any semester is to really cover every country in the world, obviously. First of all, I wanted to make sure that students could pick their own country that they have an interest in, and that would broaden the number of countries we would cover. And then I switched it to infographic for the online component because there were a few things I wanted to do with it. One is to retain the goals I had in mind for them learning about a country. But also then I wanted to tie in some best practices for online presence in the classroom, for example. My discussions, I was also unsatisfied at the beginning, we learn as we go along, and my discussions tended to also be maybe a little stale, or I’d throw out a question and I would get very similar answers from everybody. They were going back to the textbook and giving me something rather than being creative or energetic in their own answers. And so the way the infographic works is I have about 10 through the semester that they have to do. And so it’s basically breaking up the country study into smaller pieces, so that they have different topics as we go along the different topics in the class. And then before they submit them to me, they submit them into the discussion for the appropriate week. And that way, all the other students can see them, it gives them a lot of different skills. One is that they are able to critique other people’s work, they are gaining more knowledge about a variety of countries. It allows them to practice skills on their own in terms of working together. So I don’t see these always as only individual assignments, although that’s how they’re graded, but kind of a group work assignment that they can all enhance each other. And so there were a lot of ways in which I wanted to bring different elements into the same assignment, particularly because I didn’t want to have to think of how to bring these elements in and do different assignments for each thing I wanted to bring into the classroom. Having one assignment that was consistent really helped them.
Rebecca: It sounds like by having a consistent assignment, you do have to learn how to do the assignment over and over again, that part of it is covered. You do it one time and then it’s clear how to do the assignment and then you can focus on the content and the material.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And one of the other things is, unlike just having one country study at the end, there was a lot more formative assessment that could go into it. So exactly that, where we’re able to help build skills up early on. Some of the content early on is pretty simple. The first one is making an infographic about the demographics of the country. And so it’s pretty simple, but it allows them to get the first skills if they’ve never used, for example, Canva, or other programs that allow them to make an infographic. So they get their feet wet with that. It allows them to think about how to communicate in a different way other than a paper, because I also began to think about my intro level students who many would become political science majors, but many wouldn’t. And so in a course that they were using for general education, they’re not going to be writing political science research papers. And so allowing them in different ways to express themselves I felt was another skill that they could bring.
Rebecca: It was nice to see this scaffolding, separating out some of the technical skills from the content, because often we’re doing all of those things at once. And it sometimes can be unclear whether or not it’s a technical skill that is lacking or the lack of understanding of something. So separating those out of it really does seem like it would help have a clearer sense of where students are. And, as we know, [LAUGHTER] if you try to ask students to do too many things in one bigger assignment, then certain things end up edited out. And that might be the thing that was really critical. So it’s nice to have those separate assignments to focus in on those.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I really enjoy the fact that, rather than focusing on grading a long paper, I’m able to go through that process with them. And then also in discussions, it gives me so many opportunities to re-teach something. So if I’m noticing in someone’s infographic that they’ve made an error, or they have a misunderstanding of a concept we’re working with, then all the students in the class can see me correcting that and doing it in a gentle way, that seems a little bit less high stakes for students that because it is just this one assignment, and I’m making this one little correction here, but I think it benefits everybody.
John: So for those students who haven’t done much work with infographics or with graphics in general, do you provide any instructions or recommendations to them? You mentioned Canva, do most students use that? Or is it a mix of tools?
Michelle: They usually do end up using Canva, because that is one of the tools that I put in the directions. And so I have quite lengthy directions in terms of guiding them through accessing technology, allowing them to know that they can use various different technologies, depending on their accessibility to them. There are some really great programs that of course, cost money or pro versions. But I let them know that for our purposes, they can certainly just download a free version of a program. They could really even do it in the Microsoft Office Suite in a variety of ways if that’s where their skills lie. And of course, that’s something that all the students have access to on campus. And so I do get them lengthy directions, they’re not all my directions. I don’t feel like I need to reinvent the wheel. So I just include several videos from YouTube that talk about how to use Canva. And those are sufficient and actually probably better than I can do. And so I put those out there with other directions, I give them alternatives. And then of course, if they’re still stuck, then they can always work through it with me. We can have a Zoom meeting where they pull up their materials, and we work on putting it together.
Rebecca: You mentioned that students were sharing infographics with each other, it sounded like maybe through a learning management system or something. Can you talk a little bit more about what that sharing looks like and the kind of feedback that students are giving one another.
Michelle: So the learning management system we use here is D2L Brightspace, and there is of course, like in most learning management systems, there’s that built in discussion feature, so I just use what’s already there. I don’t mind using third-party applications., but it just tends to make things trickier. So I just use the discussion. Have them post it right to the discussion, and have them use the discussion tools, whether it be just typing in or using some audio or other tools to give feedback to each other. And I find that the discussions are so much more lively. Even more than I expected. The first time I used it, it was for a summer class and I thought “okay, I’m gonna try this now because it’s summer, and no one wants to be sitting writing a 20-page paper in summer. What am I going to do?” So I put it out there for the summer class and I thought, Okay, well, maybe they’re busy with other things or they’ve got excitement in their own life over the summer or they’re working a lot of hours. I had never had such lengthy discussions go on in any class before that. They really enjoyed looking at each other’s work rather than just from me. Many of the students chose countries that reflect an interest they have, maybe it’s somewhere that they’re actually from, although I usually try to encourage them to broaden a little bit. But that also brings such a benefit to the rest of the students. So we do have students who do that. I have students who maybe have gone on vacation somewhere or have a family connection somewhere, I’ve had some that have been stationed in the military, and come back, and they want to talk about what they noticed when they were there, so they put a lot of that in the infographics. I found just use the basic tool, but allow it to be opened up for them. And I also try in discussion, and I do this even in other discussions that I have online, because I usually try to hang back for the first bit, quite a bit. I allow that to be organic. And then I’ll go in and make sometimes just a summary of everything that’s been said or things that I need to correct. So that it’s not simply another lesson from me. But I have that ability to correct when I need to.
John: You mentioned the first infographic assignment had them work with demographic data and display that, to what extent are these assignments tied to the specific course work that you’re doing during each of the 10 assignments?
Michelle: For most of those 10, they’re directly tied to the material for the week. So for example, the textbook will have a chapter where we’re talking about government structures, presidential systems, parliamentary systems, et cetera. And so the infographic for that week will be directly related. So they’re going to do an infographic laying out the government structure. And then another module will be on political parties and how they work in various parts of the world. And so it’ll be directly tied to: “So show me your country, and show me the main political parties in your country. Tell me what their main ideology is. Tell me who’s in power now… which party? And what does that mean for the policies that get put forward?” Another one would be one on current events, the last one that they do is: “Well, what’s going on there now? …and “With everything you know about your country now, what do you predict for the future for them? How do you think they’re gonna solve this?” So a little bit more policy oriented… also, “look at what they’re actually doing in terms of legislation and implementation.” And I also do one… I don’t use the textbook anymore, but it’s something I used years ago that I retained the content in a module, which is to look at the concerns of any country in terms of every country’s concern with prosperity, security, and stability. And so I asked them to just put out an infographic that asks them to assess threats to those things, and looking at their country. And so it’s a little bit on the current events side, but it’s focused for them in terms of every country needs to be aware of its security… what’s happening?
Rebecca: You’ve hinted that students are really engaged in these assignments because of discussion forums. But can you elaborate on just the general sense of what students have been able to accomplish by shifting to this format, and also their engagement with one another?
Michelle: I think, several things, some of which I’ve mentioned. So the formative assessment part, I think they gain a lot from not just getting comments at the end of the semester, oftentimes handed in that last week. And then, frankly, I don’t expect that every student has even read my comments at that point. So just having the opportunity to fully engage throughout the entire semester, and so we’re not also dealing with, “Oh, I have three days before this paper is due. So let me think about it today, make a plan to think about it more tomorrow, [LAUGHTER] and then maybe I’ll do it the next day before it’s actually due.” And not that that’s all students, but I know when I was an undergrad that happened to me. So I think that just slowing them down, allowing them space to actually think about their country in multiple ways, and not have it be “Okay, we’re all working to doing your own country study at the end of the semester,” but having them actually engaged the whole time, I think is of great benefit to them. And I think they learn a lot more. I think that taking it in these smaller chunks, actually has made them research a little bit deeper on each of the topics because they’re not overwhelmed with “Okay, I’ve got all of these topics now to cover in this country study.” And so they tend to just do it in a way that is most efficient for them, let’s say. And so I think this gives them that way to back up a little bit and actually enjoy the process of learning rather than the process of an assignment only.
John: I think you’ve made a really good point there about students’ tendency to procrastinate. I was thinking back to when I was an undergraduate, and actually a graduate student as well. And I can’t recall a single time when I didn’t start writing the paper the day before it was due. I spent a lot of time gathering materials, taking notes, and organizing and putting an outline together, but the writing generally took place in just one day. So, [LAUGHTER] this is forcing students to engage in a little bit more spaced practice, to engage with the material regularly, and I think there’s a lot of benefits over that rather than the traditional way of just rushing through and getting it done right before it’s due.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I’ve adopted that in other classes too, the idea of doing a lot of prewriting throughout the semester. So I’m a big believer in the prewriting process, and it’s very valuable, and it is doing work. But when I mentioned earlier, sort of they spend the day thinking about it, I’m thinking more of myself as an undergraduate thinking about not the assignment, but thinking about the fact I have to do an assignment.[LAUGHTER] So it’s more anxiety, not so much productive work on the content of what I’m doing. And so yeah, the prewriting work for any assignment is really great. So I’ve been trying to shift that mindset. I also teach a research methods course in my department and I teach our senior seminar. And so the senior seminar, especially, just making it about an entire semester-long process, I think, has taken a lot of pressure off of them. They seem a little relieved by the end, it’s not as daunting,
Rebecca: It definitely seems like it deepens the study and the engagement, not just because it’s broken into smaller pieces, but because it’s a consistent country the whole time and because it’s a consistent kind of assignment the whole time, it really provides a structure to be able to do that. I’m curious whether or not any of your other colleagues have also shifted to doing assignments in this format, or other similar kinds of strategies.
Michelle: I can’t really say. I know that in my department, we’ve talked about them a lot. And so I think people are adapting parts of them. I don’t think anybody does it the full way that I’ve described in terms of the full semester, but we have talked about just different ways of communicating. I think that’s going to shift again, obviously, AI is something that everybody is grappling with how to best use. So I think there’ll be some shifts coming. But I can tell you that I was Interim Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and now I’m a faculty fellow there. And I’ve talked to a lot of people across campus, and some of our off-campus partnerships about this assignment, because I get really excited about it. If you haven’t noticed, this is my favorite thing. And so I’ve talked to a lot of people, and I just can’t be sure how many have actually applied some of these things. But they certainly seem interested, and they’re certainly searching out the same types of things I was searching out: how to make things, first of all, more authentic for the students, how to engage the students more with themselves in an asynchronous class or with other students. Even in a synchronous class or on-the-ground class, you could still have the same assignments. You might want to introduce them differently, you might want the discussions to take place in the classroom, rather than obviously online, because you could engage in person that way. So you can do kind of a round robin around the room, maybe… any of those techniques. But I also let the students know that, for them, they will become a mini expert by the end on that particular country. So they should all understand the topic areas but. becoming an expert on the individual countries that’s all their own. And so I hope that colleagues, no matter what field they’re in, can find some way to utilize that. Otherwise, they’re probably just a little sick of hearing me talk about it. [LAUGHTER]
John: Speaking of fellow faculty, has anyone else shifted to using infographics at your institution as a result of your work with us?
Michelle: Yeah, I can’t be quite sure. But I do think that in talking to a lot of faculty that they are shifting modes of communication for students, and I have talked to people who are much more expert at creating infographics themselves. You can do it very, basically, but you can also get really creative and high level with it. And so I oftentimes collect infographics I see for other fields, so I share those with faculty. I’m not sure. It’s one of those things that I so appreciate a podcast like this because sometimes teaching can be a lonely endeavor. We’re a little bit maybe shy about sharing what we do, because we’re afraid it’s not measuring up necessarily to what others are doing. So it’s a good question, though, and I think that that’s something that maybe I want to engage… maybe in a workshop in the future on campus and bringing faculty in and seeing who’s doing this type of thing, or maybe another brand new idea that’s even better.
Rebecca: I think one question that often comes up from faculty when we’re talking about kind of alternative formats or unessays or other [LAUGHTER] ways of not necessarily doing a more traditional essay kind of assignment, is how you evaluate the work. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how you’re evaluating these assignments, just to give faculty a sense of what that might look like and what that feels like in comparison to a more traditional kind of assignment?
Michelle: Yes, that’s a great question. I’ve talked in many ways about why I did these assignments in terms of just making it a more engaging process. But in terms of measurable, assessable goals, I do use rubrics, and have laid out exactly what skills I’m assessing. So I do have a section of the rubric that is based on the skills of communication. I have a very low stakes, low number line for things just like visual engagement, because I don’t want it to be students worried about the visual engagement when they need to learn the political science concepts. but I want to let them know that that’s important. So I have in the rubric descriptions in each of the columns about visually engaging: Does it bring the reader in? Is it easy to read? So I have that skill section, I have a section specifically on the content itself: Do they understand the concepts? Are they using the language that we use in political science? And then I also have sections for pretty typical traditional looking at their writing and seeing if it’s appropriate writing levels, tell them take a look at other people’s infographics… go out in the world and look at the bottom, there will be the sources, you need to include those, you need to not leave those off. So even practice that they would get in papers about citing things, if they put a graph in, you still have to say where this graph came from. So the practice that they would normally get are the same skills. And so I just lay it out in a rubric for them, as I do with most of my assignments. Of course, the rubric is not secret to the students, that goes out with the very first assignment: this is what you should be looking for. I’m going to use it for grading, you can simply use it as a checklist. You can use it to evaluate other students and give them feedback and tell them where you think there could be improvement. And so I think that the assessment itself is pretty typical to what I would normally do when thinking about an assignment: What are my goals for the course? How does this assignment help to meet those goals? And then how do I convey to the students whether or not they’re meeting those goals? Or essentially where they’re at in the process of becoming expert in that goal.
John: Do you use one rubric for all the assignments? Or are there separate ones for each of the infographic assignments?
Michelle: So I’m a big believer in constructing the outline once and then using it, but having different content in it. And so I use the same basic rubric for each of the assignments. And then I give the feedback in that content area really is the main portion. In the content area, I will make some changes to what they need to do specific for that assignment. So if it’s political parties, I would have expectations about what types of things they’d understand about political parties. And so that will change but my basic outline of what that looks like. And I’m a big believer in that kind of consistency in everything. So I can tell you I do that also with just how I set up the modules. And so my modules always have the same outline. There’s an intro with the learning outcomes for that specific module: what can you expect to learn this week, then the section with textbook readings. So this is what you’re going to dig into and read in a very traditional way. Then there’s a whole separate content section, which might be a video I’ve created, it might be videos that I found online that they should be engaging in. And then I usually have a pre-test and post-test quiz, and then the assignment for the week. And in this case, always associated with that assignment discussion. And then always at the end, I have a section, another discussion, which is I just call “Ask the professor,” And it’s another space for it. I always have to tell them every time I put the same heading and I say, “Don’t ask personal questions here, [LAUGHTER] but if you have a question that everyone can benefit from on the topic this week.” So that’s just an example of how I feel that it just makes it easier for me to focus on what’s in each of those boxes, rather than recreating the format. And I think students really take a lot of comfort in knowing after a couple of week: this is the rhythm, this is what I’m expected to do. And so now they’re focused on different content, but they don’t have to relearn a different set of skills. So going back to your question about the rubric, and is it the same? I do that because then they get used to what skills they’re bringing, and then they can hone that same skill over time, they can go back and look at their rubric grading and see their improvement over time. And I’m also a liberal user of the comment section on rubrics. I know that a lot of people tout rubrics for the time-saving part of it. So oh, you can check these boxes, and it makes it easier. And there’s some of that. But I can’t stop myself from also than opening up that box and just writing a ton of things to them. So I think that, again, it’s one of those things where the rubric itself becomes a really good outline. And then it’s just a matter of what I choose to put into my grading when I do the rubric.
Rebecca: High structure is always helpful for folks, that’s for sure.
Michelle: That’s very reassuring.
Rebecca: I feel like there’s a story behind why infographics as opposed to something else. What led you to infographics as opposed to some other alternative format?
Michelle: So like I said, I’ve been at this 27 years, so maybe I’m just getting old, but I feel myself saying in my head: “Well, kids nowadays don’t have the attention span for writing a 20-page paper.” And that’s not necessarily true. But as I talked about before, maybe they just have to be taken through that process. It can’t be just one big thing. And that was long before the internet, people talking about decreased attention spans. But I do think there’s something to matching up with the way in which they use visuals in their daily life. So they utilize memes, they look at infographics in various formats, I find a lot of them in social media in different areas. So I try to structure discussions in a way that is very much like the way they’re already engaging on social media. So yeah, the story is really how could I find a way that it’s something that their mind is already used to, that they can then apply it in this way. And also the other story, my husband is the County Administrator here in our county. And so I was in his office one day, I was the Assistant County Administrator and I was in his office one day and from the League of Minnesota cities, they had an infographic, a stack of them on the front table about: what does county government do? And that was really the last push I needed because it was so well done. And I thought, “Okay, this is what we need, people need to understand what levels of government do.” People often come to the county with situations that have nothing to do with what counties are actually able to do for them, and so what does your county do? What can it do for you? And I just thought, “How brilliant is that? To put it in that way.” And so I just really was sold on on the idea that infographics can really be fairly deep teaching, if they’re done well. We get so used to the academy and everything has to be these long papers, but rather than bemoaning the fact that the attention span has gone away, I’m just finding a way to adapt to that. So how do students engage with each other? And let’s make that happen.
John: And I would imagine students are more likely in the future to be creating infographics than they are to be writing 20-page papers unless they’re going on to graduate study.
Michelle: Yes, absolutely. That was the other part of it is that this wasn’t really authentic… the 20 page paper… particularly in that intro, liberal education, general education course. That was not authentic to what they were going to be doing. And I felt that in political science, if they were going to be political science majors, they would get that deep research component in other courses and upper-level courses in their capstone. And so I felt that it wasn’t necessary to put them through a 20-page paper. And the reason I keep saying 20 pages is because I realized that the amount of content you need in the country study is pretty lengthy to really understand the country, and so it really was about 20 pages, I just felt that that wasn’t engaging to people, no one was engaging each other with a 20-page paper. And so it had to be something that you could look at more quickly, you have to have the skill of condensing the material, you really had to be really pithy with how you were presenting the material so that someone can get it in a very quick way. And so I feel that allowed them to engage. And then even if you assigned a student to engage with another student’s 20-page paper, pair them off, have them do peer evaluation, they weren’t going to do more than one at that length. Maybe if you cut it down to a 10-page paper, you could have them have a group where they exchange it among three or four people, but that’s still not as big as I’m able to get by having everybody in a class post their infographics so that you can all see huge variety of work in the span of scrolling through normal social media. And of course, I’m asking to do a little bit more, but in some ways, it’s almost that they don’t even notice that part of it because they’re just scrolling through and saying: “oh…” Comments that I get most on the first assignment have to do with “Oh, I’m so glad you chose to do that country, I’ve always wanted to go there. Have you ever been? …because it looks so interesting.” So it doesn’t start out as this deep political discussion. But because of those comments in the first week, I’m convinced of the engagement that starts to come from it. One part that I didn’t mention is I also put in the directions, that if they want to add something, like a fun fact, about the country on any of these infographics, they should, and I’m surprised at how many students then choose to do that on every single one of the infographics at the bottom. There’s a fun fact. And I’ve been amazed by what they’ve come up with. There are things that I don’t know about these countries. I thought, “this is fun.” So I do think that students take to it, they want to show other students their country, they want to say, “Hey, I learned this thing. Isn’t this cool?” And then I get to learn things I didn’t know.
Rebecca: Sounds like a great way to build community and to have a first interaction with a discipline, which sometimes can be off putting. And this sounds like a really positive way to get people interested in a discipline as well.
Michelle: Yeah, I think so, and I hope so. I hope that that does make students more likely to maybe take an upper level, look at us as a minor or major. And I will say, talking so positively about this assignment, because it’s worked so well. But I can also talk to you in a podcast about all the assignments that haven’t worked well, that I don’t get this excited about, that I can’t say were this level of success. And so when we were talking about coming on the podcast, I wanted to highlight this one, because of course, it’s the success. I wanted to show what has actually worked. But, of course, there’s a lot of ones that haven’t. So I do feel that I’ve hit on something here that can be very useful, that I’ve been really satisfied with, and my students seem to be really satisfied with.
John: We always end with a question. What’s next?
Michelle: So that is a great question. I’ve been thinking about that for a while. How do I take this to the next level? So I think one thing that’s next is sharing this out more. We’ve talked a few times about looking at other faculty and seeing if they would adopt something similar to this. So I think that’s one aspect. I think another aspect is to just continue to refine the assignment in a way that gets the most student engagement. I’d also like to see these assignments, if we can have them maybe printed for my asynchronous online classes. This particular class I teach mainly online now, I rarely teach it in the classroom another colleague has those sections. And so, right now, it’s simply archived either as the students own individual file, or in D2 L. And so I’d like to think about ways in which maybe we can archive them, maybe print out them in poster form and have them in the department so that people can maybe again, engage, get interested, a student walking by who’s not in political science who’s hanging out in the hallway waiting for their next class to begin, and starts reading the stuff on the walls and start saying, “Oh, that’s kind of interesting,” and maybe starts to get engaged. So looking at it outside of the particular classroom, I think would be a really exciting way to go with it.
John: Well, thank you. I’ve really enjoyed hearing more about these assignments. And I think it’s something that could work in many disciplines.
Michelle: Yeah, I hope so. And exciting for me would be now to sit back and kind of watch what other people do with it. And oh, okay. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s really cool. That’s always the most exciting part for me from the CETL angle is really just seeing how people take off with something in a way that I wouldn’t expect. And it’s been a pleasure talking with both of you.
Rebecca: I always love a good conversation about interesting assignments. So thanks for chatting with us and sharing in depth how the assignments work over the course of the semester.
Michelle: You’re welcome. My pleasure.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Ganesh: Editing assistance by Ganesh.
[MUSIC]