student podcasts – tea for teaching

242. Student Podcasts

Posted in assessment, authentic learning, collaboration, collaborative learning, higher education, hybrid, learning, pedagogy, student podcasts, teaching
June 1, 2022

Student research papers have been ubiquitous in higher education, but there are many ways in which students can demonstrate the skills that they have acquired. In this episode, Megan Remmel joins us to discuss the use of student podcasts as a more engaging alternative to traditional research papers. Megan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bradley University.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

Kane, John (2020). Using Podcasts to Increase Student Engagement. Video created for a virtual poster presentation at OLC Accelerate Conference. November. (the video that Megan mentioned finding)
Podcast instructions and documents used in introductory economics class (the materials that John shared with Megan)
Otter.ai transcription

Transcript

John: Student research papers have been ubiquitous in higher education, but there are many ways in which students can demonstrate the skills that they have acquired. In this episode, we discuss the use of student podcasts
as a more engaging alternative to traditional research papers.

[MUSIC]

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. [MUSIC]

Rebecca: I guess today is Megan Remmel, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bradley University. Welcome, Megan.

Megan: Hi, thanks for having me.

John: Our teas today are… Megan, are you drinking tea?

Megan: I am not drinking tea. I have rooibos this morning. But I am now currently drinking my coke zero sugar.

John: It’s not that much different than many teas.

Megan: Yes.

Rebecca: Many other rebels join us as well. [LAUGHTER] I have English afternoon today, John.

John: And I have ginger peach black tea, a return to an old favorite as we move towards the end of our semester here.

Rebecca: We’re both getting to things that are comforting.

Megan: Ginger is calming. So, [LAUGHTER] you might need that at the end of the semester.

John: Oh, very much so.

Rebecca: So we invited you here today to discuss a podcast project that you’ve been using in your state and local politics class. Can you tell us a little bit about your project.

Megan: So I was trying to think of a way to make students try to approach things in a more neutral way. Because obviously, in poli sci, there’s a lot of soapbox standing. And I’d previously been using just plain old policy analysis papers. And students don’t love them. And so I was trying to think of a way to get them to do the assignment that I wanted them to do, and having some guidance, because they’ve listened to podcasts before, so they kind of know what some of these are structured like. And so I was hoping that that would help tone down some of the opinionation that can come out of these things. And so I YouTubed, and I found John’s YouTube page, [LAUGHTER] and found his podcast project and contacted him just out of the blue asking him if he had any materials he was willing to share with me. And he did. And those came in very handy in terms of being able to guide students in the project. But it was just me trying to give them a different way to do something. Some of them still opted to do a paper this semester, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to try something different, to maybe be able to say to someone in an interview that they’ve done something in this more kind of digitalformat. So it was trying to open up the possibilities for them in class.

John: And was this a face-to-face class? Or was this an online class or a hybrid class?

Megan: So the first time I tried to do it was last spring, and that was a hybrid class and was admittedly a disaster. But that class was a disaster for numerous reasons, I think hybrid being the prime driver of that. So this class was entirely in person. I did allow them to work in groups if they wanted to, and some of them did, and some of them didn’t. And I had them do two rounds of podcasts. The others who wanted to, wrote a paper and the percentages were equal. And so a number of them who worked in groups the first time around did not work in groups the second time around.[LAUGHTER] So they got to choose their own topics. I gave them a list of I think 10 topics from that section of the course. And so there were restraints, but I let them propose if they wanted to do a topic that was of interest to them. Somehow I managed to have a Sports Communication major in the class, and when we talked about special purpose districts, I mentioned to him that there are stadium districts where cities are basically using taxpayer dollars to do massive overhauls of stadiums. And so that’s where he went. So it was still in political science. It was still state and local politics, but it was something of much greater interest to him personally than say, term limits and state legislatures.

Rebecca: Imagine that.

Megan: I know, shocking, right?

John: So, the students worked in groups, how large were the groups that they work in for these podcasts.

Megan: So, I proposed having them work in twos. This class is a 300-level political science class, but it has historically been required for the history secondary education students and criminal justice students. and poli sci students have gotten more interested in state and local politics, but I don’t think they think it’s as sexy as national level or international politics, so I think that they realize that’s where the jobs are, they’re getting more interested. So the audience is not kind of a typical political science class. Because of that, I have these history secondary education majors, who because of how tight their curriculum is, are in classes all the time and know each other really well and work together and collaborate pretty frequently. And so I did allow one group of three to work together. So I basically increased the requirements. So if they worked in a group of one, they had to have eight peer reviewed sources that they could point to in the script. If they were a group of two, they had to have 12 sources, and then this threesome had to have 16 sources. And then it went from a 10-minute requirement to 15 and a requirement to 20 minutes for that three-person group and the three-person group was actually probably the best podcast I got. And I obviously can’t attribute it to whether it was just the number of them or they’ve also been some of the best students in the class this semester, just generally, so I wasn’t surprised that they did a good job anyway.

John: So you mentioned a script. Did you have students submit a script before they recorded or was that done after the fact?

Megan: So kind of both. I had them pick a topic and then I had them submit either an outline or a script and kind of gave the pros and cons, where an outline is obviously a little more freewheeling and allows for a little more conversational style in the recording, whereas a script would be much more definitive, they wouldn’t be scrambling for words necessarily. So they’d probably have fewer filler words and they could be sure that they weren’t fading off and losing track of what they were saying. So I gave them the option of either, I think the students who wrote scripts just generally did better. So I don’t know if in the future when I do this again, if I’m going to get the option of an outline, or if I’m just going to make them write a script, because those seem to just perform better, but with the script I made them include work cited, and they had to tell me where in the script or where in the outline which source connected to that material. So I was trying to make sure that they were still using peer reviewed sources, they could obviously use stuff from outside of that. But I wanted to make sure they were still using peer reviewed sources, the way that my policy analysis paper kids were. But letting them do it in this less structured style, in comparison to like an eight to 10 page policy analysis paper.

Rebecca: How did students respond to having these options?

Megan: I was a little surprised at how few students wanted to do the paper. [LAUGHTER] I don’t know if they’re just burned out from… I assume the last two years has just been a lot of online writing assignments, for instance, and so they were just scrambling at anything that didn’t involve them having to write in such a structured way. So I have relatively few students select the paper option. So I’d say it was probably three quarters picked the podcast and a quarter picked the paper. And the ones that picked the paper… my pattern deducing… seem to be the seniors in the class. And I think they just wanted to get their paper done and be done and not necessarily have to coordinate with other people. And maybe they have prior experience with less successful group work, for instance, and they were just: “I’m going to trust myself.” But that was kind of the pattern, where the underclassmen were more likely to do the podcast and the ones that seem to be picking the paper were the seniors.

John: Was there any apprehension about recording a podcast? Because when I’ve tried doing this, I know students are often a little bit anxious about things like, “I don’t know if I have the technical skills or have theequipment to do that.”

Megan: Yeah, well, what was great was in the material you sent me, you sent me a lot of options that students could use. So for instance, regardless of what they submitted to me, in terms of the outline, I have them use, I think it was Otter’s transcription. And so they were using some of the sources that you sent to me. And so I think they felt more comfortable. And as they went, I think, obviously, from the first round to the second round, the quality of the recordings went up. And some of them realized that there’s ways on their smartphones to record and that it will partly transcribe for them. So I think they got better as they went, I didn’t try to ding them too much for production value in the rubric. So there is stuff in there just about like, “Please don’t have insane amounts of background noise [LAUGHTER] in your podcast. Maybe don’t record it in your car…” or something like that. So I tried to have a kind of minimum standard, but I wasn’t going to hold it against them if it was kind of fuzzy audio, for instance. But they actually didn’t seem all that apprehensive about the idea. They were better at it than I would have felt.

Rebecca: So the burning question is: “Did they move away from so much opinion and they’re more neutral? Or did they stay pretty opinionated? [LAUGHTER]

Megan: So actually, it went better than I thought it was going to, because spring 2021, when I tried this the first time around, I could not get them out of being on their soapboxes. And when I created the instructions for the policy analysis paper, I frame it as though you were working for a state legislator who knows nothing about the policy topic you’re writing about. And they want a policy brief from you and then recommendations at the end. So, the recommendations part is the “opinion” part. But it’s got to be based in all of the research that you’ve talked about earlier. So if it were about legislative term limits, political science agrees on very little, but this is one thing there’s kind of universal agreement on is that they are bad, and they backfire and do the exact opposite of what we want. So if that’s what the research is finally saying, then the idea is that you would recommend to the state legislator to vote against instituting term limits in the state. So I found that they were generally able to do that… it took the scripts, that initial round, to be like, “some of this language is getting a little feisty,” and “some of this, I’m not seeing any citations behind it, so, as far as I’m concerned, it’s reading like your personal opinion.” So I think that stuff was pretty necessary to get them to tone it down. I also had them submit draft recordings before the final recording. So I could ensure that the script was improved upon for the recording and so I could direct them if they were starting to go a little too far into the opinion editorial page of the newspaper. And so they were generally pretty good at it. If anything, I think they might have been overly cautious by the end of it, in that they had all this evidence about something leading to something and it was kind of repetitive so… confident that that’s actually what’s happening and still feeling like they have to do a both sides-ism. So I think I’m gonna have to try to work on that to instill in them that “No, you can take a position at the end, it’s just got to be based on the evidence you presented earlier, instead of just constantly pontificating,”

John: …and once you have your students do that, could you have them work with some journalists out there? [LAUGHTER]

Megan: Yeah, as somebody who gets interviewed pretty frequently with local media, I get a little frustrated with the both sides-ism. And yesterday, I got interviewed a lot about the Roe draft. And the reporters kept wanting to talk about the leak. And I was like, “No, the leak is not the important part, guys.” So yes, I understand some frustration there.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how students either shared or heard each other’s podcasts or whether or not the podcasts were shared more broadly.

Megan: So, inside Canvas, which is the learning management software, Bradley uses, for the ones who gave me permission to share, I posted the files inside of Canvas. And then, strangely, and I don’t know if it was because they were maybe afraid of the quality of it, some of them let me share one podcast, but not the other podcasts. And it wasn’t necessarily like, they wouldn’t let me share the first and they would the second, I just think they thought I like this one better, and so you can let people share this one. And I didn’t like this one, and you can’t share this one. So I just put them on the Canvas website. A couple of them told me, the ones who got maybe low Bs, for instance, on the first one, because everyone did pretty well… the ones who got maybe high Cs, low Bs, on the first one, they told me, they went and listened to some of the other podcasts just to kind of see what the universe looked like. And one of them went, “Yeah, I realized I need to step up my game.” [LAUGHTER] And so I think it was useful from that perspective, I don’t necessarily think they were listening to it to learn about the topic that their classmates have done. But I do think it made some of them realize the quality of their work could have been improved If this is the comparison point.

John: I think that’s a useful benefit of any type of peer review of other people’s work, that when they get to see what other people are doing, they might feel better about their own work. But more typically, they realize that there were things they could have done better. And that’s, I think, a useful experience for everyone, including faculty.

Megan: Well, I think students don’t even realize that for all intents and purposes, we have to use them as guinea pigs from semester to semester to make a class better and to improve. So I realized that maybe the pure hybrid format of spring 2021 was not a good time to maybe experiment with assignments. And so it made more sense to try something now. And it’s unfortunate that those kids maybe didn’t get the best experience, but they are our little guinea pigs, and we also need to learn from their work to see how we can make their work better by improving our assignments.

John: One of the issues I’ve had when I’ve done this, I’ve only used it in online classes so far, mostly because my face-to-face classes are relatively large and I couldn’t listen to two or three hundred of these. But one of the issues I had was that for many students in the online classes, during the depths of the pandemic, it was the only time they really got to talk to other students at the same time and I ended up with these incredibly long draft recordings, sometimes, like 30 or 40 minutes for a podcast that was supposed to be quite a bit shorter. And it did add to the amount of time it took to provide feedback. And included in the rubric was a great penalty if it was too short or too long. So I had to remind them of that. It was a tiny penalty, I think the length was only like five or 10% or so of the rubric score, but I felt bad docking them for that, because when I listened to it, it was clear that they were just enjoying getting to know each other and they were having these great conversations and getting to know their classmates. On the other hand, the focus could have been a little bit tighter. And that is one of the trade offs about having a script versus something which is a little more freeform. But it was really encouraging to hear the connections that students were forming. Although, after many hours of this, I would have appreciated them being a little more concise in some of that discussion.

Megan: Well, to your point. I’m curious, I’m not teaching the summer, but I am teaching an online Intro to American Government class this fall. And when I’ve taught it online before I just used forum postings. And it’s a lot of “I agree with this person,” even though you have directions that tell them not to do this, “I agree with what this person said.” And I’m kind of wondering, and thinking about tweaking this for the fall of kind of doing these voice responses, in hopes that it might limit some of that just repetitive nature and get maybe something a little bit more substantive. Plus, it’s more interesting for me than just reading the same post over and over and over again. And because it’s in an online environment, and it’s asynchronous, though I do have weekly benchmarks so they can access everything all at once, I think it would allow them to have a little bit more of the interaction than they get into the standard asynchronous typical shell. So it’s nice to hear that. I think I would also then have to say it was only supposed to be a 300 word post. So that’s only like maybe two paragraphs so we really don’t need to give a War and Peace sort of opinion. But maybe that would give them some of that more conversational style and make them feel like they’re at least possibly getting to know some classmates, ideally with the idea that maybe they can talk to each other and go over course material instead of being in their own little silos.

Rebecca: There’s something about hearing a voice, or seeing a face that can make all the difference. Of course, from your end, if you just make sure they have to post things in accessible format, you can either listen or read, whichever might be faster. [LAUGHTER]

Megan: What are you implying Rebecca? [LAUGHTER] It was more fun to grade these for sure, it was way more fun to grade these than a standard paper, without a doubt, because I could listen and giggle. [LAUGHTER] Because some of them would throw in a little snarky bit. And you don’t get to have that in these really structured formal papers. So, for me, grading wise, it was definitely more enjoyable.

John: For me as well, it was much more fun. And my impression was students had a lot more fun with it than they would have had doing a written assignment.

Megan: Yeah, I still feel like I’m going to continue to allow them to do a written paper. I know, if I had been in their shoes, I probably would have still pursued a written paper. And I had a couple students in there who were just quiet as church mice. And were probably never going to have the self confidence to even attempt a recording. So I think I still need to provide the option, which I did not do last spring. And I think that’s another reason why it might not have been successful is just given the… I mean, you guys know… class personalities vary wildly. And so that class was just very quiet and reserved and not super engaged. And so podcasts probably not the best approach in that class, in hindsight, but I didn’t know that before they got into the class, and I had built the syllabus.

Rebecca: Yeah, those surprises do happen.

Megan: They do, they do. And it’s a little difficult to overhaul your syllabus quite that radically in the middle of the semester.

John: There is something to be said, though, for pushing students a little out of their comfort zone. And in fact, this podcast, in part, got started because of a similar experience that I had, where I was teaching in the Duke Talent Identification Program…

Megan: I remember that.

John: …and they asked me to be on a podcast they had just started. And I said, “Well, I’m really busy, I don’t really have time for this, and I don’t think I’d really be the best person.” So I gave them a list of people’s names who they should contact to be on this. And they said, “Okay, we’ll contact them, too. But we’d like to interview you.” And after trying to get out of it for a while I agreed to do it, [LAUGHTER] and then realized it wasn’t all that bad. And then I came back from Duke that summer and Rebecca and I were talking and I said, “You know I did this podcast and maybe this is something we might want to consider.” And it’s one of the factors that led into this. I wouldn’t have probably had been doing the podcast had I not been pressured a little bit.

Megan: [LAUGHTER] I feel something similar. 18 year old me would not have done the podcast option. 35 year old me who’s done probably 80 media interviews over the last few years…much more competent doing it now.[LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I think one of the things that I really responded to that you were saying, Megan, is that you were offering options. And that there were two that you did two podcasts or two papers and that if students chose a paper the first time but then heard podcasts, there’s a second thing. So they could do perhaps one of each, right?

Megan: Yeah, so there was more flexibility. I did not have any of them do that. But at least it was a possibility for them. I feel like I don’t know if they misread the syllabus, but it was once I picked a path that is my path, I am locked in for that path. But there was the possibility of it. So maybe some of them in the future will get maybe a little more courageous and go from a paper to a podcast.

Rebecca: Or maybe they go from a podcast to a paper

Megan: …to a paper.

Rebecca: whatever works for them. [LAUGHTER]

Megan: Also true, whatever is most appealing to their preferences.

Rebecca: I really like what you were both saying too, about personalities of students coming out. And that when they might be writing a more traditional paper, it’s just like entire personhood just disappears. And that having that kind of positionality a little bit come out and their personality come out helps us to get to know our students better and to help them get to know each other better when they’re reviewing each other’s work.

Megan: Yeah, there were some students in the class who in class itself were really quiet and then I would hear these little snarky asides in their podcasts and be like, where’s that in class, I want that in class, please give it to me in class.

John: And they would often make connections to their own lives. They were trying to connect their own experiences to what they were learning in class, at least in the podcasts they were doing for me, and those are exactly the type of connections we try to encourage students to make so that they recognize the salience of what they’re studying. I think that was really helpful.

Megan: Yeah, with my history, secondary education students. In the first half of the class, we talked about state-level interest groups. And so I gave them the option to talk about the NEA and the AFT. And most of them picked it because I think they all know that they’re probably future members of one, if not both of those organizations. And I don’t think any of them realized how different those two organizations are, I don’t think they realized not only currently how different they are, but the histories and the motivations behind them are entirely different. And so I think some of them may not join both of those organizations now, [LAUGHTER] when they become teachers, because I don’t think they like the motivations of one group necessarily versus another group. So I do like that maybe this is actually going to impact their workplace environments, and actually how they choose to behave. Same thing with the second half of the course, we talk about tax policy, which I love… shockingly, not of super interest to them… and obviously, property taxes are one of the major sources of education funding for K through 12. And so a lot of them picked that. And they knew maybe that it was bad, I don’t think they realized how bad it was. And at least in theory, some of them seem to have a little fire lit under them. How quickly that the real world maybe extinguishes that is a different story. But at least for now, I think there’s a lot of desire, at least within these particular students, to try to change school funding formulas, for instance. So I actually looked at the roster in advance of the class starting and looked at the majors of the students to try to find topics that were relevant to state and local politics as a political science class, but that students of those majors would actually gravitate toward.

Rebecca: To me that seems like one of the most meaningful choices that you made in your assignment design, because that really hooks a student and keeps them engaged.

Megan: Yeah, forcing them to talk about a topic they do not care about is hugely problematic. I teach our research methods class, and basically, if it’s a quantitative social science paper, it counts. I don’t care what topic it is. And they’re just mind boggled. So one of them, he’s a political science major, but he’s writing his paper on how video games affect stress levels in people. And so they just get to poke around in stuff that they don’t feel like they have permission to poke around in otherwise.

Rebecca: The other thing that I found interesting as a design faculty who does similar things, maybe not a podcast, but we do things that are out in the public, and we might share them, is that I often give models for students to look at that are professional, we might even analyze those together. But it’s not until they see each other’s that all the light bulbs go on. [LAUGHTER] It’s something about seeing a peer get it that all of a sudden helps bring the rest of the students along. And so they’re always clamoring for getting to see each other’s work. And it does improve the overall quality of the work, in my experience overall….

Megan: Yeah.

Rebecca: …despite the fact that they might have these professional models to look at.

Megan: Yeah, I did, because of, again, John’s instructions, I found state and local related podcasts, and linked to some of them. So they could see how they’re talking about policies, but not being super opinionated about them. And I’m looking forward to now that I have permission to share some of these, I teach this class every spring next spring, being able to give them these models of colleagues basically having done this work. So that, yeah, it doesn’t have the same production quality, and there’s no intro music and ad breaks, but they can see that their classmates have managed to do well on this. And they too, can do well on this. I mean, I always provide sample papers, I get permission from students and remove all their identifying information and post those so that students can see like “You can write a research design in my research methods class, it is possible. This was an A, this is what it takes to get an A.” So I’m glad that a few of them gave me permission to share their podcasts. And I think I’m going to share some of the better ones and some of the less better ones so that they can see for themselves, the spectrum of possibility. And if they’re cool with just putting in somewhat minimal effort, then that’s what this podcast sounds like. And if you want to put in the effort that’s gonna get you an A, that’s what this podcast sounded like.

John: One of the things that my students have commented on at the end of the class was that some of them have decided that they really enjoy podcasting, and they started their own or they plan to do one in the future…

Megan: Wow.

John: …and a few of them have also said, “I never listened to podcasts before, but now I’m listening to these podcasts.” So I was really impressed. But it did have these other side effects that I didn’t really anticipate it having.

Megan: I can’t say any of them have told me that but I’d love for at least for them to listen to some more podcasts because clearly, that’s all I listen to in the car. [LAUGHTER] So many podcasts.

Rebecca: I’ve had similar experiences. John, although I haven’t taught a podcast class. I’ve introduced students to podcasts as part of learning materials.

Megan: Yeah.

Rebecca: …and having assignments… and many of them say that they really enjoy that format more than others, but they may have never really experienced it previously.

Megan: Yeah, I can assign them a 10-page article or I can assign them a 30-minute podcast. They definitely like the 30-minute podcast better. They seem to actually listen to it in a way that they don’t with the reading. So yeah, I have been more and more frequently been trying to find either like 5-minute local NPR stories or outright organized podcasts for them to listen to,

John: I’ve been doing more of the same. And I try to find podcasts that have both the audio and a transcript, so that people can choose a modality depending on where they’re working and reading. In some cases, it may be hard to find the time to listen to audio, or they may be constrained in some way and they prefer reading the text. And in other cases, students would much prefer listening to a podcast while they’re walking or exercising, or doing something else. So they have appreciated the choice when it’s used as a basis for discussions or some other assignment.

Megan: I hadn’t even thought of that. But I’m gonna have to think about that for the syllabi for the fall.

Rebecca: The transcripts are really helpful too, because if you are listening, and then you hear the name of something, or you’re not really quite sure how to spell it, or whatever, the transcripts can be really helpful… if those transcripts have been edited, of course.

John: One thing I’ve always been amazed by are the number of people who say they only read the transcript, they never listen to the podcast. Because what I enjoy about it is the narrative and the ability to focus on a conversation while I’m driving or walking or something similar. And reading the transcript would be very much like all the other reading I do, and it just wouldn’t seem as interesting.

Megan: I agree, but to each his own.

Rebecca: There’s a few podcasts that I listen to regularly that I might go back and revisit in transcripts to pull out some notes of things that I wanted to remember. And so I really get very frustrated when podcasts don’t have transcripts for me to do that.

Megan: [LAUGHTER] Fair.

Rebecca: To support my needs.

Megan: This is about me. Thank you very much.

John: It’s important for accessibility purposes as well.

Rebecca: Yeah, definitely. So Megan, you shared a couple of things that you might want to do differently in the future related to this assignment, do you have any other thoughts about how you might frame or structure the assignment a bit differently to continue producing excellent podcasts and your classes?

Megan: I’m curious about the idea of… It’s a 300-level class, and I feel like providing them the topics was a little hand holdy. And so I’m trying to figure out if I should let them pick the topics, because then they have to work a little harder to figure out what might constitute state and local politics. Because I think you can see that in pretty broad ways. But I worry that if I do that, then they’re just going to take some really black and white literal approaches. So I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do on the topics front of things. And it might just, again, depend on who’s in the class. I think if it were more of a straight up political science class, I’d let them maybe wander a bit more. But since that’s not the audience of this class, typically, I might try to give them a little more structure, since they’re probably of all people gonna go, “I don’t know what you want for me in a class that’s not directly my major.” So that’s thing number one. I am also trying to figure out for the groups, for when they recorded together, given that some of the groups fell apart in the second round, I’ve never had great success with peer review, because they don’t seem to want to be telling the truth about each other. And so I’m trying to figure out how to get around that because it was pretty obvious with one group in particular that someone was doing all of the heavy lifting, but that person wouldn’t fess up to it. And so I’m trying to figure out if I should allow them to work in groups, and if so, how to try to ensure that the workload is being done somewhat more equitably. Because when I’ve had them work on group projects that have involved writing, for instance, I can follow the Google Doc, because I’ve required them to give me access to something like that and I can see who’s adding what. I’m less able to do that in this scenario. So I’m trying to figure out how to… maybe in the script writing process, still have them share it as a Google doc so I can follow the trajectory of who’s adding what, when, in an effort to try to get a better handle on making sure that one person is not being carried through the assignment. And that’s just, I think, a general struggle with trying to grade group work assignments. But that’s the only thing that I can think of right now and I’d love advice. But the only thing that I can think of right now to try to address that a little bit. And I knew it was gonna be a problem, I just didn’t know quite what to do with it. [LAUGHTER]

John: While you can follow the editing history, that can be a bit of a tedious path through that. What I’ve generally asked students to do is just to use a color code where they pick a dark color, so there’s still good visual contrast to meet accessibility issues. But they each have their own color that they write their text in. So when they write a section of a document, just have them block it and choose their color. And then when you read through it, all the dark blue will be from one person, the dark green will be from another person, and the purple will be from a third and it makes it a whole lot easier to evaluate the individual contributions. And that’s worked really well.

Megan: That is beautifully simple. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Rebecca: I do a couple of things, also, because I do a lot of group work, and group work that’s not always visible. I often have shared documents where it makes sense and ways of documenting it. But I’ve also done things like having students keep timesheets, just recording what they’re doing and when and how long it takes with the frame that it might be helpful for them to better understand where they use their time. And so that sometimes is helpful. We also tend to do things in design more like a process document. So it documents the process and milestones and summaries of what they’ve contributed at various points. And so I find those kinds of documents really helpful to understand what people are doing. And I always request them to provide a little bit of information about why they made certain decisions. And as soon as you do that, then you know who did it, it becomes very clear. And the other thing that I do is a Google form as review of the other collaborators. But I do things like ask questions about how willing they were to accept feedback, what was their greatest contribution? So it’s framed in a little bit different way than maybe a traditional rating system? Like, did they do all the things?

Megan: Yeah, it sounds more, what did you do versus what did your partners do?

Rebecca: Yeah. It’s more aligned with how you might do evaluations in a workplace or something rather than maybe traditional peer-to-peer evaluation.

Megan: Those are awesome. Thank you.

Rebecca: Megan, was there anything else that you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Megan: No, I just want to thank John for being so willing to share his materials with me because I would have been floundering about how to start.

John: I was really happy that someone requested it.

Megan: It was great. Thank you so much.

Rebecca: Well, we always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Megan: I think I’ve got a lot of material to work with with state and local politics. Given the recent political landscape, maybe too much material to work with and state local politics. I think one of the things in the future and I’m nowhere near this yet, I’m interested in letting them explore alternate methods of this podcasting style. So maybe actually interviewing local candidates, working with political parties, the League of Women Voters is actually very, very active in Peoria, and they still subscribe to being non-partisan, so it would be nice to try to team up with them and see if they’ve got some sort of outreach campaign they’d like to do. So I’m thinking of trying to really expand, but next year is busy. So that might be the year after.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Megan: Thank you for having me.

John: Thank you very much. And I’m really thrilled that someone actually found that material useful. [LAUGHTER]

Megan: It was, it was great. [LAUGHTER]

John: It’s an activity I’ve been doing with my class for three years now, and it’s been working really well, and I’ve really enjoyed it. And many of the students really have to.

Megan: Yeah, time two was the charm for me.

Rebecca: Yeah, you have to have a practice round.

Megan: Yeah, unfortunately, those students were guinea pigs, but I learned from them.

Megan: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

[MUSIC]

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.

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.

[MUSIC]

216. Fall 2021 Reflections

Posted in flipped class, higher education, learning, online learning, pedagogy, reflective practice, student podcasts, teaching
December 1, 2021

Since we started this podcast four years ago in November 2017, we’ve taken a break from our usual interview format at the end of each fall semester to reflect on the evolution of our own teaching practices. In this episode, we look back on our experiences in the fall 2021 semester.

Show Notes
Transcript

Shownotes

Lumen Learning Waymaker – the provider of the OER-based personalized learning platform used in place of a textbook in John’s intro class.
Greenlaw, S. (2019). Iterative OER Development. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 67. February 6.
Grant, A. (2021). Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It’s Called Languishing. The New York Times. Updated October 4.

Transcript

John: Since we started this podcast four years ago in November 2017, we’ve taken a break from our usual interview format at the end of each fall semester to reflect on the evolution of our own teaching practices. In this episode, we look back on our experiences in the fall 2021 semester.

[MUSIC]

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.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Hey, John, it’s been a while. [LAUGHTER]

John: It has been, we’ve had a few guest hosts filling in. With your new position you’ve been kind of busy recently.

Rebecca: Yeah, I still have a bit of a teaching load as well as my shift to being in the Division of Graduate Studies. Hopefully things will start smoothing out over the next few weeks.

John: Our teas today are…

Rebecca: I have English afternoon tea.

John: Excellent. That’s a return to an old favorite.

Rebecca: It is.

John: And I have, on a snowy, cold day here in Oswego, spring cherry green tea, bringing me back to a warmer time.

Rebecca: A time that we all wish for. [LAUGHTER]

John: And because we still have this big pile of tea left around in our conference room, because we haven’t been doing too many workshops in person this year.

Rebecca: Yeah, definitely.

John: So we thought today would be a good opportunity to reflect back on pandemic teaching part 3, 4, 5, whatever it is.

Rebecca: Yeah, we’ve lost count, I think.

John: 20 years or so of pandemic teaching, and what our experiences have been like this semester.

Rebecca: So maybe we should first start off by just indicating the kinds of classes and modalities we were teaching in. So I was teaching two sections of my web media classes, which are stacked classes, so 300-, 400-, and 500- level web design courses, and I was teaching entirely synchronously online.

John: And I returned to a classroom with the smallest large class I’ve ever had here, with about 186 students, as well as an asynchronous class, which I’ve been doing for a number of years. They’re both introductory economics courses.

Rebecca: I know one of the things that I have been experiencing, I’ve heard a lot of other faculty talking about, and that we’ve seen through polls of our students, is the mental health challenges that they’re facing. I’ve had many students report extreme depression, anxiety, heightened stress, complete focus issues. We were just talking this week about memory issues. And it’s really taking a toll on their learning.

John: The good news is that students are much more willing to discuss mental health issues than they have ever been in the past. The bad news is they’re just so incredibly prevalent. I’ve heard from dozens of students who’ve been reporting their experiences with depression, or anxiety or stress, as well as, as you said, difficulties in focusing and just problems with being motivated to do their work.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think that motivation issue is an important one to underscore. It’s not even necessarily that they’re not interested in the subject matter, because when they’re in class, they might be fully engaged. It’s what’s happening, or maybe what’s not happening outside of class, that I think is really the challenge that students are facing.

John: I think administrators throughout the country were very optimistic about a return to normalcy this fall. And I think we all were hoping for something closer to a normal experience, our students as well as us. When we had the vaccine come out, that looked remarkably effective and we were assuming that everyone would very rapidly be vaccinated and this whole pandemic thing would be completely under control. And that’s not quite the experience that our students ended up with. And it’s not quite the experience we ended up with.

Rebecca: I think, even if we take the emergency remote learning out of the equation, spring of 2020, and we just look at where we’ve been over the last three semesters. I moved to teaching synchronously online. I’ve taught the same way with the same classes for three semesters, and I’ve really seen a shift between fall of 2020, and fall of 2021. In fall of 2020, although students were kind of bummed out that they might not be getting the same college experience that they had hoped for, they were still in fairly good spirits. I definitely had some extra students struggling that I may not have had previously. But they were engaged. They asked for things like more practice assignments so that they could dig in. And a lot of them were taking advantage of the creative nature of the kind of studio classes that I teach to just escape all the things that were causing stress around them. And I’m really experiencing perhaps the exact opposite this semester [LAUGHTER], where all the things that the students requested and needed and wanted in fall 2020 are not the things that the students need in fall of 2021 and now moving into spring of 2022. How about you, John?

John: My experience in my asynchronous online class was in fact, more of a return to normalcy. Because last year’s asynchronous online class was one where a lot of students expected more synchronous components, which in a few decades of teaching online had never been a common request. And a lot of students were really not that happy about an asynchronous course last year, they were expecting more of a synchronous experience. And now that we have so many more face-to-face classes, including the one I’m teaching, the people who are taking this are mostly adults, they’re mostly working. Many of them are parents and they’re very much back to the normal sort of experience of an online class. My face-to-face students, though, are not doing quite as well. They’re younger in general, and they’re experiencing many of the problems that you’ve described. And they’re having a lot of trouble just completing even simple weekly tasks. And I’ve been providing a lot more structure, I’ve been sending them a lot more reminders with emails, with announcements in class, sending reminders to individual students, and it’s not getting through. There’s a remarkable amount of work that’s just not being done. Even things that would only take 10 or 15 minutes are just simply not being done. And it’s really frustrating to see students struggling and not doing the basic work that they need to to be successful in the course.

Rebecca: I know you teach a lot more first-year students than I do, I teach mostly upper-division students in the classes that I teach. And it’s interesting, because they may be students that I’ve had before who have a track record at that college and have done quite well in the past and have hit an all-time low. It’s like the grind is over. [LAUGHTER] There’s no more grind left to kind of move through this pandemic in a way that they need to if they want to have the academic achievements that they’ve had in the past. It’s interesting that you say that these what we maybe classify traditionally as “non-traditional” students in your online class, are quote-unquote, “back to normal” ish. In part because maybe people who are parents, their kids are back to school, and they’re back to work in a way that maybe feels a lot more normal to them. But school still feels really different for students that are more of a traditional college age.

John: Many of the students in the asynchronous class are part time, they’re taking a couple of classes at a time. But even there, I should note that they are reporting stress at higher levels than I’ve seen in the past. But they’re doing the work, and they’re being very successful. But a lot of that, I think, is age because many of them have been in college at various times for the last few decades, or in some cases for several decades, or have returned to school after being out working for a while, and they’re very well motivated to be successful. And they have a very specific goal they’re often working towards… a very specific career goal… and they see the course as being essential towards meeting that. Our freshmen, though, have been through some pretty rough learning experiences. The quality of the education they received in high school was quite often not very good, but it certainly was very mixed in quality. And there’s a lot of research about some of the learning losses that people experienced with remote instruction. And when you’re 18 years old, and you’re entering college, and you spent a year and a half or so with a pandemic, that’s a non-trivial portion of your life, in terms of pandemic learning. And I think people need to get used to learning how to be in the classroom. And it’s been a challenge for many.

Rebecca: You know, I haven’t been physically in the classroom, but I’ve certainly heard stories of folks who are face-to-face and have students just saying that they don’t even know how to interact with other humans [LAUGHTER], and actually just coming right out and saying that. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s been like to be in person and some of the challenges that you and your students have faced in that environment?

John: One thing I think everyone was hoping was that masking requirements might be gone if the pandemic had been under more control. I’m in a classroom that seats 420 students, but I have 185 students in the class and they’re spread out. There’s often a lot of distance between those students, and they’re wearing masks. And they are participating so much less in class discussions. And when they do, because they’re wearing masks, it’s really hard for anyone to hear them. And that is really frustrating for them, and it’s somewhat frustrating for me too. And it’s been a bit of a challenge. And the mask requirements in theory would be really good, but one of the things I’ve been observing is that some students, at least, have been very reluctant to actually wear their masks over their mouth and their nose. And I’ve had a few students who’ve had to be reminded of that every single class day from the start of the semester. And that is a sort of environment that’s just a whole lot less pleasant. They’re not very happy because they’re being told to wear a mask, and they don’t believe there’s any need to do that. And I’m not very happy because I picked up COVID, most likely from this class earlier this semester. And I’d rather not see it spread any further. But it’s certainly a much less engaged classroom environment than I’ve ever seen in the past. Because students are spread out more, they’re not talking to each other, it’s harder to hear each other. And there’s just not the same level of interaction that I’m used to seeing in that class.

Rebecca: I’ve had some students talk to me about their in-person classes and just the anxiety that they feel and the fear that they feel of potentially being exposed to COVID-19, and that it just really makes them quite anxious to just be around people. And when people aren’t abiding by the policies set, that just heightens the anxiety but also really makes it not safe for particular groups of people, students who might have compromised immune systems and things like this. And so for some students, they were really, really, really looking forward to being back in the classroom but are saying, “Hmm, what online classes are available in the spring so I can stay away from people?” [LAUGHTER] …which is interesting. That’s definitely not the experience of all students, but definitely a subset of students.

John: Our institution, along with the rest of the State University of New York, had a vaccine requirement go into effect at the end of September. And in the first month, there were a lot of students in my class who either had contracted the virus and had to miss class for 10 days or so, or they were in close contact with someone and went in quarantine. So the class began with often a dozen or two dozen people in the class who were not able to attend in person. So I was running the session in Zoom, which is not something I was hoping would have to happen. Because as everyone noted last year, having a class where you have some students in Zoom, and some people in person, it’s just much harder to do. There’s just a much higher cognitive load. I got more proficient at it as this semester progressed, but I certainly would prefer never to have to do that again. And as you said, more and more students were getting nervous about this, and the number of people attending remotely has been increasing, particularly in the last few weeks as people were reporting they were more and more nervous and were staying away to avoid the risk of getting an infection.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that we’ve been experiencing, at least on our campus, is certainly there are some cases of COVID-19, but there’s also a lot of cases of other things going on. [LAUGHTER] There’s mono, there’s illness, there’s stomach bugs, but all these things initially may present themselves as seeming like they’re COVID-19 at first, and then many students are sick. And I think, culturally, there’s much more of an expectation to stay away if you’re not feeling well. Which is a good thing, right? That’s a good public health thing, to not make everyone else around you sick. But that does impact what’s happening in classes and who’s in class and who’s present and who’s able to keep up. And so I don’t think that’s going to change, we’re going to need to start responding and thinking about, “What does that mean when students aren’t able to be present in class? Or they’re really too ill to even attend synchronously online or whatever.” So Zoom isn’t always an option if someone’s actually sick.

John: What other adjustments have you made in your classes, given these circumstances? Or what adjustments are you planning to take forward into the spring?

Rebecca: I’ve been taking some mental notes and having conversations with my students about, really, the barriers that they’re facing in success, like what’s keeping them from succeeding in the way that they hope. And I had moved into having more low-stakes assignments that were structured and scaffolded, really in response to some of the things that students had wanted prior to the pandemic. And then also, really, in that first fall semester when I was first teaching synchronously online. And the students now are like, “Whoa, there are too many things to keep track of!” Even though it’s structured, having to do more than a couple of activities in a week just seems completely overwhelming. Because they’re reporting memory issues and other things that are likely side effects of the mental health struggles that they’re facing. I’m finding that they’re pretty engaged during class, and I want to seize the moment on that, and continue doing some really engaging activities. I’ve ramped up community-building activities in every class period. I’ve even had them submit ideas and have implemented them, and they get so excited when I’m using one of their ideas. And switching some things around, I had some review assignments that were Google Quizzes, then I did a Kahoot!. And all of a sudden, somehow, even though it’s practically the same thing, that’s way more amazing. So I’ll likely shift more of those over to Kahoot!. And I’m also thinking of, instead of doing low-stakes assignments, I may just do no-stakes assignments. Those are the things that we’re working on in class, it gives them the opportunity to do things. I’ll probably reduce how many of those we’re doing, because the students are just not able to get through as much as they had in the past. Their capacity of being able to do that has been lessened, as it is for all of us. Things are taking longer amounts of time to do things. So I’m trying to respond to that and really think through ways of structuring the class so that there’s options, too. So one of the things that I did just recently, like literally last week, I was noticing there was a lot of assignments still missing. And for some students that might mean 15 or 20 things. And even though they’re small things, that’s a lot of things. And then that almost paralyzes a student from moving forward. They’re not able to move forward, they just don’t know what to do. They freeze and they’re unable to move forward. So I offered the option of doing a small project instead that would demonstrate the things that those assignments were meant to do, as an alternative. And so some students have responded that that seems way more manageable because it’s one thing even though it has a checklist of things that they would need to do in it. It’s a little more creative, it’s an alternative option. And I think I may just start with having an alternative option from the beginning [LAUGHTER] next semester so that they just have a couple of different pathways that they can choose. Group work is also at an all-time struggle this semester. Although if you’re doing collaborative work, there’s always a team or two where things need micromanagement, you need interventions. That always happens as students are learning to work together in how to be a teammate and how to be a collaborator, but it’s at an all-time high this semester. And so I’m thinking of ways that we can still do collaboration, but in a way that really doesn’t depend on another person to follow through on something, especially follow through on something outside of class. So it’s a major rethink of a couple of things that I do in my classes. But I think it’s necessary in order to respond to the moment and really, where students are right now. How about you, John?

John: Well, I had shifted some last year and more this year to more low-stakes assignments, including some short videos I created with embedded questions. And the main issue is many of the students are just not doing those. I’m using a Lumen Learning Waymaker package, which is a personalized learning system, which is very well designed. We actually talked to the primary author of that, Steve Greenlaw, on an earlier podcast, and one of the basic things that students have to do is just read some text with embedded questions, and they get a small amount of credit just for completing those questions. And that should be the first thing that they do each week, but it’s often the last thing that they do. So reading the basic readings before coming to class is something that probably a majority of students just are not doing. And in the past, I got a much larger proportion of the students doing that. Because when they’re in class, we work on problem sets. I do a lot of work with iClicker where I give them problems, and they work either individually or in small groups on those and half to three quarters of them, depending on the day, are coming in without the basic concepts that they need to have understood to be able to participate in that flipped environment. So it’s been a challenge. And I talk to them about that every day, and it just hasn’t been making a difference. And I’m not sure what to do about that in the future. The next time I’ll be teaching this class will be in fall 2022. And I’m hoping we’re in a better environment and we get back to more normalcy. For my spring classes, I’m teaching very different classes, and I had revised those quite a bit last year. And I think I’m going to move more in the direction of more group work on all of those classes than I had used in the past.

Rebecca: I know flexibility is something that I have continued to try to embrace more and more for students. And this semester, it’s meant accepting more late assignments or just not really paying attention to when things are submitted. And although in some ways it’s good for students, in other ways it’s not. In some ways, if they’re not completing things by a particular time, then it’s not helping them build the skills either. So I’m trying to find ways to be flexible in a way that gets them excited about what they’re doing so that they become really interested in what it is so that they want to do it, and that they want to get lost in it outside of class. And sometimes smaller assignments, or smaller homeworks and things, are harder to get invested in in that way. And given that I’m in a creative field, I have this opportunity to perhaps seize the desire to find that space, but also recognize that some students may find it very difficult to be creative in a time like this, and offering different pathways for those students where that’s not a good option for them. So I’m going to really need to find a couple of different pathways for the information. And what I’ve really been reflecting on and thinking about is, “Well, what are these course objectives? What are they meant to achieve, and can they demonstrate that at the end of the semester?” I’m really moving in this ungrading direction for sure, I can feel it. I’m easing in slowly, not all the way there yet. But I think that’s definitely the framework that I’m thinking through and wanting to embrace because I want the learning to happen. And I don’t really care how it is that they’re demonstrating it to me, other than they can demonstrate it to me. So I just need to figure out a structure that will work for all of us moving forward.

John: In my asynchronous class, I’ve been doing a lot more work with student reflection. And with making connections where, in weekly discussions, for example, I often used to give them some readings and ask them to analyze the readings and discuss it using the terms and concepts that they had just learned. And I’m leaving those discussions much more open-ended, where I’m asking them to make connections to things that they’ve read or stories in the news. And that’s been much more productive in that class. The other thing that’s worked really well in my asynchronous class again, which has been working much better in general is, again, doing a podcast project and the connections that they form when they work on it together is just coming through as a really positive experience where they do get to engage with each other in ways that they don’t always get to do when they’re taking an online asynchronous class. But it’s a lot harder to scale that when you’ve got a couple hundred students.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think that the scaling of things is what becomes a challenge. Even scaling flexibility can be a problem in a relatively small class, in comparison to the classes that you’re teaching. Allowing fluid deadlines and then everybody waits until the last minute to do something, means you might get hundreds of things all at once. So you have to really think through what’s also going to work for you as a faculty member as we’re making some of these decisions about how to adjust. But I think the key thing to underscore here is that we can’t just keep doing the same thing, because our students are in a different space than they were before. And they’re coming with different backgrounds. We need to respond to the moment which may mean things that we have traditionally relied on are not working, and that we need to come up with new things.

John: And I think we’ve all seen that to some extent, that ways in which we have taught in the past just are not working that well. And I think most of us are experimenting with new things. But, it’s a challenge.

Rebecca: Yeah. I do like what you were saying, John, about reflection. And I’ve also been doing more of that in my classes, too. And I’m finding that really valuable on many levels. It’s a really great way to connect with students when they’re sharing their own experiences, and the ability to even just make one comment on one thing that they say, I think, connects us a little bit. And they feel more willing to be open and have real conversations about what it is that they’re working on, instead of an artificial or transactional relationship. So, it’s meaningful, and it’s also helping me see where they really are getting stuck, or how they have misconceptions, or the way they see themselves as makers in the world. These are design classes so it’s also, how are they seeing themselves? And I think it is helping to move in that direction. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I kind of seized the moment of the pandemic to move more in that direction. And I’m really glad that I have and I think that’s one thing that is working particularly well, as you also noted.

John: And another thing I’ve tried this semester is building in more growth-mindset messaging. It’s not working quite as well as I’d like, because people are faced with a lot of challenges. And all those struggles make it a little harder, perhaps, for them to see that sort of growth taking place. But it has inspired a few students to not give up, to stop by and talk about ways in which they can improve. And I keep hoping that by continuing that messaging, even if it doesn’t work for everyone right now, it may help them in the future.

Rebecca: I’ve also been really uplifted by some of the observations I’ve made of students. Bringing students along, really accepting the fact that other folks are struggling for a wide variety of issues and really approaching each other with a very non-judgmental approach, and just meeting their colleagues where they’re at. So they’re working collaboratively with someone who’s seemingly very unprepared and they just say, “Okay, let’s get you through this,” or, “Here’s a thing you can do, how about you do this thing so that you have a way of contributing?” And I’ve witnessed it in many different occasions this semester, and it does restore my faith in humanity.

John: I’ve seen the same with the podcast project, where there were groups where one of the people were not participating at all, and they’d submit their draft. And then a day or two later, they’d submit a different draft with someone else integrated into it. It may have been after the deadline, but I’ve been more flexible on those deadlines. And the people would show up, and they’d go back and redo it, integrating them into it. And I’ve been really pleased with how well they’ve all worked together, especially where they’ve been recognizing the challenges that other students are facing.

Rebecca: Of course, that’s not to say that some students aren’t frustrated.

John: The frustration has come through, but it always ended up with them not abandoning their fellow students, but ultimately supporting them.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think when students have been nudged in that direction, like it’s a collaborative assignment, you have to collaborate, they’re definitely pulling through and figuring it out, and having tough conversations. I’ve been using a thing called a “retrospective.” I’ve mentioned it before, at the end of a part of a project that asks students to think about what their team can start to do, stop doing, and continue doing, and using that as a way to facilitate a difficult conversation about a relationship that’s not working. And I think that that tool has been helpful to provide some structure around that and to deal with it. I’ve also noticed that when collaboration is optional, then they’re just kind of opting out. And I haven’t overly pushed it and accepting the fact that maybe there’s moments where we need to not be collaborative or we really don’t want to be and that’s okay, too… and so, leaving space for both activities to happen. But it’s exhausting, huh?

John: It certainly is. I feel like I’m not working as hard as I was last year, but I’m more exhausted than I was last year. And I’m not quite sure why there’s that perspective, but it’s one I know I’ve been feeling, and I think many people have been feeling.

Rebecca: I know I read a New York Times article, I think it’s a couple weeks ago now, about languishing. The feeling that we’re having that’s just kind of numb is called languishing. And I shared it with my students, and they responded like, “Yes, I understand this thing.” But I think we’re all experiencing the emotions and mental health challenges of the people around us, and that’s weighing on us. It becomes an emotional labor that we’re not thinking about or not realizing that’s eating up our time, it’s eating up our energy. It’s necessary work I think right now to support our students, but it’s also incredibly tiring in a way that maybe a more traditional non-pandemic semester doesn’t have. So naps? Time for naps.

John: In theory, that would be great.

Rebecca: Yeah, neither one of us are nappers for sure. [LAUGHTER]

John: Yeah. So what’s next for you, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Well, I’m looking forward to rolling a little bit more into my role in graduate studies, and maybe bringing more graduate studies topics to the podcast occasionally, but also finding a little bit more balance in my time. We’re talking a little bit about how exhausting this semester is, and I’ve gotten away from some of the things that bring me a lot of joy, like taking walks and reading and writing. And that’s in part just because I’ve moved to survival mode at the end of the semester. I was really good at preserving all of those things at the beginning of the semester and that was really helpful, and then it just started falling apart. And I know that many other faculty probably can relate to that. So I’m looking forward to being able to, after the semester, trying to rebuild some of those things back into my schedule, and getting to do a little more deeper thinking about things that I just haven’t had the capacity to do during the semester. How about you, John?

John: Well, in terms of providing more balance, one of the things that I really enjoyed this fall, for the first time in quite a while, was I had started playing some music with a band this summer and we did a three-hour show. That was just a tremendous amount of fun. And I’m hoping I get to do some of that again, moving forward. It was so nice. It was at a location where everyone had to show proof of vaccination, it was outdoors. So I felt pretty comfortable there, pretty safe there, and it was just a really wonderful escape from being cooped up on Zoom all the time.

Rebecca: Yeah. It’s a good reminder to kind of get back to the things that we love to give us the energy to do some of the other things that we need to do. And to provide some of that support that we need to provide for our students when some days it feels like I just can’t do one more thing.

John: And I think many of us have reached that feeling at this stage of the semester.

Rebecca: Well, I’m looking forward to another year of episodes with you, John.

John: I am, too. The podcast has always been one of the bright spots for me each week. It’s been so much fun talking to so many people doing such amazing work.

Rebecca: So let us close by cheerleading all of our listeners on, you can make it to the end of the semester, you can do it! And thank you so much for listening and supporting this work. And I hope that you continue to listen and that if you have suggestions for things that you want to hear about, please let us know.

John: Well, thank you for listening, and we’ll be back next week.

Rebecca: …right on schedule.

[MUSIC]

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. Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.

[MUSIC]