Higher Education Beyond COVID with Regan Gurung and Dwaine Plaza

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

I asked Regan and Dwaine on the podcast so I could pick their brains about what they’ve learned reading and editing all those chapters. What lessons has higher education learned from such a challenging time? What lessons should higher ed learn? And how can we get ready for whatever challenge comes next? 

Episode Resources:

Regan Gurung’s faculty page, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/regan-gurung

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

Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State, https://ctl.oregonstate.edu/

Music:

"The Weekend" by chillmore, via Pixabay

Podcast Links:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Derek Bruff: Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time. Back in the fall, I wrote down a number of themes I wanted to explore on this first year of the Intentional Teaching Podcast.

One of my bullet points says quote, pandemic Teaching is mostly over. Now what? In this episode, I talk with a couple of educators who have a fairly unique perspective on pandemic teaching, how it has changed teaching and learning in higher education, and what lessons we might learn from pandemic teaching.

Regan Gurung is associate Vice Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Oregon State University, as well as a professor of psychology there. Dwaine Plaza is a professor of sociology also at Oregon State University, and the two of them are editing a forthcoming book titled Onward To Better, How Facing A Pandemic Will Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century.

Regan and Dwaine are in the interesting position of having read about two dozen chapter submissions for the. All about lessons learned from teaching during the COVID 19 pandemic, and all authored by faculty, staff and administrators, including a healthy amount of teaching center directors. Full disclosure, I am one of those contributors.

I wrote a chapter on our experiences with pandemic teaching at Vanderbilt University. I asked Regan and Dwaine on the podcast so I could pick their brains about what they've learned, reading and editing all those chapters. What lessons has higher education learned from such a challenging time? What lessons should higher ed learn and how can we get ready for whatever massive challenge comes next?

Thank you Regan and Dwaine for being on the podcast. I'm very excited to get to chat with you today about your upcoming book. 

[00:02:07] Regan Gurung: Thank you. 

[00:02:08] Dwaine Plaza: Great to be on. 

[00:02:12] Derek Bruff: Before we talk about the book and what you've learned from the editing process, I'd like to get to know each of you a little bit better, and I'm gonna ask a question I, I like to ask many of my guests.

Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator? 

[00:02:27] Regan Gurung: This is a, this is a good one because I think about this often actually. So I, I have this forefront of my mind. What's interesting is for the longest time I just teaching and being an educator was not on the cards. I did the classic was an undergrad, went straight from undergrad to graduate school.

My graduate school, the University of Washington in Seattle didn't take any teaching classes. And actually for all my five years I had a research assistantship. So, you know, I was doing research, so, yeah. You know, I think that was, that was great didn't, didn't, there was no need to do anything other than research and I didn't even know I wanted to. The turning point happened when a friend was teaching an introductory psychology class and he said, Hey, you are doing research on close relationships.

Would you come and do a 50 minute lecture on close relationships? And I loved my research, I love talking about my research, and I took the opportunity and went in, and that was the epic turning point for me because those 50 minutes every second was joy. Every second was joy. The students, faces their reactions, their enthusiasm to the topic.

I just realized I was feeding off it and it felt very good to share information. And from that point on, I looked for any teaching opportunities I could get. Asked to teach whenever I could teach, actually had to go out of my way to teach. Did not teach I was a TA while I was in Seattle.

I went to a postdoc at U C L A, again on a complete research ticket and wanted to teach so much that I did the classic freeway drive to a place that wanted an instructor. And my very first instructor of record wasn't even in grad school. It was actually because I just really wanted to teach and Cal State Long Beach had an opening and they said, yeah, we need a, we need somebody to teach health psychology.

I said, yep, sign me up. That was my very first shot. And I will say as a testament to what we educators get out of it to this very day, I am good friends with a student who was in that first class I ever. He's doing success very well at Yale in no part due to my health psych class, I'm sure. But I just love the fact that this day we are in touch and, and that's part of why I love doing this.

It's those, it's just that sharing that energy and that excitement and just getting people reactive. . So that's me. 

[00:05:15] Derek Bruff: Wow. That's great. That's great. I don't hear that version of the story very often where you were on a, a really clear research track but got looped into teaching through a guest lecture.

That's, that's really, that's really fascinating. Mm-hmm. , how about you, Dwayne?

[00:05:28] Dwaine Plaza: Well, my story goes back even further than that. I think if I were to sort of plant myself in a place where I was watching a great teacher, and I'll reference Mr. Arkin in grade six, and this is no joke. So Mr. Arkin in grade six was the kind of teacher who did experiential learning with his grade six students.

He took us down to the rivers. We measured stream velocity. We did very, very basic topography of the rivers and, and looking at gian baskets. And I still remember those lesson plans from back then. And so as I was going through school, I always had opportunities to be in many leadership roles. And so I was in the Air Cadets in Canada for five and a half years which put me in a situation where once you've learned to do something, you have to teach it to somebody else.

And so I've always had this desire to know that I could actually translate something for people in a way that they could actually understand it. And I just developed that skill over time, such that I've now branded myself as a person who does you know, teaching of sociology. But I also have my students do very, very practical things.

And at the end of it all, they all, they, I never thought about that before. And so that's really where my teaching came in. I was a researcher, like Regan talked about himself going through grad school also. And so I didn't have a teaching ga, I always had a research ga. But I would also be asked every so often to come and do guest lectures

in classes, and again, that became my conduit to realizing yeah. I did have kind of a, an experience from early on as a young person that I'm bringing here to this group of people, and people started to like it. You know, they, they, I wasn't the sort of dry faculty member just showed up. And I also have, I would have, have something for them to do.

And even to this day I've now integrated a lot of technology into my teaching. And so I believe in that interaction not just the sage on the stage kind of idea, but somebody who is coming. and sharing things that are their experiences, and I have had the same experiences and I try to bridge those two things together.

So that's my journey. 

[00:07:35] Derek Bruff: Yeah. That's great. That's great. I love it. Yeah, and I, I, I mean, I can relate to that too, especially that feeling of. , understanding something interesting yourself and finding a way to convey it to others where the light bulbs start to go on . . And yes, I, I also had to kind of learn over time that I can't just talk at people to, to make that happen.

Sometimes that works. Yeah. But most students need more engagement and more experiences to draw on. So I love that part of your teaching as well. . Well, let's talk about the book. What is the title of your book and what led to the launch of this book project? 

[00:08:06] Dwaine Plaza: So the history behind the book really comes out as a result of the Covid circumstance.

And so I was two years ago, well, actually a year and a half ago, I was the president of the PAC 12. It's called a l c faculty Senator. . This is a group of senates from the PAC 12 that get together and actually discuss oftentimes teaching issues, research issues or issues that are going on in their various campuses.

 So we had this brainwave, you know, that said, Let's bring together those Center for Teaching and Learning experts to talk about how they were dealing with COVID and what kind of lessons they were learning. I was fortunate enough that I had met Regan about a year before that, and I knew the kind of great work he was doing.

I also had interacted with him while I was faculty senate president at osu. In terms of some of the issues we're coming up with around how to triage our educational. platform. So when I approached him and said, Hey, Regan, would you like to, would you mind being on a, a panel of other Center for teaching and Learning experts coming from the Pac 12?

He jumped on it right away, , he said, yeah, I'll do it. And I then had my other colleagues and as part of the PAC 12 asked their Center for Teaching Learning. So ultimately we had approximately six center for Teaching, learning experts directors, I should say, coming to this virtual forum, the forum came and it went and it was excellent.

It was outstanding. Everybody just said this is one of the better ones we've ever had. And after the event Regan and I just started a conversation and it was actually Regan's idea to say, Hey, let's maybe put together an edited book around this topic where we actually have those same presenters plus other people from the PAC 12 who weren't able to actually present.

Cause we can only have six. Contribute what they experienced and what they learned. 

[00:10:01] Regan Gurung: and our title is Onward to Better, how Facing A Pandemic will Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century. So very, I think, you know, We hope it's a visionary, aspirational way to go, but that's, that's sort of how we felt after listening to our colleagues and.

And even in my conversations with different friends around the countryside and of course multiple social media exchanges I really noticed that together with all the naysaying and the stress and the burnout, there were also real glimmers of hope. And I think Dwaine and I really wanted to highlight that hope, bring it to the front forefront.

And very, very early on. We both, and we were on multiple meetings, especially over the summers in preparation for the next term for the campus. And in many of those meetings very early on, we felt that back to normal is not something we wanted to do. And one of the things we noticed that we'll, we'll sort of get into is that when we looked at how faculty and staff around the countryside responded To the pandemic.

A lots of new things happened. Yeah. There were, there were a lot of stumbles, but there were affordances of, of previous ways of doing things that were way better than previous ways of doing things. And that's really wanted me to, we wanted to capitalize on, but for starters, we wanted to say this is an epic moment in time where higher education literally rose up to keep teaching.

[00:11:46] Derek Bruff: Yeah, I love that. And I think, I think as you noted, there's lots of folks who've realized that back to normal is maybe not what we want. That there were things about normal before that were problematic that weren't working that well. And some of us have figured out some solutions to some of those challenges that we want to keep using going forward.

So I love that. And as hard as the pandemic was, I mean, it was, it was really challenging in so many different ways, but it did push people to innovate and to try new things and. That's something that I think we should learn from. Right? I think the other impulse of going back to normal is you, you then forget some of the great lessons learned during that time.

So let's talk about some of those lessons learned. I, I, I think all the contributed chapters have been submitted. And reviewed and maybe even revised. I know I've revised my chapter, so I'm, I'm I, I I may have beat the deadline. But you've had a chance to read these chapters from teaching center folks, mostly from lots of different types of institutions.

So here's my big question. Given what you've seen from your contributors, what has changed about teaching and learning in higher education as a result of the pandemic. What are some of those lessons learned that are gonna be valuable going forward? 

[00:13:01] Regan Gurung: Yes. You know, and, and I will say Derek, thank you for your prompt revisions and getting your, a chapter in even with all the things going on in your life, like different people's lives.

But right there, I think the fact that. I'm really proud to say that. First off, I should say great shout out to Dwaine. Great working with Dwaine as a co-editor. I'm just proud of all the authors who in the face of a pandemic, in the face of things going on in all of their lives. We got our manuscript in one day early.

It's just feels so good that about the community that we have. So I wanna take a moment to say the community of teachers and educators out there. A special shout out to the University of Wisconsin Green Bay for, for jumping in with the chapter when we needed it. I just, just outstanding. So needed to say that.

The biggest, there were even, even before the future, if I could pull out some of the, the big things that jumped out at us. There were clear differences between campuses that had a strong, well staffed center for teaching and learning and campuses that did not there were at least, there are at least three or four chapters.

There are four chapters out of the 17 center- based chapters where the, the center is either one person or there's not even a real center, but it's shared. And I think right off the bat we could see that those campuses with well established centers that also had good communication with leadership and administration, they're the ones who coped better. I think one big theme was the variance based on center for teaching and learning size and connection. If you listener are on a campus with a good teaching and learning center, you are lucky because your campus probably dealt with the pandemic better. Along those lines, another theme came in, in what I said, which was the, the big use of technology.

I think here we found that there were many faculty with limited use of learning management systems. And one of the big things that came out of the pandemic and now truly answering your question that I think will go forward is looking at all the special affordances of learning management systems that we didn't necessarily use before.

So yes, many of us may have used zoom breakout rooms and chat. Myself, I taught Gen Psych to 280 people that fall of 2020. And on Zoom yeah for those, for those of you listening, there were some faces made. Yeah. And, you know, you should grimace. It was, it was quite the challenge, right. But, but here's the, what came out of the pandemic that's going forward is I noticed that in that large class, I probably had more people participating because of the Zoom chat than before. And I took that into the post pandemic you know, coming back to the classroom where in fall 21 and 22, I now have in-class chat a live chat. This fall, I had 400 students and we used the learning management system, not even Zoom, to have a live chat open. And again, I'll tell you, there was more participation in class than I have ever seen.

So that's just one huge example where we see faculty using technology in new ways to get participation to make up for that lack of face-to-face. And I clearly see that going forward and now faculty and centers capitalizing on that and saying, Hey look, this works so well. How can we roll it up and scale it up and use it?

So that's one really, really big thing that that comes out, that came out for me is the leveraging of technology for the future. To not just go back to the, you know, quasi luddite stages that some of us, you know, were, were in. , 

[00:17:11] Dwaine Plaza: I think it's gonna be a really big disservice to the future if we just sort of say, Nope, let's go back to an old way where it's lecture on the stage.

And we're gonna service 400 students. I really like what Regan has suggested he's doing. I also teach a large class 128 this this quarter. And I also taught over a hundred during Zoom sessions too. But what I discovered was just something as simple as recording my lectures and having the ability for students to then go back and review.

Helped numerous types of students. The international students were benefited. The students who needed to go back and listen to me again were benefited. For exams, they benefited. So what I think we needed to really do is embrace the existing technology. Push companies like Zoom and other companies who want to develop it even further so that, for example Derek, when a faculty member enters the classroom, it's no challenge.

Push one button, everything's going. I think one of the problems for some of my colleagues right now, and I we heard this also in our chapters, is that there's always been this sort of mystique about technology. And so some faculty are always, you know, reticent about making it work well and making it. I think that if it became, Easy for someone to push one button and a camera then gets initiated and it's actually following you around the stage or following you wherever you are in that room.

These become just small, small modifications that make a classroom so much more accessible to so many more people. And so we have to get to that as a mindset, as a, as a, as a cultural mindset shift in institutions across the United States, both big and large, that it's okay to embrace technology. It's okay to actually have an online exam.

And it's, it will actually go okay if you set it up well, it doesn't have to be proctored necessarily by a professional company if you write the exam in such a way that there's not a whole bunch of opportunities for students to cheat, to quote unquote cheat. Now, that's always the big one, right? I'm worried about my test because someone's gonna cheat on it and therefore they're gonna get some kind of advantage.

Yes, there's always that possibility, even in your own class, , where you're up, where you are physically standing there and there's 300 students in front of you. How did you regulate for cheating. You know so what I'm getting at is all those things that we learned from you know, the virtual world can actually be put back in place, but with improvements, and here's where I think we as an institution have to invest in those improvements.

But I also think we have to push those companies who have developed during the time of Covid, there were some companies that were coming up with some really innovative things and they were, you know, they were offering 'em to us. Many of us didn't take them because we didn't have a budget for it. But here's now the opportunity for

academic administrators to say, okay, now we're hunting. Now we're, we're, we're, we're listening. We're gonna work with faculty. We're gonna work with our Center for Teaching and Learning, and we're gonna try and figure out which of those technologies were ones that we wanna invest in, because we know that's gonna be the future.

I actually use one right now called Top Hat. I'm not trying to put forward the company, but I think they, during the covid really tried to be listening to faculty to try to say, what do you need next? We'll work with our team here in Top Hat and we'll develop it for you based on what you tell us you need.

They can't do things for us unless we tell 'em what we want. So I think that has to be a communication piece too, between us as institutions and these companies to collaborate rather than to just sort of push them off onto the side and say, you developed something. And if you, if we like it when you show it to us, we'll we'll go along with it or not go along with it.

[00:20:46] Derek Bruff: Yeah. I wanna say one thing about the ease of use and then I, I wanna see what Regan wants to add. I do think this, this ease of use is important. It's not always solvable. There were things that became easier in a Zoom class. For me to be in Zoom with a bunch of students and to start a poll question. I mean, it actually took Zoom a a few months to kind of make that easy.

But it got to the point where that was a pretty easy activity. Whereas if you walk back into a physical classroom, there's not necessarily a button to press to start a poll, right? And so there is some problem solving that needs to be done, but if you can move some of those same technologies back into a classroom in a way that's as easy to use as they were on Zoom.

Then you're able to take some of those pedagogical activities that worked really well in one context and, and, and make them work well in other contexts. If it's a, you know, 14 step process, every time you wanna run a polling question, it's not gonna happen. Right. That's not practical. 

[00:21:41] Dwaine Plaza: That's 

right. That's right.

Yeah. So something as simple as a Jamboard or a poll or, you know, any of those other reactions, I mean, all those things became part of our Zoom world. which we would love to, well, many of us would love to have in a large class situation where we can actually get that feedback right away and then react.

React. We all then get a chance to react to it, you know? And I think students also feel much more engaged too, if people are always saying, you know, my students have stopped showing up in my opinion. Again, my experience I think they've stopped coming to your class possibly because you're not engaging 'em anymore.

You're not doing something for them that actually makes them want to actually step into that place because you haven't created that culture for them. You might have created it in the first couple weeks, but then you've waited. They haven't waned. You've waned, and so you've lost the audience.

Regan, I interrupted you. Sorry. 

[00:22:37] Regan Gurung: No, no, no. Actually, almost everything each of you say gives me, you know, something else I remember from the book. But I think, I think two big things I did wanna highlight right here. One is, you know, Dwayne, what he said, you know, we've gotta tell companies what we need, right?

We've gotta tell people what we need. But there's a variation of that that I saw in many of the chapters, which, faculty on campus, on campus campuses telling their centers for teaching and learning or telling their academic technologies what they needed. And those groups saying, actually, we have that, actually, we've always have that, but you've never asked, you know?

 Because I think. Here's, here's what I find fascinating is all these things that we'd like, and I'll give you a simple example. You know, instead of any new technology that a student has to pay more money for actually hidden in plain sight in the technologies we use are answers to our questions.

For example, I use our learning management system to do, I already mentioned chat, so our learning management system has chat. I never even thought of using it before, but after the pandemic, I started using the same chat that's always been there. I just turned it on, right number one. But here, here it gets even better.

Dwaine, you mentioned polling. There's a simple hack to a discussion board where you can use it as a poll. Now, maybe it's two clicks Derek versus the one that you wanted, but you can hack your discussion board so that at any point you can ask a question and have students like Option A, B, C or, D, and it'll be like a poll with no new technology.

Right. So I think that's one big part is talk to ask your centers. Ask your learning tech folk what you want. And I love the way our academic learning technologies address it. They say, look, don't ask us for technology. You tell us what your pedagogical problem is. That's the way it should be.

And Derek, I know in your wonderful book, that's exactly what you do too, right? Whether it's moving the chairs or, or whatever. It's like what's your problem, we'll help you solve it. 

[00:24:42] Derek Bruff: Yeah, and I saw that a lot with our, our educational technology support at the teaching center I ran. During the pandemic, which was faculty would come with a very particular question about a particular tool.

And actually the better answer was not to use that tool, but to find something else, right? And so once our educational technologists were able to understand what the pedagogical goal of the activity was, they were in a much better position to suggest easy to use tools. Often as you say, things that the university was already paying for

that could meet those needs. Yeah, I think that's, that's a really subtle lesson, I think from the pandemic, but I think it's a really important lesson given how institutions have already invested in learning management systems and other commonly used tools.

Let me I'm gonna end with this question because you are in the book taking as you say, a, a hopeful look to the future. But we also know that there will be more challenges, right? There may be another pandemic. We know that climate change is gonna have a dramatic effect on higher education one way or another. There may be economic challenges or political challenges in the future.

I, you know, 2020 was the most disrupted year in my lifetime. And maybe we won't have something quite so disruptive, but maybe we will. And so I guess my question for you is, What advice would you give to faculty or administrators for preparing for the next huge challenge, whatever it might be?

[00:26:12] Dwaine Plaza: Well, I would start by saying adopt a culture of flexibility. I think that's what got us through the pandemic to begin with. But that should be an approach to higher ed that should continue on and be flexible enough that you don't have to do, you know be so wedded to something you've decided to go on now.

You can actually do quick shifts and if someone's not working, shift, move somewhere else. And that also reminds me too, Derek, of, of something we're doing on our campus, which I think is actually something of a mistake. What we're doing is we're building more buildings. However, if you look at the trends nationally, we're actually having more eCampus students.

So yes, you can build these buildings and yes, you can put ca classrooms in them. And yes, you can put lecture halls in them, but let's say 20 years down the road. Are those physical spaces, spaces people are actually gonna be physically using? It's almost like the library. We actually had this conversation about the library a couple years ago where the library is no longer the library where people actually go to actually study and pick books off a shelf.

Students are now going to the library as a meeting space. So what we've had to do in the last couple years at our library, and I think many others nationally, is to take the books out of the library, store them somewhere else, and turn those spaces over into meeting spaces, because that's what students were doing in the library in the first place.

They're just being hindered by the fact that, you know, we, we had books in there. Books are important. They're not going away, but you don't necessarily have to have them so that you can actually sit there and look at them in the, in the, in the space called the library. And I think the same thing's gonna happen in the future with regards to the classroom chair, desk you know, projection unit in the front of the classroom, et cetera.

That may or may not be the future. I think we have to have that flexibility to think about it in different ways. And I'll turn it over to Regan. 

[00:28:01] Regan Gurung: Yeah. And I'm gonna underscore the flexibility. Inara Scott, in, in the book, has a chapter on what she calls and where she discusses what she calls resilient teaching.

And you know, she talks about resilient teaching. That to directly address Derek, what you said is how can you design your courses and your academic life so that you're resilient to the other curve balls that are coming your way? So absolutely on that. I do have a, a bigger level though. And, and it, it almost, I wanna jump off even your question, which was what would you tell administrators and faculty?

And I would actually say we need to get more administrators and faculty together. Because one of the big things that worked on our campus was our administration very nicely from the get-go, brought staff, faculty and administrators to the same table together so we could work at things together. There was no, we fiat that you do this, you know there was this, okay, everybody's at the table.

There are different ranks, there are different situ. That's something that I thought really made us get through this way better than we would have. And I think for the future, having those mechanisms in place. You know, many campuses are pro faculty governance, but that's not enough. It's great to have strong faculty governance, but you need to have faculty governance and administrators actually talking and communicating well for any curve balls that come our way.

[00:29:37] Derek Bruff: Yeah,

I don't know how many times I've seen a faculty only committee that was charged with some important task. , as valuable as that faculty insight is, if there there, there might not be any staff on the committee who might implement their recommendations. Right. And so you're missing a piece of that puzzle.

And what I'm hearing from you is also, let's get some administrators on that committee too. Right? We can't just tell the faculty to go and. You know, think good thoughts for a year and give us your report and then we'll see what we do with it. Right? But to have those conversations with all the parties together, figuring stuff out together is gonna equip campuses to be much more flexible in the 

future.

[00:30:13] Regan Gurung: And I think what, and when we say all the parties, I don't think we can leave it there without saying, And Centers for teaching and learning. I felt honored to be at the table of those discussions. You know, it wasn't just administrators saying something or faculty senate saying something. I mean, right now a lot of the big things going on at Oregon State University have administrator, Center for teaching and learning,

and faculty senate reps all talking together. And I think that's just feels so much better than somebody telling you to do something with no input. You know, , right? 

[00:30:48] Dwaine Plaza: And one group that's often forgotten is also the students. And so we need, we need to also have that student representation. I know the students are more, yeah.

I know students are more. They're in and out of the university, right? Five years they're gone and they oftentimes don't get involved in student government until their second or third year. So what I'm getting at is we need to be more intentional across all campuses by having student representatives in those same committees so we can actually hear

what's working, what's not working? You know? Cause it's, again, as, as anecdotal evidence is not the evidence that of, of a so-called research one institution . 

[00:31:25] Derek Bruff: Right. Right. And as you said, there's lots of ways to get at that student perspective and those student opinions. And whether it's a pulse survey or focus groups or other things, you don't necessarily have to have a student rep on a committee.

Although that can be super helpful. You can also understand your students' experiences in lots of ways. And I think that's one of the things that we saw in the pandemic. An awareness that our students did have a diverse array of experiences learning at our institutions, and we really had to, we, we had to pay attention to it that year, but we need to pay attention to it every year.

So thank you for that. Well, thank you both for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for the work that you've put into this book. I know it's gonna be frequently and well-read and a real value to the higher education community, so thanks for, thanks for giving us a little preview of it here on the podcast.

[00:32:12] Regan Gurung: Thanks for having us, Derek. It's been great. 

[00:32:14] Dwaine Plaza: Yeah, thank you Derek. Nice, nice being with you today.

[00:32:21] Derek Bruff: That was Regan Gurung and Dwaine Plaza faculty at Oregon State University who are editing a new book called Onward To Better, how Facing the Pandemic will Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century. I am grateful for their work in this area and for taking time to come on the podcast to share a little bit of that work.

I'm reminded a little bit of another book I've been reading. It's called Who Gets In and Why By Jeff Selingo. It's all about the college admissions process, and interestingly, Jeff Selingo embedded himself in not one, but three different college admissions offices. One office would've yielded lots of interesting insights, but spending time with three different offices meant Jeff could see similarities and differences across institutions, and thus how institutional priorities play out differently in the admissions process.

Regan and Dwaine are in a similar position with. Able to see how different institutional choices have affected teaching and learning differently. It's really fascinating and I think both faculty and administrators will have a lot to take away from the book when it's available later in 2023. 

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff.

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