Intentional Teaching
Intentional Teaching is a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. Hosted by educator and author Derek Bruff, the podcast features interviews with educators throughout higher ed.
Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.
Episodes
57 episodes
AI Across the Curriculum with Jane Southworth
Today on the podcast, I’m excited to share an interview with Jane Southworth, professor and chair of geography at the University of Florida and co-chair of the committee that designed UF's "AI Across the Curriculum" program. That program was de...
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Episode 55
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40:28
Teaching with AI in Technical Courses with Jingjing Li
In my new job at the University of Virginia, I recently met Jingjing Li, Andersen Alumni associate professor of commerce. Jingjing teaches business intelligence at both the undergraduate and Master’s levels, and her research interests include a...
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Episode 54
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41:38
An Oral History of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching
In 1986, Vanderbilt University established a new Center for Teaching, a unit that would help thousands of faculty and other instructors at Vanderbilt and across higher education develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teac...
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1:35:43
Some College, No Degree with Josh Steele
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, there are approximately 36.8 million adults in the United States under the age of 65 who have completed some college but left before obtaining a degree. How can universities meet ...
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Episode 53
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37:56
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Active Learning in the Humanities with Todd Clary, Stephen Sansom, and Carolyn Aslan
I see a lot of scholarly work on active learning in the STEM fields, but much less about active learning in the humanities. So when I read an article about active learning in a large-enrollment Greek myths course at Cornell University, I wanted...
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Episode 52
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38:44
Teaching Habits of Mind with Becky Marchiel
This episode features a conversation with another faculty colleague from my time at the University of Mississippi. Becky Marchiel is an associate professor of history there, and she teaches a very interesting history survey course. In our conve...
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Episode 51
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39:44
Teaching in an Election Year with Bethany Morrison
Listeners in the United States might have noticed that there’s a presidential election coming up, and we know that can make for a challenging teaching environment. Fortunately, I have an interview to share that addresses just this moment. Betha...
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Episode 50
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39:25
Improving Teaching at the Institution Level with Lindsay Masland
This is a story about institutional change. The product of that change—a new framework for assessing teaching quality now in use at Appalachian State University—is important, but the process that led to that change is just as important because ...
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Episode 49
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39:17
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Neurodivergent Students and Active Learning with Mariel Pfeifer
Today on the podcast I talk with Mariel Pfeifer, assistant professor of biology. Mariel started at Ole Miss just about a year ago as part of a cluster hire of three STEM faculty who are on the tenure track at UM doing disciplinary based educati...
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Episode 48
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39:38
Culturally Responsive Teaching with Emily Affolter
Emily Affolter teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “socia...
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Episode 47
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39:24
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Student Agency and Rhetorical Triangles with Paul Hanstedt
Back in February 2024, as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I reached out to Paul Hanstedt, author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, to talk about the "rhetorical triangle" as a...
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Episode 46
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42:06
High Structure Course Design with Justin Shaffer
During these late summer episodes of the podcast, I’m sharing some interviews I conducted in much cooler times. Back in February as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I talked with Justin Shaffer, teaching professor in ch...
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Episode 45
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42:03
Multimodal AI Projects with Emily Bruff
A few episodes ago, I talked with Marc Watkins of the University of Mississippi about the many ways that generative AI is beginning to intersect with student learning. Marc noted that the newest versions of ChatGPT and similar tools are no long...
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Episode 44
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26:54
Daybreak: Learning at Play with Kerry Whittaker and Matteo Menapace
This episode is all about games as learning experiences, with not one but two interviews about the 2023 cooperative board game Daybreak, a game about climate action. Daybreak puts players in the roles of world powers building the technologies a...
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Episode 43
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1:05:55
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Neurodivergent Learners and Earners with Holly Tilbrook
This spring Holly Tilbrook presented as part of a panel titled “Neurodivergent Learners (and Earners!) in Postsecondary Education” at the UPCEA annual conference. Holly is a deputy director of the Academic Centres at the University of Cambridge...
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Episode 42
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38:29
Take It or Leave It with Stacey Johnson, Emily Donahoe, and Lance Eaton
Inspired by a recent episode of the American Birding Podcast, this episode of Intentional Teaching features a "Take It or Leave It" Panel. I spent some quality time with recent essays published online looking for arguments about teaching and le...
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Episode 41
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47:31
AI's Impact on Learning with Marc Watkins
Worried about your students asking ChatGPT to write their essays for them? That's so 2023. Generative AI technology is changing fast, and now these tools have the potential to disrupt many different aspects of learning, from reading to notetaki...
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Episode 40
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39:53
Curriculum Mapping with Jennifer M. Harrison and Vickie Rey Williams
Jennifer M. Harrison and Vickey Rey Williams are the authors of the book A Guide to Curriculum Mapping: Creating a Collaborative, Transformative, and Learner-Centered Curriculum, published by Routledge in late 2023. Jennifer is the ass...
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Episode 39
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40:53
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Student Performance Feedback with Jeff Przybylo and Thomas Fisher
With the advent of easy-to-use generative AI like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, many instructors have been looking into alternatives to traditional written essays, which are often easy to write with AI assistance. Last fall, I led a webinar on...
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Episode 38
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36:47
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Learning Assistants with Katie Johnson and Katarya Johnson-Williams
In a Learning Assistants program, students who did well in a course in the past are invited to come back to attend class and help current students learn the course material. I knew these programs could be effective from my time at Vanderbilt Un...
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Episode 37
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39:35
Universal Design for Learning at Scale with Thomas J. Tobin
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for improving learning for all learners based on the science of how humans learn. It involves providing learners with multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression. We’ve...
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Episode 36
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39:59
AI-Enhanced Learning with Pary Fassihi
I talked recently with Pary Fassihi, senior lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, about her use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly in her writing and research courses. I’ve known P...
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Episode 35
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40:08
AI Learning Assistants with Sravanti Kantheti
We know that having students go to the free version of ChatGPT and ask it questions about course content can lead to some… inaccurate answers. But what if we could send students to an AI chatbot that was actually trained on our course content? ...
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Episode 34
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37:54
Instructional (Re)Design with David Hinson and Shawndra Bowers
David Hinson is the R. Hugh Daniel professor of architecture at Auburn University. David teaches a course in professional practice, a course that covers such things as running a business, marketing and communication, and professional ethics. Wh...
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Episode 33
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38:50
Students as Partners with Aimee Fleming and Maren Rice
Students as Partners programs have been on my radar for years now. These are programs that pair faculty with thoughtful students who provide input and feedback into the faculty member’s teaching and course design. The programs seem to have incr...
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Episode 32
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39:23
