The Resilient Pedagogy podcast with your host, Travis Thurston. On this episode, we discuss creating adaptable courses with authors from Resilient Pedagogy. This is the space where we discuss practical teaching strategies to overcome distance disruption and distraction. We also explore how approaching course design, classroom communities and pedagogies of care can humanize our learning environments. Our guest today are Kosta Popovic is assistant professor of physics, and Optical Engineering at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate from the University of Virginia. He's passionate about the role fundamental STEM courses play in engineering education, and enjoys teaching introductory physics, nuclear physics and medical imaging courses. Eric Reyes is an associate professor at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology within the Department of Mathematics. He's a statistician and he enjoys collaborating with medical students within the Rural Health track at IU School of Medicine in Terre Haute and undergraduate biology majors at Rose Hulman. And Kay C Dee is the Associate Dean of learning and technology and a professor of biomedical engineering at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. She currently teaches engineering design and Regulatory Affairs courses, making academic change happen is her vocation. Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'm really looking forward to discussing ideas from your chapter today. But before we get started, I want to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests, as an emerging term resilient pedagogy has been defined in a number of different ways. And it continues to be applied in varying contexts. So what does resilient pedagogy mean to you?
I would love to jump in and tell you that I think of resilient pedagogy as pedagogy that lets you very quickly recognize when something's not going quite right or not, as well as you'd like it to kind of rumble with that fact very quickly and make some intentional choices about changes that you're going to make and then kind of rewrite the end of that story to be in the next chapter and the next part of your course.
To me, resilient pedagogy means that I can focus on student learning, and what my role is in that process, and not necessarily completely irregardless of the events around us. I can make sure that this process is not disturbed by the disruption that may happen that are seeking to slow down or negate our learning within any courses we do.
I think playing off what Kosta said, disruptions are inevitable. And I think for me, having resilient pedagogy means that I'm not going to survive those, but I'm going to thrive through those disruptions. No matter what comes at me, I'm going to be able to adjust, and my students are going to flourish in that setting. That's what I really love to see happen.
Yeah, I love those ideas, that that idea of that idea of flexibility definitely comes out in your in your ideas there. And I really like how we were bringing those those student perspectives considering how this is impacting our students. And also, Eric, I like how you added, not just surviving, right? We're we're finding ways to be flexible and thriving through these disruptions and changes. Oh, I love that. So my first question, really, I want to highlight several ideas from your chapter that stood out to me. But when disruptions occurred in early 2020, there was a lapse in in quality educational experiences that many of us felt from all sorts of contributing factors. And you point specifically to some design factors that can allow for this flexibility that we were talking about your course offerings. So I'm interested to discuss how do you identify critical aspects of courses while also planning for flexibility?
That is a great question. And I think Eric might be the best one to toss that one too, in terms of keeping, keeping what's critical.
I remember when we first started this process, and I had a lot of colleagues asking, Well, I'm spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to move this thing that I'm used to doing in person every day to an online setting. And by identifying what's really important, you're only spending time on that mental exercise with the things that are most critical to your class. So for me, one of the examples was I realized that I love collecting data in class as a statistician, and that's really fun, and it's games and is exciting. And I was spending a lot of time trying to think about how to transition that to an online setting, when there were other activities that were much more fundamental to the course. And so by talking about like the act of discussing data design, I didn't need to collect the data to have that discussion. And by focusing on something that was really going to drive me to my end goal, then that was much easier and much more worth my effort to figure out how to transition that into an online setting.
Yeah, I really like that. Not just thinking about, like, the time that we spend in class, but really thinking about what's what's most important. What are the most important aspects. I like that, that distinction.
That's one reason why we started our program with asking people to really focus on the critical learning objectives of their course. And I realized that in some fields of academia, learning objectives are looked down on for some good reasons that they might bias the students and that the journey of learning is the students experience, we don't want to define that. But in STEM fields, we have to keep an eye on the fact that our students need to be prepared to take professional licensure exams. And so really keying in on what the critical objectives are. And what must be met, I think is a is, as Eric was talking about, a key step in deciding what else you can flex.
So you mentioned some of your programming. So one of the ways you responded in summer 2020 was to create an interdisciplinary, faculty led summer program. Can you tell our listeners about how you implemented the creating adaptable courses, training, and maybe some what are some of the outcomes?
Well, I can give the background and then maybe Kosta can talk to some of the faculty led portions of it. We we realized that we realized that we needed to do better, we did our best in the spring. But we had some time to prepare for the fall. And we decided that instead of hoping disruptions wouldn't happen, we would deliberately plan for them and embrace them to the best that we could make the most of the opportunity. So we received permission from our provost to put together a training program through the summer, our learning and technology staff worked behind the scenes to make that happen. And we identified a group of critical educators in different disciplines throughout the institute, who could act as not just peer guides, as we developed content, but moderators and mentors and motivators as we moved through the content. And I will say that having that group of faculty, who are familiar with the micro cultures of the different departments, having them, as leaders of this team were absolutely critical to the success of our program. Kosta, what do you think?
So, to start with, I would say that everything that happened during summer of 2020 is a blur, for think reasons that all of us are so familiar with. But from what I remember, during that time, I remember that working with this interdisciplinary team really helped put a lot of different course design approaches in perspective, I think for all of us in a way. So during the the first portion of this process, which was a six core six module design in our learning management system, I believe that over 70% of our faculty went through that process, which started with discussion and exercises on backward design of our courses. And we already spoke a little of that moments ago, in that there is not necessarily a natural to many educators, given that pedagogy in itself is not is rarely a component of graduate work. So having many of our colleagues go through that process for the first time, I think was very revealing to, to them. And myself, for example, in disciplines like physics, I think, oftentimes we find ourselves running into a question of, hey, which book are you using for this course? And which chapters are you covering? And the discussion of learning objectives necessarily is not natural. So, so having this great resource, first of all, the mentor group that helped me see a lot of these things, and then be able to take those lessons and try to translate them and transfer them to my micro culture, which all of us did, within our micro cultures. Was a was I think one of the, one of the best parts of that of that summer work, and then everything else just flowed from there.
I thought one of the cool parts about our program was that we all felt like we were going through it together, whether we were part of developing it as a peer mentor, or whether a colleague going just starting out from fresh going into the program. It wasn't like an outside entity came in and told us how to be better or do something different. We were in it together, every one of us was developing a course alongside those that were taking it for the first time. And so we could all experience the same things and the same challenges. So being able to lean on each other was really, really, I thought, a cool feature of the summer program for us.
Oh my gosh, remember the team's conversations we had, like 1000s, of literally 1000s of comments in a team's conversation within within a week or two. It was hard to keep up with sometimes, but but people really were very generous about what they had to say that they asked questions openly with vulnerability and people, people engaged in a very deep way I was I was I was really humbled by our colleagues and their approach to that.
that's great. I mean, 70% of faculty participating is is a, an impressive number in and of itself, but also creating a space where people feel comfortable to ask those questions. And to engage with each other. And creating a supportive atmosphere is something that's really, really admirable. What what also stands out to you, after you went through that process of some of the important outcomes in your actual courses, or, or in your teaching?
or me, I think, the benefits of designing with somebody, I have often designed my courses on my own, I did my own thing, I could be completely individual. But this summer, we because we were so many we're doing it together, I often ask questions of my my colleagues and my peers teaching similar courses of how did you handle this? What would you think about this? Even though you're not teaching this particular class? I am? Does that feel right to you? What do you think, and I got some really great ideas that I wouldn't otherwise have received. And so the importance of just bouncing ideas off of somebody during the design is something I hope to continue to do each term as I design new courses.
Going back to that point to believe Kay C Dee made a little while ago that we were all in this together. We were in a situation where several of us were going to teach multiple courses throughout the quarter throughout the year, and kind of flipped back and forth depending on just course loads and such. And we ended up I think in many places splitting up some of the work so that not everyone would necessarily have to focus on all the courses. And that shared resource and knowledge that others were working to help you as you were working to help them make it through the next year, which carried and still carries so much uncertainty in terms of how things are carried out in the academic setting was one thing that really helped helped me feel more comfortable with approaching and planning for the upcoming academic year.
For me, that's one of my favorite aspects when you get interdisciplinary groups together is that you can you can get, you can get content out of the way. And really talk about some of those, those teaching those teaching greater teaching concepts and thinking about how we're reaching our students, how we're supporting them, things like that. And so Kosta, you mentioned this idea of of embracing change. And I know, many of us have had to roll with change whether we really wanted to or not. And, you know, whether that's the way that we we plan and teach our classes or even the technology tools that we've adopted to communicate with each other. What advice would you give about embracing and planning for uncertainty, rather than maybe fighting against it?
Well, I would say that, that our I think our natural instinct is to to fight change and fight the fact that we may have to change things on the fly. So approaching the given that we were expecting potential for uncertainty and change, I think it was a little easier to to approach knowing that this will be uncomfortable during the year if we had to fight it. And, and being okay with the fact that, you know, if we do some legwork now, we will be able to be less stressed out during the quarter while delivering quality courses and quality experiences for our students was was the main main reason that it helped us I think go through that process more easily.
Kay C, what was it you said this summer like something along the lines of we can't control what's going to happen, but we can control how we respond to it? I felt like that became a real driver for me personally.
That's exactly right. We when we're when fate circumstances are out of our control, one of the things that we can do to help ourselves sort of regain equilibrium is find something that we can control. And planning for the prospect of having to go completely remote or have students in quarantine or isolation at a moment's notice was was a way that I think a lot of us really sort of regained our footing this summer, and were in a better space, heading into the fall. That's That's right. Thanks, Eric.
Yeah, I love that perspective, thinking about the things that we that we do have control over, right, and making the adjustments that we can make that we that are within our realm. Yeah, I like that. My last question today, I want to kind of shift focus. Looking forward, there were many things that all of us did in in reaction to the disruptions of 2020 and preparing for what came afterwards. And there were several changes that we made in our own practice. I'm hoping that we don't all kind of fall into this trap of just kind of going back to the way we did things before pre-pandemic. So. So in that light, looking forward, what are some things that you changed in your own practice that you want to continue doing moving forward?
I can answer a little bit in terms of trends I've observed over the rest of this year from our school, and then myself. So in terms of faculty support, and learning and technology, we've seen the sophistication level of the questions that we receive, and the request for assistance, the sophistication level has risen tremendously from what it was pre-pandemic. And we've also seen increased use of our learning management system, and some of our other online tools in hybrid and face to face courses. And I think that's a positive thing. Overall, I think faculty are finding utility in these tools in ways that maybe they had not considered before. And I'm, I'm completely a fan of, of expanding faculty toolboxes to achieve the objectives they want. So one thing that I plan to continue in my courses, is, has nothing to do really with technologies. But I was very aware during the pandemic that a lot of my students were having a really rough time. I taught first year students this past year and, and it was really rough for them. And it required a lot of compassion and a lot of firmness, in equal measures to help them get through some of those courses. So I plan to continue talking about resilience, and incorporating more acknowledgement of when things are rough. How do we move forward, in my courses. Most especially for those first year students, academic resilience is going to be something that I do more research on as a scholar and then continue to incorporate in my courses.
I learned personally, that I think I am better in written environment, sometimes with students than I am even in face to face having some time to reflect on an answer to a tough question and respond in text often feel like I'm getting that personal engagement better than I would in person. And so that's something I don't think I would have realized had I not tried to embrace some of the challenges we had over the last year. So as a larger mindset, I'm hoping moving forward that when I do come up to some challenges in my teaching, that I take a step back and figure out what I can learn from that to improve in general moving forward, instead of just thinking, I just got to get through this and then I'll get back to, as long as I keep that mindset of I can always improve from this experience. Who knows what I'll learn in the future?
To me a question of what to do going forward is, is is an interesting one, given how strong of a phenomenon inertia is, we are in the middle of our last academic quarter for this year. And at this moment, I can think of is just, let's go...
I'm sorry... the physicist who wants to talk about how strong inertia is I just have to say that okay, that's good.
Yeah. And I just at this moment, I'm just moving until an external force stops me. So I think it will take some time this summer to really reflect on what this year has been. And I try to impart that on my students quite often. Every time you go through major event, a be it exam, or an entire academic year of, of classes, both from the learning and the teaching perspective. Sit back and think what's happened and then chart your path forward. So for me, personally, I am aware that I have a wealth of new resources and approaches that I will most certainly use going forward. Even though, at least in our case, we are fairly certain that we are going back to full time face to face instruction in the fall, fingers crossed. But one thing that I think will stick with me most from this experience is that anytime I approach a new course, I will sit back and go through the backward design process first. And I think that will help all of my courses, be a tad bit more resilient compared to what I would have done in the past.
Thank you so much, you three, for taking the time today. It's been great having you on the show.