#TLTSYM18 - More than expected (Professional Development Reflection - Michael Fiorentino)

Attending the 2018 Teaching and Learning Symposium proved to be an exciting and rewarding experience. I was fascinated by the level of technology that is being implemented within classrooms and the great potential for learning it has. My impression leading up to the conference was that there would be discussions surrounding the use of computers and smart-phones in the classroom, and I can honestly say I was blown away by what it turned out to be.

The opening keynote was by Stephen Dubner, who has authored books and led podcasts on economics. Dubner was able to bring a great sense of humor to his presentation with stories of dirty doctors, mischievous monkeys, and his amusement of modern poultry breeding systems. Through those stories, he was able to portray to his audience the complexity of human behavior. As the precedent to a days worth of discussions on innovation and technology, Mr. Dubner invigorated the crowd for what was to come next.

The first session that I attended surrounded a topic that was of a particular interest to me. The topic of the session was Active Learning with Simulations. Teaching with the use of simulations, which mimic real-life experiences, allows students to work their way through complex problems. The example that was shown during the session was from an online course being administered through the Department of Higher Education at Penn State World Campus. The simulation presented a scenario where the student was the dean of a college, responsible for making a decision regarding the budget for the upcoming academic year. The scenario gave the student various options to select regarding the decision they made for the particular situation. Once a selection was made, the student would be presented with either a follow-up question or stopping point. This online tool allowed for the student's progress to be tracked as well as record the amount of time spent on each problem.

The second session that I attended was much different than how I anticipated it to be, but in an enlightening way. The topic of this session was Using Data Science in Support of Learning. The vision I was expecting for this session was how to communicate research findings and statistical evidence amongst an audience. What I was not expecting was a discussion on artificial intelligence and language processing! One of the things that stood out to me was a software program that was able to predict the likelihood of a student choosing a particular course based off of their previous course selections. This program utilized specific algorithms that could be used by college administration to predict course enrollment for upcoming semesters. Since each student is unique, it was not recommended to be used solely for student advisement.

It was a very eye-opening experience to see first-hand the level of technology that is being used within the educational system. The level of mastery it takes to plan and implement these complex instruments is phenomenal, and it is even greater that there are students involved in this process. The level of innovation within our society continues to grow, and it will be amazing to see the learning platforms that will be available for the next generation of students!

Michael Fiorentino is a graduate student in Agricultural and Extension Education at Penn State.

Teaching Tips to Improve Your Game (Professional Development Reflection - Steph Herbstritt)

Unfortunately, I had to miss the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium and Stephen Dubner (really looking forward to learning what you all learned last Saturday) but as a result, had the opportunity to attend a Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence seminar on teaching by Deena Levy and Chas Brua and gain ten tips for teaching excellence.

I was pleasantly surprised by the overlap between their material and our current course syllabus from tips on building rapport, establishing strong links between objectives, lesson material, and evaluations, being an active teacher and staying organized.

Here are three big takeaways I plan to use moving forward and I think would benefit all of you.

1. Learning is a process that takes us from unconscious competence (novices) to unconscious competence (supreme experts). Right now, we likely fall in the middle (AKA the sweet spot) in the conscious incompetence (we know what we don't know) or the conscious competence (we remember what it was like to learn the material but we know the material). We are on the brink of becoming experts in our fields and yet just on the other side of remembering how hard it was to get here. As a result, we can guide teaching like supreme experts generally cannot.

2. Building rapport and creating a positive classroom atmosphere can make all the difference in the world to you as a teacher and to your students. This means smiling, learning students' names, allowing for spontaneity, being conversational, breaking up presentations, being positive, using clear communication, and creating a sense that you and the students' are a team. Learning is a never-ending journey and you as the teacher will continue to learn.

3. On that note, acknowledge that it is ok if you don't know something, and you can still teach something you don't actually know. Be honest with yourself in both your teaching and your learning.

I'm looking forward to applying the ten tips Deena and Chas provided and following up on some of the reading material they suggested. First up on my reading list--How Learning Works and How to Teach What You Don't Actually Know. If you're interested in learning more, let's touch base and get a conversation going!

Steph Herbstritt is a graduate student in the Agricultural & Biological Engineering Department at Penn State studying the synergies between water quality, farm profitability, and sustainable energy.

How robots and artificial intelligence are taking over the classroom! (Professional Development Reflection - Isamar)

How robots and artificial intelligence are taking over the classroom

Past Saturday I arrived at the Penn Stater Conference Center expecting to develop my teaching skills through a series of presentations by experts in the field. I had not seen the agenda before arriving. Good thing I didn't have any idea on what to expect because the first talk by the keynote speaker discussed everything from turkeys, chickens and why washing your hands is important! I couldn't stop laughing but at the same time, it made me think about the reason behind every study and how to use data to teach and impact people. Also, it gave me a new podcast to listen to on my morning commute!

Some standard topics I thought would be included in a teaching and learning symposium would be making lesson plans, effective teaching and classroom management. To my surprise, the topics were full of tech-savvy teachers using innovative techniques in their classrooms to enhance the learning experience. Robots and artificial intelligence were a hot topic throughout the day. Two out of the three proposals in the open innovative challenge included these topics.

One particular proposal in the challenge that caught my attention was "Faulknerbot", a chatbot modeled after the writer William Faulkner. In this case Aaron Mauro, an English professor at PSU, developed a chatbot with the purpose of applying conversation based content discovery. Instead of going to the library or searching the web for Faulkner content, you can just chat with an online version of him! Imagine how fun and engaging this could be for students. The chatbot was programmed with not only Faulkner's written works but also many of his interviews. There was a suggestion from the audience to create a "Syllabus chatbot" that could answer questions regarding office hours, assignments and other syllabus topics quickly instead of having to e-mail the professor. 


Another interesting proposal from an Economics Professor, introduced the idea of using robots as learning devices for students. However, this was the second time during the symposium that the robot topic was introduced. One of the talks I attended was from Dr. Ronald Arkin from Georgia Tech. His research focuses on human-robot interacton and how this could help early stage parkinson patients. This technology could also be applied in the classroom for students with disabilities or even as an ethical mediator between graduate students and advisors. 

Needless to say, my day was full of surprises (in a great way!). My mind was exposed to innovative and out-of-the-box ideas on how to engage students in learning. As a Mechanical Engineer, I had never looked at robots or A.I. in the teaching and learning environment. Usually these technologies are introduced in engineering or computer science courses. However, now I can see how they could be applied to everyday teaching on all subjects. Robots or A.I. shouldn't be seen in any way as a replacement of the teacher but as a tool for the teacher. I wouldn't call this is a robot takeover, but a teaching and learning takeover!

Written by Isamar Amador a graduate student in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State

Focus on Learning!! (Professional Development Reflection- Shelley)

Dr. Saundra McGuire, photo credit:
https://sites01.lsu.edu/faculty/smcgui1/

Being in a class as a current student, learning how to teach other students, is an interesting dichotomy.  Most of the time when I’m learning about teaching styles/techniques, I’m quietly assessing if I would appreciate it as a current student.  This was the case when I attended a recent workshop sponsored by the Schreyer Institute here at Penn State entitled “Get Students to Focus on Learning Instead of Grades: Metacognition is Key!” by Dr. Saundra McGuire, Retired Assistant Vice Chancellor & Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University.

I knew that metacognition loosely meant being aware of your own thought processes, but Dr. McGuire explained we could also understand how to control our mental processing.  Learning how to learn—now that’s a thought. 

She detailed homework and reading strategies that, albeit, I’ve heard of before—and as a student, literally never implemented.  I knew I should be trying to summarize passages of text in my own words just to reinforce the learning, but come on—I had more important things to do.  When I was taking a physics class in college, I’d just get so frustrated with the problem sets that I would look at the answer and try to work backward, never focusing on fixing my mistakes or working through the problem multiple times until I got the correct answer.  Heck, half the time if I was reading a biostatistics book, I skipped half of the examples and just kept going.  All of these are mistakes that students make that impact their learning and subsequent grades in a course.  Dr. McGuire counseled students during her career and encouraged them to implement these strategies into their studying techniques, and the results were nothing short of incredible.  To watch as students’ grades increased from horrible failing grades to As and Bs IN JUST A SEMESTER was inspirational.  While I’m harping on how great their grades improved, the foundation is that these students focused on learning—they actually retained and learned the information at a deeper level that gave them the tools to do well on exams and other assessments. 

As instructors, we can encourage our own students to implement these strategies!  And, we can keep ourselves accountable by ensuring that we are setting our students up for success.  Solidifying that students know what the task is and can understand how information is organized can greatly improve their study habits, helping them to pinpoint what information is important rather than getting lost in slides and slides of lecture notes.  Dr. McGuire asked a group of students if they understood the difference between studying and learning, and they acknowledged that learning is long-term understanding while studying may just require memorizing information for a test.  Studying is tedious; learning is fun.  Our students have already done the hard part—they understand the difference, and we as instructors can continue to encourage focusing on the learning rather than the memorizing.  The learning will certainly help our students in the long run. 

This workshop impacted me on a deeper level, because I can implement these strategies on both sides of the fence—not only for me personally as a student, but also as an instructor.  These strategies are not only advantageous for the college student, they are important for any learner at any age, in any career, at any level.  Focus on the learning.  

Written by Shelley Whitehead, graduate student in Entomology at Penn State