Leading Lines

In this interview with Sung Jun Han, Dr. Laura Guertin talks about how her use of technology has evolved over the last 20 years. Listeners will hear examples of how technology has enabled Laura to teach even while aboard a ship doing field work and has enabled her students to learn while commuting. Starting with the course objectives and using low-bandwidth, accessible technologies can unlock so many possibilities for learning.

In this interview with Derek Bruff, Remi talks about how annotation works in partnership with reading as a knowledge construction activity. With physical books, digital reading, and even on social media, people add notes to texts to wrestle with what they read and reach new audiences. Let's explore how instructors can harness the power of annotation in formal educational contexts.

In this special audio note from Leading Lines producer and host Derek Bruff, Derek shares that the podcast will be winding down after a few more episodes. Thanks to all our Leading Lines producers and guests we’ve had over the years for making this podcast something special. And thanks to all you for listening. Some of Derek's favorite episodes: https://twitter.com/derekbruff/status/1557013656185245699

On this episode of Leading Lines, producer and colleague Stacey Johnson brings us an interview about virtual exchanges, connecting students across cultures through technology. Stacey and our Vanderbilt colleague Chalene Helmuth, principal senior lecturer in Spanish, speak with two guests with extensive experience with virtual exchanges. Brianna Janssen Sánchez is assistant professor of practice in languages, cultures, and international studies, and coordinator of teacher education, at Southern Illinois University, and Nancy Ruther is principal and founder of Gazelle International, a non-profit that partners with higher education institutions to produce globally capable graduates. Nancy’s work at Gazelle follows almost 30 years as associate director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. In the interview, Stacey and Chalene talk to our guests about different models of virtual exchanges, the kinds of support and scaffolding to support virtual exchanges, and the impact virtual exchanges can have on both students and teachers. Links • Brianna Janssen Sánchez’s faculty page, cola.siu.edu/languages/faculty-…anssen-sanchez.php • Nancy Ruther @ Gazelle International, www.gazelle-international.org/nancy-ruth…-principal • Gazelle International, www.gazelle-international.org/ • “Assessing language learning in virtual exchange: Suggestions from the field of language assessment,” Lee & Sauro (2021), journal.unicollaboration.org/article/view/36087

On this episode of Leading Lines, producer and colleague Stacey Johnson brings us an interview about virtual exchanges, connecting students across cultures through technology. Stacey and our Vanderbilt colleague Chalene Helmuth, principal senior lecturer in Spanish, speak with two guests with extensive experience with virtual exchanges. Brianna Janssen Sánchez is assistant professor of practice in languages, cultures, and international studies, and coordinator of teacher education, at...

On today’s episode of Leading Lines, producer and colleague Stacey Johnson brings us an interview with Jill Lassiter, assistant professor of health sciences at James Madison University. Professor Lassiter recently wrote a Faculty Focus article on service-learning in a virtual world, including the changes she made to her service-learning projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the interview, professor Lassiter shares three principles for adapting service-learning to challenging environments, describes some of the virtual service-learning projects her students have engaged in over the last few years, and offers advice for instructors new to service-learning on getting started with technology-supported service-learning. Links •Service-Learning and Community Engagement, a Vanderbilt Center for Teaching guide: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-through-community-engagement/ •Faculty Profile for Dr. Lassiter - https://healthsci.jmu.edu/people/lassiter.html •Service-Learning in a Virtual World - https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-delivery-and-instruction/service-learning-in-a-virtual-world/ •Leonard, G., Lassiter, J.W., Hammill, R., & LeCrom, C.W. (2022). Service-learning and the development of interpersonal skills in pre-professional undergraduate students. Pedagogy in Health Promotion. DOI: 10.1177/23733799221074626 •Martin, T., LeCrom, C.W., & Lassiter, J.W. (2017). Hearts on our sleeves: Emotions experienced by service-learning faculty. International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, 5(1), 41-56. https://journals.sfu.ca/iarslce/index.php/journal/article/view/273 •LeCrom, C.W., Lassiter, J.W., & Pelco, L. (2016). Faculty Feel it Too: The Emotions of Teaching Through Service-Learning. Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education, 8(2), 41-56. https://discovery.indstate.edu/jcehe/index.php/joce/article/view/294

On today’s episode, we talk with Simon Howard, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, about his recent TikTok assignments. In his social psychology course, he was looking for new ways to engage and assess his students, and during the pandemic he landed on the very short video format of TikTok as a solution. Simon is a first-generation college graduate who completed his undergraduate degree at San Jose State University and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Social Psychology...

James Paul Gee wrote a book on games that pointed out how much learning happens when you play a game. Gee was writing about video games, but the same is true for analog games, like board games. Designing a game for players and designing a learning experience for students can run surprisingly parallel. In both contexts, you put together a sequence of experiences and interactions that are intended to guide the participants in certain directions. Gee pointed out that, since games can motivate...

Deep learning is the kind of learning we want form our students, but it’s also the hardest kind of learning to foster in our students. In today’s episode, we hear from Monica Sulecio de Alvarez, a learning experience designer based on Guatemala. Monica has taught for ten years in higher education on how to design for complex learning in online environments, and she’s created competency-based distance learning modules for organizations in a variety of fields, including nutrition, ethics,...

In this episode, we continue our mini-series on bodies and embodiment produced by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. Leah has been interviewing experts who can help us understand why paying attention to bodies in teaching and learning spaces is so important. Leah talks with Susan Hrach, Director of the Faculty Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and Professor of English at Columbus State University. Leah reached out to...

Learning is always hard work, but sometimes it feels easier and we’re more motivated to persist if there’s an element of play involved. What can we learn about learning in the context of games that we might use to foster student learning in higher education? That’s a topic we’ve explored several times here on the podcast, and I’m glad to share another discussion of this topic in today’s episode. Miguel “Miko” Nino is the director of the Office of Online Learning at the University of North...

In this episode, Leading Lines' own Stacey Margarita Johnson and Derek Bruff discuss student-produced podcasts. Stacey and Derek share their own experiences with podcast assignments and, by searching through the Leading Lines rich archives, also bring in voices from past episodes so we can hear their stories as well. LINKS • The downside of Spotify exclusivity: https://twitter.com/trufelman/status/1487450647561744384 • NPR College Podcast Challenge...

This episode begins our new mini-series on bodies and embodiment. Leah Marion Roberts, senior graduate teaching fellow at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, interviews experts who can help us understand why paying attention to bodies in teaching and learning spaces is important. The episodes explore how theories of the body make sense of social life and inequity; how learning is sensory, experiential, physical and emotional; how educators can incorporate embodied practices into their...

In September 2021, Derek Bruff had the opportunity to visit the Farminary at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. The Farminary is a working farm on the seminary campus that’s integrated in the seminary curriculum. This fall, for instance, a half dozen courses met regularly at the Farminary, combining work on the farm with theological education. In this episode, Derek talks with Nathan Stucky, director of the Farminary Project, and Emma Lietz Bilecky, Farminary Fellow at the...

Our newest Leading Lines producer, Julaine Fowlin, is back with another lively interview. She talks with Carl Moore about his passion for digital transformation in education, fostering culture change on a university campus, and his rather bold vision for the future of educational technology. Carl Moore is assistant chief academic officer at the University of the District of Columbia, and part time teacher at Temple University, the University of Southern California, and the Online Learning...

Tazin Daniels is an assistant director at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. She has a doctorate in medical anthropology and her current scholarship focuses on promoting equity and inclusion in teaching and in faculty development. She’s been practicing equity-focused teaching in online environments long before we were figuring out how to teach on Zoom during a pandemic, and she’s deeply committed to helping other instructors reflect on and improve...

Eunice Ofori is a senior instructional designer at the Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans. She has a PhD in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on instructional design and technology from Virginia Tech, and her career has focused on the use of instructional technology and sound pedagogy in a variety of teaching contexts. She’s also a good friend of podcast producer Julaine Fowlin, the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching’s very own assistant...

Welcome to the 100th episode of Leading Lines! For this momentous occasion, Derek Bruff reached out to Zoe LeBlanc, a Vanderbilt doctoral student who was interviewed way back during the first season (Episode 8) to see if she would come back on the podcast to talk about her career since that interview in 2016. Since finishing at Vanderbilt, Zoe has been a digital humanities developer at the Scholars Lab at the University of Virginia and a postdoctoral associate and Weld Fellow at the Center...

Brooke Ackerly and Kristin Michelitch, both political science professors here at Vanderbilt University, are editing a forthcoming special issue of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics focused on Wikipedia, the systematic knowledge gaps and biases it has, and efforts by university faculty to address those issues through student initiatives. In that issue, they reflect on their own experiences engaging their students as Wikipedia contributors, with benefits both to Wikipedia and...

On this episode of Leading Lines, producer Cliff Anderson brings us an interview with Morgan Ames, author of The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child, published in 2019 by MIT Press. One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, was a non-profit initiative launched in 2005 to bring low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, under the assumption that doing so would transform education in those countries. In the interview, Morgan Ames talks about the origin of...