Episode 11 - Fostering collaboration, empathy, and innovation: A conversation with Dr. Meghalee Das

Welcome back to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, where we explore the experiences, challenges, and strategies of dedicated educators. In this episode, host Eric Magrum sits down with Dr. Meghalee Das to discuss how principles of collaboration and user experience (UX) research can transform teaching and learning.

Dr. Das shares insights on:

• Building collaboration and trust in academic and workplace settings
• Applying UX research to enhance learning experiences
• Encouraging empathy and understanding in the classroom
• Fostering connection in both in-person and online environments

Tune in for an insightful conversation with Dr. Das as she reflects on the value of empathy-driven teaching and the power of thoughtful design in education.

Transcript

One of the qualities was that students would like teachers to be more empathetic. Empathy is a very core aspect of user experience research.

Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, an outlet created for continuous learning and actual insights for faculty. I'm your host, Eric Magrum, inviting you to join us in conversation with dedicated educators who share their experiences, challenges and effective solutions. Today, I am excited to welcome Dr. Meghalee Das, an assistant professor within the School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication here at James Madison University.

Meghalee has experience in technical communication, workplace collaboration and instructional design that I hope to leverage to help those tuning in today. Welcome, Meghalee, and thank you for being here with us today.

Hello, Eric, and thanks for having me here. I'm really excited.

So let's just jump right in. You study workplace collaboration. Can you walk us through what initially drew you to the topic and how you came to study it?

Yeah. Workplace collaboration stems, the interest in workplace collaboration stems from my academic and professional background, which is quite interdisciplinary. I am originally from India where I used to work as a journalist, and there was a lot of coordination that would happen across different teams scattered across the country.

As well as, when I came here in America, my initial background was in business management, and so I did an MBA, and there was a lot of group projects that would happen there. And anybody who has worked in a group project, whether it is in an academic setting or a workplace setting, knows that it can be a very satisfying experience, but also it can be, you know, there can be conflicts due to personalities, working styles, and it is there no matter like what industry you belong to. There are certain external conditions can sort of worsen some of those challenges and barriers.

So for example, there can be technology related challenges, where we know that teams can be scattered in different parts of the world, and they may not have the same infrastructure or the tech access, and that can create problems. There can be time zone issues, if it is a cross-cultural team that is globally distributed, cultural differences, as well as we talked about, personality differences and working styles. And so as a student, as well as a professional, I definitely have had the best of teams.

I'm still friends with some of those people. But yeah, there were times where there were issues. Sometimes we were able to resolve them, and sometimes they created problems.

And that affected trust, that affected the productivity, the workflow. And as a technical communicator, particularly a technical communicator interested in user experience, as well as an intercultural communication perspective, my goal has always been to create documents that are clear, that serve the purpose and goal of why we are creating that document, but also making sure that we understand our readers, our users really well. And so, because a lot of writing is done collaboratively, I think there is a need for more research on how to create more effective documents collaboratively, but also do it well in a fun way so that everybody has fun doing it.

So I guess that's kind of why the interest sort of...

Yeah, so you were saying some people have a really good experience, and that actually caught me by surprise, because honestly, every time somebody said group project, I thought, oh lord, help me.

It's rare.

Yes, and I think it's interesting, because it sounds like as a student, you're like, all right, this could be done better, or this was done really well, and I want to dive into the essential elements of that. So could you dive in to some of those essential elements? And I know you've recently wrote a book about this, and we're going to get to that, but could you just give a very quick oversight of, okay, if somebody's listening to this podcast, and they're going to tune in for the next 30 seconds, what do they need to know about creating effective collaboration?

Yeah, and there are, I think the problem happens because there are a lot of factors which create those barriers for effective collaboration. And there are some things which are very innate. It's like our personality, our character, our working style, and you put all these people together in a group who usually have not even met each other before, or they just maybe barely know each other in a workplace.

So I think these are some things that we encounter in the workplace, but as instructors who may have group projects assigned in our classes, and many classes do that, as instructors, there are, of course, certain steps that we can take to facilitate the process, and also make sure that our students can turn in the best work, but also are not unnecessarily stressed out. There are, again, certain steps that I can talk about as I talk about the book, but also the whole point is to create an environment of safety, productivity, fun, and also so that the goals of the project and the learning outcomes are met, because you can't just give a group project and then expect people to just start working. There are certain time in the semester where I think it should be assigned.

You can't give a group project in your first week. There has to be a certain plan on when you want to introduce it, how you want to select the team members. Are you going to let students pick members or are you going to pick them?

Then I have some strategies which I have found useful over the years. Then of course, once you have the team set up and they are working on their projects, how are you going to measure progress? How are you going to ensure that if somebody has an issue, how do they address it?

Accountability measures and leading up to that final deliverable that they have. I think there are certain fields and certain programs where group work is more common. For example, when I was doing my MBA, I think except my accounting class, probably every single course that I took during my MBA had a group project and it was just there.

Even like an economics class had a group project. So there will be some fields where group project and assigning group project is essential. Even as instructors, if we as instructors also feel uncomfortable doing it, we still have to do it because the field demands it.

Our job is to prepare students to have those experiences and be more familiar with those dynamics in an educational setting where they can make mistakes, and these are very low stakes environments, then pushing them out in the real world where they have to deal with it for the first time. That would be a motivating factor for me, even if I am not very comfortable with it, I think certain arguments can be made that we still have to include aspects of group work somewhere there because most of the workplaces that we know no matter what your field has some kind of group work, teamwork involved. However, I do understand that there can be certain hesitations, certain strategies that we can do better.

So for listeners who have been doing group work, but want to do better, I can share some strategies that have worked with me from an educational perspective and then I can kind of refer to the book and some of the things we have there too. So one of the first things that I do in any group work that I assign is, I first plan at what point do I want to assign the group work. Most courses have group work towards the second half of the course.

You know, initially you have like other assignments that they do. The reason is that it gives students time to know each other a little bit. I have a lot of in-class activities where I do these small group work that they do, like 10 points in-class activities, and they already start working with people in the class, and it creates camaraderie, it creates just this really fun atmosphere where they know it's just 10 points, it's a fun activity that they are doing, but they know each other, they get to see each other's working style, and it really helps them to know each other.

The second thing is, I have something called a team preference survey that I send to students. The main things that I ask there is that, what are some of their skills? So it could be maybe they are better editors, designers, writers, researchers, and I ask them to reflect on it, just like a multiple choice question, and also what role do they usually like to take in a team, or if they have any preferences.

I also ask them things like, is there any particular person that you really, really want to work with, or somebody that you don't want to work with? I directly ask them that, and I keep that question optional, whether they want to answer it or not, it's up to them. Based on the survey and my understanding of the students, the assignments that perhaps they have already completed, I also have kind of an understanding of the personalities at this point.

I create, I assign groups that way. I have always assigned groups myself. It just, I think, one, especially in undergrad, I think it's better to do that.

Maybe in graduate classes, you can ask graduate students to find people. But here, I have found it really useful and students actually like it when they already have a group. So I create the group based on some of those preferences and needs and things that they tell me.

And again, I keep some of those questions optional in case somebody doesn't want to share certain things. But giving them the opportunity to share certain needs, challenges, barriers, or anything that they want to share me as I create these groups.

Can I stop you there for a second? So a couple thoughts. So first, I love the idea.

You said, particularly if the fields demand it. And I think even if we're uncomfortable, we need to think about doing this group work because it really is something that's going to be useful. And I think, to be honest, my disdain for group work as myself being a student and then me becoming a faculty member, I've extended that to my classes mainly because I don't think I know how to do it very well.

So that's number one. But I also think along with that, the utility value is going to, as you talked about, enhance motivation for students if they know that I'm going to be a part of this medical team or I'm going to be a part of this business group or this or what not, I have to do this well. And if I sharpen those skills now, I'm going to be better at doing it then.

Instead of, I'm going to try to figure it out on the job. So I love that. My second question would be, or I guess comment, would be, it seems like you've been doing this for a while.

And I say that because my biggest hesitation and my knee jerk like, oh, oh, is, how do I effectively put them into groups? Because I feel like I would be the worst picker of groups. Like, okay.

And how long did that process take you to nail down? Like, okay, this sort of person with these preferences goes over here with these people tend to work well together. Or this one time I did this and it absolutely blew up in my face.

So let's not do that again. Can you talk to the listeners a little bit about that process?

That's, I would say, something that I keep learning. There's new things that I learn every semester. But I have, I will say, I don't have a fixed strategy to do that.

I think it's important that we stay flexible when we choose this. There are times, I would say, and I have done this for a while, I think I have had group projects in my classes for at least six years now. At least one class every semester has a group project.

And so, I have had groups where I put all the overachievers in one group. I have done that because in my experience, sometimes there are some students who are very type A personality, they need to do the things and they get very frustrated if they're somebody who's very chilled and laid back. So, and the result of that group, it is an excellent product that comes out.

And it also depends on the class and depends on the project. And I've done that. There can be lots of personality clashes, because everybody has an opinion there.

They are all overachievers, right? And so, it's really fun to see the dynamics that way. So that's one.

I have also balanced it, really. So there could be somebody who is perhaps struggling in class a little bit. And I have paired that with somebody that I have seen done really well, but I've also seen that they have a personality which is like very kind, and they communicate really well.

So it's pure mentorship, right? And that's one of the concepts that I have in my book, also. Because it's also not just about me, like, telling this is how you would work really well.

It's about them discovering and them developing those leadership skills, giving them the opportunities to do that. And so I think one, that skills survey or the team preference survey helps because now I know that, okay, I have a lot of researchers in this group. Let me put some designers and some editors.

So that's the thing. Like sometimes it's by personality, sometimes it by the behavior I see in class. And sometimes it is from the preferences that they have really said so that at the end of the day, there is a balance of personalities, skills, as well as what I think that I need to push sure a little bit.

So let me mix this up a little bit.

Thank you for speaking on that. Now, I didn't mean to derail your train of thought because you were going into the different aspects. And the first aspect, I believe, was putting them into groups.

Yes.

I think that there was another one after that.

And so once you figure out the groups, you know, they have various deliverables, it must be important to be, like, very clear about what those deliverables are, so that they know that. And then almost all my group projects have progress reports because in any industry job, you would have progress reports. And so sometimes I have four, depending on the length of the project.

Sometimes I may just have two. Sometimes these progress reports are group progress reports where they basically say all the work that has been done, what they are working on now and what's left. And there is, you know, like a small reflection that they do where they talk about what everybody has done.

Sometimes I even do this as an individual progress report. Again, it depends on the course and what my goals for that project are. So the progress reports, if it's individual, usually these are shorter, maybe two or three.

And again, this is a chance for students to, if there are some issues happening, they can subtly talk about those things and it gives me an opportunity to intervene if necessary. That's usually my last option. Unless it's like a really, really bad situation, I usually encourage them to resolve those things themselves.

But the progress reports, it's really important. Students love actually writing that because it helps them see what they still have to do. It helps them make timelines.

And so usually, just to give some background, most of my project reports, sorry, group projects start with a proposal where they already have a timeline and things like that. And so now they, in the progress report, can actually show that, oh, have we met the things that we put in our Gantt chart or our timeline or have we missed certain things? Have we assigned the responsibilities correctly or not?

Or do we need to move things around? So these are the things that happens over the course of the project that they do. It could be like a month or so.

So the progress report helps with that. And in the end, you know, after the deliverables are all over, there is also like a team feedback form. And that is also something I say right in the beginning, that remember, there is a team feedback form where you will be reading each other and yourself.

You will be talking about your contributions. And there are usually 10 points there. So like attended meetings was courteous, or made meaningful contributions in meetings, or met all the deadlines that we set.

So there are like 10 points there, and they give each other points out of 10, including themselves. And so that keeps people a little more accountable, I think, because they know that at the end, I as an instructor will get to see whether they have done the work or not. And when I'm grading the work, it also helps me see that if all three people in a group of four is saying like, this person has not done anything, then maybe I need to have a conversation with that person.

But overall, if you do all the other steps, I have seen, at least in my experience, very rarely are there like major conflicts. And then if students can figure out how to do that, they actually enjoy the group work.

Yeah, I feel, as somebody who doesn't adopt a lot of group work, I feel like, I think there's obvious benefits to group work, but I think I'm getting stuck in my mind's eye, I'm getting stuck in the mud, for lack of a better term, of all these things. And man, it'd just be easier to do an individual project. But I could also see where once you get this up at cruising altitude, and once you create the system, it almost runs on itself.

It runs by itself. And it's actually probably less work. It's more work on the front end.

Exactly, yeah.

But once you get it up to cruising altitude, it could probably be far more rewarding. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Absolutely. I definitely want to recognize the labor that goes as instructor in creating some of these strategies. A lot of my teaching strategy and my pedagogical style has that almost like research in a way that I'm trying to understand my students and their goals and connect it to the learning outcomes.

And so sometimes I have to create these surveys or I have to like now, grade these progress reports and read it. But these are mechanisms which actually at the end make my work easier. I mean, you are grading like six group projects and you have like 20 individual projects.

So if you look at the time you're spending in grading and things like that, it eventually balances out. And my goal, it's not to have group projects just for the sake of having group projects. So for example, I teach first year writing here as one of the courses.

And in my first year writing class, in JMU, I don't have a group project. I just focus on writing. These are students who have just come to college, right?

At this point, I want to hone those research media literacy writing skills. And in my previous institutions, there was a group project aspect, but here I don't do that. Most of the group projects that I have are maybe for undergrad, major courses in technical communication.

And again, because my field, technical communication, definitely necessitates that I have to have some kind of group project. It's a writing communication field where you're not just communicating with your writing colleagues, but also like with the software engineers, with users, with marketeers. And so like it is important to develop those skills.

So that is usually my rationale of like, yes, not all courses perhaps need it, but then is it going to help them achieve those learning outcomes better? It all comes to those learning outcomes in the end.

Very cool. So switching gears a little bit, we've talked about group work and collaborative work, which I've enjoyed, by the way. I'm easing up, and I'm even thinking of ways right now that I could infuse this into my classroom, successfully or unsuccessfully at that.

So you've done a fair amount of work in the online teaching space, specifically with regard to inclusivity. Can you tell us a little bit about this? And then again, the practical highlights or those knowledge nuggets that folks could take away and immediately implement?

Yes, and are you speaking more about like from an instructional point of view? Or still like collaboration?

I think I'm thinking, I realize I took a right hand turn and I may have even went in the other direction. In a metaphorical sense, obviously. I think I'm thinking on as the instructor thinking about online teaching, or even if I'm not online teaching, so much of what we do already is online.

For example, even if I deliver class in person, everything's on canvas. It's not like, all right, here's your project paper, if you will. So how can I do that well?

And even if there's talking to two different types of folks or camps here, so the folks who are online teaching and the folks who are utilizing online teaching to supplement their in-person teaching.

Yes, I think online teaching, especially post-COVID, has become such an integral part of any university. There were always distance courses, online education, but the number, the enrollment numbers that we see in online classes is definitely high, and it just went up during the COVID years when, of course, we know that we had to do it. And then it stayed.

Most universities have either synchronous or asynchronous online classes, especially in the summer. Right now, a lot of students are taking online classes. And as you mentioned, that because so many aspects of our teaching is online, whether it is learning management system like Canvas or Blackboard, or we are using perhaps tools for engagement and stuff like that.

And so I think that some aspects of online learning is going to stay. And as instructors, it will benefit us if we are more familiar with some of the tools, technologies and strategies. So my dissertation project, which also led to a few publications, was primarily about inclusive online learning.

The demographic that I was particularly studying was international, multilingual, cross-cultural students. And some of the findings from that project, as well as the resultant recommendations, helped me create this framework, which I call the SEAL Framework, or Culturally Inclusive Online Learner Experience Framework. And so the goal was not to just create a framework that helps a certain group of people, but then research as well as practice says repeatedly that when we create strategies that helps our most underrepresented and marginalized students, it helps everybody.

It helps all the students because you are looking at everyone's needs here and are creating strategies accordingly. So inclusivity is definitely important, and there are steps that we can take, whether it's in terms of our teaching strategies or tools, and I can elaborate on that if you would want me to.

Yeah, you said something very powerful. You said, and I'm going to butcher it, but I'm going to ask you to repeat it, which was when we focus our teaching on the students who, for lack of a better term, they need the most, it helps everyone. Yeah.

Can you speak to that a little bit more? Can you unpack that?

Sure. The students in our classroom, the classroom is a microcosm of society in general. We have students from all sorts of backgrounds, whether it is various levels of technological experience, whether they are from a different country, or they have different cognitive abilities, their disabilities, they're different types of people that exist in that classroom.

And as instructors, we usually have a plan, we have a syllabus, we have strategies, but sometimes, it's not possible for us to, okay, we can't think of every single student in the 20, 30, 40 classes. We often might think that, okay, let me have a time-tested strategy and apply that for everybody. But that does not work.

It is neither efficient nor helpful. And then as an instructor, I don't want some of those underrepresented students to fall through the cracks. I want to create strategies.

Yes, there's a little bit of labor involved in finding out what those barriers are, what those needs are. But I think that once we do that, the strategies that we are applying, whether it's teaching, engagement, participation, or just understanding our students, it helps us understand all our students. And there is better engagement, better participation, better just exchange happening among the different student groups.

And it just leads to a more meaningful learning experience. And as an instructor, even if I have to put in some work to understand my students better and develop those strategies, I think it is a far more satisfying experience as an instructor also. And especially because I'm a UX or user experience researcher, UX as you know, it's a field where this focus is on the user, whether it's a user of technology or an audience, reader, student, anybody, the user.

But in UX, we don't just focus on the cognitive needs of the user. So we just don't focus on efficiency and usability and what they want, but also how they feel, whether they are satisfied with that experience or not, whether it was memorable for them or not, how they feel about it and not just what they think. And so a lot of my work when it comes to understanding my students and developing these inclusive strategies is a user experience-based strategy.

And I developed something called the learner heuristic. I can just break it down for you. There are seven steps in that, but it emerged from the CIO framework, where the framework is more of a theoretical framework that supports why this is necessary, and the heuristic is more like a practical application of what instructors can do.

Would you like me to elaborate on the heuristic?

Yeah, so when we say framework, I know that sounds... Is that just like a scaffolding for better understanding? Is that...

Yeah, it's kind of like a theory. So just to give some context, for my dissertation project, which for now is my biggest project, I conducted surveys, interviews as well as focus groups. And then I also did a usability test of where international students who are multilingual, multicultural, they performed certain tasks using the Zoom software.

And so these tasks were directly related to tasks that they would have to do in an online class, in a synchronous online class. And so that way, my research focused on a few things. One of those things was what are the needs of the students, what are the challenges that they are facing, including technical challenges, and then what are their expectations in terms of instructor qualities, online instructor qualities, and also their expectations in terms of online instructional strategies.

And from that, from those findings, I created the SEOL framework. But then the framework talks about those issues. It is an analysis of those issues and the expectations.

But then the point then comes, okay, now we know it, what do we do now? How can we actually resolve some of those issues as instructors? And that's where the learner heuristic comes.

Got it, okay. So, that seven step process, will that cover some of the online teaching strategies? Yeah, let's go through that then, if that would be helpful.

Yeah, and again, some of these strategies, I feel can be applied to any class. In fact, I have a few publications where I have used some of those strategies and I will share some examples. And I've used that in any class for that matter.

And that's one thing I find is online teaching is effective teaching just in an online space. And that's one thing that I used to say, oh no, that's for online teachers, that's not for me. But I think what we're all talking about is effective pedagogy.

Exactly.

That's what we're talking about.

Exactly.

So please continue.

Yes, and there are obviously going to be certain additional aspects of online teaching because the medium of teaching is different. And there's the technical aspect that comes which kind of creates some barriers, but also affordances and things that help. And so there are some strategies which I feel are very easily transferable and some are not when it comes to online and in-person teaching.

But there are definitely certain common strategies. And again, as you mentioned, at the end, it is effective pedagogy with some extra elements. And so the seven-step learner heuristic, where again, I wanted the focus to be on the student and not on the instructional, the instructor or the instructional process here.

So L begins with learning about students' needs, goals, expectations, things like that. So for example, when I take online classes, especially in the earlier days when online classes were not so popular, I used to do something called an Online Class Readiness Survey. And so it is especially important to do that in summer.

And again, my participants at that time were international students. And a lot of international students go home during summer and they take classes from there. So some of the questions that would be there in the Online Readiness Survey would be what technologies are available there, because we know that Google might not open in a different country.

Or so if you want to have a Google Doc where you want to give some kind of project, they might not be able to do that. They would need VPN and stuff. Time zone.

So if you want to have an in-class activity, can they even participate in that? Or do you want to have more asynchronous assignments? So it helps you plan your activities and your course prep that way.

There will also be questions about just in general, what is their technical experience? Have they used the software or not? Things like that.

So that is something. And again, in general, what are their needs? What are their goals?

Understanding our users. E stands for empathize with barriers and challenges. One of the instructor qualities that appeared in my survey or in the dissertation project, one of the qualities was that students would like teachers to be more empathetic.

And empathy is a very core aspect of user experience research, because unless we put ourselves in our users' shoes, essentially, or our audience's shoes, we are not able to create the documents and the products and the services which will cater to their needs and expectations. And so empathy is not just a concept, but it's also a tool that we use. The next is...

Can I pause you for a second? So, I can hear in the back of the professoriate, if you will, I can hear saying, wait, what's the difference between being empathetic and essentially just giving in to whatever a student wants?

Yeah, absolutely. And so I have actually heard that from other instructors also. And, you know, it's a matter of personality.

There are some people who teach in a certain way, and some people may have a certain way of teaching, where they are like, well, I am the expert, and I know that this is something that they have to learn. And that is true. You know, as an expert, as a teacher, you have your strategies that have worked in the, and you understand the field, so you know what to teach.

But empathy is not this cognitive aspect. Empathy is about understanding what the students might be going through and making it intentional. This is not something that is, you know, something that you just do on the side.

My argument is that if students, if you want students to succeed, you cannot just focus on what they're turning in, in the classroom, because there are so many different things that are influencing them, their motivation, the amount of like focus they have, there are news events that might affect people. And in online classes, if they are globally distributed, like I had a classmate who had like, you know, like bombs falling in her country, and this was as a student. And so, you know, things that are affecting people.

And as instructors, if we are not empathetic towards those things, if we are not flexible regarding certain things, then what differentiates us from artificial intelligence and other technology? I mean, I would be very, very supportive, and I want to argue that we, in fact, need to make it part of our strategy and not just as an afterthought. And it should be there because, yes, there might be a little bit of work.

It might sometimes clash with our personalities if we are not, you know, that kind of, you know, just a personality level. But the payoffs are so much better. You see students really, like, engaged.

You see students sending you those emails that no one has ever said this to me before. I appreciate it so much. And so there are certain things.

If I can make students interested in my content, but also love doing what they are doing, how can I expect them to do it when I'm, like, so detached and not really understanding their environmental conditions and things like that? So that is part of my intentional strategy that empathize with those barriers and challenges because only then you can come up with effective teaching strategies. Yes, so A was for adopting tools and strategies to reduce barriers and increase usability.

Because online teaching has a technical aspect, we have to make sure that we adopt tools and strategies which are usable, which are accessible. And if needed, we can either share resources where they can learn how to use those things. And if needed, even demonstrate how to use certain tools.

So for example, when I do some collaborative work, in my very first time when I used a Google Doc, I kind of just assumed that students know how to work on it collaboratively. But many students didn't. Some did, some did not.

So just to show them like, okay, here's how you comment, here's how you review, here's how you can edit, or here's how you can just like read, but you can't change things. So unless you keep some time for demonstrating some tools, we can't just expect that all the students will know how to use those tools. R stands for reviewing instructional strategies through feedback.

An important part of UX research is that we always want to make sure that we seek feedback, and not just at the end, but throughout the design process or throughout the creation process. Many instructors have things like mid-semester evaluations. I always have that.

I have had surveys where it was just things that students wrote, but over the years, I have actually used it almost as an activity that they do in class, but it has five questions. In this mid-semester evaluation, not only do I ask students to give feedback on me, my teaching, and what they're learning from this course, but also reflection on themselves, like are you going to the writing center, or are you assigning more time in reading the materials? And then I read those things, like people, like the students will say things like, I guess I could spend more time reading, perhaps I'm not doing that as much as I should be.

And it gives students pause, and it gives me a chance to apply some of those strategies to this class itself rather than the next class, at the end, when we get evaluations. And so next we have N, which is nurturing a learning space of trust belonging. And so this is the part where the inclusive aspect of teaching comes.

Again, this is my pedagogical style, this is my philosophy. I have these activities that I have at least like two or three times a semester where I do these check ins. I might have, so if some folks know that baby hippo Mudeng, who was really famous, once I'll do these activities where I'll have like nine pictures of Mudeng and her various expressions, and I'll just ask them, which Mudeng are you?

And then they will like write these things and like little notes. Sometimes I do this activity called, it's called a bud, rose, and thorn activity, which is basically like students anonymously and collaboratively write on a Google Doc, something that they are looking forward to, something that they are really happy with right now, and something that they are struggling with right now. These activities, because they are anonymous, students are very forthcoming in what they want to write there.

It also helps them see that they are not alone. Like it helps them see like, oh, there's like other people struggling with a class or with something. And we have a general discussion about these things.

There are also other tools like Padlet, you can do that, you can add GIFs and photos. And so yeah, these are things that I do only maybe like two or three times a semester. But again, it helps build that community and it helps create that space of safety.

So I want to push back slightly.

Yes.

So I also do that. And I do a close your eyes, tell me how we're doing on a scale of zero to 10. Zero being, I need to not be here, verse 10, like I'm salivating at the mouth to hear the next word.

And it really gets like, and this is usually after like, maybe I'm lecturing or we're doing something. However, I can also see some folks having the perspective of, that's not part of my job. My job is to deliver the content.

And I think, I don't want to give the answer away, but I think the answer resides in your approach is more a user X approach, a user design approach, as opposed to a more traditional instructional design that focuses more on the content, literally whatever the content of the course is, as opposed to the learners who are covering the content. Would that be accurate?

Yes, yes. And you know, if there are instructors who want to have that approach, and that is not a wrong approach, that is an approach, perhaps it has worked for them. And again, as I mentioned, there can be like personality differences also and a pedagogical philosophy that they follow.

And so, as somebody who studies pedagogy, and you have done sports pedagogy too, you know, we are always trying to figure out something better because there can't be like this one solution-fits-all approach that has existed since 50 years. And well, the world is changing, our students are changing. And in that moment, I think it is important to be adaptable and flexible and come up and try these different things.

And so, I do not want to criticize someone for that approach that they have and may think that, well, that's not my job, I'm not a psychologist. And that is true. But we are humans, we are people.

Our students are not just producers of assignments, but they are people too. And so, this is again my approach. And I, again, coming back to the importance of being kind and empathetic, and I just saw Superman and it's like kindness is punk rock now.

So, there's a line there. And so, I think as instructors, as people, I would like to see my students as humans who, yes, their goal is to create, you know, learn things and create these assignments, but they are also people, and once in a while, a check-in helps create that community. It helps create trust, because a classroom is also a team.

A classroom is also, you know, we are collaborating together. And without trust and safety, you're not going to have a successful collaboration. And so, there's two more.

Perfect. If you want me to continue.

Yeah, absolutely. Please do.

So, the last two ones are ENR, which is E stands for Engage Students Through Activities Tools Collaboration. So, one of the findings that I had in my study, especially in online classes, engagement was extremely like one important need, because it is so easy to get distracted. I get distracted in a meeting.

And so, like, the more people do things, the better, you know, you can keep them engaged. And in my study, you know, I give examples because there are tools which can be games and polls kind of tools, very popular among students. There can be writing and collaboration tools, so that there will be things like, you know, working together on a Google Doc or say a Zoom whiteboard, a Miro.

There are other tools like that. And of course, there are just in general, there are video conferencing technology engagement tools also. So, for example, my study was mainly on Zoom.

But then like within Zoom, you have things like raise hand. So you can have a policy that, listen, if you have a question, please use that so that you have like, not just one person just, you know, talking. You can have emojis, you can use the chat, you can use the whiteboard annotation.

So maybe show students how to use those things and make it clear in the policy. I'm sorry, do you have a question?

No, I was, I'm sure you saw it on my face. So, my thought with those things goes, the tools, because that's what, I think about it obviously from an instructor perspective, but I started teaching during COVID all online. My first entire year of teaching in higher ed was all online.

And the only thing that would get me, the person who's supposed to be delivering content, excited about delivering the content was I had to buy an external microphone. So, one that you're speaking with something similar, much less advanced and much more financially feasible for me at the time. And the feedback I got on that, the quality of the audio, and for listeners, we're talking about like a $27 mic.

We're not talking about a $400. We're not talking about, we're talking south of like $50 here.

Yeah.

Made such a big difference. Yep. And I think those little things, they go a really long way.

And I don't have studies to back this up. I know there is evidence out there that suggests even audio, the quality of audio is actually even more important than the quality of video.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And I think that goes a long way. And I think that goes with, and I don't want to steal your thunder for the UX, but the user experience design. They are experiencing whatever it is we're trying to teach them, whether that's through lecture, whether that's through video, whether that's through a picture.

And the quality of that matters, particularly for their attention and their engagement. Because if we don't have their attention, they can't be engaged. If they aren't engaged, they aren't going to learn.

Yeah. And one of the needs that students in my study mentioned was good equipment. Really?

What was mentioned if you don't know?

So good equipment and high-speed internet access. So for them, it was like if there's a lot of lag, if we cannot hear the professor microphone, it's very difficult to concentrate. And they actually said the same thing.

We don't expect them to have these very high-end equipment, but then things like a microphone, video, sorry, webcam, and then reliable, good quality internet. These are some of the basic things. I have a few colleagues who during COVID made a little studio for themselves and they invested in certain tools and things.

And again, we can have a conversation about it where, will we be reimbursed for things like that? Or is this a financial cost for me? And also training.

And one of the things I talk about in my study is that a lot of people were just kind of pushed into online learning. Like you mentioned, like COVID, not just online. No training, nothing, but you do need some training.

And so again, because there is a learning curve here, there are some fields where, yeah, you know, as a student, I was taking online classes, so I kind of, it was quite smooth for me, but some of my colleagues struggled. It was stressful. It was like, okay, you can't just transfer in-person strategies online.

And so is the university going to have more professional development activities and events where you train people for these things and also compensate instructors for the additional labor that goes into designing these online experiences, whether it is to learn a technology so that they can teach it better or whether they're investing in equipment. I think that is really important and goes together with this step.

Yeah, I could talk about that for about four days, but so I want you to keep going on.

Yes, the last one is, you know, refine. So iteration is an extremely important part of user experience as well as the design thinking process. And I will connect it a little bit to my upcoming book also.

So R stands for Refine Instructional Design Strategies as an iterative process, which means that something that we perhaps do at the end of a semester where we have our evaluations or we think like, oh, this didn't really work, maybe I need to modify it. But then once we have all this information, if we do not make those modifications or continue what worked, then we kind of stay stagnant. And as an instructor, that's the last thing I ever want to be.

I don't ever want to be stagnant because it is important to identify the things that are working, but also the things that perhaps did not work that well, that can be modified. And if we have all this information that students are telling this, and I think it's important, I can use my expertise as a pedagogy researcher, but I can also listen to what my students are saying, or perhaps, you know, everybody did really bad in an assignment, but perhaps my prompt was not clear then. So make those changes accordingly.

And I talk about refining and iteration, and just to connect it with the upcoming book. So the book that I wrote, again, is specifically about collaborative writing. The title of the book is Collaborative Writing at Work, a playbook for teams.

So that one is more focused on a workplace setting. But as instructors, as I mentioned, who are training these students to eventually go into the workplace, there are certain strategies that we can apply in our classrooms also. So just to give a quick summary, so the book which I co-wrote with Jason Tham from Texas Tech University and Joe Moses from University of Minnesota Twin Cities takes a user experience approach focusing on design thinking and agile project management methodologies.

So just like Learner Heuristic which I just mentioned, the design thinking process consists of six main steps. Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and iterate. So what we did in this book was it shows workplace teams how to empathize with our users as well as team members and define the problems really clearly, whatever you are trying to resolve while you are creating these documents.

Ideate creatively, collaboratively, prototype rapidly, your solutions or the document that you create or the product that you create, and then test it. Anytime you are creating a software or a document, you always have to test it before you release it to the public. And then at the end, you iterate.

You continuously iterate, and there are certain steps that we can do in order to do that. And these exact steps, these exact methodologies can apply in how we design our courses, how we modify our courses or update our courses, say once the semester is over. And so as I mentioned, the classroom for me is essentially a collaboration.

It's a collaborative experience with students, sometimes even fellow teachers. And so I think there are certain transferrable strategies and skills in all these different projects.

I can't reiterate enough how much an iterative process, and that essentially means just using feedback to make it better, has impacted my teaching. Even as simple as, hey, did that analogy land or do we need another one? Or do we need a different example?

And I say this because, again, as I've illustrated, I am more of the user experience design approach as opposed to the classical instructional approach. But I do think it's critical just even if the very smallest, and this isn't the reason I do it, but because the students feel a part of the learning process, because they are, they are a critical piece of, and even if you were in business, you'd be, if we're going to design the water bottle in front of you, okay, do we like the picture on the front? Do we like the cap?

Do we not? And then you say, oh, no, we should change it this way. That way the user has a piece of the puzzle, and they also, other people are, if we have enough of a sample, they're going to create a better design.

They're going to create or help you create a better class, which I think that's why I've never taught the same class twice. It always changes, even if it's a marginal change, or somewhat trivial, but somewhat trivial could mean the difference between somebody understanding a concept and not understanding a concept.

Absolutely, and it's so great to hear someone else also like doing that, and I know other colleagues of mine do that too, because sometimes I feel like we have research responsibilities, we have service responsibilities, and there's a lot of burnout that sometimes happens, and we're like, I'm just going to do the same thing that I did. But then I think, at least for me, teaching is where I get the joy, and like, okay, I have this research, well, let me apply it and see if it's working or not, and then to see students having that spark in their eyes, like, that is the satisfying part. And so, yes, I would definitely recommend iterating, taking the feedback, making those changes, and it's part of me growing as a teacher, too.

So the burnout part, I think that's a big thing, and that's where I very much live by Occam's razor concept. And to me, sometimes, unless I get excited about an idea, I'm probably not going forward with the idea. But this is an idea, like the collaborative work and the iterative design that has got me really excited, simply because I'm taking the real-time feedback and I'm going to implement it immediately.

And that's where the example you use of the mid-semester feedback, I know a lot of different professors who use that, but even within that, you don't have to have weekly surveys, but hey, how are things going? Just two minutes, how are things going? I mean, are we, like, are we, give me a sense of how things are going, are we liking or not liking, what's going well, what's not going so well, and how can I do it different?

And you would be shocked how students respond, or at least I have been shocked with how, wait, you actually asked me, you asked me, the person who's taking the class, how I can make it better. I'm like, yeah, because you're part of making this thing better, the big engine, if you will.

And it comes back to the thing you mentioned earlier, where, yes, I am the content expert. I know what you need to learn to succeed in this field. But then just knowing that content doesn't help, how I teach it, whether it's landing or not, that is also important.

And how will I know it if I don't ask for feedback?

And I think it's akin to a master chef. Okay, I might make the same piece of meat or tofu or whatever, but if you come back and you say, hey, if you present the plate like this, it tastes better. Why would I not do that?

I'm gonna deliver similar content, I'm gonna cook the meat or the tofu, whatever, the same way, but all I have to do is change the orientation of this little leaf or this garnish thing and it tastes better. Let's do that. Why would we not do that?

Stay tuned for another episode with Meghalee in the coming weeks.