Teaching Beyond the Podium Podcast Series
Get inspired by members of the University of Florida community as they discuss tips and strategies for creating a quality learning experience.
Teaching Beyond the Podium Podcast Series
Interface 2026 Highlights
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Our annual Interface Teaching conference is an opportunity for educators to share their best practices and strategies for teaching and learning. In this special episode, you'll hear presenters from the 2026 Interface conference share key takeaways from their talks on topics like mentorship, experiential learning, mixed experience classrooms, and more!
Featured Guests:
1. Drew Feigum and Isaiah Fetterman, Center for Online Innovation and Production
2. Dr. Feihong Wang, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Dr. Soo Ahn, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
3. Dr. Rui Tammy Huang, College of Education
4. Dr. Becky Piazza, and Truly Hardemon, College of Public Health and Health Profession
5. Dr. Zhiyong Drew Cheng, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
6. Shashank Santosh, Top Hat
7. May Mansy, College of Engineering
Hello, and welcome to the Teaching Beyond the Podium podcast series. hosted by the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Florida. My name is Melina Jimenez, and today's episode is a little different than our usual episodes. Every year, we host our annual Interface Teaching Conference, which is an opportunity for educators from UF and other institutions to come together and share their best practices and strategies for teaching and learning. You will hear from a variety of people, such as instructional designers, professors, and production managers from a wide range of fields such as Education, Food Science and Human Nutrition, and organizations such as the Center for Online Innovation and Production. Drew Feigum and Isaiah Fetterman at the Center for Online Innovation and Production, or COIP, presented on recording strategies both at home and in the studio. They can help instructors who want to improve the quality and effectiveness of recorded lectures.
Drew Feigum:Basically, ways that we're able to enhance people that come into studios across across campus, but also remote recordings and just ways to ease their anxiety going in to talk and during, so they can focus on delivering their content, where they're not having to worry about the tech or where they're going, and they can just worry about presenting their content since they're the content specialists.
Melina Jimenez:I asked Drew and Isaiah how they make instructors feel comfortable.
Drew Feigum:I think it takes more than one time in a studio or remote. What we try to do is we have a session, if it's online where we go through all the steps, introduce ourselves, and let them do a test recording after we went through all the settings and everything. So it kind of gives them kind of a beta test. So if it if it's great and it and it works, then we keep it. If not, we can tweak it, and then it's good. And same thing in the studio. That's more of a nervousness because you have other people around you in unfamiliar space. If you've never done it, a big thing is they don't have the actual feedback from real students if they're used to a residential course, so usually just get them going. Maybe a piece of chocolate will help, or some coffee waiting for them in the morning. But other than that, just really try to get them to be themselves and more in a relaxed, fun environment.
Isaiah Fetterman:Yeah, and simply just by having certain things prepared beforehand, or like if you're recording at home, we can just handle all the tech stuff and make sure it's all set as it should be with several like recommended recordings and tech, so that when you get to actually recording, it's nice and simple, nice and straightforward.
Drew Feigum:We really try to get their personalities to come out, so it's like if you say this, then say that. If you talk with your hands, talk with your hands, smile, and really try to get them to focus on their content, so much that even during multiple recordings, I can even tell what their not least favorite subject matter might be in a series of recordings just by the difference in their tone. And so we try to push up the ones that they don't like as much, so that they match everything else.
Isaiah Fetterman:And on the technology side, just removing unnecessary distractions and low quality mishaps that people may have, just so that the students can focus on the instructor, focus on the content, and not be distracted by poor environments, poor tech, and poor setups.
Drew Feigum:And another small piece of that is they don't have to be perfect. They're not a robot. It's not AI. So mess ups, we don't encourage them to mess up, but we encourage them to if they do mess up to power through. It's more natural, and it also I think adds more connectivity to the students because they're a real person. It's not like stop rewind, let me re-say that. You're not going to do that in a residential course.
Melina Jimenez:If you want to work with Drew and Isaiah on Our next guest presented on innovative practices for large your own recorded lectures, you can find them on the UF COIP website. enrollment asynchronous online courses. Feihong Wang, Associate Instructional Professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Soo Ahn, Instructional Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, along with Paloma Rodriguez from the Office of Global Learning, and Larisa Olesova in the College of Education, did their presentation together. But we are going to hear from Dr. Wang and Dr. Ahn on three teaching strategies to explore global and cultural connections.
Soo Ahn:Our session focuses on practical strategies for global learning in large online courses, especially when traditional models such as a study abroad aren't really feasible.
Feihong Wang:Our sessions emphasize intercultural learning. So basically, we are all sharing about strategies to boost intercultural learning. So, for example, Larisa used a hybrid approach and designed intercultural learning activities, get students to have physical experience, having field trip to museums or libraries to increase their intercultural exposure and also learning, but also do the reflection online.
Soo Ahn:I focus on experience-based global learning that doesn't rely on international partners or synchronous interaction using everyday experiences like food, art, and access to food to foster perspective-taking at scale.
Feihong Wang:Sue's approach is based on students' own lived
experience:what they eat, what they see, what they assume, and then challenge students to reinterpret those experience to expand their intercultural learning. And in my class, I offer virtual exchange opportunity for my students to be connected with students from another country of a completely different culture, to have this experiential learning of cultural differences and similarity, and then to get boosted in their intercultural learning, so I think all our activities increase and boost connections and then relevance in student learning about intercultural aspects and knowledge and skills.
Soo Ahn:In addition to these three panelists, we also have Paloma Rodriguez from the Office of Global Learning, and then she provides some information about the resources available on campus for faculty members who likes to explore global learning.
Melina Jimenez:I asked why instructors would find these strategies beneficial for their classrooms. Dr. Wang explains,
Feihong Wang:Students do not need to pay or go to, you know, physical places to do the exchange, to do the global learning, and so they can just either through connecting virtually with students from another country or using the online free resources or on-campus resources to get exposure to another culture, and then to do intercultural learning. This also push us to really have intentional design of our courses, and then with very clear learning outcomes and structured reflection and scalable assessment, and ultimately make our courses stronger, more thoughtful, and more impactful in our course design and implementation. Intercultural learning activities for large online courses is not only doable; it's also beneficial, and it's very impactful for students and for instructors ourselves. It's fulfilling as well. So I encourage all the faculty to pursue intercultural learning.
Soo Ahn:Overall, our session emphasizes that global learning can look different depending on course context, but it's absolutely possible even in large online environments. We hope that this podcast encourages listeners to see internationalization as flexible, creative, and accessible.
Melina Jimenez:Professor Ahn loves sharing her passion for global exchange throughout the year by leading workshops, modeling interdisciplinary collaboration, and encouraging faculty to engage with resources on campus.
Soo Ahn:Listeners can learn more through the Center for Teaching Excellence, a faculty workshop series that I offer every year, and especially in coming fall, the Fall 2026, I will team up with Feihong and Larisa for the workshop as well as the UF Office of Global Learning, and in this workshop we will focus specifically on global learning strategies for large online courses, and we'll talk about virtual exchange, experience-based global learning, and hybrid models with concrete examples and design guidance. We really encourage faculty to join us, regardless of discipline or course format. And for more structured training, the Office of Global Learning provides many great trainings and workshops for faculty. So I strongly recommend faculty member who listen this check it out on their website.
Melina Jimenez:You can learn more about these four presenters on the Center for Teaching Excellence website. If you've encountered a range of skills or proficiencies among your students, differentiation of learning is a strategy that emphasizes choice, transparency, and learner agency, Rui Tammy Huang, Clinical Assistant Professor of Educational Technology and Computer Science Education, and the Program Coordinator for the Computer Science Education Program, shares her strategy.
Rui Tammy Huang:In my course, I use a three-level assignment structure, while approaches like MTSS also use tiered design and often focus on addressing learner, learning gaps. This model takes an asset-based perspective. It starts from what learners bring and designs a progression that allows students to engage with meaningful challenge using a leveling up structure. It's almost like a gamification approach, so this approach enhances students' engagement by reducing their anxiety and giving students a sense of autonomy. Instead of everyone completing the same task at the same level, students work through the structure where they can take on challenges that feel both achievable and also allowing for productive struggle, and the leveled design is also fine-tuned to align with their competency levels. So putting together these efforts, this supports like two key motivational needs identified by
self-determination theory:autonomy and competence, so which in turn will drive higher student engagement. For example, in a class I taught after completing the level one course, about 39% of those submissions achieved level two and level three. That suggests a meaningful number of students chose to go beyond the minimum when the design supported it, and then the approach also supports more inclusive learning environments. In these mixed experience classrooms, a single pathway often leaves some students, like, overwhelmed and other students underchallenged. In this model, students first complete the fundamental level, and then they decide whether to level up into extension or challenge levels. So the learning objectives remain shared, but then the evidence of learning can vary across spectrum, from fundamental application to like more sophisticated application. Again, the data from my class showed that about 81% of the higher level completions came from students with intermediate or advanced background, and 29% from novice who had no prior programming backgrounds, so that also reinforces the value of leveled choice, while also highlighting that the goal is not to bring all students to the same level, but to support meaningful growth based on where they start.
Melina Jimenez:If you want to learn more about Dr. Huang's work, check out her faculty bio on the College of Education page. Thoughtful instructional design was a common thread at this year's Interface Conference, and our next guest, Clinical Assistant Professor Becky Piazza, and Instructional Designer Truly Hardemon, both from the College of Public Health and Health Profession, explain how learning connects to the world outside the classroom, and how student input factors in.
Becky Piazza:We're in health professions, so the Department of Occupational Therapy wants to give our students experiential learning opportunities, hands-on learning opportunities, lots of performance-based assessment, working with patients, but trying to scaffold low stakes opportunities to help them get comfortable with that, and so working with instructional design, you know, here I have these ideas. My background is as a treating occupational therapist turned into professor. How do I teach the students these interpersonal communication skills, confidence, marrying competence with confidence, and what does this look like for planning something with learning objectives, and how do I assess that they actually are getting out of this what I hope they're getting out of it. I of course think it's important, and but unfortunately, just me thinking it's important isn't good enough to to justify the whole thing. So working with instructional design specifically, Truly, I kind of pitched this idea of working with OT and physical therapy, and getting our students off-site, and working on not just patient care skills, but really communication, teamwork, articulating roles and responsibilities, shared values and ethics as healthcare professionals, and kind of working backwards in working with instructional design. Goodness, I mean none of this would exist without instructional design from creating a shared Canvas platform, creating content in a way that made it easy for students across two institutions. Our work is Santa Fe College with UF, so accessing Canvas across two institutions, creating the formatting and assessment so that shared goals were met. The pedagogy behind the whole thing. I mean, I could go on and on about instructional design. I had a good idea, and and Truly and her team actually makes it happen.
Truly Hardemon:One of the main things that came out of all of the interprofessional education we do, but particularly this simulation, is how to translate how an expert thinks about things, to the students who are learning those skills, and so they were interacting in a simulation of what an interprofessional team looks like out in the real world. But before that, they got to see videos of working pairs of physical therapists and occupational therapists that work together every day and how they interact and what's important to them in that relationship, and then at the actual site, the simulated clients were practitioners. They were occupational therapists and physical therapists, and so the students got the opportunity to interact with them on the case, but also to get feedback from them afterwards, and so it was just this nice cycle of giving and taking throughout the lifespan of a career. I don't know.
Becky Piazza:Yeah, for sure. And really, you think about inclusivity and accessibility. You know, thankfully, our how our disciplines-that's kind of our jam. You know, bread and butter of ensuring everyone gets to participate and grow and learn. And so, ensuring our Canvas course was accessible, ensuring early access to all of our students, ensuring the perspective of the content wasn't just heavy reading, but videos, simulated medical chart cases, brief cases, and then bringing all of those students to an actual hospital environment. And we did the entire IPE in a real hospital with real equipment to help the students translate real-world skills, like this isn't just a class assignment. This is like for real life. What you're going to need to do. So we're very biased. We think it's amazing what we did.
Melina Jimenez:I asked Truly and Dr. Piazza how they came to include more experiential learning opportunities in their courses.
Becky Piazza:I think something that was really great about this opportunity was students gave us feedback from previous cohorts, graduates now, who said we wish we'd had more opportunity working with other disciplines. Like students saying, for curricular feedback, I want more. I want more opportunities. I want more preparation for this kind of thing, and not just reading articles or you know an online discussion, but actually front and center with other disciplines. And so, being able to create something, develop, design, and implement something that we know is as important as instructors, but that the students were recognizing as this would help me. That was exciting.
Truly Hardemon:Building collaborations across departments and colleges, and even external to UF, can be very valuable for students, giving them real-world experiences and simulating what they might encounter in their post-graduation lives.
Becky Piazza:Yeah, I would say interprofessional education is for everyone, and if you're not doing it, you are missing out.
Melina Jimenez:If you don't want to miss out on the work that Truly and Dr. Piazza are doing, check them out on the College of Public Health and Health Profession website. In that same vein of experiential learning, Assistant Professor of Nutritional Science Drew Cheng sends his students into the community to engage them in the material they are studying in their class.
Zhiyong Drew Cheng:Practically, I connect the classroom with the community, so I tend to use the real world questions, challenges to engage students to think, and I even use student-initiated questions. Some of the students they're struggling with eating. Like some of them may have eating issues, or they have gut issue, or they have weight, you know, they concern about their body weight, stuff like that, and they want to be healthy. Sometimes they bring in the question from family members, like they're struggling with autoimmune disease, stuff like that. Because I teach nutrition, metabolism, I say bring in your question, your own questions, and the question from your friends, your families. So we're going to use this question as a primer. So we're going to do intensive research, literature research. You know, look at the current literature. Of course, we discuss fundamental knowledge effects in the classroom, and we also kind of engage students to do current literature, meaning the cutting edge research. So they kind of apply the fundamental knowledge and as well as the, you know, the up-to-date research to address the question that they have. The most exciting part for me in the class, the one of the capstone course I I have been teaching is to engage students to make educational video. So they actually go out to like do some survey in addition to family members stuff like that. So they can even go like social media contact and say, "Hey, what is the top rank of question that confuse you, or some issues they are struggling with your metabolism, health, nutrition, diet, and they come back to work as a group. So a group of people will pull their questions together and sorting out the top rank of questions according to the frequency of appearance. That type of educational video in lay term language helps help the the community participants a lot. Actually, I have the student will do a reflection after the project, so they collect feedback from the community participants, asking them, you know, in what way that our project have inspired you, or that you're going to take some change in your lifestyle. So I think interest and curiosity is the most important thing, in my opinion, that motivates students to learn. Because if they lose interest, then you know you can you know like people say you can lead the horse to the water. You cannot
Melina Jimenez:You can learn more about Dr. Cheng's work on push them to drink. For instructors who are just starting to add instructional the Food Science and Human Nutrition page. design and engagement, Senior Account Director Shashank Santosh explains the Top Hat platform.
Shashank Santosh:We have a in-house instructional design team that works one-on-one with faculty. So a typical journey that faculty take is rather than do everything all at once and try to overdo their entire course, you work with someone from the get-go. We try to look at one simple activity or element that we can change in your course and then build that over time. So our instructional designers typically meet with you a few weeks before your classes start because it's an intuitive online platform. Setting up one class takes all of 20 minutes if it's only a lecture, and from there we scaffold your learning experience over the course of a semester or a year. So that's the typical journey. Now here at UF, we have several faculty who have designed their textbooks on the Top Hat platform. These journeys definitely take a bit longer, but in that case, we also provide them with editorial support. So, depending on the pathway and the goal that the faculty have in mind, we have different support structures built in. Of course, we work directly with the Center for Teaching Excellence, so that definitely helps improve the end user experience. From an engagement standpoint, we are creating more opportunities for students to do something with the material, whether that's responding to a question, checking for understanding, applying concepts in context. That keeps attention from drifting. As I mentioned, we can design this before class, during class, and after class. From a inclusion perspective, be designed for accessibility upfront. Things like readable content, multiple ways to engage, low stakes practice help ensure students can participate fully, not just the most confident or the most prepared ones, but everyone can. From an instructional design lens, it's about intentional design with cognitive load and pacing in mind. So instead of overwhelming students, we are structuring the experience such that they can do some, learn some, do some, learn some. That way, it's spaced out, irrespective of what modality. Ultimately, it's a shift from delivering content to designing learning experiences that are responsive, inclusive, and engaging by default. Our premise was that student attention isn't disappearing; it's fluctuating, and the age of AI and content digital distractions, engagement doesn't happen by accident. It's something that we need to design for intentionally. Instead of thinking about engagement as something that happens during class, can we design for it before class, during class, and after class? The goal was to move away from passive consumption to active participation. So students aren't just keeping up; they are meaningfully engaging with the material throughout that session.
Melina Jimenez:The Center for Teaching Excellence website has more resources on the Top Hat platform. Finally, Dr. May Mansy, along with Roza Vaez Ghaem in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering, highlighted the importance of mentorship in academia and the BME learning program in their presentation. Here, Dr. Mansy explains.
May Mansy:So, for the presentation today, we are introducing the B Mentor program, one of two initiatives that I developed for the department, and basically the premise is that mentorship in academia is always assumed to happen organically or naturally, and while there's a lot of good intentions behind it, and it's very important, a very important ingredient in academia, it tends to lack structure and systemization, which makes the results or the outcomes vary widely. Some people have great experiences. Some people not so much. So the B Mentor program is an effort to make or to build a structured mentoring framework that includes a dedicated training component for mentors and mentees. You know, about what it means to be a good mentor. What does it mean to be a good mentee? What are you supposed to do? What are your roles? What are the expectations, and things like that. And also develop a structured environment for it. So there is a dedicated Canvas site. There are accountability measures. So after we pair people, which is also a smart algorithm that we're going to be introducing, they're not left alone. Now, we have like biweekly check-ins that are mandatory, so we can kind of check in on people and make sure that they're making the progress that was intended for them. This is actually multi-tiered, so we have alumni mentoring more senior biomedical engineers, and then the more senior biomedical engineers serve a dual role, so they're mentees to the alumni, but they're also mentors to younger BMEs. So we have a three-tiered structure to have like the benefits kind of trickle from top to bottom. It's more targeting student engagement and like the sense of belonging for them because a lot of times you know as freshmen coming in, you know, they're lost, they're overwhelmed, they need a mentor, and we used to assign them, hey, so and so and so and so here's your mentor, and student C and D, your mentor is mentor B, and then we let them be. But there's all of them, even the mentors. They're still students. They're still young. They don't really know what it means to be a mentor. So we hope that you know when we educate them better about mentorship, those relationships would be a lot more efficient and synergistic, and then we can actually leverage them to enhance student learning, student success, and retention.
Melina Jimenez:You can learn more about Dr. Mansy's work on the College of Engineering page. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Teaching Beyond the Podium podcast series. For more helpful resources, including information on the Interface Teaching Conference, faculty learning communities, and workshops developed by the Center for Teaching Excellence at UF, visit our website, teach.ufl.edu. We're happy you joined us, and we hope to see you next time for more tips, strategies, and ideas on teaching and learning at the University of Florida.