Trending In Education

Dr. Shannon Clute joins Mike to share his broad and varied experiences in education, innovation, marketing, and digital media. He begins by telling the story of his early experiments with podcasting and other new media to innovate in higher education where Shannon was a Professor of French Literature. In the early 2000s, he launched an enormously successful podcast called Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir that began as an innovative project for his students but rapidly grew in broader appeal. From this experience, Shannon began to understand the value of pursuing your passion projects and being flexible and opportunistic in your career choices. From there, he transitions to a marketing role at Turner Classic Movies before ultimately returning to academia now leading The Hatchery, The Center for Innovation at Emory University. In a wide-ranging conversation, Shannon reinforces the critical importance of knowing your customers and shifting from push to pull dynamics when it comes to program development a

Howard Lurie, Principal Analyst, Online and Continuing Education at Eduventures, joins Mike this week to discuss recent research findings from the firm that dives into the mindset and sentiment of adult learners. Eduventures has published findings from two surveys of adult learners--one fielded before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and then a second survey fielded in June 2020. Howard shares his perspective on changes in demand, desired credentials, and delivery mode pre- and post-pandemic. We explore the short-term and longer-term implications of the economic and public health impact on adult learners as we expand the perspective beyond the graduating high school population to begin to wrap our heads around the much larger and more diverse population of adult learners writ large. Howard and Eduventures provide great insights on today's show. If you want to learn more from them, visit eduventures.com. Thanks for listening!

Fresh on the heels of the release of Coursera's second annual Global Skills Index Report, Melissa and Mike break down what's new and noteworthy in the 2020 report. How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted global trends in course completion on Coursera? What's new and emerging in the key fields of business, technology, and data science and how is the US stacking up on the global stage? It's a fascinating report on the emerging skills that are relevant to career growth, earning potential, resilience, and lifelong learning in these wacky times. Check out the report, have a listen, and let us know what you think on Twitter at @trendingined

Dr. Stephen Kosslyn, President of Foundry College, returns to Trending in Education to discuss a new book he's been working on. The book has the working title of Active Learning in the Digital Age and covers the six key principles that drive active learning. The principles are deep processing, deliberate practice, incentives and consequences, dual coding, chunking, and associations. Join Stephen and Mike as they explore these concepts and how they can be applied to create great learning interventions in these tumultuous times. Thanks as always for listening!

Welcome to the second half of 2020. We made it to July. For this episode, Mike, Dan, and Melissa reflect on the year so far while tracking some of the more sensational stories that are breaking lately. Did Donald Trump hire someone to take his SATs? If he did, is that better or worse than Lori Laughlin paying for access to the USC Crew team? What do we think about Betsy DeVos's bookcases for her Zoom meetings? Or the administration's take on getting students back on campus and physically in our schools for the Fall? And how about the near miss of threatening to revoke international student visas for students at schools that are going entirely online? We lean into the crazy a bit this week as we spot emerging trends about class outside and schooling from home as we all agree online and hybrid learning in its varied forms is here for the long haul. Thanks for listening.

UNC Greensboro Chancellor, Dr. Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., joins Trending in Education to share his experiences leading a university with a long history of opening up access to higher education. Beginning as a women-only university in the late 19th Century, UNC Greensboro has since opened up to non-white students soon after to men. Dr. Gilliam has been Chancellor since 2015 and he tells the story of how he got the job and what he's been able to do since joining the school. UNC Greensboro has eliminated race and ethnicity differences in retention for first-year students. They've nearly eliminated income-based gaps and are now focused on reaching rural students and providing access to the tools necessary for success in these changing times. We discuss the importance of digital inclusion, Dr. Gilliam's transformative experiences leading the university through the COVID-19 response thus far, and responding to the George Floyd murder and related unrest. We dig into the importance of having a mission-based culture an

Liz Leiba, an education professional, teacher, and podcast host, joins Melissa and Mike to discuss her personal response to George Floyd's death. In response to this travesty, Liz has become much more active on LinkedIn and on her podcast, The Ed Up Experience, telling her personal story as a black woman in higher ed and the corporate world. Melissa and Liz share their experiences, how their perspectives have changed, and how going along to get along just doesn't cut it anymore. Liz is a powerful voice on this and many other topics and we look forward to having her on again soon. Thanks for listening.

Dr. Terri Givens, the CEO and Co-Founder of The Center for Higher Education Leadership, joins Mike and Melissa this week to explore her experience as a Professor, an Administrator, and now as an entrepreneur focused on transforming higher education. Terri tells the story of her academic career spanning Stanford, UCLA, University of Washington, University of Texas at Austin, and most recently Menlo College. Throughout her journey, she's advocated for the importance of teaching and providing faculty, adjuncts, and graduate students access to leadership development tools to help them navigate their careers. We conclude with a deep dive into the ideas in Terri's upcoming book, Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides. We very much appreciate having Terri on the show and hope to have her back on again soon. Thanks for listening.

Dr. Mohanbir Sawhney, the Associate Dean for Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, joins Melissa Griffith and Mike Palmer to explore how the traditional approach to Business School and Executive Education is ripe for disruption. As the McCormick Foundation Professor of Technology at Kellogg, Dr. Sawhney is launching and testing several varied and distinct approaches to providing business education both through the traditional two-year on-campus model and also through hybrid and online models. The Professor engages with Melissa, a Kellogg alum, in a conversation about providing continuous value and lifelong learning to alums through communities of interest, small private online courses (SPOCs), along with access to human-powered services like executive coaching, live webinars, and 1-on-1 office hours. We genuinely enjoyed the imaginative and impassioned perspectives Dr. Sawhney provides on this topic and hope you'll lean in with us to explore how graduate education will accelerate forward in the tumu

Elise Awwad, Vice President of Strategic Enrollment at DeVry University, joins Mike this week to explore how DeVry has been delivering proactive care as part of its educational philosophy for adult learners. We examine how they were able to respond to the twin challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the civil unrest in response to the death of George Floyd. DeVry's long history of online learning along with a holistic approach provided the tools to respond to a tumultuous 2020. Elise shares her passion for helping adult learners in need and, as a regular listener to Trending in Education, she reinforces the critical importance of digital inclusion in opening up access to higher education for adults who are ready to advance their careers.

Warren Kennard joins Mike this week to explore the current state of affairs in educational technology. Warren has been working in educational technology for the past 20 years and is the Founder of ConnectEd and the Managing Director of the Cahoot Academy. After defining the distinctions between small private online courses (SPOCs) and massive open online courses (MOOCs), we dig into the importance of delivering people-mediated programs especially as the waves of automation and artificial intelligence can be dehumanizing. Warren draws from his experiences at Get Smarter, the Cahoot Academy, and ConnectEd to round out a more human-centered understanding of what's emerging in the growing field of educational technology.

Melissa and Mike begin with a frank conversation about how we've been responding to the Black Lives Matter protests and related civic and personal upheaval in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis. What's the best way for organizations to navigate these tumultuous times? How should we think about acts of omission versus those of commission? How do we begin to lean into awkward conversations about race to begin to reach new levels of psychological safety, empathy and understanding. Then Dan Strafford adds his perspective as a father of three and someone who is frequently at a loss when it comes to reaching a clear understanding of what's going on these days. We reference a great Chalkbeat article that captures the perspectives of K12 educators across the US, touch on an article by Dr Howard Stevenson out of U Penn Graduate School of Education on how to talk to children about racial issues, and conclude by referencing a quick Forbes article by Adunola Adeshola that describes 3 Things You Should

Vikram Baliga, host of the Planthropology podcast, joins Mike this week to talk about his experiences as a horticulturist, a science communicator, and a podcast host. Vikram expounds on what brought him to horticulture and how the importance of setting has meaningful ramifications to education. As we explore the origin story of the Planthropology podcast, Vikram provides insight into what it means to teach people how to appreciate the plants in their lives. Whether you're officially "Plant People" or just interested in a deeper perspective on learning and the future, you should get a lot out of this week's episode. We hope you enjoy!

We are deeply saddened by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many other black men and women at the hands of police. We plan to cover the emerging trends of civil unrest, increased awareness of race and social justice, and how this relates to learning, media, and future trends in future episodes of Trending in Education. For today's show, we're releasing an upcoming episode of Running It Back with Tarlin Ray and Mike Palmer where we break down Blackballed, the new Quibi short-form docuseries about the 2014 Los Angeles Clippers and the Donald Sterling scandal. What leadership lessons can be learned from the Sterling incident and the responses by Doc Rivers, Chris Paul, Adam Silver, and Matt Barnes, among others? What parallels can be drawn between the reaction to the Sterling scandal and the response to George Floyd's murder and the Black Lives Matter movement that have been activated on a global scale today? We don't reach any tidy answers to the current situation, but by running it

As The Eurhythmics say, "sweet dreams are made of this." On today's episode, Ken Florence joins Mike for an expansive and imaginative exploration of lucid dreaming, something Ken's been drawn to since overcoming challenges with sleep paralysis earlier in his life. Ken is a musician and composer who created the original music for Trending in Education and its sister podcasts. We begin by discussing how there have been increased reports of vivid dreaming during the Covid-19 pandemic response citing the research of Deidre Barrett. Then we discuss tactics like dream journals and looking for "triggers" in dreams such as clocks and light switches to help us gain conscious control over many aspects of our dream worlds. We conclude by exploring how dreams relate to psychedelic and VR simulation experiences as the trend towards varied phenomenological experiences continues to grow. We hope you enjoy the ride!

Brandon Jones returns to Trending in Education in his new capacity as CEO of Triad Behavioral Health to explore emerging trends for behavioral health professionals. How do the expansion of telehealth and the easing of HIPPA requirements impact the delivery of behavioral health services? As we see upheaval in many professions, what's the prognosis for behavioral health and what makes sense for folks curious about embarking on a career in mental health? What's the best way to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and our collective response to behavioral health and the professions that focus on it? Mike and Brandon discuss what's new and on the horizon in the field and showcase the launch of the new podcast Behavioral Health Today. It's great to welcome back Brandon, one of the founding hosts of Trending in Education. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording.

Sharia Huda and Sean Dougherty join Mike for today's show as we explore the importance of accessibility to the thoughtful design of learning technology. Sean shares his perspective as an accessibility specialist with experience at Google and other large technology companies while Sharia adds her views as a former K12 educator and Ed Tech specialist with experience advising startups on this and other topics. How does Universal Design for Learning (UDL) help all users of a learning product? How to you facilitate the shift of mind needed in leadership at an organization to begin to change the culture? How does empathy and good design thinking help us elevate consciousness about the importance of inclusive design of educational products? Listen in to learn more.

Trending in Education partnered with Rohit Barghava and the Non-Obvious Company to host a Virtual Summit on the Future of Learning which we're releasing as today's episode. Join Rohit, Melissa Griffith, Dan Strafford, and Mike Palmer as we discuss what the future might hold for parents, learning professionals, and lifelong learners. In a wide-ranging conversation, we explore how our behavior patterns around learning and life have change in response to Covid-19 and how these pivots will likely play forward in the coming months and years. What do we make of the distinction between learning and education? How will we navigate this unprecedented wave of disruption? As digital learning moves to the foreground, how will we understand the role of higher education, K12 education, home schooling, and online learning? How should we think about digital equity and digital inclusion? And what might things look like as we imagine a post-pandemic world? We cover all of this and more in a fascinating discussion that we hope

Tarlin and Mike run it back covering the final two episodes of The Last Dance, the epic sports docuseries from ESPN covering the 1990s Bulls. This week we cover the legendary battles with Reggie Miller. What can be learned from Reggie's mindset and competitive drive. Was the "Flu Game" actually the "Tainted Pizza Game" - we have some hot takes there. Tarlin talks GOATs, Mike talks conspicuous omissions, and we begin to synthesize what we learned over the 10 hours of The Last Dance. It's been a heck of a run and we're looking forward to continuing the run even though The Last Dance has ended. Stay tuned for more as we figure out how to keep the magic happening. And thanks of course for listening.

Dr Bernard Bull, the President of Goddard College and the Host of EDU Futures Podcast, joins Mike this week to share his perspective and make a few predictions for the coming year. Bernard explains how he is using scenario-based thinking to plan for the possible futures for Goddard, a small alternative college in central Vermont. We discuss Goddard's unique approach to higher education and muse a bit on how new models will likely emerge from these tumultuous times.