0:00:01 – intro

You are listening to the National University Podcast.

0:00:10 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University Podcast, where we offer a holistic approach to student support, well-being, and success: the whole human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners. Today we’re talking about how to effectively teach remotely and some effective teaching strategies to all age categories, from elementary, middle school, high school and all the way through higher education, and some strategies involve problem solving, lecture, demonstration, questioning, storytelling, drill and practice, and spaced repetition. Today’s guest has some interesting information. On today’s episode, we welcome Dr. Maggie Broderick to discuss effective teaching strategies. Dr. Broderick is a curriculum director and associate professor at the Sanford College of Education at National University. She served as a dissertation chair and a founding director of the Advanced Research Center. Dr Broderick has taught online at various universities and previously taught on-ground in both higher education and pre-K through 12th grade education in the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania area. Thank you for joining us. We welcome you to the podcast, Dr. B. How are you?

0:01:28 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh, thanks, Kim, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

0:01:31 – Kimberly King

Absolutely. It’s a very impressive background, and why don’t you fill our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work and your passion before we get to today’s show topic?

0:01:41 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Sure. So, yeah, it’s been quite a journey. I love sharing with other teachers. It’s sort of interesting to see how our paths form. I started off teaching PK through 12, like you mentioned, and when I was starting off I was mostly in a German magnet school in the city of Pittsburgh in the 1990s. Yeah, So I taught music and German there, What? Yeah? Yeah, So like I was doing like little German folk dances and teaching them to sing in German, And then, as time went on, I got my PhD in education In the late 90s and early 2000s.

I started changing my path because I had my first child in 2002. And so I started veering towards higher ed And I now have a 21-year-old, a 17-year-old and a 12-year-old, And so time keeps going on. Yeah, So I’ve been teaching higher ed on ground and in person, like online and also various things during that time. And I found online teaching at the right time sort of to balance that as a mom and as a teacher. And so since that time I’ve done a ton of different things Faculty, dissertation, chair, administrative roles, scholarly stuff, like you mentioned, curriculum director So like a lot of different hats since that early time being a K-12 teacher, a PK-12 teacher in that German magnet school.

0:03:09 – Kimberly King

You know, I bet you have a lot of former students that come to you and they remember the folklore and the German, and that’s something that is you know that you don’t always hear about every day. So that’s pretty awesome. And I hope you speak German to your kids, or did you?

0:03:23 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh, thanks, it’s a lot, it’s fun. I mean, I just love that stuff. So lots of fun.

0:03:28 – Kimberly King

That’s great. Today, we are talking about how to effectively teach remotely, and you are ahead of the curve, probably doing this, it sounds like, before the pandemic. So, Dr. Broderick, it sounds like you’ve taught a lot of levels as well, from children in PK-12 schools, through higher education. What is it like to teach at various levels in context?

0:03:49 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

I do, I love it. So for me, you can kind of see from when I was saying earlier, I just like to wear a lot of different hats and try a lot of different things. And it keeps me sharp, keeps me on my toes. I know not everybody’s like that, but for me it’s really energizing. And then by doing that, like you said, you know all these different ages, picture your three-year-old children all the way up to adult learners. I mean how incredible to see all those developmental phases of human beings going through learning right, and it’s just kind of incredible to see that spark. You know, I even had a student who was in her 80s.

0:04:31 – Kimberly King

Oh, bless her heart.

0:04:32 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Isn’t it incredible? So like an online student in her 80s. And so like to see people embracing learning, whether it’s a little three-year-old doing a little song that we’re learning together, or that 80-year-old online student before the pandemic? you know, it’s just incredible. But what remains the same is really that heart right. It’s really that relationship between the teacher and the student, whether it’s that little three-year-old or that 80-year-old online learner or anybody else. It’s that relationship. And then knowing that they’re loving learning and seeing that kind of spark, right? And so honestly, if it’s anything from small children to somebody writing their dissertation, you see that spark for learning, you see that excitement and that’s what drives me personally.

0:05:16 – Kimberly King

I love that. I have a question for you about that too. Is there a style of learning that you’ve seen that really works best across all age groups? Is it storytelling? Is it like you said they were doing, the folklore or the dancing, the German dancing, like things like that, where you’re actively engaged is and which might be hard to do when you’re remotely? But would you say anything, a certain style that sticks across all ages?

0:05:40 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh, that’s a great question. It goes down to that relationship thing. And it’s sort of like more about seeing the person as a human being. So I’d say that the style is more like realizing who it is in the environment and what’s exciting them and what’s motivating them, right? And so when you see that, you just ride that wave, right. So it’s not necessarily going to be the same style, but it’s knowing that everybody’s going to have their own part and their own excitement for the learning and grabbing that and realizing, whatever developmental stage they’re at, how you can harness that and really connect with them.

0:06:18 – Kimberly King

Meeting people where they’re at, and it sounds like you’ve done that successfully. Times obviously have changed over the past few years with regard to how people teach and learn. I guess can you just talk about the changing times? You’ve kind of been through it at all, along with the different age levels, but what about the times that have changed?

0:06:38 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing, isn’t it? And you mentioned briefly, like COVID and teaching before COVID and during and all that. I’m just thinking about my own kids, like my oldest just turned 21. And then you know, yeah, I’ve got a 17 and a 12-year-old. And, like, if I look at that 21-year-old versus that 12-year-old and their experiences in life, it’s vastly different. My 21-year-old had VHS tapes. We went to the library, we picked up VHS tapes, we got DVDs, we got CDs. He remembers all that stuff. The internet existed, but it was not what it is today. Most of his school year occurred before COVID.

Senior year was 2020. And so, but the 12-year-old has had a vastly different circumstance in terms of the tech that’s been available mobile technology, smartphone, social media, and then COVID Going through all of that, right, remote. That was two years of her life, very crucial developmental time. And so I think, like, when we think about those things, we have to think about digital literacy, what it’s going to continue to change into You know, we’re thinking about Chat GPT now. We’re thinking about artificial intelligence and all this stuff, right? What’s going to happen next, right? So we have to really think about how it’s going to keep changing, personally, and it’s not going to stop, it’s going to accelerate I mean even in the last 20 years, like it’s going to become even more So. I think that’s kind of where my mind is on that.

0:08:04 – Kimberly King

And it has gone by so quickly just with the technology advances and everything. And it is interesting to me. So you did kind of just talk about how you know your reflections on those changes due to the pandemic as well. But I think it’s so interesting about your children’s ages. You know you’ve a 21-year-old, I have a 22-year-old and a 24-year-old, and so they didn’t get cell phones until middle school, so they didn’t grow up with it in their hands. But maybe, perhaps I don’t know if you’re younger or one you know it is a difference in the availability of that technology.

0:08:42 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, Oh, it’s incredible. And you know, try as you may to shut it down, they find a way right? So we have to be mindful. Yeah, yeah, right, so we have to be mindful about it, we have to, you know, just really reflect on it. And we have to engage in conversations about it, because it’s just not going away.

0:08:59 – Kimberly King

Yeah, And I think the communication is key there. Technology plays a huge role, like we’re just talking about whether a teacher is teaching on ground, hybrid or online. So how does technology figure into everything across the board? You know you’re the perfect person to ask, since you’ve engaged in all kinds.

0:09:17 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh, thanks, yeah, I mean, when I think back to that magnet school and you know, we barely had anything like we had to apply for a grant just to get any computers in 1997 in the building, and how times have changed. Kind of amazing. And honestly, technology is in all of our teaching now.

So we were calling something in the flipped classroom a while back, like maybe about 10 years ago. There was this thing going around. And it’s still around, but I would argue that now almost anything is a flipped classroom. If you really think about it. We’re putting stuff online out there for the students, whether they’re an online student, a hybrid student, an on-ground student. Most of them have something that’s happening on a computer. And that really wasn’t as much the case, you know, for my oldest child, the 21 years old, and even for my dissertation 2004. I had to bring paper to them at the school. And so the contents available for a person to peruse, and even if it isn’t, they’re going to go look up those YouTube videos and say, hey, I have a hack for this, I’m going to find out how to learn this and go faster than that teacher if they’re so inclined if they’re motivated.

Yeah, yeah. So you know, we have all sorts of integrated things And I would argue, you know that most things are sort of, you know, a hybrid situation And really we have to think about everybody also being all over the world now They’re not just in a local situation. So you have a very diverse student body of a lot of different type of people in your classrooms Like I said at an 80-year-old and we have to meet them where they are right. We have to realize that. You know, these supports are there everything’s sort of online. And we also have to see them for the unique person that they are and how they may approach things.

0:11:08 – Kimberly King

So you are walking right into the next question. I do want to ask you about your 80-year-old, because kudos to, I don’t know if it’s male or female. Maybe it’s a female, is it female?

0:11:17 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yes, it’s female.

0:11:18 – Kimberly King

I think that’s amazing. I just I have such a heart for seniors and I feel so. You know they’re in. This is not their world. You know their phones, technology. And I remember being in line just a few months ago at the passport office and there was a sweet elderly lady in front of me. And the girl behind the counter was getting frustrated because she couldn’t really understand that technology And I kind of had to step in just to say give her a little break. You know, just let’s be kind. And so tell me what that’s like to teaching at that 80-year-old level and really meeting her where she’s at.

0:11:56 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, yeah, it’s inspiring. I mean, the thing is she chose to enroll in an online class, right, she? she pushed that button and it was before COVID that I had this student, though I’ve had some other ones that are not quite 80 years old but, you know, definitely older than me, and they made the choice because they were motivated, they were interested, but then they might have needed, like you said, a little extra something, a little extra, you know, availability, or a little extra touch. Yeah, whatever you want to say. So it’s really meeting them where they are and realizing, oh, this person seems a little anxious, they want to be here, but they’re missing something. There’s something and it could be anything it could. It doesn’t have to be age, could be a lot of different reasons why they need. So it’s being in tune with that.

Sometimes in the classroom we call that with-it-ness, right, and it’s hard to do that online, right, to be “with it.” But that’s a term they’ve used, like since the 70s, because it’s a very 70s sounding term, right? And so this like being sort of with it, it’s still true, like realizing, oh, I see this student is conversing in a certain way. Oh, they need me to do this extra thing. That’s not in my job description but it’s gonna help. I can do this. I’ll provide this extra PDF or whatever I need to do, this extra link that they didn’t quite see in the course room. I’m gonna email it to them. Whatever the case may be, you know, meeting them where they are and at the point of need, so they’re not frustrated and anxious. That’s what it’s all about.

0:13:21 – Kimberly King

And you know, and you can’t even see it, if it means extra time with them, where you’re not online with your students. But you know, and maybe other students are like, come on, can we get to this? It’s that extra effort on the backside and so I do those to you. I think that’s awesome, and I think your 80 year old student is a hero, good for her and a lifelong learner, you know. And the other thing is just their experience, what they can share about their own life and what they’ve seen in this lifetime. I think that’s something we don’t always hear every day. Tell me a little bit about Zoom and other meeting spaces like that have become so popular. And how does all of that figure in with teaching online and the hybrid and all and on the ground?

0:14:05 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Isn’t it? it’s like amazing to think about, like the before times, right?

Before the pandemic. Like I knew what Zoom was and some people knew what Zoom was, but a lot of people didn’t. I’m in a choir I still sing, and I’m in a choir here in Pittsburgh. I love it, I sing soprano and at that time almost no one else in the choir knew what Zoom was. And suddenly we’re shut down for the pandemic And I said, hey, guys, we might not be able to sing together so much, but we can at least say hi and I’ll put together a little Zoom for us, right. But now that sounds almost silly. It’s only three years later. But now almost everybody can FaceTime, can Zoom, can all these other things. Right, my mom figured out some things because she wanted to see her grandchildren and so yeah, yeah, so it’s kind of incredible to realize just a few years later. But really, now that we all know what they are and they’re ubiquitous, they can be those sort of synchronous touchpoints that can really be that glue to hold things together.

If a lot of the learning experience is online, like I said, sort of like more hybrid II, then it can be more self-directed, which is empowering, but it also can feel isolating, right? It also feel very kind of like I’m just doing this all myself and there’s no community, and so it can bring that classroom culture in and that sense of belonging. If you have, like, a fun interactive Zoom and you have an open sort of thing where it’s not even necessarily a lecture, it’s just sort of a- like I said about the choir, we weren’t able to sing together, it just wasn’t gonna work- but we were able to say hi and it. You know, a lot of people in that choir needed that. They were alone in their houses.

I did some research with colleagues and we found that in some of these Zoom classrooms during COVID, people turned off their cameras and it didn’t feel a sense of belonging. They felt like they were talking to a blank screen. Right, that was a big theme from our research. And so anything we can do mindfully like – don’t force someone to turn their camera on – but, you know, because there could be all kinds of reasons not to but to encourage then we can build community online. If people want to buy into that and feel comfortable, then we can really have time together to create that rapport, that relationship, and that feeling of belonging.

0:16:18 – Kimberly King

So I’m curious, because you were doing this pre-COVID and pre-, you know, the pandemic. What was your- were you using Zoom before, or was there another, another way that you were talking and doing your online classes? How did that look?

0:16:33 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, oh, it’s been really interesting. I feel like somebody should write a dissertation. Maybe they did, maybe they have about how it changed. So, being an online higher ed since around 2009,. It really was almost all asynchronous at that time in a lot of places. So if you would be teaching an online course in 2009, 2010, you really wouldn’t have a synchronous component with Zoom.

If you did, it was spotty. It didn’t work so well. The tech was uninviting, it felt clunky. It felt really clunky. I remember one time it totally didn’t work. Three students showed up. This might have been like 2010, 2011. And they seemed a little like lonely and they just wanted to connect And the recording. Nothing was working with the video and audio. So I just started typing to them as if we were on, like you know, internet Relay Chat in 1995 or so. We were just typing. And it was okay, but now it means amazing how far we’ve come. People are isolated, they’re lonely, they are searching for connection. And the audio and video really help to bring that to life. So you know, we’ve had some clunky technologies that have sort of worked, but now we have much better technology.

0:17:41 – Kimberly King

We do, and it’s just kind of cool that you have. You’ve been there all along the way. I may have skipped a question, so I just wanted to go back and say ask you about some of the specific tips and strategies for teaching various age levels on the ground, hybrid and online.

0:17:59 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh sure, sure. So a couple of words I always think about with that. I think of the words proactive and supportive and responsive. I’m sorry, three words, three words. But thinking about being supportive is part of that. So you’re supportive because you are proactive and you are responsive.

So when you plan mindfully, when you’re proactive and you set up your classroom so let’s picture my music classroom in 1997, I put the instruments in a certain way. It’s inviting the kids say I want to play those instruments, that looks cool. And then everything set up in a way where they’re not going to let’s face it, fight, you know they’re going to get along. So it’s set up in a proper way where everything is the classroom management set up proactively right. And then I’m responsive. So let’s say, something does go wrong, somebody is sad because they hit a wrong note, or somebody’s neighbor is poking them because, let’s face it, they’re, you know, seven years old and they do that. Then you are responsive to the situation. It’s exactly the same. And sometimes you do have to react like there are emergencies, right, but it’s exactly the same thing online, just like an in-person classroom.

You set it up, you set up the space mindfully so they can find the drop boxes so they can find where to submit their work, so they can find where to get support systems, like for help if they need academic coaching or if they need mental health and emotional support, if there’s a link to go to those types of resources. You set things up so that people in discussion boards see each other’s responses, respond mindfully, and maybe don’t have fights on a discussion board, right? So it’s the same exact thing as these seven-year-olds not hitting each other with the mallets of the xylophone, right? You want to have it set up mindfully So it’s proactive, responsive, and then you know, at the same time, being supportive of all of that by doing it that way.

0:19:50 – Kimberly King

Okay. Okay, that is really interesting. It’s a great analogy. What about the learning management system, LMS, or other shared online spaces for teachers and students?

0:20:00 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Okay, Oh yeah, yeah, that figures in so well with what you mentioned about sort of the Zoom. Like I said, that used to be super clunky, right. So we depended so much on the LMS. We still do. I was a curriculum director- Now I’m seeing that behind the scenes.

So, you know, when people set that up really mindfully and really think about how they’re setting up what’s needed for students, then the students can be really self-directed. They’re able to actually go in and do work at 3 am if they need to. And, let’s face it, our adult online learners – gosh, they are busy. So you know they have the opportunity to do what they need, get it done, go to work the next day. And then if they need me, you know they can reach out.

And so it’s really pretty common to follow like a certain formula in sort of the discussion boards and things like that. I’m pretty guilty of that, like we kind of follow a certain way of doing it. But I would say you know, as the tech continues to evolve and as things become a little more exciting with the LMS and we’re getting more buttons and bells and whistles, that you can be creative. You can do all kinds of things like having video responses and having, like you know, all kinds of different multimedia. So pretty cool stuff you can do nowadays that you couldn’t do, say, 10 years ago.

0:21:13 – Kimberly King

You know just a little quick thing. I remember being in a classroom. I was just touring a school for my kids when they were younger, and I remember that teachers were talking about just the history of Thanksgiving. And they put out all of the foods that would have been there. And it was super interactive. And I thought, boy, it would a great way for these young kids to learn and be a part of it, because they kind of reenacted, or you know, ate the food.

You know, they discussed the history, but if they became a part of it too, So I know it might be a little more difficult online but are some things trickier to teach hybrid online than in person? And I guess that would kind of go hand in hand with what I just told you.

0:21:53 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly right, because, like you can’t sample that food, right? Right, you can’t taste it, you can’t smell it, a lot of your senses, there’s no Smell-O-Vision, unfortunately, (laughter) or fortunately, depending you know, so I don’t always have all the senses.

So some things do naturally work great online. Some things actually, you know, make sense. For example, doctoral education. it’s exploded in the past couple of decades. Like I said, people are so busy but they want to get that advanced degree. They are not going to quit their job for four years – they have to pay their rent, their mortgage, whatever, and they have a life. they have a family. So that has exploded and we’ve made great strides. And they’re self-directed online learners. Other things don’t work quite well. I wrote a blog about that a while back during COVID called “How Do You Teach THAT Online”? There are examples of like during COVID children who would be taking their physical education class and they’d have to go into like a closet in their house to do the jumping jacks because you know other people were in the space and that’s tricky. Teaching Phys. Ed. to children online during the pandemic insanely difficult. Music, similar right. Some things don’t work quite as well. But honestly, when you have such a difficult thing as COVID, people become incredibly innovative. And now we’re seeing people find ways to do things. I see people doing music things online that I never could have imagined before COVID, because they’re teaching a violin lesson online. They never would have maybe done that before. So kind of incredible like necessities, the mother of invention, kind of thing.

0:23:29 – Kimberly King

Absolutely No. I love that. And I’m glad to hear you. I’m also a singer, I was the second soprano. So I love to hear you someday.

0:23:39 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

We should sing together!

0:23:41 – Kimberly King

I know right, but this is great information. We have to take a quick break, but more in just a moment. Don’t go away, we will be right back. And now back to our interview with Dr. Maggie Broderick. And we’re talking so it’s so interesting about effective teaching strategies. And so, Dr. Broderick, there are many different types of learners. What teaching strategies work best in various situations?

0:24:04 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh yeah, I mean it’s really. We touch on that a little bit. And it’s really kind of incredible. Our world is global now. I mean you could teach people online. I had a student who was in American Samoa. Some people don’t even know American Samoa exists. It’s a tiny place with 500,000 residents.

They’re diverse in every way. It’s not just what you might think of on the surface, right. So we might think about ethnic diversity, racial diversity. Very important to consider. Socioeconomic diversity, first generation college students, all kinds of people, immigrants, gender and sexuality, understanding people’s differences there. Just people from every possible intersectionality of diversity. You can’t think one size fits all anymore. You just can’t. So I think we sort of use the phrase earlier and meet them where they are, and that’s what we have to do.

And it’s hard because teachers don’t have a lot of time, no matter what level, from those three-year-olds, teachers teaching preschool, all the way through these 80-year-olds – everybody’s busy. But it’s super important that we take a moment and just reflect and take a step back and put ourselves in their shoes. And just kind of have some empathy and reflect on what does it feel like to them? So they’re bringing their perspective, their prior knowledge. I think you mentioned earlier about my 80-year-old student.

We need to just be open-minded, thinking about again being proactive and responsive to their needs, because you really aren’t going to have two of the same. They’re all gonna be different and something that might make someone feel welcome might make someone else feel unwelcome. We have to make cast a wide net and make sure that our curriculum’s designed proactively, make sure we really take that step back and go well, what if somebody is different, has a difference in their gender expression, has a difference in their socioeconomic background, has some other kind of cultural thing, how are we most welcoming? How are we making sure to be inclusive? It’s hard, I mean. We really have to take that time to reflect and take a step back and, just, you know, really see it that way, I think and I like that.

0:26:13 – Kimberly King

I think empathy is your keyword there, and times have changed. How should teachers plan for instruction in on-ground, hybrid or online learning environments?

0:26:23 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Oh, Yeah, it’s that word proactive, that’s my favorite word. Gotta be proactive. And it’s not just at the beginning, right? I mean, it’s not just setting up those instruments and like, hey, it’s done, it’s, it’s also ongoing. So in that online classroom, same thing is sort of ongoing maintenance.

Oh, some links have broken. My students will get frustrated at 3 am when they log in and try to get their stuff after a 10 hour shift, and suddenly the link is caught in the classroom’s broken. They can’t do their work, that’s- Can you imagine the anxiety and frustration? And they can’t contact the teachers at 3 am. So really being smart about you know whether it’s on ground, your physical items or if it’s online, and then a sort of even the things like time for time management and resting and reflection, and realizing that all these things have to be built into your approach. So if we’re thinking about the whole human being and you know, are they feeling anxious? Are they feeling they have all their resources they need, whether their physical resources or, on this you know, digital space? Having that forethought and that proactive nature is really, really important.

0:27:31 – Kimberly King

Hmm, that’s a good point. What about – how might teachers best support students academic and social emotional needs? And you have talked about this a little bit, but I don’t know if there’s anything specific else you’d like to talk about. On these types of learning, you know online classrooms on ground and hybrid.

0:27:53 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, I mean that’s social emotional. I mean I hate to bring back COVID and think about it, but we have, we have all been through a shared experience, right, and it was hard. There is no one who said, yeah, that was a breeze, awesome. No, so we all get it right. It was all really hard. And so I think we’re all acutely aware now of people’s needs our own and that other people have them too. Like, everybody went through that and had different bad things happen, and so we really have to think that this is a little harder to do in a hybrid or an online environment because there’s no sort of face, gestures.

You know gestures and facial expressions and you know you might hear in somebody’s voice But they might also be typing and you don’t really know. So it’s being kind of that, that with it Ness again, and it’s almost like a social emotional with-it-ness, where you realize that if they’re in hybrid or on ground, it’s sort of this two-dimensional, isolating thing. So having things like support centers available, having these ways of helping – I think of that phrase it takes a village.

0:28:56 – Kimberly King

Yeah, right.

0:28:57 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

So you know you can’t just say, oh look, it’s online, go learn, good for you. And you also can’t just say it’s online, and call me if you need me. It’s not enough. So somebody might be at 3 am feeling super anxious, super upset, or they might be really excited too. There might be something good happening and you want to be keyed in and you want to be with it about that. Little harder to do online. So we just have to think like maybe a phone call, maybe a zoom, maybe some other way, just to make sure we’re clued in and we have that with-it-ness and the students know that we care, you know.

0:29:28 – Kimberly King

And that’s a good point. It kind of leads me into my next, you know, question is to what really is the role of the teacher these days? Because it has changed so much. But just a quick question, you know, do you plan for having one on one? I mean, again, timing is everything, but only does that kind of only bubble up where you would have a one-on-one Zoom or call with one of your students if there’s a problem, or is that kind of built in to, you know, just the program?

0:29:58 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Right, it depends. So I think it’s both. So what’s really interesting when you have online and hybrid, is it sometimes there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

Yeah, so I’m a curriculum director at the moment and I’m directing the curriculum, so I’m helping people to make sure their courses are built, and the person writing the course might not be the person teaching the course. And so you know, you, they, they should be mindful and they should be proactive in their planning, and then the person teaching the course should also do that. So there’s a lot of kind of opportunities there. You know, you can build it into the course, you can say, hey, we’re gonna have these synchronous sessions, we’re gonna have these opportunities to connect, and then maybe they’re there or maybe there’s not enough, and then the person teaching the course goes “Oh, actually I think we’re gonna need a little bit more here.” Maybe we’ll have a celebration, you know, maybe it’s not just all this person’s anxious, maybe it’s that we need to have an extra thing at the end, where we get together and celebrate some things. Maybe we do some kind of Zoom that way and then, you know, definitely reaching out, not just trusting that everything’s there in the person’s getting what they need, because they probably need some support in some way or another.

Just along those same lines, I think we have to kind of move away from the idea that the teacher is just holding the knowledge like a font of knowledge, And that “sage on the stage” they call it, right? And they do, they are an expert there, there, because they’re the expert. But they have to be able to let their guard down a bit and let the student teach them also and embrace that and have a sense of community and balance. That way It’s hard to be humble sometimes that way, hey, I’m a professor, I have a PhD and everything. But really we can learn from our students, right, we can learn from our students and we can show them you know, we’re all here, we’re learning to their learning, we’re learning together and we do care.

0:31:35 – Kimberly King

You know, I think that can really play across a lot of different roles, even Dr./Patient, because it’s your body and you’re the one saying, okay, I feel this and so I think that’s a that’s a really key point that you know you’re learning on both sides. What do you see as a future, as times keep changing for teachers and students on the in-ground, hybrid and online learning environments?

0:32:03 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Yeah, I mean, I think about this so much. I like science fiction, I’m a science fiction fan. And, gosh, you know, we could let our minds go wild, couldn’t we? I mean, gosh, we could think about where it, where AI, is heading and where all these other things will lead. But it’s not going to be science fiction, but it is going to happen fast, it is going to happen quickly, and we have to be agile and flexible and open enough to say, okay, hey, AI is on the horizon, Chat GPT is on our doorstep. We’ve got to make sure we’re doing it this way. And also understand that the students might know more than we do about this, right? And so we got to be thinking, and so you know, basically it comes down to motivation, like that human element. That element is key, that you know.

Why is the learner there in the first place? You know they’re not. They’re hopefully not there to just cheat with Chat GPT. They’re there for some reason. Connect with them. For that reason, why are you here in this classroom? How can I help you? I actually serve you as the you know facilitator, professor, the teacher? How can I help you reach your goals? And then it’s authentic, right. And then it’s like, okay, technology can help us reach those goals. And it’s pretty cool. So maybe embrace it, knowing that it’s something you maybe don’t – you won’t know everything until you jump off – but you know, do it with, with a good heart and realize people are probably there to actually learn, hopefully, and motivate and engage with that in mind and meet them where they are, kind of with that human element in mind.

0:33:37 – Kimberly King

That’s great. I was just going to wrap it up by saying about the human element, but great, it’s exciting. And thank you for all that you have done and what you continue to do into the future. This has been a really interesting topic. And if you want more information, you can visit National University’s website at nu.edu, and we look forward to your next visit, Doctor, thank you.

0:33:57 – Doctor Maggie Broderick

Thank you so much for having me.

0:34:02 – Kimberly King

You’ve been listening to the National University podcast. for updates on future or past guests, visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening. Thank you. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.