3QTL: Three Questions about Teaching and Learning

How might we reimagine what scholarship looks (and sounds) like in the twenty-first century? In this special reflection episode, Dr. Derritt Mason is joined by 3QTL consulting producer Dr. Stacey Copeland and Dr. Jill McSweeney-Flaherty, associate editor of the journal Teaching and Learning Inquiry, to discuss 3QTL Season 1's experimental peer review process—the journal's first-ever podcast review. Our discussion explores key themes that emerged across the season, including care ethics, community building, and pedagogies of kindness, while also examining what it means to produce the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through podcasting. Join us as we reflect on the values that anchored educators during COVID-19, consider how conversation can function as scholarly method, and ask what sound-based scholarship might suggest about the future of academic research and knowledge creation. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.

For Dr. Bryan Dewsbury, equity-minded, inclusive, or humanist teaching means distinguishing teaching students from teaching subject matter. The humanity of students, in other words, is prioritized over course content, and their lived experiences become vital to how the classroom operates. In our conversation, Dr. Dewsbury describes how he confronted the challenges of teaching online during COVID lockdowns, while also highlighting the many dimensions of his approach to humanist teaching. He explains, for example, how restructuring "office hours" as "student hours" can deepen student learning; how the principles of PhD qualifying exams might help us design open-book undergraduate exams; and he offers other possibilities for inviting students to become thoughtful, engaged citizens. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.

The most challenging years of COVID lockdowns found Dr. Morgan Vanek inhabiting the role of student more often than she might have expected. As she learned to parent, drive, and cook—all during a pandemic—Dr. Vanek found herself reflecting deeply on those core values that were guiding her teaching and learning practice, while simultaneously rediscovering the value of the Humanities for helping us survive and make sense of global crises. Join us as Dr. Vanek outlines the many ways she transformed her classrooms in light of these experiences: from the implementation of "ungrading" techniques like contract and labour-based grading, to strategies for demystifying the "hidden architecture" of university courses, to centering social justice in a course focused on the traditional canon of English literature. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.

Justice, believing students, and believing in students: according to Dr. Cate Denial, these are the three pillars of "a pedagogy of kindness," an approach to teaching and learning that centers care for ourselves, as instructors, and care for our students. Dr. Denial, the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Illinois, is also the Primary Investigator of "Care in the Academy," a Mellon Foundation-funded project examining pedagogies, communities, and practices of care in the academy after COVID-19. Kindness, Dr. Denial stresses, must include reconciliation, forgiveness, and accountability, and it should be distinguished from "niceness." Join us as Dr. Denial generously details what a pedagogy of kindness might look like in practice, from paying careful attention to the language of our syllabi, to reconsidering our assessment practices, to providing students with fidget toys in online classes. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.

What do Mariah Carey, arts-based student feedback, and the Disability Studies concept of "crip time" have in common? They all played integral roles in Dr. Alan Santinele Martino's approach to teaching and learning during the most challenging moments of the COVID-19 pandemic. An assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, Dr. Martino is currently researching the intimate lives of LGBTQ2S+ disabled people in Alberta, and he brings this Disability Studies lens to our conversation. While we aimed to survive the pandemic, Dr. Martino points out, we also had a unique opportunity to consider how embracing "crip time" and interdependency might help us, as a community of teachers and learners, navigate difficult moments. Join us as Dr. Martino highlights the vital importance of disability justice, the value of vulnerability, and what it means to feel "Mariah Carey fabulous" in the classroom. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.

Over the course of a twenty-five-year teaching career, Dr. Jesse Stommel has been interrogating the power dynamics that structure our grading and assessment practices. Every conversation about grades is also a conversation about power, he maintains, and "ungrading" might offer some possibilities for making our classrooms more inclusive, caring, and collaborative spaces. The rapid switch to online teaching during COVID-19 raised some new questions for Dr. Stommel about the state of post-secondary education, and he found himself reconsidering the very foundations of his teaching and learning practice. Join us as Dr. Stommel discusses the joys of collaboration and the problem with "pivots," and shares some strategies for how we might reimagine grading and assessment. Full episode transcript and references are available on our website.