From Episodes to Insights: Analyzing Silver Lining for Learning

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Sa.

Punya Mishra: Welcome to episode 272 of Silver Lining for Learning. I'm Punya Mishra, one of the co hosts. Um, I'm not joined today by a couple of the. Chris Didi is at his son's graduation. Lydia, uh, Kao is running a little late. She will join us in a minute. Yang Zhao is somewhere in the universe. Um, you know, we never know where he is at any given moment. Kurt Bonk, I thought was going to sleep through this because he's in South Korea and it is 1am but he has joined us, as you can see, and so we are very excited to have him here as well. Um, today is sort of like a meta episode, which is an episode about the show which is kind of strange but also fun. Silver Lining for Learning, uh, began with an email from Yang Zhao back in March of 2020. Um, he was just sort of asking this question. What if schools shut down for a year?

Kurt Bonk: What if.

Punya Mishra: We scoffed at his question. We thought school would shut down for two weeks and we'd be back. But anyway, either way, we ended up, uh, starting the show and it's been going strong, uh, ever since. We are now at, like I said, episode 272. Um, some of our hosts have come and gone and so on, but I think, couple of things to emphasize here, uh, which we did an analysis of the show, which we'll get into in a little M bit, um, through pandemic learning, cell phone debates, arrival of Gen AI, political turbulence, whether Ukraine or whatever, um, this show has just sort of gone on and on. We have no sponsors, no institutional support. Five, uh, of us put money out of our pocket and we get some amazing guests, uh, on the show. So, really excited today, uh, like I said, to have this meta show because we are joined by faculty and graduate students from the University of Houston who actually did a collaborative inquiry project about this show. And, and so I'm really excited to learn more about what they found out. The, uh, project was developed by one of our guests, Dr. Susie Gronset, who's a professor at the University of Houston, and Kelly Davis, a doctoral candidate in learning, design and technology, in collaboration with our very own Kurt Bonk, who has fingers in everything. Um, one of the things that was kind of fun for me personally was that I had, for the, uh, sixth year anniversary of the show, developed using AI, this sort of tool which allowed you to look over this episode, look at themes and so on. And it seems that this tool was used by Suzy and her students in sort of deciding which episodes to look at. So I'm super curious to learn more about that. So welcome to the show, Suzy. Um, with you are three of your students, and they have amazing backgrounds. I would love to hear a little bit about that as well. We have Paola Esql, an med student. We have Garrett Ward, an educational game designer. Okay. I should mention that Paola has a background in architecture and UX design. Garrett is a game designer and a founder, uh, of the studio, uh, sorry, founding studio director of Coug Interactive, and Vidya Menon, who is a doctor, as well as doing the med. So this is an exciting group of people to have here. I'm just going to pass it on to you, Suzy, to introduce yourself a little bit and then hear from all of our guests, uh, today before we jump into the conversation.

Garrett Ward: Thanks.

Kurt Bonk: Before you jump in here.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Go ahead.

Kurt Bonk: If we, if we bring you on every week or enough times, would we qualify for a Texas foundation or agency grant for our show? Just want to know, you know, what we need to do qualify for that. All that oil money.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: I can't speak to that. I can't speak to that personally. But I have been here at the University of Houston for 14 years and um, I am a clinical professor in the learning design technology program area. We also have a, um, master's and EDD program and a graduate certificate in health science education. And so when we have students in these different programs, they come from a variety of backgrounds. They represent, um, applications of, uh, learning design and technology strategies and theories, uh, in K12 education, pre K12 education, actually, ah, higher ed settings, uh, from technical, ah, community college to college, university to um, uh, even beyond. We, uh, have informal education. We have museum educators. We have those that are in the Texas Medical center who are physicians, um, teaching in, um, specialty, uh, areas as well as medical schools here in the Houston area and at the bedside. So we think more very broadly about how the lessons we've learned in the learning design technology field apply across different formal and informal educational contexts. Uh, for me, I specialize in inclusive instructional design. My original background was in special education. And then I became interested in how technology could provide opportunities for learners with disabilities. And over the years have looked for, uh, applications across different barriers to learning. So I think very, um, holistically about the affordances of technology and really equalizing, uh, learning opportunities and, um, the way we design educational experiences strategically so that, uh, all can be successful. So I'll pass it over to, uh, Paola to introduce a little bit about herself.

Paola Esquivel: Hola. Soy Pa. Ola Esquivel. Um, I have a background in architecture and UX design and am pivoting towards education. And so because of that, a lot of my work focuses on creating these learning experiences that are intuitive and inclusive and human centered. Um, I am currently developing a UX design curriculum for K through 12, specifically in high school, ah, across Texas. And um, it's a, ah, pleasure to be on the very podcast that we discuss and analyze throughout this project.

Punya Mishra: So you have to tell us about how you manifested this because I think that's such a great story.

Vidya Menon: It's so embarrassing.

Paola Esquivel: But. Okay. So, um, I ended up, ah, on a group project last semester with Garrett and a friend of ours named Natividad. And this semester I had her for this project as well. And so we were texting, um, when we were analyzing this project and I told her, hey, I really want to be on this podcast. But you know, later on once, I have a couple more accomplishments under my belt. So when Dr. Gonseth ended up reaching out to me and asking if I wanted to be a guest on the show, I texted her and she told me. She was like, you manifested this? So it was very, very exciting. Um, like, to see that it just kind of came full circle.

Punya Mishra: That's very cool. Thank you for sharing that. And it's not embarrassing at all. It makes me feel good that you want to be on the show. I know. The heck.

Paola Esquivel: No, no, thank you. Um, actually, I think I know.

Kurt Bonk: How many more shows can you create? That's what we want to know. I'm sorry, can you do this again?

Paola Esquivel: Oh, yeah, of course, anytime. Uh, I'm going to pass this off to Garrett.

Garrett Ward: Hi everyone. It's an honor to be on this podcast for the same reason Paola mentioned. This is such an awesome podcast, so it's great to be a contributor to it. So, as mentioned, my name is Garrett Ward and I recently graduated from UH with my Master of Education in Curriculum Instruction with the specialization in Learn Design Technology. Ah. During my time there, I served as a graduate research assistant for the Cougar Lab, which is UH's internationally recognized AR&VR research and development lab, and was the founding studio director of UH uh's Game Dev Club, Coug Interactive. As for my profession, I work in educational game design through my company, FINLIT Studios, and earlier this year I began working in virtual production for Captive Creative, where I, uh, utilize agentic engineering to develop tools and resources that empower creative students and educators.

Punya Mishra: That's wonderful.

Garrett Ward: So a lot there. Yeah.

Punya Mishra: Yes, Vidya.

Vidya Menon: Morning everyone. Um, thank you again so much for Having us, um, on the podcast, kind of to echo my um, co guests. Uh, it's really cool to watch all these episodes and to be a guest is, um, a really special experience. Um, uh, my name is Vidya and I am a grad student, um, at the University of Houston Master's of Education program with a health professions focus. Um, I am a physician, um, as my background. I'm a pediatric hospital medicine fellow at Texas Children's Baylor College of Medicine. Um, and you might be wondering, why am I in a master's program? So I kind of fell m in love with medical education and curriculum design in medical school. I did some research in medical school with um, curriculum design and sim, and at that point I had mentors that had done, um, masters in, uh, education. And that's something that I had kind of been wanting to do for the, um, past few years. I was just trying to find, you know, what point in my career, um, to do a master's and finally had the opportunity to do it at the University of Houston. Um, so excited to be in the program, excited to be, um, a guest on this podcast as well.

Punya Mishra: Thank you all. Uh, yeah, thank you for joining and I'm going to start with you, Suzy, and then we'll just open up the conversation. Um, what inspired you to do take on this project that you know that silver lining for learning? I mean, you know, Kurt and we have talked a little bit about this in the past, that this could be an educational resource, but so that was really exciting to see that you actually went ahead and did that. But can you speak a little bit to what inspired this project in the first place and sort of what were the broader goals? Um, rather than just have the students summarize the podcast, because AI will do that for you, maybe badly, but it'll do it. Uh, so what were you looking for from the instruction or the learning, uh, point of view?

Dr. Susie Gronseth: So I think it was one of the December shows towards the end of 2025, um, there was an episode where uh, you all were reflecting on what have we learned? We're coming up on the six year mark. What have we learned? Really? Somebody should do an analysis across these episodes. They're really rich data. And Kurt was preparing for his class. He was talking about how he was lining up guest speakers in his class and the different topics that his course was going to cover. I knew that I was going to be teaching elearning pedagogy and design a graduate course here at the University of Houston, uh, in the, in the spring semester. It's a course that I developed about six years ago and we teach every two years. And so it gives me a chance to re envision what is this course going to look like, you know, over the last two years, what has been updated. And so I was looking to replace one of the modules and thought this would be a really great activity, um, to work in there. And I had done a collaborative activity in the fall semester, as Garrett and Paola mentioned in another course that worked really well. These are asynchronous online courses. They don't have a set time or space for the students to interact. There's usually around 25 to 30 students in the course. Um, and so I think about ways that I could build in these opportunities for them to get to know others in the class, to have, um, socially constructive kinds of experiences in working through the different topics. And so I thought that, um, this would be a really great way that they could work together, come up with concrete products, and also hear from a variety of different perspectives across the six years and from around the world, um, on topics that were very relevant in the course. And so that was really where the idea came from. And I reached out to Kurt and I said, hey, would you like to join, um, forces in whatever ways makes sense, uh, with your class this semester and see if there's any students in your class that would want to do this as well or share ideas. Um, and so that's. That's kind of how it started. Did you want to add anything, Kurt there?

Kurt Bonk: Yeah, I had a group of three work together and uh, did great presentation as well. I think that Susie was hopeful that I'd have my entire class. We're with her entire class initially. But yeah, each class did some analyses that was very eye opening, uh, in terms of what shows were popular and why and what topics were covered during the six years, six plus years now. Uh, and maybe what would be topics to cover in the future, actually, when you think about that. So I, uh, thought it was really important to get that done because others might want to use those episodes in their classes. You know, we're only two instructors out of thousands, literally, who teach this course around the world. So, um, you know, this is a rich database and this is one. Cut through it, one way to approach it. And given the currency of this, this course and given that it's fast pacing content, you know, um, uh, to find out that certain episodes are more, um, uh, relevant to some students than other. So really important. Um, so maybe we might want to have Garrett and Vidya And Paolo talk about and Susie talk about. What are the episodes and topics that came out? And Garrett, before we do that, I think you need to, to pronounce your company name again and spell it out because people might want to look for it. I didn't get it at all. What's the name of your company?

Garrett Ward: Sure. So Finlit Studios, that's F I N L I T Space Studios. And um, I make educational games. Uh, so it's named that because the first educational games I made for facilitating the uptake of financial literacy for ages 2 and up. So the first game I made Profit Playground was for ages 2 to 5 and the second game I made for, it's called Financial Frontier and that was for ages six and up. And it's on mobile platforms, iOS, uh, Android, it's also on Mac OS as well as on Windows via the game distribution platform Steam, if anyone's interested.

Kurt Bonk: Very good.

Punya Mishra: So, um, I'm going to, I'm super curious to actually learn what those of you who in your groups you worked on and explored these episodes. I want to go in reverse order of how we introduced ourselves. So Vidya, I'm going to start with you. Um, how did you select the episodes? What were some of the things that you guys found? And personally, selfishly, I'm super curious about whether you used that AI tool that I had built, um, doing the six years of analysis. Was that useful? Uh, and how you were thinking about it. So we'll go Vidya I think then Garrett and then Paula.

Vidya Menon: Yeah. So, um, how Dr. Gonseth had the course set up. So she, um, we had kind of different themes, um, sort of pulled um out from all of the podcast episodes. And uh, the theme I, um, chose was um, social, emotional learning and well being. That's um, something that um, is, is important to me especially being um, in medicine because there's a lot of burnout, um, especially with like medical students and, and further training. And so um, I was kind of curious to see how we're able to engage our learners, especially with things being more asynchronous and, and more kind of online. Like how do you still sort of engage with the material, learn the material and apply it. Um, and so I always think it's interesting to hear perspectives outside of medicine because I feel like we're a little bit behind um, in kind of the educational space. Um, and so that was kind of why I picked that topic. And um, I got to work with um, people also like not necessarily in the medical field, um, as part of my Group, um, and so it was great to hear their experiences as well. And so m. Those episodes were actually sort of picked out um, based on uh, I believe the AI tool, um, uh, that um, Dr. Gronset used. So actually the work was kind of done for us which was great. Um, and it was really nice to see um, how different episodes across all of the years, um, sort of kept tying in that theme of well being. How do we um, establish connection, keep connection in increasingly sort of um, technological world where we are doing a lot of asynchronous um, things. And with AI I think you lose a lot of um, connection and online learning you lose a lot of connection. So how do we kind of get back to building connections? And I think um, with group projects like this, I think that's a really great way to connect with your um, you know, co students. Um, you know sometimes when you think of group projects it's like, oh, you're kind of rolling your eyes a little bit. But I thought this was such a great and collaborative way to sort of share ideas and you know, we come together as an entire class and sort of learn from, from the different themes without having to watch all you know, 200 something episodes. And so I think the way the course was designed was a really, really nice way to um, kind of see how these different themes sort of interplayed across each other. How can we learn from each other and again kind of build that um, connection. As sort of mentioned in uh, the, the podcast episodes that we sort of focused on.

Punya Mishra: So how many episodes did each group take up? I'm just curious.

Vidya Menon: Uh, I believe it was um, eight to nine. Our group had about nine podcasts and we were each assigned to watch um, three to four um, of them. Um, and we all watched uh, at least in my group, um, we all watched Ah, episode 136 which was how the pandemic has shaped um, leading universities integration of digital learning. So that was like a really great starting point of like okay, how uh, what do we need to focus on, um, in this SEL and well being theme. And then we watched um, sort of different episodes. So um, I watched the episode um, about online learning in Egypt which was fascinating. I really enjoyed that, um, as well as um, kind of looking to the future. That was um. Sorry. The hosts reflect. That was also an interesting episode that, that I was assigned and it was really nice to see you know, again across the sort of span of, of those, those podcasts, how those, that theme of SEL and well being sort of was um, incorporated. And I think that's a testament to the AI tool that was built, um, in. In terms of like, the efficacy of. Okay, this, uh, you know, ah, this podcast, um, well, you know, there's, there's different topics. Like, one of the main focuses is, you know, social emotional learning and well being.

Punya Mishra: Yeah. So that was, I think, the most surprising thing after I built that. That was literally built like in two weeks. I mean, that's what's amazing that we could do something like that. It's like analysis of 2.6 million words. That's how much chatter we have created over six years. And that was something that. What was surprising is what stayed common across the six years. And there was like, that was like, very heartening for me to find that the humanistic element, whether it's social emotional learning or that was a constant. That was like a steady beat through six years. Topics would change and come and go. And so that was kind of a cool thing to find out. But anyway, Garrett, on to you.

Garrett Ward: Yes. So to speak, a little bit more on what Video is saying is that we, we use your tool to have a collection of episodes presented to us. And the theme that I focused on in my group was AI and emerging technology. And this was, or rather this is something that I spent a lot of time, time working within, but also thinking about, because with the kickoff of this transformational state outside of the classroom as well as inside the classroom, with all of these emergent technologies provided, um, with that catalyst of the pandemic kicking everything into high gear, we're seeing a rapid evolution of our species and of our society, I think unlike we've seen for a few millennia. And to me that is extremely significant and worth a lot of study. And so I was very curious to what extent these emerging technologies are being implemented within the educational spaces and what academics and professionals working in the academic in these spaces are, what they're thinking about them and how they are utilizing them for their various purposes. What's really cool about the LDT program at UH is a lot of our professors had us using these AI tools throughout our study of the AI tools in, in the various classes. And they would have us conducting a dialogue with these AI tools. And it reminds me of Punya, I believe you mentioned it, but I think it was actually Chris's discussion point of augmenting intelligence and how we utilize these tools to make ourselves more capable and more effective at what we do by again, engaging in a dialogue with these tools and of course, validating whatever resources or responses they get to us through our own research, but not necessarily depending on them to think for us. And so that's what a lot of the episodes that I was listening to, what they covered were, your discussions of those topics. Specifically we listened to episode 223 which was our group episode that did an overarching look at how AI is being employed in educational spaces. And then there were a few other instances where I came across tools such as Jill Watson, which was empowering students as well as educators in order to remove a lot of the busy work from that educational process which can allow them to have more worthwhile engagements and help facilitate some level of deeper learning. And so all of, all of that is very intriguing to me. And in terms of themes that we discovered as a group, we discovered that there are these tensions and conflicting perspectives amongst everyone working within education. So you might have, you might say a bit of a dogmatic approach to education. This resistance to online education and the employment of these tools to help facilitate online education. And of course transformative design and deeper learning associated with the use of those tools, increased community engagement, collaboration, and as I spoke to student and teacher empowerment by providing that greater agency during the educational process.

Punya Mishra: Thank you on um to Paola.

Paola Esquivel: So our group focused on the theme of reimagining systems. And um, we ended up, because there's four of us, we ended up each kind of choosing a sub theme and that was specialization, digitization, personalization and improvisation. Um, and throughout it we sort of noticed that the common theme that kind of tied everything together was inclusivity. So overall it was inclusivity. And then we created the izations in order to make them sound kind of punchier. Um, but what ended up being a serendipitous moment was how we could tie each of these sub themes into a principle of UDL and the overall instructional design, um, application and process of designing for all types of learners. But I think it's a testament to the conversation where as we increase with our knowledge of AI and wanting to incorporate AI, we tend to lean more towards human centered, um, sort of learning experiences. And this is where I tend to, and I want to praise Dr. Gronseth was within this class and even the last class, there was a huge focus on communication and the community building around these online environments and overall the reimagining of how we can talk to each other even in a virtual and digital space.

Punya Mishra: Thank you very much. So, you know, you've got your grade. You don't have to praise her anymore. It's done.

Paola Esquivel: I miss no, I am actually Dr. G's number one fan.

Punya Mishra: She's a great teacher. I know that. I am just messing with her. That's what I do. I just mess around. Uh, but Suzy, so, um, I'm just curious because all three of them talked about how that you would use the tool to select episodes. Can you speak a little bit about, um, how that process worked? Because I'm really curious because, um, I had hoped that this would be useful to somebody down the road, but to know that somebody actually used it is actually kind of fun.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Yes. Thank you so much. So I did want to talk about how we set this up. Um, this is a 16 week course. It's asynchronous online. And I wanted to do this activity but also accomplish a lot of other things in the class. So I dedicated four weeks to it out of the 16 weeks. And you could spend a lot of time trying to choose episodes, figure out what that theme is that you want to focus on within all the different, um, topics that are addressed across the podcast, to become familiar with the format of the podcast. And I wanted them to spend more of their time in the engagement with each other, listening to the episodes, talking with each other to identify what are the key ideas in each of the episodes and then how do we see these ideas come at from different perspective across a subset of the episodes? Uh, our doctoral candidate Kelly Davis and I and Kurt had been talking about this for a couple of months, like January to February of how to set up this structure. And we had drafted a set of, uh, groups with episodes. Kelly pulled episodes manually from across the six years of episodes and had some headings. And um, they were around 10 episodes each group. And so we were going to go with that. And then you emailed us and said, hey, I've been ideating this analyzing silver lining for learning tool. Check it out, see what you think. And I thought this is great because you had the methodology already described in the tool and you had open and digital learning as one of the, uh, topics. And so I paired that topic with other topics. So then once you paired them together, then a lot of them had around nine to 10 episodes that filtered out naturally. And um, for those that, that there were a few that had uh, less than that or the AI topic had, I believe around 18. So I split that into two groups so that each group, uh, each of the seven groups had the same amount of episodes to cover. And there were a few, uh, groups that overlap because there are some overlaps in topics, but largely they're Looking at different episodes coming from that, the things that I've learned through Universal Design for Learning, and how we can build scaffolds that can help everyone to be successful in the process. We built scaffolds through this, uh, activity. And I'm happy if anybody wants to reach out to me to share the handouts that we develop to support this. We had a master project handout that described the four weeks and what, um, they were going to be doing in each week. And then in the weeks, the second week, they did, um, the analysis of episodes. Each group had one episode that all group members listened to. As you heard, um, Garrett and Paola and Vidya talk about, they had a common experience that they could launch their discussions. So they all listened to one episode. They noted, uh, themes from that episode in their shared handout, uh, in a section of that handout. And then below that, they had sections for eight to nine additional episodes that they were instructed to divvy up among their group members. And they could have more than one group member do an episode, but each group member was guided to do about three more episodes so that all the episodes could be covered. And then they were instructed to come together, schedule a synchronous meeting with all their group members to kind of like a jigsaw format, bring that expertise to the group and say, okay, this is what we all listen to. This one episode we heard here. How do these other episodes mesh with that? And are there these larger themes, uh, within our group that we're seeing emerge? And they, they could. They noted that in the handout too, so they could see it in text. So the multiple means of representation of that information. They had their shared notes, and also they were discussing it. And then they turned that into a presentation. So it was. It was step by step, scaffolded, so that, um, they could come up with these themes in four weeks of work. Well, actually three weeks. And then the fourth week is when we presented them. So they recorded that presentation. And, um, we were able to share that asynchronously, uh, in the class and then with the Indiana folks as well. So that was kind of how we came, um, through that and the logistics of it. The tool was wonderful. I shared the tool with them to say, here's where we're pulling the episodes from, and you can see why they're surfacing this way. But I liked how it pulled episodes from the beginning to the end, so you could almost see, um, how the concept might have morphed from a Covid emphasis to more of An AI emphasis, for example, um, across the years.

Punya Mishra: It's amazing to me. I started this, I was in 7am in Frankfurt airport and I was like, our six year episode is coming up in two, three weeks. Maybe I can do something using this cloud code and everything. And 18 days later, I mean the final version was actually built in one day because I was experimenting with different things. And then like, okay, now I know how all the pieces fit together now. Like the css, so the style as well as all the sort of the interactives and all of that one Sunday morning till evening. It's insane what this technology can let you do if you are thoughtful and systematic about it. Because lots of times you'd have to double check what it was coming up with. So again, I mean as speaking more to the three of the students, learners, uh, in this space, I mean this is um, like in terms of how you can do qualitative research and it raises lots of very interesting questions. So part of what I did was, if you notice, I have shared everything publicly. Like all the transcripts are there, all the moves are there. Because how else can I trust the output of AI is? The only way I can do it is make it completely public and auditable by anybody. Right. Um, so it's kind of interesting as an experiment, but I'm going on and on. I know Lydia has been waiting very patiently. Lydia, on to you.

Speaker G: Thank you. What a pleasure to meet all of you. And um, I thought it was such a good example of human AI collaboration. And Garrett, I know you earlier mentioned Chris work on this um, uh, augmented intelligence, um, uh, rather than thinking about AI, we need to thinking about ia, how AI is enabling us to augment our intelligence. Uh, and he often speak about the difference between reckoning and judgment. And reckoning is something that's more formulaic and things that we can offload to AI. AI can scan the 2.6 million words and make sense of this and extract these themes. But judgments is the higher level, higher order thinking that require human sense making. So Punya built this tool assisted by AI, but the human took the tool and looked at the data and start to collectively make sense of them. I thought this is a really beautiful example. So my question is more about the human sense making process, this collaborative process. And uh. So um, Suzy already kind of outlined from her perspective as an instructor how she um, designed this activity. I'm wondering from a student perspective, what is your experience collecting, making sense of these episodes within a group setting. And we all know at university level, especially Asynchronous course. Sometimes learner can feel very isolated. And how do you like, bring this community together? And uh, yeah, just curious, how about your collaborative process

Garrett Ward: so I can go first to answer that. So the way that my team operate is that we utilize Microsoft Teams to collaborate asynchronously as well as synchronously. So we would schedule meeting times where we could all come together and discuss the episodes, but then we would also independently exchange communications through one of our chats and we would help, we would use that process to help inform our analysis, which we also had a Google document that had a list of all the episodes where we could put all of our analysis notes in each episode section. And that then allowed us to go at a later time and meet for a longer synchronous meeting for about two to three hours where we discussed each episode at length and then went through the ideation process of uh, determining what sub themes existed across all episodes and how those sub themes could, could exist within higher theme categories. And then from that is where we were able to get our five themes which we then built our presentation around. And then when it came to the presentation, we actually used a tool called VoiceThread, which would allow us to take a PowerPoint presentation which we had been developing through the cloud based platform, which does not allow for voice recording. So we instead imported it into voicethread, where we could asynchronously record our segments for each slide because we were unable to meet synchronously. And that allowed us to put that recording together, which we then presented to Dr. Bronze.

Speaker G: Anyone can go next? Yeah, Paola.

Paola Esquivel: Yeah. Um, so actually very similarly to Garrett, um, my team had a really hard time meeting synchronously, but that didn't stop us from being productive within this project. And so while we also had a Microsoft Teams chat, we also had a figjam whiteboard on the side which we would update on our own time. We'd send a message in the group and be like, hey, I made these changes. Let me know what you think about it. And we could leave notes um, in real time and come back whenever it was available to us. Um, but now that I was told that the project was scaffold in a way that it made, um, for a sort of jig saw, um, representation of the assignment, it actually made a lot of sense in the way that we approached this project and each of us becoming our own expert and choosing our own sub theme and creating an overarching theme in order to finalize this project.

Speaker G: Wow.

Vidya Menon: I feel Kind of old school, listening to Garrett and Paola. Um, ours, our group, we kind of just used. We use good old email and um, Google Docs and um, shared. Shared PowerPoints. And so it's really, really cool to hear how m. You know, there's so much, so many like collaborative tools, uh, that are at our disposal to be able to, you know, work synchronously or asynchronously. Luckily our group, um, was able to meet synchronously a couple times. I think that was probably the hardest part of the project is kind of seeing when people are free. It's because, um, everyone kind of has jobs outside of the master's program. So it's like, oh, I'm working a night shift, I can't join this evening. So, um, luckily it worked out for my group. But, um, it's really cool to hear all those tools. Like I said, I feel like we're a little behind in the educational space in medicine. And so, um, getting to be a part of projects like this is just such a great way to learn what tools are out there to help improve collaboration. Because we do a lot of, um, you know, collaborative projects, um, whether they're educational or not in medicine. And we kind of have just been sticking to Zoom or teams meetings. And so I think, you know, um, learning that there's other, um, tools out there to help create presentations or collaborate like Garrett and Paola were mentioning, is really nice to hear. I'll definitely be taking, Taking some stuff back to my own institution.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: I think it's important to have options when you're creating these kinds of collaborative projects in this space because you are going to have students who are more familiar with communicating by email, setting up a synchronous Zoom session using the provided shared documents. So originally the um, templates we stored in our own OneDrive and we gave them shared links so they had access to them. So we were trying to set up some of that in the back. And then you have other groups who prefer to create a GroupMe or WhatsApp group or to start to collaborate in Google Tools or things that make sense for them, but to give some kind of baseline to get them launched. Uh, I found it can be really helpful and to provide some options. And when they say, hey, can we do our presentation on VoiceThread? I said, that'll work too. Um, I gave them a couple of other kinds of tool options, but they asked if they could do that and it certainly did work fine.

Speaker G: It's really interesting to see how different groups works, uh, Differently. And I think one of this question around education technology is what works? But we realized that's a false question. It's really about what works for who in what context. And then it just seems that every group have different situations and some people are able to work synchronously, some people cannot work synchronously. So you're able to use technology to bridge that gap, to make, make this more inclusive. And then Suzy, kudos to you. To give students option to feel like there's not just one way to succeed and we can make it work for like our goal and purposes, for our context. So that's really wonderful.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: We're trying to model the things that we're studying in the course we're studying elearning, pedagogy and design in this particular course. And so when we're saying that when you're design, you need to build strategic options that needs to be incorporated into the structure as much as, as possible so they can see what that looks like and experience what that looks like from the student side.

Speaker G: Kurt, I'll see you.

Kurt Bonk: Okay. Um, I'm staying here with a couple of alums from Indiana who are famous in educational technology. And I just figured out what they, what's useful for their dissertations. It's holding up your computer a little bit higher so the image is better. That's. You want to read what, an old test dissertation? 1988. Development and testing of Motivational Instructional Devices for Instructional Text Development. Anyways, um, there's trying to sleep, so I need to keep this brief. Um, couple things. I got two questions, so. And by the way, Garrett, it's really great to hear someone using voicethread. I was training teachers a quarter century ago in Indiana, State of Indiana, for technology integration. By the way, we're using VoiceThread back then. It's changed a lot in the quarter century since. I mean, before Susie was a student in our program at Indiana, I was using. And that was a long time ago, Susie. No, not that long ago. Anyways, so I'm going to take the same approach as Lydia. Um, take a student perspective here and then I'm going to have you take a podcast producer perspective. Uh, but first, start with a student perspective. Given what you watched, um, given what you learned, given what you've shared and so forth, what topics would you advise other, uh, instructors of a course like this, uh, to include in their syllabus that might be interesting and informative and valuable, uh, for their students? Given what you've seen, how would you change Sylvia to make uh, the content more engaging and so forth. And what things would you include in the syllabi um, today?

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Are you talking about similar kinds of courses?

Kurt Bonk: Similar kinds of courses.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Topics to be studied.

Vidya Menon: Okay.

Punya Mishra: Yep.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Go ahead, Jared. If you have some thoughts and you

Kurt Bonk: could even talk about future courses, that's fine too.

Garrett Ward: Sure. So I come at from uh, a game design perspective. So what I discovered in my studies is there's a lot of parallels between game design and structural design or educational design. So what I would encourage is the incorporation of more game design theory from a lot of the progenitors of uh, the current practices. And I think also something like John Keller's arcs, which is attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction, that instructional design philosophy that maps onto game design. So I imagine that a lot of the same theory from game design can map onto education as we've seen with gamification. But I think we need to go one step further than gamification because gamification is not game design. And then although it does derive a lot from the practice of game design, I still think that there are a lot of, a lot of design practices and theories that I think could be very relevant to education. In fact, one of my professors, Dr. Alf, he uh, constantly is referencing game design philosophy because he spent about 20 years being a game, uh, a games journalist. And so he has a lot of those theories in his tool belt that he actually applies to his courses, such as the most recent course that I took with him, which was the, the design, uh, development of online educational resources.

Kurt Bonk: Go ahead, Vidya.

Vidya Menon: Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting question. Um, I, you know, a lot of these themes I think focused a lot on, on you know, technology and um, you know, the learner experience, the instructor experience with technology. But, but to me I think that um, you know, the episodes that really stood out to me were um, you know, almost like lack thereof of technology or you know, how do we um, you know, in, in resource limited settings, how do we incorporate technology or varying kind of student backgrounds and access, um, uh, incorporate that into the, the learning space. And so, um, this wasn't my specific assigned episode, but one of the members of my group, um, had the episode about um, the students in Afghanistan. And I thought that was absolutely fascinating. Really. I think we take for granted um, a lot of the resources and technology that we have access to. And I think that's all wonderful. But how do we kind of adapt, um, you know, learning and teaching in more sort of resource limited settings, um, where people may not always have access to Internet or always have access to certain types of technology. Can we sort of translate what we're doing technologically into you know, a non technological form? And I don't, I don't know if it's almost like backtracking, but I think it's important to not lose those skills that we, you know, heavily rely on technology for, um, especially with you know, um, AI becoming so prominent. And I think that kind of goes back to what, what Garrett was saying, like not relying on AI, but using it as a tool, um, to kind of help and make things more um, efficient. And so kind of short answer wise, like how, how do we kind of navigate this space in a resource limited setting? And I think one of the um, one of the themes kind of talked about sort of equity and access, um, but I think it would be interesting to dive um, a little bit more into um, you know, how things are done in other countries and what can we learn from um, you know, those places that are more resource limited and um, how can we sort of have innovative um, you know, solutions to, to problems to help improve access and, and equity and sort of bridge that gap.

Punya Mishra: I have a quick comment if before. So Vidya, thank you for bringing up the Afghanistan episode because I think that's one of the episodes that really stands out for me. Um, in large part because I think in more research rich environments we, excuse me, forget how powerful this idea of learning itself is. Right. We lose sight of that sometimes. We just take it for granted. And it's when you talk to, when you hear this young girl speak, um, in Afghanistan, and that's one episode that I actually had to go in and edit out certain things because she had mentioned certain names and stuff which could have identified her. So I mean this is somebody who's putting her life at risk to learn. I mean if that doesn't move you, then there's something wrong. You know what I mean? And so I really appreciate your mentioning uh, that and this is just a little quick, um, thing I recently just found out two weeks ago, I don't know if I've even shared it with Kurt and Lydia, that I got the Nehru Fulbright Fellowship. And the argument I'm making is that the most interesting things around technology and education, particularly around AI, are happening in the global South.

Speaker G: South.

Punya Mishra: And the idea is for me to go and spend four, um, months spread out over three trips in India, um, looking at exactly the kinds of questions that you sort of brought up there. Um, so thank you for bringing that up because I think that's Something which I think Silver lining Amara best episodes are the ones where we have gone to the global south, where we have talked to students and teachers and educators in that space. I mean, Kurt brought in these young kids from Nepal, you know, um, who were using MOOCs. I mean, I still remember that. You know, those are the ones that really stand out. So thank you for that. Sorry, Paula, it's on to you.

Paola Esquivel: No, no, actually, um, when I was, you know, reflecting on the podcast in general, one of the things I really appreciated was the global perspectives of this podcast. Um, I grew up on the border between Texas and Mexico and I spent a considerable time in both the US and um, and in Mexico. So I really appreciated that it wasn't just this US Perspective, it was also, oh, we're bringing in people from Argentina, we're bringing in people from the Philippines, so on and so forth. So I really, really commend the podcast for being able to do that. But, um, building off on that, I think, and this conversation that we're currently, um, having, it's talking about being human and leaning human, even in technology in itself, um, but also the idea of going back to school. And I mentioned in the synchronous session we had with um, Indiana, where my favorite episode was actually episode 44 and that was the 60 year curriculum and this idea of the pursuit of lifelong learning and what is elearning and pedagogy as a class, but not the, um, sort of excitement in order to learn and keep learning and developing our skills. Um, and so I think that that would be a really interesting aspect to add back into elearning and pedagogy and the idea that you can always come back to school regardless of your age and regardless of your background.

Kurt Bonk: Does Susie have anything to add to that?

Dr. Susie Gronseth: Um, I think that, uh, you know, there are certain episodes that that have, have stuck out to us that we've talked about. Episode, um, 253, um, with educating girls in Afghanistan in particular, of course, the two episodes with the students from Nepal. Um, it's been really interesting to me to look across these seven groups and the individual themes and to see how that human connection really surfaces, how student agency surfaces, um, the empowerment of individuals, the empowerment of educators to make decisions and utilize tools in ways that are going to meet the needs of their learners in their community context. I think those are themes that seem to rise across the six years, um, across the topics, uh, across the issues, ah, focus that seem, uh, to be perennial, um, issues that m, are worthwhile to continue to explore. And study and our courses. That was your original question as to how we can, um, enhance the curriculum of our master's program, our courses, other graduate programs that we're doing. Um, there are things that we teach that gout, uh, of the phase or out of date. Um, but then there's these other topics that are more persistent, um, that get to the deeper, um, questions about what it means to design curriculum, design educational programs in ways that are going to be effective and supportive of learners around the world.

Kurt Bonk: So I have another question and I'm going to ask Lydia to enhance my question. Maybe Punya enhance it as well before we ask it fully. So the question is, if you were a podcast producer of Silver Lining for Learning after six plus seasons, now in season seven, what people would you invite back? What topics would you include? What do you think would be interesting? By the way, um, Laura Payne, who appeared in the Afghanistan episode, I invited into my class this semester because I found her fascinating. So people, you. We discovered that. I discovered that Punya discovered Lydia and Chris and Young, we all discovered from each other that, you know, that, that Punya would bring in or Lydia bring in or Chris or, or Young or, you know, or myself. And then we, we say, wow, you know, this is really cool. This is a topic we need to go. Maybe we need to go in this direction because this really is exciting. Like the Nepals, uh, episode we had a follow up, you know. So, um, from a podcast producer perspectives. We all are podcast producers, uh, given the show's been existence for this long. Lydia, you want to enhance my question and then Punya, you want to enhance my question, Then we'll let them answer it.

Speaker G: I think your question is really well phrased and uh, yeah, I don't have anything to add, actually. Punia.

Punya Mishra: Uh, I think the only thing I would say is like, what have we been missing? All of us have blind spots. Collectively, I think between five of us, we mitigate it quite an extent. Uh, but to get an outside perspective would be great. I'm just thinking, Vijay, we don't have anything about medical education for a reason. Is that something we should have? I don't know. And so I'm just curious from your perspective, sort of following up on Kurt, like, who should we call back? But who have we not been talking to? Uh, I think would be an important thing for us to recognize.

Dr. Susie Gronseth: I've really appreciated the episodes where there have been people in different roles. So where you have the, the teacher and the students together and then there are questions where you get both of Their perspectives, like what was the teacher's intention of doing this activity? What's the student's experience in that activity? So I like that cross conversation, um, having episodes that feature that. And I know you've done some of that. And just like you said, um, there are, there are applications for these skills, these concepts and education more broadly and um, places that are not the traditional sense. So thinking about you know, health professions education, medical education, um, health science education settings, elevating um, elevating that with more, more content there. But also where does this look, where does learning happen in um, and where is learning design applied in other ways? So for example, um, you know I do projects with colleagues uh, across the university in developing things like a platform that uh, with our Houston Food bank that um, using AI predicts places where we can pre position disaster supplies before hurricane season so that they can be maximally used. And so the design of that platform, the people who are going to use it, um, making that intuitive. I'm able to draw from the things that I've learned in my training and other experiences in more formalized settings to um, building this platform in an intuitive way and using user experience design practices to connect the users with our programmers so that we can refine it to meet their needs. So there's you know, ways that we can apply education in other spaces beyond um, some of the more formalized that that um, that we do see in um, articles and presentations and other podcast episodes that might be interesting to elevate. But we did talk about this, so I'll throw it over to um, Garrett, Paula and um, Vidya if you have some ideas you want to share.

Garrett Ward: Yeah, so as a follow up to that, I think as Dr. Bronset was mentioning, there's a lot of parallel industries or perhaps industry unrelated to education where a lot of these tools, technologies, philosophies and processes can be applied and vice versa. There's a lot to learn from those industries. So as you mentioned, Punya, the medical industry, uh, instructional design, game design, uh, social work, those kinds of spaces I think would be very intriguing to get some people that have benefited in one way or another from these technologies or from their studies of education. And in terms of guests to bring back on, these weren't guests on the podcast, but they actually were guests on one of our shared classes, Dr. Vonk, and that was Dr. Charles Zubin I believe is the way you say his last name, and then Dr. Charles Graham. I thought their insightful discussion of not just the applications of AI in education, but also Some of those philosophical ponderances of AI in education would be worth hearing. Also this podcast. And Paola, would you like to follow up?

Paola Esquivel: Thank you, Garrett. I. I think a fun aspect that we could bring and, and have, you know, sort of diverse, uh, people come onto the show are the exploration of hobbies and how that makes us as educators. And so the kinds of people you can bring in, not just only educators, but maybe people who run workshops or who teach, um, community classes or who, um, go to library and read towards students and how that perspective changes how they feel themselves as educators can be. I think that would be a really fun and interesting way that you can add more people to the show. But before I hand this off to Vidya M. I think a fun sort of sub, you know, um, section that you could add to the show is maybe like Punya's question of the podcast for the day. Right. And you can have your users kind of respond to it and be like, oh, I think it's this response. I think it's gets this response in sort of this like, pop quiz format to see if people are listening and maybe you could reward a very, ah, um, follower, a very passionate, um, follower, um, in the future. I think that'd be a really fun aspect to add. All right, Vidya, take it away.

Vidya Menon: Yeah, all great ideas. I really enjoy those, um, the ones that you shared, Garrett and Paula. Um, I think, as Paula was sort of mentioning earlier, I think one of the things that, that is so unique about this podcast is that it has, like, a very global reach. And so I think it'd be cool to have a podcast where you. This might be logistically difficult, um, in terms of, like, time zones, but have, you know, multiple guests from, you know, all four corners of the globe and kind of, uh, present them with, you know, what is the universal problem that we're facing in, um, education today? And kind of get their perspectives of, you know, based on, like, the resources that they have. How would they sort of tackle this problem or, you know, present them with, okay, this is, um, a course that needs to be presented. How would you, you know, tackle that with, um, your background and, um, again, the resources that, that you have available? And I think kind of having that sort of active learning that's happening on the podcast where everyone's kind of collaborating and sharing ideas and kind of learning on the fly, um, I think is really cool. And that's something that I feel like I did today in terms of hearing from, um, you know, my, uh, co classmates, um, definitely things that I'm going to take away from being a part of the podcast.

Kurt Bonk: Um, so yeah, so Garrett mentioned Charles and Charles, uh, Charles Graham. I have a handbook of blended learning with him, uh, from 20 years ago, 2005 actually. And Chuck Szubin. Charles Zubin was on this show a long time back and um, they, the two of them have many blended edited books on blended learning. But Charles Zubin has worked at Central Florida 55 years. He came when it was basically starting in 19, started in 1970. He just retired. They had party for him last month and AI took and transitioned pictures of him from his early career to pictures of him now and have him walking through a door as a young person and going through the door as a elder statesman, uh, as his kind of documentary of his life as a capstone of his career. I thought that was fascinating way to use AI to kind of um, get you to think about one's entire career that way. Um, and it's fascinating. I'll try and find the link, uh, in the short time that we have here to share it with you guys. But, uh, thanks for coming on the show. Um, it's fun to be on an island in South Korea in the southern part near uh, Busan, and uh, be able to connect with everyone globally like this. Um, and tomorrow, uh, I'm back to Seoul and then back home, no day later. Anyways, um, Punya's probably got a comment before Lydia's closing us out today to introduce the next show.

Punya Mishra: I think Garrett said that he had a quick.

Kurt Bonk: Right. Yep.

Garrett Ward: Yes, yes. Vidya and Paola both just had me thinking of a great episode format that you could have, which is listener questions, I think, providing, uh, a means by which listeners can submit questions that you then read over the air and then answer and you can have more of that free flow conversation.

Punya Mishra: So I love these suggestions. I'll tell you. This is, I'll tell you what, our biggest bottleneck. Our biggest bottleneck is that we have five hosts who have full time jobs, who are extremely productive academics and managing to do this. So I think our weakest point really is our marketing. We have no bandwidth to do that. You know, just pulling out the episode, getting the guests and doing that. So I love these and it'd be so good to do that. So I in fact wrote a couple of small grants hoping to get, but didn't get funded because we just need a producer. We just need somebody who's, you know, 10 hours a week is devoted to doing that. But here we are, we keep going. So, you know, and with that, Lydia is going to introduce episode 273.

Speaker G: Yes, in 273. In this episode we'll have guests from Peru and we'll hear about their self sustaining ecosystem of um, youth, uh, led organizations. So we hear from uh, um, not just the perspective on adult, but also the perspective of the students. So very excited about this episode and stay tuned.