Authentic Audiences and Rhetorical Triangles

As part of the current slow ready of my 2019 book, Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, I've been sharing a few resources with my Patreon supporters that are on theme for each week of the slow read.

This week we're reading chapter seven of the book, which is all about using technology to connect students with authentic audiences. It was only after writing that chapter that I read Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World by Paul Hanstedt, where I was introduced to the idea of the rhetorical triangle. I've used this idea in every workshop since when I needed to talk about the authentic audience principle because it so elegantly explains why audience matters in the assignments we give students.

So for this week's slow read bonus resource, I'm excited to share an interview with Paul Hanstedt. He is currently serving as vice chancellor for academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. We talk about the rhetorical triangle, his new role at Rochester, and his work helping colleges and universities around general education, because Paul is also the author of General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty, the second edition of which is out now!

​You can listen to my conversation with Paul Hanstedt on my Patreon. Becoming a Patreon supporter is just $3 US per month, and it helps defray costs for the Intentional Teaching podcast and newsletter.

Slow Reads

That wraps up the 2024 slow read of Intentional Tech! Thanks to all who read along this winter and those who comments on the weekly discussion questions on Patreon and LinkedIn. I hope you enjoyed digging into or back into my 2019 book. A lot has happened since then in higher education, so we had a lot to consider!

2024 seems to the year of slow reads. Perusall is hosting a series of community reads of books like Grading for Growth by (past podcast guests David Clark and Robert Talbert) and Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology by (past podcast guest) Michelle D. Miller. The Perusall community reads aren't that slow, each lasting three or four weeks, but they are hosted on the Perusall platform, which provides for collaborative annotation by readers. I'm a big fan of social annotation.

And I'm participating in the rather ambitious slow read of War and Peace organized by Simon Haisell on his Footnotes & Tangents blog. You may be aware that War and Peace is a very long book, but taking it one short chapter a day has been a lot of fun, especially with all the community discussion that Simon has facilitated. You'll hear me say this again on future podcast episodes, but I'm struck by how much more engaged I am in the reading because of the conversations I'm having with other readers. It's a quality learning community!

The Work of Centers for Teaching and Learning

Mary Wright, associate provost for teaching and learning and executive director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University, has a new book out and it's fantastic. It's called Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education, and in the book Mary reports on her multi-year study of centers for teaching and learning through their Web presences. She answers questions like, How many CTLs are there in the US? (Answer: 1,209.) Also, How many CTL leaders have senior leadership positions like vice president or associate provost? (Answer: 21%.) And, What do CTLs say about themselves through their mission statements? (Short answer: Lots.)

For someone like me, who has spent his career working in CTLs, Wright’s work is a fascinating look at my own field and how it represents itself through mission statements, listings of programs and services, and annual reports. Josh Eyler, our fearless leader at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, asked the team to read and discuss the book as part of our ongoing professional development this winter, and we left with a lot of lessons for our work at CETL going forward.

Over on my Agile Learning blog, I shared some highlights from a couple of chapters of Mary's book, along with my thoughts on some of her findings. I wrote about chapter three, which details the various programs and services that CTLs offer, at least as far as Mary and her team were able to determine through analysis of CTL websites. I also wrote about chapter five, which focuses on how CTLs assess and represent their work through annual reports. In that second post, I share the single most useful piece of advice I was given when I was named a CTL director back in 2011!If you're in the field of educational development or would like to know more about centers for teaching and how they operate, I highly recommend Mary's book.

Thanks for reading!

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