Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
Intentional Teaching, Wrapped
Intentional Teaching, Wrapped'Tis the season for your quantified life. If you're a Spotify user, you've already received your Spotify Wrapped report about the music you listened to on the platform this year. Meanwhile, my Board Game Stats app tells me that I currently have an h-index of 6 for the year (meaning there are 6 games I've played at least 6 times each in 2024) and I'm one play away of hitting a 7. I'm also looking forward to seeing how my War and Peace slow read shows up in my first-ever Goodreads "Year in Books" report. As someone who tracks a lot of aspects of my life, I was excited to see the "Backtrack" year-in-review report for the Intentional Teaching podcast from my podcast host, Buzzsprout. I learned that Intentional Teaching is in the top 25% of all podcasts on Buzzsprout, based on downloads during the first seven days of an episode's release. The podcast has been averaging 300 first-seven-days downloads over the last ten episodes. I'll need to get that over 466 to make it into Buzzsprout's top 10%. Buzzsprout told me I am a "Bi-weekly Boss" since the podcast averages 2.5 episodes a month. I'm aiming to release new episodes every other Tuesday throughout the year, with occasional breaks like the next two weeks of winter holidays. (Be sure to update your feeds on January 7th for an interview with Len Cassuto and a special guest interviewer!) I have a feeling that a weekly schedule would lead to more growth in listeners, but I just can't imagine interviewing and editing at that pace. Intentional Teaching has been downloaded in 76 countries in 2024, with top countries the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany. Chicago edged out Nashville as the podcast's most popular city with 202 total downloads in the Windy City. With 30 episodes released in 2024, that means I have, what, six diehard fans in Chicago? I'll take it. Across all episodes, Intentional Teaching has had 14,314 total downloads this year, which is up 75% over 2023's 8,169 downloads. That's partially due to the fact that I published 30 episodes in 2024, up from 2023's 22 episodes. Perhaps most interesting is the list of top episodes as measured by total downloads in 2024:
If you missed any of those, follow those links to listen! Thanks to the 43 guests who came on the podcast in 2024 to share their perspectives and experiences on teaching and learning in higher education. I'm honored that you took the time to talk with me, and I'm glad that I can help give your work a wider audience. And thanks to the hundreds of you out there listening to the podcast. I know your time is precious, and I'm grateful you chose to spend some of it with Intentional Teaching. Two more stats about the podcast: Since its launch, 12% of the guests of the show have been mathematicians. In the last year, however, I've had on a lot more biologists, so that now biologists account for 17% of all Intentional Teaching guests! Finally, here's a quick preview of 2025 on Intentional Teaching, based on the six interviews I've already recorded. We'll spend some time on generative AI, naturally, but also graduate education and undergraduate research. I also have another fun and fascinating interview exploring parallels between board game design and learning design. See you in the new year! Thanks for reading!If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague who might like it! That's one of the best ways you can support the work I'm doing here at Intentional Teaching. Or consider supporting Intentional Teaching through Patreon. For just $3 US per month, you can help defray production costs for the podcast and newsletter and you get access to Patreon-only interviews and bonus clips. |
Intentional Teaching with Derek Bruff
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
Rethinking Doctoral Education Some years ago I was talking with the chair of a department. It was a STEM field, but I won't be more specific than that. I asked the chair what his goals were for the department's doctoral program. He said that they wanted all of their PhD graduates to secure faculty positions at top 25 research universities. I then asked him how many of their graduates were landing those spots at the moment. He said, "Oh, none of them." Way back in 2001, Chris Golde and Timothy...
"Imagine an issue. Wrong, it's more complicated than that." I've been taken with the above snarky quote from minor social media celebrity @internethippo. I seems to describe so many of the issues we've been debating and discussing here in the United States in the year 2024. So many people want simple answers to complicated problems, whether that's combating inflation or balancing the federal budget or a whole host of culture war debates. But complicated problems rarely have simple answers,...
AI Across the Curriculum This past summer I was at a conference and ran into Flower Darby, co-author of Small Teaching Online and The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. Flower has been doing a lot of work over the last two years supporting faculty explorations of generative AI in their teaching, and we spent a few minutes swapping resources and citations, since I’ve been doing that work, too. Flower pointed me to a paper from a team of faculty at the University of Florida about an “AI...