Interview on Casting Out Nines

I’ve mentioned Robert Talbert a few times here on the blog, notably in this post on the inverted or “flipped” classroom. Robert is a math professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I’ve followed his blog, Casting Out Nines, for years, even before it moved to the Chronicle of Higher Education blog network. He’s a fellow Vanderbilt math PhD, although we didn’t overlap here–he finished the same year I started. Robert is a thoughtful, scholarly teacher, one who reads widely about college and university teaching, thinks deeply about students and their learning, pushes himself to be a more effective teacher, and shares his experiences and reflections with the higher education community through his blog and Twitter activity. We’ve been friends online for years, thanks to social media, but we hadn’t actually met in person until this spring, when I attended a SoTL conference hosted by GVSU. He’s as interesting and engaging in person as he is online.

Robert has launched a new series on his blog that he’s calling “4+1 Interviews.” He’s reaching out to a few colleagues, asking them four questions about their work, and inviting them to answer an additional question of their choosing. I’m honored to be the first interviewee featured in his new series. In the interview, I talk about my transition from math faculty member to teaching center director, the biggest challenge I see in improving the quality of undergraduate education, the future of classroom response systems, and a couple of common misconceptions people have about MOOCs. I hope you find my responses interesting. Feel free to leave a comment on Robert’s blog!

Image: “9,” Leo Reynolds, Flickr (CC)