November 30, 2025 • 38 mins
What happens when passionate curiosity meets unconventional research methods? Dr. Sheldon Greaves reveals the power of "guerrilla scholarship," which is a creative approach to intellectual work that flourishes outside traditional academic walls.
For instructional designers, educators, or anyone seeking to pursue intellectual work without institutional backing, this episode provides both practical guidance and inspiring possibilities. Dr. Greaves reminds us that meaningful learning thrives in community, where diverse perspectives come together to explore questions academia might overlook.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you
information, tips, and tricks asan instructional designer.
Hello instructional designersand educators, welcome to
episode 68 of the Designing withLove podcast.
I'm thrilled to have Dr SheldonGreaves, an author and educator
(00:23):
, with me today.
Welcome, Sheldon.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (00:25):
Hi, Jackie, it's a pleasure to have Dr
Sheldon Greaves, an author andeducator, with me today.
Welcome, Sheldon.
Hi, Jackie, it's a pleasure tobe here.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:27):
Yes, thank you so much.
I'm glad we got connected onPodMatch and had an opportunity
to do this interview today.
I'm excited.
I'm looking forward to usgetting into the deep dive of
everything, so it'll be great.
I'm looking forward to it.
To start, can you tell us alittle bit about yourself and
share what inspired you to focuson the education field?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (00:46):
Well, I have always been very passionate
about learning, mostly.
Well, I guess it's trendy toblame your parents for a lot of
things, and I guess I can dothat in this case.
There you go.
My parents were both collegegraduates, my mother in
particular.
She graduated with a degree inEnglish.
(01:09):
She had a fairly wide view ofthe world.
My father had traveled fairlyextensively in Europe and the
(01:30):
Middle East before he settleddown, so there was a great deal
of awareness that there's a big,beautiful world out there world
out there.
My mother also was a huge fanof the public library, which
served both as kind of a ersatzeducator and occasional daycare
(01:53):
where she would drop me at thepublic library, and she also
made a point of ensuring thatthere were lots of books in the
house, and that's a habit thatkind of stuck with me.
I can't get enough of books.
My wife is the same way.
(02:13):
It's not entirely true that Imarried her for her library, and
so I have always been kind ofpassionate about it, and so I
have always been kind ofpassionate about it.
Going through school, I finallyfinished with a doctorate in
Near Eastern Studies from UCBerkeley, and while I kind of
(02:46):
soured on the whole academicscene and there weren't any jobs
anyway, but I still was verypassionate about learning and
education, and so I found otherways to exercise that passion
working in the nonprofit sector,in citizen science, and I also,
by a very strange chain ofevents, found myself as a
co-founder of Henley PutnamUniversity, which was the first
(03:07):
private university that wasdesigned from the ground up to
offer programs to theintelligence, counterterrorism
and executive protectionindustries.
So I was basically trainingspies for a few years, which
turned out to be just anincredible experience and a real
(03:27):
lesson in how the universitysystem works.
You learn a lot about auniversity by building one.
Jackie Pelegrin (03:34):
Right, exactly, you learn the inner workings of
it.
Yeah, it's more than aneducational system, it's a
business that has to operate.
Yeah, those inner workings ofit, yeah, and then you kind of
see the all the differentelements that go into it, of the
financial side of it, and thenthe government side of it, you
(03:55):
know, especially forundergraduate students, and Pell
grants and scholarships andloans, all that good stuff, yeah
.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (04:02):
And privacy and policies and all the stuff
that you've got to come up withto make sure that you prove that
you know how to run auniversity.
Well, I also had to do mydoctorate rather on a shoestring
, because while I was doing mydoctorate, my wife was doing
(04:23):
hers at Stanford in classics,and so we were effectively a
young married couple putting twokids through college namely
each other and so we had to getcreative, and one of the things
we did, for example, was thatafter her scholarship ran out I
(04:43):
didn't get one, because she'ssmarter than I am we would take
turns, I would go to school andshe would work full time, and
then I would take a financialleave of absence, get a job, she
would go to school and we'djust trade off and we eventually
made it.
I mean, we eventually did bothfinish and we're still married.
(05:05):
So I guess that says somethingabout how that works.
But when I wasn't in schoolformally, I still had to keep up
with what I was doing and Istill had stuff I wanted to
research.
And that's where you kind ofhad to get creative because I
didn't always have access to theusual things that I would have
(05:25):
had had I been a student.
And that continued after Igraduated and I still wanted to
do stuff but didn't have accessto a university.
So that formed the basis of mylatest book, which is about how
to do interesting and usefulintellectual work when you don't
(05:45):
have access to the tools ofacademia.
Jackie Pelegrin (05:49):
Wow, that's great.
I love the story of you andyour wife, how you both were
able to work that out and reallyreally come to an agreement
right, and say, okay, you do itfor this period and then I'll
take a break.
And you figured out a way tomake it work, and make it work
in different ways, so that youboth probably wouldn't burn out,
right, if you're both going atthe same time and then trying to
(06:10):
care for your family and yourchildren and everything that
wouldn't have worked.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:15):
Well, we didn't have kids, but we did
have cats.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:18):
So Okay, well, that's yeah, and they, they have
their own needs, right they?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:22):
have their needs and they will let you know
when you don't meet themExactly.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:27):
They can be, they're independent, but they
still need care.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:31):
They need help.
Yeah, they need care.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:34):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I love that.
I love that your parents hadthat.
Like your mom and your dad hadthat travel bug in them and they
loved to explore and everything, because that sounds like my
grandparents.
They loved to travel too andthey kind of put that in me.
So I love learning.
I don't know differentlanguages, but I love to read
(06:55):
too.
So I have that affinity forreading books.
So I would read mystery bookswhen I was growing up, so I can
relate to that.
I would read Nancy Drew HardyBoys when I was growing up, so I
can relate to that.
I would read Nancy Drew HardyBoys when I was growing up in
the summertime.
So my friend and I would tradebooks and we would.
She would read one and I wouldread one, and then we'd trade
and we'd talk, read each other'sand then talk about it
afterwards.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (07:16):
So it was pretty neat, so you had a book
exchange.
Jackie Pelegrin (07:18):
Yeah, exactly.
So I would collect the NancyDrew, she would collect the
Hardy Boys.
So we each didn't have to buybooks and we saved on that.
So it was fun.
Yeah, it was a neat, neat idea,Definitely.
So it's nice when you can becreative like that and and do
those things.
That's great.
Wow, I love that.
So, yeah, that's, that's agreat way to open up.
You know about what you weretalking about with your book.
(07:40):
So you talk about in your bookabout guerrilla scholarship.
So can you kind of talk alittle bit about that?
Maybe give us an example ofthat?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (07:48):
Yeah, that's.
Guerrilla scholarship is mydesignation, something I coined
many years ago.
That is basically doingintellectual work by using
creative and unconventionalapproaches to finding and
working with information.
That's one half of it.
It tends to ignore disciplinaryboundaries and it allows people
(08:14):
to look at areas of study andinquiry that are often ignored
by academics.
Not because academia is wrongor bad, it's simply they only
get to look at what they canfind funding for Right and that
creates kind of a small pocketwhere all the research gets done
(08:35):
and there's a whole bunch ofstuff that just doesn't get
touched.
Side of guerrilla scholarship isa deep appreciation and concern
for doing so in a way thatbenefits the community.
You form learning communities,you get people together and you
(08:58):
have salons and seminars andteach-ins, or just get a few
people together at the coffeeshop and you talk about stuff
and the idea is that, like theguerrilla combatant, that kind
of guerrilla can only succeed ifthey have the support of the
(09:21):
surrounding community RightRight From time to time.
(09:42):
Well, in numerous cases, thefounding fathers repeatedly
emphasized the importance ofeducation in the citizenry, and
I always turn to DwightEisenhower's farewell address.
This is the one where he gaveus the phrase
military-industrial complex.
That's what everybody remembers.
But he also said that theindustrial military complex can
(10:05):
only be held in check by quotean alert and knowledgeable
citizenry, and so that's anotherreason why I'm kind of well a
little exercised about this.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:20):
That's neat, yeah, I like that.
So we don't do it in isolation.
That's neat, yeah, I like that.
So we don't do it in isolation.
We do it surrounded with otherlike-minded individuals or
people that we may not know muchabout their area of expertise
and we can draw upon theirexperiences and then we can
learn from each other.
So it's a community approach tobeing able to learn and grow
(11:05):
no-transcript ideas and methodsand things like that and talk
about it and then just do itover lunch.
So that way we weren't.
I mean, it was taking time awayfrom their lunch hour, but we
were like, bring your brown baglunch and just come in.
You know, if you want to learnwhile you're at lunch, instead
of just sitting in the cafeteriaor sitting in the break room,
(11:28):
come on, come in.
And so it was nice.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (11:30):
Yeah, that's a wonderful example of
how, of how this can be done.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:12):
That's great.
Yeah, do you have any examplesof where you've seen it uh, that
guerrilla scholarship reallyeffective in what you've been
working on, maybe in the past ormaybe what you're working on
now?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (12:23):
Well, there's an example that I like
to point to just as an exampleof being creative and
unconventional, and this is theexample of a 14-year-old eighth
grader named Rebecca Freed.
Eighth grader named RebeccaFreed whose father would print
(12:44):
off I guess he worked at anoffice, a law office, and he
would occasionally print offarticles that he thought his
kids would find interesting andbring them home.
One of the articles that heprinted was about a paper that
had been published by a scholarby the name of Richard Jensen,
(13:05):
and the paper claimed that theidea in Irish immigration that
there were all these signs andads that said no Irish need
apply, that it was a myth, thatthis didn't really happen.
Well, he brought this home andRebecca read the article and she
(13:27):
thought that seemed a littleweird.
So she jumped onto GoogleGoogle Images and she started
searching and she immediatelystarted finding these old period
photographs of shop fronts withsigns that said no Irish need
apply, and this kind of piquedher interest.
So she continued to dig andeventually she got a hold of
(13:50):
another gentleman by the name ofKirby Miller.
He was a retired professor whospecialized in immigration
issues, and he happened todisagree with Jensen's thesis,
and she went to him and she sayshave I got something here?
And Miller goes yeah,absolutely, you've got.
This is great stuff.
So what he did was he helpedher assemble what she had done
(14:17):
and fill in the gaps and turnher little scattered body of
research into a real rigorouspaper, which was then submitted
for peer review and published inexactly in the very journal
that Jensen had published hisoriginal paper in.
And, you know, it justcompletely knocked the pins out
(14:39):
from under this guy's thesis,which I guess is not something I
mean.
No scholar likes to have histhesis toppled, let alone by an
eighth grader.
Right curiosity flow, but alsohooking up with people who have
(15:07):
the skills to take what you'vedone and show you how to turn it
into real-life scholarship.
I mean, if she had just postedthese things on social media, it
wouldn't have made anydifference at all.
But as it happens, she ended upmaking a significant
contribution to the field ofimmigration studies.
Jackie Pelegrin (15:24):
Wow, that's amazing, and at 14 years old she
was able to take that, yeah,and really, because I would
imagine a 14 year old wouldn'tbe able to probably have that,
maybe not that capacity to beable to follow that through
right, Because I know when I wasthat age I didn't want to.
I, I, there were things Iwanted to do but I didn't
(15:45):
necessarily follow through withthem because then something else
would pique my interest andmove on.
Yeah, so that's hard.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (15:51):
Well, when I, when I was 14, I I had no
idea what peer review was.
I had no idea what an academicjournal was.
You know, I mean the, the most,uh, advanced thing that I would
read would be, like you know,of that sort would be, you know,
news magazines like you know,time or, or newsweek, or that
sort of stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:10):
I mean, I think that that was it, but yeah yeah
more of a casual reading typeof things that you could do on a
sunday morning or something,yeah, exactly, wow, that's a
great example.
I love that.
And so it shows that age andtalent is no barrier, because
you can, like you said, hook upwith someone that has that
capability and that experienceto be able to take it to the
(16:32):
next level and bring it to maybe, or maybe bring it to the
finish line.
You know, if you've gotsomething, you know it's not
quite ready, you can havesomeone kind of help you with
that.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (16:42):
Yeah, and you know this also points out
something else, and that is thatthere are an awful lot of
people out there who used to bein academia.
They're not anymore.
Maybe they got disillusioned,maybe they retired, maybe they
decided they wanted to dosomething else, but there's this
huge I believe untappedreservoir out there of
intellectual talent andexpertise that I think in many
(17:06):
cases, is just kind of waitingor looking for an opportunity to
do something with their stuff,or would love to dust something
off and see what happens.
And I'm kind of hoping thatwhat this book will do is that
it will inspire some of thesepeople to kind of come out of
the woodwork and and, uh, youknow, see what they can see, see
(17:30):
what they can do with whatthey've got.
Uh, you know, in 2025 or 2026.
Jackie Pelegrin (17:36):
That's great.
Yeah, I've got your book on mylist of books to get because I
think that's, yeah, I think it'sreally great because, yeah, I
mean, for a long time I've I'vethought about writing a book
myself and but I thought that'sjust too too far out there.
I well and it's funny toobecause I thought I couldn't
teach college courses.
I thought, nah, that's, I'm not, that, I'm not a teacher.
(17:57):
And here I am four years andit's just, you know, past that
four year mark of teachingcollege courses.
So I thought, if I can do thatright.
You know then then and so now.
The book is that it's around220 pages now.
And so yeah yeah, so in aweek's time I was around.
It's about yeah, I was about aweek and a half.
(18:18):
I was able to take all thedifferent content from the
podcast episodes the solo onesthat form the basis of the book.
And so yeah, so it was existingcontent that was already there.
It was just putting it into adifferent format, adding
different things to it to givethem some reflection, and so
it's a combination of academics,so it's like that academic side
(18:41):
of it models, theories, butthen also the practical
application.
So that way it's and you knowthere's so many great books out
there that have some of that inthere.
But hopefully this will providea unique lens from that and
people will be able to use itthat are thinking of going into
the field or want, you know, to,even just generally in
(19:02):
education, if they're not sureif they want to go into
education.
I think it's a great way to beable to do that, because these
models and theories aren't justfor instructional design,
they're across different sectorswithin education just in
general.
And I think it's a great way tobe able to do that, because
these models and theories aren'tjust for instructional design,
they're across different sectorswithin education just in
general.
So hopefully it'll be a goodresource.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (19:20):
That sounds great.
I look forward to seeing it.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:23):
Yeah, me too, and I even have a proposal that
I put together and crafted that.
So if I want to go with ahybrid know like a hybrid
publisher or something like that, then at least I've got.
It's about 10 pages, so it'snot too long.
It's got a sample chapter andit's got some you know the
author biography in there andmarket research.
I, you know, did some researchto see what, what does the
(19:44):
industry look like and andwhere's that at, so that you
know publishers could see thatit's a good return on investment
.
Cause you know how that goes.
You, you have to be able topitch your book and it's a it's
a whole marketing plan that youhave to show that you have that.
And I was like, okay, I bettershow I have that social presence
and that ecosystem that I canbuild around it and and market
(20:06):
it.
So you know, I mean publisherswill help you do that, but at
the same time, the author needsto kind of do some of that
legwork too.
So that's important.
That's great, yeah, so, as weknow, there's been many changes
in education over the lastseveral years, probably even
because of just AI, butdifferent other things have
(20:27):
impacted that.
How would you describe thestate of education today
generally?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (20:32):
have impacted that?
How would you describe thestate of education today
generally?
Well, that's a reallyinteresting question because for
the last couple of years I'vebeen working as a substitute and
a personal care assistant andan educational assistant at the
school district here in Albany,oregon, and I've seen a lot of
things and I have, you know, allgrades K through 12, wherever
(20:57):
they needed me.
That's where they stuck me.
Also, a lot with behaviorsupport and special ed.
I am in absolute awe of whatschool teachers do with what
they have.
It's just amazing to me.
(21:17):
I feel like, quite honestly,the way teachers generally are
regarded in this country is anational disgrace.
I don't think they are paidnearly enough.
Let's look frankly.
Until we start paying schoolteachers a six-figure salary,
let's not even pretend thatwe're serious about education
(21:41):
Schools.
They are crowded.
There was one guy that I washelping out.
He was a kindergarten teacher.
He had 32 kindergartners in hisclass, at least two or three of
them with some fairlysignificant learning issues, and
you know, I don't know, I don'tknow how he managed to do it,
(22:03):
but then we had a strike herelocally.
Teachers got most of what theywanted and the next time I went
to his class.
It was half as big as what itwas before and things were under
control.
So you know, that was that kindof tells you a little bit about
what's needed.
I'm also of mixed opinion whenit comes to the use of computers
(22:28):
in class, especially thesekindergartners.
One of the things when I washelping out with this gentleman
when his class had 32 kids in it, they're all trying to get
these kindergartners logged inon their iPads into the network.
And look, I'm sorry, asking 32kindergartners to log into a
(22:50):
network is like asking astarfish to do brain surgery.
Yes, it's just not.
You know, it took 45 minutesjust to get them all logged in.
And it wasn't just the kids,you know there were.
Some of the computers wereglitchy, some of the software
wasn't working right, and everytime something like that happens
it adds another five minutes ofdelay.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:13):
Exactly.
They're taking away from theactual learning process.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (23:17):
Right, they really are.
So I'm kind of I'm kind ofdubious about how computers are
being used.
I think there's a place forthem, but I think it needs to be
more carefully and moredeliberately thought through.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:32):
Right, especially at that young age.
Yeah, yeah, definitely at thatyoung age.
Oh, my gosh, five years old,I'm thinking back to when.
I was in kindergarten.
Yeah, we definitely didn't usecomputers.
They were more concerned aboutgetting us to learn shapes,
numbers, colors, things likethat, the basics, and instead of
(23:52):
trying to navigate an iPad.
Yeah, that's true, and I have afriend.
Her little boy is going to benine in January but when he was
two he had a tablet that he Iwas like two, she would give him
a tablet and, yeah, now heloves it for everything and I'm
like I don't know.
I'd agree with you.
(24:13):
I have my opinions on that too.
I'm like there has to be abalance somewhere and limits,
and I don't know.
It's just that's kind of youngto expose them to technology
when they don't fully understanddifferent things yet.
To understand the implicationsof technology and what it can do
, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (24:30):
Now, funny story when I was in first grade
I was having some trouble withmath.
This was in the early 60s, sothat kind of dates me.
But my parents went to talk tothe teacher who was in charge of
the math teaching the math inour classroom and they were
concerned.
And the teacher said oh, don'tworry, by the time he's an adult
(24:54):
, everyone will have their owncomputer and it won't matter.
Well, she was half right.
Yeah, she was.
Yeah, she had the first partright yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:06):
Just not the second part.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (25:08):
Yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:08):
That's funny, yeah, and I wonder what you know
what you mentioned about justthe challenges of K through 12
education, if that's why so manystudents that I get in my
classes are in K through 12education.
I would say 80% of them aregetting the master's in
instructional design becausethey want to come out of the
classroom and it's so sad tohear that that they want to,
(25:30):
that they're burned out.
You know, like you said, thatthey don't get enough pay.
And for what they do?
I agree.
And sometimes even in highereducation too.
You know, I work, I work as anadjunct faculty and I love what
I do.
And they say you don't go intoeducation for the money, that's
for sure.
But I agree it's.
There needs to be thatcompensation for what they're
(25:52):
putting into it.
And so, yeah, so it's.
It's tough.
And I read some of thediscussion questions and the
things that they are goingthrough and they face and it's
like, oh, my goodness, they'restill.
They're still dealing with theeffects of COVID, even almost
six years later.
And so it's.
It's had a lasting impact onlearning and and behavior and
(26:13):
all those different aspects.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (26:14):
So you've probably seen that too, and just
the ripple effects of itteachers, which I find
astonishing given that we haveliteral, empirical proof that
there are teachers out there whoare literally willing to take a
(26:37):
bullet for their kids.
That's just heinous.
It's unacceptable.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:44):
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
Let's hope that we can improveeducation and make it so that
you know, because it's you knowit's interesting because
administrators and schools theyfocus so much on test scores,
right, and outcomes andeverything else and that's
important.
But if there isn't somethingthe research behind that, to see
(27:06):
why are test scores so low.
Because you know, I readarticles too, you know about the
state of education and thenit's like what's going on?
Why is there such a disconnect?
So it's very interesting.
Yeah, hopefully they can gettest scores to go up, because
then when you see othercountries like China and North
Korea, and they, their students,are so much higher in math and
(27:29):
science, and it's like, oh,that's, oh, that's a little
scary.
We need to improve that and getthem to a higher level so that
they can be ready for college,if that's what they want to do,
or go to a trade school orsomething like that.
So yeah, it's interesting.
Wow, yeah, so what kind ofprompted you to develop your
particular approach to learningin the life of the mind, like
(27:53):
when you wrote your book, orjust in general?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (27:55):
Yeah, well, there were a couple of things.
One was necessity, like Imentioned before.
But there was another book thatI encountered early in my
doctoral program.
It was written by Ronald Gross.
It was called the IndependentScholar's Handbook and it was
first published in 1982.
(28:15):
And he people who were scholarsbut who were not part of
academia.
So an example, he gives severalexamples.
(28:43):
One was Buckminster Fuller, theengineer who invented the
geodesic dome and God knows howmany other incredible inventions
.
He basically workedindependently.
It wasn't until very later,much later in his life, that he
got any kind of professorship oranything.
There was the historian BarbaraTuckman, who wrote some
(29:08):
marvelous historical books ADistant Mirror, about the 13th
century, I think.
It was one called Fire andSword, about Palestine, about
the Zimmerman Telegram, aboutthe Guns of August, which was
this classic study of how WorldWar I broke out, classic study
(29:34):
of how World War I broke out,which, incidentally, john F
Kennedy had just finishedreading about the time the Cuban
Missile Crisis came about.
Jackie Pelegrin (29:40):
Oh, wow.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (29:40):
And this kind of influenced him.
He understood from her book howeasily certain things that are
designed to prevent things fromspinning out of control could
actually have the oppositeeffect.
In the book she talks about howall these alliances were
(30:01):
designed to keep wars fromhappening, but then, at the end
of the day, they actually causedit to happen, and so.
Another example was an Americanphilosopher named Eric Hoffer
who wrote a book called the TrueBeliever, which is still
considered a standard work foranyone who's studying the nature
(30:25):
of mass movements and politicalscience.
He was a dock worker in SanFrancisco.
But he, that's amazing he readvery widely and he came up with
this amazing stuff.
Well, in many cases there'sstill a lot of truth to that,
and I would kind of like to seemore of that happen.
(30:46):
I'd like to see more of itrecognized and maybe kickstarted
a little.
Right, there's some veryinteresting things going on that
a lot of people aren't aware of, that I think are, frankly,
kind of inspiring, if nothingelse.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:02):
Right, exactly, and can help inspire the next
writer, the next researcher.
Yeah, exactly, writer, the nextresearcher, you know?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, because wedon't want certain industries
to to to die away and to just gooff into the distance.
You know we still need allthese different areas, so yeah,
(31:23):
being able to have that.
That's important.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (31:25):
And we need fresh ideas.
We need places where people cancan kick around ideas that no
one else is thinking about.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:33):
That's true, yeah, and to come together and
form those ideas, yeah, that'simportant, because we're meant
to be in a community and notmeant to be in isolation.
So that's important.
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
I love that to a field, whetherit's in education or
(31:58):
instructional design.
Or maybe they're just startingout in the field of education or
instructional design inparticular.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (32:04):
I would say a couple of things.
One is to read widely aboutwhat's been going on in
education, not just currently,but in its history, find out how
we got here.
Now, I am by no means any kindof authority when it comes to
(32:26):
instructional design.
When I was working on HenleyPutnam University, I was
designing courses, but it waspretty much by the seat of my
pants and I was talking topeople and saying subject matter
, please help me.
And I became intimatelyfamiliar with Bloom's taxonomy
and stuff like that.
But much of what I learned Ikind of learned the hard way.
(32:50):
Who are actually on the line,on the firing line, as it were.
Ask them what works, ask themwhat works, ask them what they
love, ask them what they hate,and shape what you're doing
(33:12):
accordingly, because I'm afraidthat so much of the material
that I see looks kind of like itwas designed in isolation from
the classroom.
Not all of it, but enough of itto kind of make me wince a
little.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:27):
Yes, I would agree.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (33:28):
Yeah, so you know for what it's worth.
That's the best I can give youat this point.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:35):
I love that, yeah, and having that novice
approach to the subject, becausefor me my experience is in
business and then education inthe sense of the instructional
design and e-learning, thingslike that.
But I work on programs andcourses in counseling, social
work, psychology.
I have a little bit of thatpsychology background because of
(33:57):
the business and the marketing,because we learn about the
psychology behind why peoplemake decisions the way they do
and fire behavior, things likethat.
So I have a little bit of thatpsychology background, but not
to the extent that these peopledo that, our subject matter
experts and our faculty.
So I love that you brought thatup, that don't create that
content in isolation andcollaborate with people and find
(34:21):
out, like you said, once youimplement it, go back to it and
evaluate it and see what'sworking whether it's formative
or summative evaluation and seewhat's effective, what's not.
Do we need to make adjustments?
Because refinement is alwaysimportant to do.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (34:39):
Yeah, it's an ongoing process.
A curriculum is a living thing.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:44):
Right, absolutely.
So, true, yeah, so I alwayslike to take that novice
approach and not feel like Iknow so much about the content
that I lose that curiosity andthat sense of asking questions,
because then if I think I knowthe answer, I'm not going to ask
the question, right, yeah?
So being able to have thatsense of always wanting to learn
(35:06):
more, even though I may knowsome of the terminology I don't
know to the depth that they dobecause they're in the field,
they're working and they'reteaching every day, and so it
would be like someone trying toteach my class on instructional
design, and not everybody can dothat.
So we all have our talents andour skills that we're able to
(35:28):
bring to the table.
So it's really great to havethat.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (35:32):
Exactly yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (35:34):
And being able to recognize that we all work
together, so it's a team effort.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (35:39):
Yeah, it's wonderful.
It is a communal effort, nodoubt about it.
Jackie Pelegrin (35:43):
Right, exactly, yeah, no-transcript need to
(36:08):
have.
And then I take that and I putthat raw data into our closed
system AI tool and I'll ask itcan you come up with some of the
key themes and key informationfrom that?
And it'll give me a documentand then I present that in the
kickoff meeting and I say, basedon the raw data which you can
(36:28):
view and I can show you that,but here's a high level overview
of that, so that way I'm notoverwhelming them with a bunch
of raw data, because a lot ofthem don't like that.
They just want to know what'sthe gist of it, and then from
there we just kind of move along, and I utilize that to inform
different aspects of it and tomake sure we're on track, and so
(36:48):
it's really neat.
So we had a meeting today andwe went over the domains and
competencies, finalized thoseand we worked those out, and all
the drafts were based on AI,and so I said you know, it's
only going to be as good as whatI ask it to do and what my
knowledge is, but you guys arethe experts.
You know what's needed and whatis going to work for the
(37:10):
students.
So we tweaked all you know someof the things, we rearranged
things and I'm like that's whatthis is all about.
This is what true collaborationis about, and I need your
expertise.
Yeah, so it was a.
It's a great experience whenyou can take that and you can
utilize everyone's knowledge andskills and their expertise and
really make it the bestcurriculum it can be for the
(37:31):
students.
I always like to imagine themas a, with their graduation cap
on, and so that was something mymy coworker did.
He drew it on the board andhe's like we're here, let's
imagine them as a graduate.
So it's always that, that nicepicture of being able to imagine
them walking down that you knowthat aisle and getting getting
their cap and gown, you know.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (37:53):
Yeah, it's a great feeling.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:55):
Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's great.
Well, I enjoyed thisconversation.
This is wonderful, sheldon,thank you so much for sharing
your insights today.
Your experiences, tips andexpertise are sure to inspire my
listeners, so.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (38:07):
I appreciate that.
Well, thank you, jackie, it wasa pleasure.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:10):
Great Thank you .
I look forward to having youback again on the show, because
whenever I have someone on myshow, it seems like we want to
do another episode and continuethe conversation, so I welcome
that opportunity again.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (38:23):
I look forward to it.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:25):
Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Thank you for taking some timeto listen to this podcast
episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
(38:48):
I'm truly thankful for you.
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you
information, tips, and tricks asan instructional designer.
Hello instructional designersand educators, welcome to
episode 68 of the Designing withLove podcast.
I'm thrilled to have Dr SheldonGreaves, an author and educator
(00:23):
, with me today.
Welcome, Sheldon.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (00:25):
Hi, Jackie, it's a pleasure to have Dr
Sheldon Greaves, an author andeducator, with me today.
Welcome, Sheldon.
Hi, Jackie, it's a pleasure tobe here.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:27):
Yes, thank you so much.
I'm glad we got connected onPodMatch and had an opportunity
to do this interview today.
I'm excited.
I'm looking forward to usgetting into the deep dive of
everything, so it'll be great.
I'm looking forward to it.
To start, can you tell us alittle bit about yourself and
share what inspired you to focuson the education field?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (00:46):
Well, I have always been very passionate
about learning, mostly.
Well, I guess it's trendy toblame your parents for a lot of
things, and I guess I can dothat in this case.
There you go.
My parents were both collegegraduates, my mother in
particular.
She graduated with a degree inEnglish.
(01:09):
She had a fairly wide view ofthe world.
My father had traveled fairlyextensively in Europe and the
(01:30):
Middle East before he settleddown, so there was a great deal
of awareness that there's a big,beautiful world out there world
out there.
My mother also was a huge fanof the public library, which
served both as kind of a ersatzeducator and occasional daycare
(01:53):
where she would drop me at thepublic library, and she also
made a point of ensuring thatthere were lots of books in the
house, and that's a habit thatkind of stuck with me.
I can't get enough of books.
My wife is the same way.
(02:13):
It's not entirely true that Imarried her for her library, and
so I have always been kind ofpassionate about it, and so I
have always been kind ofpassionate about it.
Going through school, I finallyfinished with a doctorate in
Near Eastern Studies from UCBerkeley, and while I kind of
(02:46):
soured on the whole academicscene and there weren't any jobs
anyway, but I still was verypassionate about learning and
education, and so I found otherways to exercise that passion
working in the nonprofit sector,in citizen science, and I also,
by a very strange chain ofevents, found myself as a
co-founder of Henley PutnamUniversity, which was the first
(03:07):
private university that wasdesigned from the ground up to
offer programs to theintelligence, counterterrorism
and executive protectionindustries.
So I was basically trainingspies for a few years, which
turned out to be just anincredible experience and a real
(03:27):
lesson in how the universitysystem works.
You learn a lot about auniversity by building one.
Jackie Pelegrin (03:34):
Right, exactly, you learn the inner workings of
it.
Yeah, it's more than aneducational system, it's a
business that has to operate.
Yeah, those inner workings ofit, yeah, and then you kind of
see the all the differentelements that go into it, of the
financial side of it, and thenthe government side of it, you
(03:55):
know, especially forundergraduate students, and Pell
grants and scholarships andloans, all that good stuff, yeah
.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (04:02):
And privacy and policies and all the stuff
that you've got to come up withto make sure that you prove that
you know how to run auniversity.
Well, I also had to do mydoctorate rather on a shoestring
, because while I was doing mydoctorate, my wife was doing
(04:23):
hers at Stanford in classics,and so we were effectively a
young married couple putting twokids through college namely
each other and so we had to getcreative, and one of the things
we did, for example, was thatafter her scholarship ran out I
(04:43):
didn't get one, because she'ssmarter than I am we would take
turns, I would go to school andshe would work full time, and
then I would take a financialleave of absence, get a job, she
would go to school and we'djust trade off and we eventually
made it.
I mean, we eventually did bothfinish and we're still married.
(05:05):
So I guess that says somethingabout how that works.
But when I wasn't in schoolformally, I still had to keep up
with what I was doing and Istill had stuff I wanted to
research.
And that's where you kind ofhad to get creative because I
didn't always have access to theusual things that I would have
(05:25):
had had I been a student.
And that continued after Igraduated and I still wanted to
do stuff but didn't have accessto a university.
So that formed the basis of mylatest book, which is about how
to do interesting and usefulintellectual work when you don't
(05:45):
have access to the tools ofacademia.
Jackie Pelegrin (05:49):
Wow, that's great.
I love the story of you andyour wife, how you both were
able to work that out and reallyreally come to an agreement
right, and say, okay, you do itfor this period and then I'll
take a break.
And you figured out a way tomake it work, and make it work
in different ways, so that youboth probably wouldn't burn out,
right, if you're both going atthe same time and then trying to
(06:10):
care for your family and yourchildren and everything that
wouldn't have worked.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:15):
Well, we didn't have kids, but we did
have cats.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:18):
So Okay, well, that's yeah, and they, they have
their own needs, right they?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:22):
have their needs and they will let you know
when you don't meet themExactly.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:27):
They can be, they're independent, but they
still need care.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (06:31):
They need help.
Yeah, they need care.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:34):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I love that.
I love that your parents hadthat.
Like your mom and your dad hadthat travel bug in them and they
loved to explore and everything, because that sounds like my
grandparents.
They loved to travel too andthey kind of put that in me.
So I love learning.
I don't know differentlanguages, but I love to read
(06:55):
too.
So I have that affinity forreading books.
So I would read mystery bookswhen I was growing up, so I can
relate to that.
I would read Nancy Drew HardyBoys when I was growing up, so I
can relate to that.
I would read Nancy Drew HardyBoys when I was growing up in
the summertime.
So my friend and I would tradebooks and we would.
She would read one and I wouldread one, and then we'd trade
and we'd talk, read each other'sand then talk about it
afterwards.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (07:16):
So it was pretty neat, so you had a book
exchange.
Jackie Pelegrin (07:18):
Yeah, exactly.
So I would collect the NancyDrew, she would collect the
Hardy Boys.
So we each didn't have to buybooks and we saved on that.
So it was fun.
Yeah, it was a neat, neat idea,Definitely.
So it's nice when you can becreative like that and and do
those things.
That's great.
Wow, I love that.
So, yeah, that's, that's agreat way to open up.
You know about what you weretalking about with your book.
(07:40):
So you talk about in your bookabout guerrilla scholarship.
So can you kind of talk alittle bit about that?
Maybe give us an example ofthat?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (07:48):
Yeah, that's.
Guerrilla scholarship is mydesignation, something I coined
many years ago.
That is basically doingintellectual work by using
creative and unconventionalapproaches to finding and
working with information.
That's one half of it.
It tends to ignore disciplinaryboundaries and it allows people
(08:14):
to look at areas of study andinquiry that are often ignored
by academics.
Not because academia is wrongor bad, it's simply they only
get to look at what they canfind funding for Right and that
creates kind of a small pocketwhere all the research gets done
(08:35):
and there's a whole bunch ofstuff that just doesn't get
touched.
Side of guerrilla scholarship isa deep appreciation and concern
for doing so in a way thatbenefits the community.
You form learning communities,you get people together and you
(08:58):
have salons and seminars andteach-ins, or just get a few
people together at the coffeeshop and you talk about stuff
and the idea is that, like theguerrilla combatant, that kind
of guerrilla can only succeed ifthey have the support of the
(09:21):
surrounding community RightRight From time to time.
(09:42):
Well, in numerous cases, thefounding fathers repeatedly
emphasized the importance ofeducation in the citizenry, and
I always turn to DwightEisenhower's farewell address.
This is the one where he gaveus the phrase
military-industrial complex.
That's what everybody remembers.
But he also said that theindustrial military complex can
(10:05):
only be held in check by quotean alert and knowledgeable
citizenry, and so that's anotherreason why I'm kind of well a
little exercised about this.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:20):
That's neat, yeah, I like that.
So we don't do it in isolation.
That's neat, yeah, I like that.
So we don't do it in isolation.
We do it surrounded with otherlike-minded individuals or
people that we may not know muchabout their area of expertise
and we can draw upon theirexperiences and then we can
learn from each other.
So it's a community approach tobeing able to learn and grow
(11:05):
no-transcript ideas and methodsand things like that and talk
about it and then just do itover lunch.
So that way we weren't.
I mean, it was taking time awayfrom their lunch hour, but we
were like, bring your brown baglunch and just come in.
You know, if you want to learnwhile you're at lunch, instead
of just sitting in the cafeteriaor sitting in the break room,
(11:28):
come on, come in.
And so it was nice.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (11:30):
Yeah, that's a wonderful example of
how, of how this can be done.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:12):
That's great.
Yeah, do you have any examplesof where you've seen it uh, that
guerrilla scholarship reallyeffective in what you've been
working on, maybe in the past ormaybe what you're working on
now?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (12:23):
Well, there's an example that I like
to point to just as an exampleof being creative and
unconventional, and this is theexample of a 14-year-old eighth
grader named Rebecca Freed.
Eighth grader named RebeccaFreed whose father would print
(12:44):
off I guess he worked at anoffice, a law office, and he
would occasionally print offarticles that he thought his
kids would find interesting andbring them home.
One of the articles that heprinted was about a paper that
had been published by a scholarby the name of Richard Jensen,
(13:05):
and the paper claimed that theidea in Irish immigration that
there were all these signs andads that said no Irish need
apply, that it was a myth, thatthis didn't really happen.
Well, he brought this home andRebecca read the article and she
(13:27):
thought that seemed a littleweird.
So she jumped onto GoogleGoogle Images and she started
searching and she immediatelystarted finding these old period
photographs of shop fronts withsigns that said no Irish need
apply, and this kind of piquedher interest.
So she continued to dig andeventually she got a hold of
(13:50):
another gentleman by the name ofKirby Miller.
He was a retired professor whospecialized in immigration
issues, and he happened todisagree with Jensen's thesis,
and she went to him and she sayshave I got something here?
And Miller goes yeah,absolutely, you've got.
This is great stuff.
So what he did was he helpedher assemble what she had done
(14:17):
and fill in the gaps and turnher little scattered body of
research into a real rigorouspaper, which was then submitted
for peer review and published inexactly in the very journal
that Jensen had published hisoriginal paper in.
And, you know, it justcompletely knocked the pins out
(14:39):
from under this guy's thesis,which I guess is not something I
mean.
No scholar likes to have histhesis toppled, let alone by an
eighth grader.
Right curiosity flow, but alsohooking up with people who have
(15:07):
the skills to take what you'vedone and show you how to turn it
into real-life scholarship.
I mean, if she had just postedthese things on social media, it
wouldn't have made anydifference at all.
But as it happens, she ended upmaking a significant
contribution to the field ofimmigration studies.
Jackie Pelegrin (15:24):
Wow, that's amazing, and at 14 years old she
was able to take that, yeah,and really, because I would
imagine a 14 year old wouldn'tbe able to probably have that,
maybe not that capacity to beable to follow that through
right, Because I know when I wasthat age I didn't want to.
I, I, there were things Iwanted to do but I didn't
(15:45):
necessarily follow through withthem because then something else
would pique my interest andmove on.
Yeah, so that's hard.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (15:51):
Well, when I, when I was 14, I I had no
idea what peer review was.
I had no idea what an academicjournal was.
You know, I mean the, the most,uh, advanced thing that I would
read would be, like you know,of that sort would be, you know,
news magazines like you know,time or, or newsweek, or that
sort of stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:10):
I mean, I think that that was it, but yeah yeah
more of a casual reading typeof things that you could do on a
sunday morning or something,yeah, exactly, wow, that's a
great example.
I love that.
And so it shows that age andtalent is no barrier, because
you can, like you said, hook upwith someone that has that
capability and that experienceto be able to take it to the
(16:32):
next level and bring it to maybe, or maybe bring it to the
finish line.
You know, if you've gotsomething, you know it's not
quite ready, you can havesomeone kind of help you with
that.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (16:42):
Yeah, and you know this also points out
something else, and that is thatthere are an awful lot of
people out there who used to bein academia.
They're not anymore.
Maybe they got disillusioned,maybe they retired, maybe they
decided they wanted to dosomething else, but there's this
huge I believe untappedreservoir out there of
intellectual talent andexpertise that I think in many
(17:06):
cases, is just kind of waitingor looking for an opportunity to
do something with their stuff,or would love to dust something
off and see what happens.
And I'm kind of hoping thatwhat this book will do is that
it will inspire some of thesepeople to kind of come out of
the woodwork and and, uh, youknow, see what they can see, see
(17:30):
what they can do with whatthey've got.
Uh, you know, in 2025 or 2026.
Jackie Pelegrin (17:36):
That's great.
Yeah, I've got your book on mylist of books to get because I
think that's, yeah, I think it'sreally great because, yeah, I
mean, for a long time I've I'vethought about writing a book
myself and but I thought that'sjust too too far out there.
I well and it's funny toobecause I thought I couldn't
teach college courses.
I thought, nah, that's, I'm not, that, I'm not a teacher.
(17:57):
And here I am four years andit's just, you know, past that
four year mark of teachingcollege courses.
So I thought, if I can do thatright.
You know then then and so now.
The book is that it's around220 pages now.
And so yeah yeah, so in aweek's time I was around.
It's about yeah, I was about aweek and a half.
(18:18):
I was able to take all thedifferent content from the
podcast episodes the solo onesthat form the basis of the book.
And so yeah, so it was existingcontent that was already there.
It was just putting it into adifferent format, adding
different things to it to givethem some reflection, and so
it's a combination of academics,so it's like that academic side
(18:41):
of it models, theories, butthen also the practical
application.
So that way it's and you knowthere's so many great books out
there that have some of that inthere.
But hopefully this will providea unique lens from that and
people will be able to use itthat are thinking of going into
the field or want, you know, to,even just generally in
(19:02):
education, if they're not sureif they want to go into
education.
I think it's a great way to beable to do that, because these
models and theories aren't justfor instructional design,
they're across different sectorswithin education just in
general.
And I think it's a great way tobe able to do that, because
these models and theories aren'tjust for instructional design,
they're across different sectorswithin education just in
general.
So hopefully it'll be a goodresource.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (19:20):
That sounds great.
I look forward to seeing it.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:23):
Yeah, me too, and I even have a proposal that
I put together and crafted that.
So if I want to go with ahybrid know like a hybrid
publisher or something like that, then at least I've got.
It's about 10 pages, so it'snot too long.
It's got a sample chapter andit's got some you know the
author biography in there andmarket research.
I, you know, did some researchto see what, what does the
(19:44):
industry look like and andwhere's that at, so that you
know publishers could see thatit's a good return on investment
.
Cause you know how that goes.
You, you have to be able topitch your book and it's a it's
a whole marketing plan that youhave to show that you have that.
And I was like, okay, I bettershow I have that social presence
and that ecosystem that I canbuild around it and and market
(20:06):
it.
So you know, I mean publisherswill help you do that, but at
the same time, the author needsto kind of do some of that
legwork too.
So that's important.
That's great, yeah, so, as weknow, there's been many changes
in education over the lastseveral years, probably even
because of just AI, butdifferent other things have
(20:27):
impacted that.
How would you describe thestate of education today
generally?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (20:32):
have impacted that?
How would you describe thestate of education today
generally?
Well, that's a reallyinteresting question because for
the last couple of years I'vebeen working as a substitute and
a personal care assistant andan educational assistant at the
school district here in Albany,oregon, and I've seen a lot of
things and I have, you know, allgrades K through 12, wherever
(20:57):
they needed me.
That's where they stuck me.
Also, a lot with behaviorsupport and special ed.
I am in absolute awe of whatschool teachers do with what
they have.
It's just amazing to me.
(21:17):
I feel like, quite honestly,the way teachers generally are
regarded in this country is anational disgrace.
I don't think they are paidnearly enough.
Let's look frankly.
Until we start paying schoolteachers a six-figure salary,
let's not even pretend thatwe're serious about education
(21:41):
Schools.
They are crowded.
There was one guy that I washelping out.
He was a kindergarten teacher.
He had 32 kindergartners in hisclass, at least two or three of
them with some fairlysignificant learning issues, and
you know, I don't know, I don'tknow how he managed to do it,
(22:03):
but then we had a strike herelocally.
Teachers got most of what theywanted and the next time I went
to his class.
It was half as big as what itwas before and things were under
control.
So you know, that was that kindof tells you a little bit about
what's needed.
I'm also of mixed opinion whenit comes to the use of computers
(22:28):
in class, especially thesekindergartners.
One of the things when I washelping out with this gentleman
when his class had 32 kids in it, they're all trying to get
these kindergartners logged inon their iPads into the network.
And look, I'm sorry, asking 32kindergartners to log into a
(22:50):
network is like asking astarfish to do brain surgery.
Yes, it's just not.
You know, it took 45 minutesjust to get them all logged in.
And it wasn't just the kids,you know there were.
Some of the computers wereglitchy, some of the software
wasn't working right, and everytime something like that happens
it adds another five minutes ofdelay.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:13):
Exactly.
They're taking away from theactual learning process.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (23:17):
Right, they really are.
So I'm kind of I'm kind ofdubious about how computers are
being used.
I think there's a place forthem, but I think it needs to be
more carefully and moredeliberately thought through.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:32):
Right, especially at that young age.
Yeah, yeah, definitely at thatyoung age.
Oh, my gosh, five years old,I'm thinking back to when.
I was in kindergarten.
Yeah, we definitely didn't usecomputers.
They were more concerned aboutgetting us to learn shapes,
numbers, colors, things likethat, the basics, and instead of
(23:52):
trying to navigate an iPad.
Yeah, that's true, and I have afriend.
Her little boy is going to benine in January but when he was
two he had a tablet that he Iwas like two, she would give him
a tablet and, yeah, now heloves it for everything and I'm
like I don't know.
I'd agree with you.
(24:13):
I have my opinions on that too.
I'm like there has to be abalance somewhere and limits,
and I don't know.
It's just that's kind of youngto expose them to technology
when they don't fully understanddifferent things yet.
To understand the implicationsof technology and what it can do
, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (24:30):
Now, funny story when I was in first grade
I was having some trouble withmath.
This was in the early 60s, sothat kind of dates me.
But my parents went to talk tothe teacher who was in charge of
the math teaching the math inour classroom and they were
concerned.
And the teacher said oh, don'tworry, by the time he's an adult
(24:54):
, everyone will have their owncomputer and it won't matter.
Well, she was half right.
Yeah, she was.
Yeah, she had the first partright yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:06):
Just not the second part.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (25:08):
Yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:08):
That's funny, yeah, and I wonder what you know
what you mentioned about justthe challenges of K through 12
education, if that's why so manystudents that I get in my
classes are in K through 12education.
I would say 80% of them aregetting the master's in
instructional design becausethey want to come out of the
classroom and it's so sad tohear that that they want to,
(25:30):
that they're burned out.
You know, like you said, thatthey don't get enough pay.
And for what they do?
I agree.
And sometimes even in highereducation too.
You know, I work, I work as anadjunct faculty and I love what
I do.
And they say you don't go intoeducation for the money, that's
for sure.
But I agree it's.
There needs to be thatcompensation for what they're
(25:52):
putting into it.
And so, yeah, so it's.
It's tough.
And I read some of thediscussion questions and the
things that they are goingthrough and they face and it's
like, oh, my goodness, they'restill.
They're still dealing with theeffects of COVID, even almost
six years later.
And so it's.
It's had a lasting impact onlearning and and behavior and
(26:13):
all those different aspects.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (26:14):
So you've probably seen that too, and just
the ripple effects of itteachers, which I find
astonishing given that we haveliteral, empirical proof that
there are teachers out there whoare literally willing to take a
(26:37):
bullet for their kids.
That's just heinous.
It's unacceptable.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:44):
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
Let's hope that we can improveeducation and make it so that
you know, because it's you knowit's interesting because
administrators and schools theyfocus so much on test scores,
right, and outcomes andeverything else and that's
important.
But if there isn't somethingthe research behind that, to see
(27:06):
why are test scores so low.
Because you know, I readarticles too, you know about the
state of education and thenit's like what's going on?
Why is there such a disconnect?
So it's very interesting.
Yeah, hopefully they can gettest scores to go up, because
then when you see othercountries like China and North
Korea, and they, their students,are so much higher in math and
(27:29):
science, and it's like, oh,that's, oh, that's a little
scary.
We need to improve that and getthem to a higher level so that
they can be ready for college,if that's what they want to do,
or go to a trade school orsomething like that.
So yeah, it's interesting.
Wow, yeah, so what kind ofprompted you to develop your
particular approach to learningin the life of the mind, like
(27:53):
when you wrote your book, orjust in general?
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (27:55):
Yeah, well, there were a couple of things.
One was necessity, like Imentioned before.
But there was another book thatI encountered early in my
doctoral program.
It was written by Ronald Gross.
It was called the IndependentScholar's Handbook and it was
first published in 1982.
(28:15):
And he people who were scholarsbut who were not part of
academia.
So an example, he gives severalexamples.
(28:43):
One was Buckminster Fuller, theengineer who invented the
geodesic dome and God knows howmany other incredible inventions
.
He basically workedindependently.
It wasn't until very later,much later in his life, that he
got any kind of professorship oranything.
There was the historian BarbaraTuckman, who wrote some
(29:08):
marvelous historical books ADistant Mirror, about the 13th
century, I think.
It was one called Fire andSword, about Palestine, about
the Zimmerman Telegram, aboutthe Guns of August, which was
this classic study of how WorldWar I broke out, classic study
(29:34):
of how World War I broke out,which, incidentally, john F
Kennedy had just finishedreading about the time the Cuban
Missile Crisis came about.
Jackie Pelegrin (29:40):
Oh, wow.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (29:40):
And this kind of influenced him.
He understood from her book howeasily certain things that are
designed to prevent things fromspinning out of control could
actually have the oppositeeffect.
In the book she talks about howall these alliances were
(30:01):
designed to keep wars fromhappening, but then, at the end
of the day, they actually causedit to happen, and so.
Another example was an Americanphilosopher named Eric Hoffer
who wrote a book called the TrueBeliever, which is still
considered a standard work foranyone who's studying the nature
(30:25):
of mass movements and politicalscience.
He was a dock worker in SanFrancisco.
But he, that's amazing he readvery widely and he came up with
this amazing stuff.
Well, in many cases there'sstill a lot of truth to that,
and I would kind of like to seemore of that happen.
(30:46):
I'd like to see more of itrecognized and maybe kickstarted
a little.
Right, there's some veryinteresting things going on that
a lot of people aren't aware of, that I think are, frankly,
kind of inspiring, if nothingelse.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:02):
Right, exactly, and can help inspire the next
writer, the next researcher.
Yeah, exactly, writer, the nextresearcher, you know?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, because wedon't want certain industries
to to to die away and to just gooff into the distance.
You know we still need allthese different areas, so yeah,
(31:23):
being able to have that.
That's important.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (31:25):
And we need fresh ideas.
We need places where people cancan kick around ideas that no
one else is thinking about.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:33):
That's true, yeah, and to come together and
form those ideas, yeah, that'simportant, because we're meant
to be in a community and notmeant to be in isolation.
So that's important.
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
I love that to a field, whetherit's in education or
(31:58):
instructional design.
Or maybe they're just startingout in the field of education or
instructional design inparticular.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (32:04):
I would say a couple of things.
One is to read widely aboutwhat's been going on in
education, not just currently,but in its history, find out how
we got here.
Now, I am by no means any kindof authority when it comes to
(32:26):
instructional design.
When I was working on HenleyPutnam University, I was
designing courses, but it waspretty much by the seat of my
pants and I was talking topeople and saying subject matter
, please help me.
And I became intimatelyfamiliar with Bloom's taxonomy
and stuff like that.
But much of what I learned Ikind of learned the hard way.
(32:50):
Who are actually on the line,on the firing line, as it were.
Ask them what works, ask themwhat works, ask them what they
love, ask them what they hate,and shape what you're doing
(33:12):
accordingly, because I'm afraidthat so much of the material
that I see looks kind of like itwas designed in isolation from
the classroom.
Not all of it, but enough of itto kind of make me wince a
little.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:27):
Yes, I would agree.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (33:28):
Yeah, so you know for what it's worth.
That's the best I can give youat this point.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:35):
I love that, yeah, and having that novice
approach to the subject, becausefor me my experience is in
business and then education inthe sense of the instructional
design and e-learning, thingslike that.
But I work on programs andcourses in counseling, social
work, psychology.
I have a little bit of thatpsychology background because of
(33:57):
the business and the marketing,because we learn about the
psychology behind why peoplemake decisions the way they do
and fire behavior, things likethat.
So I have a little bit of thatpsychology background, but not
to the extent that these peopledo that, our subject matter
experts and our faculty.
So I love that you brought thatup, that don't create that
content in isolation andcollaborate with people and find
(34:21):
out, like you said, once youimplement it, go back to it and
evaluate it and see what'sworking whether it's formative
or summative evaluation and seewhat's effective, what's not.
Do we need to make adjustments?
Because refinement is alwaysimportant to do.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (34:39):
Yeah, it's an ongoing process.
A curriculum is a living thing.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:44):
Right, absolutely.
So, true, yeah, so I alwayslike to take that novice
approach and not feel like Iknow so much about the content
that I lose that curiosity andthat sense of asking questions,
because then if I think I knowthe answer, I'm not going to ask
the question, right, yeah?
So being able to have thatsense of always wanting to learn
(35:06):
more, even though I may knowsome of the terminology I don't
know to the depth that they dobecause they're in the field,
they're working and they'reteaching every day, and so it
would be like someone trying toteach my class on instructional
design, and not everybody can dothat.
So we all have our talents andour skills that we're able to
(35:28):
bring to the table.
So it's really great to havethat.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (35:32):
Exactly yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (35:34):
And being able to recognize that we all work
together, so it's a team effort.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (35:39):
Yeah, it's wonderful.
It is a communal effort, nodoubt about it.
Jackie Pelegrin (35:43):
Right, exactly, yeah, no-transcript need to
(36:08):
have.
And then I take that and I putthat raw data into our closed
system AI tool and I'll ask itcan you come up with some of the
key themes and key informationfrom that?
And it'll give me a documentand then I present that in the
kickoff meeting and I say, basedon the raw data which you can
(36:28):
view and I can show you that,but here's a high level overview
of that, so that way I'm notoverwhelming them with a bunch
of raw data, because a lot ofthem don't like that.
They just want to know what'sthe gist of it, and then from
there we just kind of move along, and I utilize that to inform
different aspects of it and tomake sure we're on track, and so
(36:48):
it's really neat.
So we had a meeting today andwe went over the domains and
competencies, finalized thoseand we worked those out, and all
the drafts were based on AI,and so I said you know, it's
only going to be as good as whatI ask it to do and what my
knowledge is, but you guys arethe experts.
You know what's needed and whatis going to work for the
(37:10):
students.
So we tweaked all you know someof the things, we rearranged
things and I'm like that's whatthis is all about.
This is what true collaborationis about, and I need your
expertise.
Yeah, so it was a.
It's a great experience whenyou can take that and you can
utilize everyone's knowledge andskills and their expertise and
really make it the bestcurriculum it can be for the
(37:31):
students.
I always like to imagine themas a, with their graduation cap
on, and so that was something mymy coworker did.
He drew it on the board andhe's like we're here, let's
imagine them as a graduate.
So it's always that, that nicepicture of being able to imagine
them walking down that you knowthat aisle and getting getting
their cap and gown, you know.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (37:53):
Yeah, it's a great feeling.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:55):
Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's great.
Well, I enjoyed thisconversation.
This is wonderful, sheldon,thank you so much for sharing
your insights today.
Your experiences, tips andexpertise are sure to inspire my
listeners, so.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (38:07):
I appreciate that.
Well, thank you, jackie, it wasa pleasure.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:10):
Great Thank you .
I look forward to having youback again on the show, because
whenever I have someone on myshow, it seems like we want to
do another episode and continuethe conversation, so I welcome
that opportunity again.
Dr. Sheldon Greaves (38:23):
I look forward to it.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:25):
Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Thank you for taking some timeto listen to this podcast
episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
(38:48):
I'm truly thankful for you.
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