EP 29 - Dr. Ericka Hollis - Teaching in the Digital Age: Cultivating Belonging and Excellence Online

In this episode, John and Jason talk to Ericka Hollis, PhD, about silence as liberatory practice, student backchannels, belonging in the online classroom, and leadership challenges with professional development. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)*

Links and Resources:

• Great list of foundational articles on the Community of Inquiry
• ACUE's Effective Teaching Framework for Higher Education
• John’s paper on online discussions: “A Tale of Two Forums: One Professor's Path to Improve Learning through a Common Online Teaching Tool”
• Dr. Ericka Hollis Contact Information
  • ACUE Page
  • Email: [e-mail]
  • LinkedIn
  • Twiiter / X

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

Mic Check

[00:00:00] Jason Johnston: Hey, John, could I ask you will you tilt your mic back a little bit?

I'm sorry to be so mic-picky these days.

[00:00:09] John Nash: Should I talk while I do that? Here's where it was and now I'm still talking and here's where it's going and now it's here.

[00:00:17] Jason Johnston: Yeah, that's pretty good.

[00:00:19] John Nash: I do appreciate your pickiness. I do.

Silence as Liberatory Practice

[00:00:21] Jason Johnston: All right. As you can see, this is pretty pretty tight operation we run here. The Online Learning Podcast. Heh. We basically When we started it, we decided that we would just do what we could do. You know what I mean? And we're having a good time. And I think that, I, we're getting some good responses from it.

I think people that listen and we produce it up to the level that we can manage. And yeah. And this is it.

[00:00:50] John Nash: I especially like the silences. It's a solace, not soul less. It's a SOLACE.

[00:00:57] Jason Johnston: Solace. The silences. Yeah.

[00:01:00] John Nash: Yes.

[00:01:00] Ericka Hollis: One of the effective teaching practices is wait time. Most of the time in education, we don't wait long enough. So for someone to actually think and respond, right? There's research behind that when you jump right in. And so I love awkward silence. I'm really an introvert. Although most of my career, I do things that are very extroverted.

So I'm okay with the pause and the solace, if you will, John. Yeah,

[00:01:30] John Nash: we'll just do Erica Hollis episode and we'll just have it be 40 minutes of no talking.

[00:01:36] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Like John Cage, if you're familiar with his pieces. He sits at the piano and he's got sheet music and it's all blank. After four minutes and thirty three seconds, packs up the sheet music and th