Short but Mighty: Designing brief, evidence-informed teaching for health professions education
August 24, 2026
Presenters:
Mariah Rudd, MEd
Director, OCPD
Carilion Clinic
TEACH
Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology
VTCSOM
Sarah Harendt, PhD, MS
Manager, Education & Faculty Development, OCPD
Co-Director, Well-being, Department of Medicine
Carilion Clinic
TEACH
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine
VTCSOM
Objectives
Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:
- Discuss attention span research and challenges of today’s learners.
- Identify theories to support a shift to abbreviated lecture times.
- Recognize several models to support shortened lectures.
- Identify best practices and tips for health professions educators who want to shorten lectures.
Invitees
All interested Carilion Clinic, VTC, and RUC physicians, faculty, and other health professions educators.
Identification and Mitigation of Disclosure of Financial Relationships
Speakers: Mariah Rudd, MEd and Sarah Harendt, PhD, MS reported no relevant relationships with any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by or used on patients.
Planning Committee: JT Addair, Michele Richardson, Mariah Rudd, Sarah Harendt, and Shari Whicker reported no relevant relationships with any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by or used on patients.
*Carilion Clinic’s CME Program is accredited by the Southern States CME Collaborative (SSCC) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Carilion Clinic’s CME Program designates this live activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
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Well, good afternoon everyone. Um, Mariah and I are really excited to be here with you today to present this session, short but mighty, designing
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brief evidence informed teaching for health professions education. I'm Sarah Herren, education and faculty development manager with OCB and OCPD and teach.
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Hey guys, uh Mariah Rudd, director of OCPD and teach. Um and thank you guys for joining us today.
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So we're going to have some opportunities for you to share your thoughts and opinions um and ask questions. Um we do have a slido where
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you can engage in a poll or two. Um if you want to put your questions in the chat, feel free to do that. Um, we may
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ask you to take yourselves off mute if you're able to uh to share your thoughts as well.
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Okay, there we go. So, while we don't have any disclosures, we do have a slight disclaimer.
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This session is not a brief session. It's more of a mediumsiz length session.
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Um, and we're not necessarily practicing everything that we're preaching today, but stick with us and we think it's going to be worth your while.
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By the end of our time together, you'll be able to discuss attention span research and the challenges of today's learners. You'll be able to identify
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theories to support a shift to abbreviated lecture times. You'll also be able to recognize several models that
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utilize shortened lectures. and you'll be able to identify best practices and tips for health professions educators who want to shorten their lectures.
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Okay, so we're going to take just a few minutes to answer this question. Why do we turn to lectures to present
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information? If you have your phone available and you can engage with the slidoh, we would love for you to do that. If not, if you're on your phone
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listening to the session, you can take yourself off mute or type something in the chat. That will work as well.
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Lots of people typing. Yeah, I like it. Okay. Yeah. Convenient. Absolutely.
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Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
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Yep. Okay. Yeah.
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Yeah. Mhm. Yep.
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Yeah. Mhm. Looks like we got one other person typing. Did we have anyone um that added to the chat? I don't want to leave anybody out.
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Oh, I can check. I don't have it open, but I can.
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Okay. Uh, nobody's added anything to the chat yet.
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Okay, so these are all great answers, all spot-on. There are lots of reasons why
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we depend on lectures to um convey information. Historically, that's been one of the accepted means of passing on
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and acquiring information. Depending on the context that we're in, and sometimes depending on the content, the lecture can be a really efficient way to disseminate information.
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For many of us, um, lecturing is something that we're used to. We're comfortable with that. Um, we may have developed lots of presentations that are
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lecture-based, and going back and repurposing those in a different format seems kind of daunting sometimes. Um, also, if we're really familiar with
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lectures, it's something we used in terms of um, teaching and learning, it just it resonates with us. It it is where we find our comfort when we're
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conveying information. And then also lectures can provide a structured approach. Um it can provide um a measure
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of control and it can create some consistency if we're having to convey lots of information to multiple groups
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of people over uh a set course of time.
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So the lecture format that I would say most of us uh engaged in the session today are familiar with would be considered a long lecture. That's what
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would be considered today. And that's one that is defined as being longer than 30 minutes. Um, for those of you that
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may have taken a college class as an undergrad years ago or maybe even a few years ago, um, and you had those
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three-hour classes, um, we would set through a three-hour lecture. I still remember those days. Um so to consider a
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long lecture now 30 minutes is kind of mind-blowing um to people of of you know my age group. But something we need to
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think about is that lectures that are longer in length do actually have some pitfalls that we have to think about. Um
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long lectures really do set the stage for passive learning. um they create an environment at times where there's low
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cognitive engagement and um it really just simplifies um what's being conveyed and what's being learned to just knowledge transmission.
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So we often can lose learner attention when we're giving a longer lection or lecture and then we can find ourselves
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having created a learning environment um that's overburdened with information.
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We're in a room full of people who are disengaged and they're not actively employing critical thinking, which is not not really ideal and it's not really what we want.
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So, let's dig into it just a little more. And I want to be really careful here because the message is not today that lectures are inherently bad or that
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every lecture needs to be shortened. The bigger issue is what happens when learners remain passive for long stretches of time.
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So, first long stretches of dense information can drain cognitive resources that learners have. Our
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working memory is limited. And so, when we continue to add information uh on top of each other over a long period of
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time, our learners might stop processing it and begin triaging that information.
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So, they're asking themselves questions like, "What do I need to write down?
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What might be on a test later? What do I really need to remember here? What sounds important?" They can still be listening, but it's different from
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actually organizing and integrating the material in ways that um allows them to go back and pull that information out
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when they need it. Another thing we have to think about is that passive lecturing can actually create a sense of familiarity without giving our learners the opportunity to practice.
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They might recognize um an idea when we explain it based on other information that they've gathered, but recognition
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is not the same as being able to retrieve information or to explain it or to use it whenever they encounter the
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need for it in the future. And so if we want learners to be able to do something with the information later, they need the opportunity to practice doing
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something with it now while we're teaching it.
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Another challenge is that educators who are subject matter experts often compress our reasoning. And so as
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experts, we see patterns and we make connections almost automatically because we have years of experience with that
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content and doing that process just becomes part of who we are and what we do. If we only present the conclusion
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though, our learners are not going to see the intermediate reasoning um that got us there. And so making our thinking verbal is an important part of teaching.
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And lectures do allow you to do that.
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Okay. So we're going to take a second and we're going to do a quick opinion check. So what do you think? Should we abandon lectures? Should we keep them?
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Are you sure? Unsure? And again, if you can engage with the slidoh, feel free to put your thoughts in the chat or take
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yourself off mute. I'll pull up the chat and monitor.
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Okay, it looks like most people said no. All right.
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So, I think Mariah and I um would suggest today that lectures do have a place in our teaching for sure. It just
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needs to be a more deliberate and modified place. Um lectures are still effective for things like orienting our
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learners, introducing conceptual frameworks, and modeling that expert thinking. That's really important.
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So, I'm going to ask you another question, and you can just type this in the chat. We don't have a slide over this one, or you can take yourself off
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mute if you want. What do we currently know about how adults learn that
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supports the modification of their traditional lecture?
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What do we know right now about how adults learn that would support modifying
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a traditional lecture and if you're unsure that's okay too.
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All right. Um Dr. Jane said adults learn more through active use of information. Great point. That's right. Yeah.
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Dr. Dr. Carvalo, limited attention span.
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Uh Dr. Kabinger can only really take in brief info in brief periods. Um and then Dr. Paulie added um lots of hands-on
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engagement is important for initial learning and retention.
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Um Heather and Hillary noted competing responsibilities can interfere with paying attention. Um that adults are
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independent and self-directed directed learners.
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Um, and then also that visual in um interactivity is also very important.
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Yeah, that's all that's all really important information. I think all of you could probably be teaching this session right now. Um, yeah, all great
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responses and so we're going to we're going to dig into that a little bit more. um what we currently know about working memory and cognitive load,
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attention span, and the underpinnings of adult learning theory, they all support the need to modify our traditional
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approach. So, those uh long lectures um to change it up and see what we can do
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to shorten the amount of time that that we're conveying information to people in one one fell swoop.
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So, you've probably heard that learners have an attention span of 10 or 15 minutes. I've heard this um heard it a lot. Uh I've even heard shorter amounts
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of time. The problem is that that claim is not well supported by science.
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Attention actually fluctuates. And so we move in and out of focused attention depending on the task that we're engaged
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in. Our motivation uh where the task is concerned. Uh our cognitive load affects our ability to pay attention if we're
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tired or not. Um and the relevance of what we're learning actually can um influence our ability to pay attention.
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All those distractions that are going on around us influence that. And then also what the learning environment is asking us to do in the moment can um c can
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create difficulties in in paying attention.
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So while attention span claims don't necessarily align with science, there is good evidence um for something called
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time on task effect. In a metaanalysis that involved 68 research reports including more than 10,000 participants,
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they found that mind wandering becomes progressively more frequent as people remain on a task. So the longer
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that you're staying on a task and being asked to focus on it, the more likely and more progressive um mind wandering
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becomes. So what that means is that maintaining attention becomes harder over time. In another metaanalysis that
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was specifically examining educational activities, they found that learners reported task unrelated thoughts about
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32% of the time. So a third of the time people were thinking about things other than the task they were being asked to focus on. And the greater the mind
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wandering, the poorer the learning outcome. So more the more people said um no my my mind wandering is higher than
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that 32% then the poor the learning outcomes were for those learners. So perhaps for us the more useful question
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here isn't how long am I going to get learners to pay attention when I'm conveying information to them but
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instead how long am I asking learners to maintain the same kind of attention. Those are very different questions.
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Science doesn't tell us that we need a stopwatch in a new activity every 10 minutes. But what it does tell us is that sustained attention is difficult.
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And so rather than waiting for attention to fail, we periodically need to give our learners a reason to re-engage
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throughout um a session of presenting information.
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That brings us to working memory. So working memory is the mental workspace learners are using in the moment to hold information to make the connections they
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need to make to solve problems. And we know that that workspace is limited. The limitation isn't the weakness for our
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learners. It just is simply a design constraint that we have to account for as educators. One thing we can do to help with this is to strip away the
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noise that is happening. Um, for example, if slides that you're presenting are full of decorative elements, um, have a lot of redundant
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wording, long lists, um, all those things are actually competing for the same limited cognitive resources as the
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content that you're sharing. And those are things we can easily change. We can change up our slides. We can make them less complex. We can make them really
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simple. Um, as opposed to having them just full of information that we're already sharing verbally. Another thing we can do is that we can actually guide
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attention. And so as experts um we often immediately know where to look and find
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information and we know what information matters. But for a lot of our novice learners, they are not there yet. And so
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things like signaling and sequencing um can really help our learners allocate attention to what they need to be focused on and what they need to be learning in the in the moment.
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We can also uh sequence complexity.
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Um sometimes when we know a subject really well as an expert um we'll want to give our learners all the exceptions
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and all the nuance right away. But for a novice learner, someone who's, you know, just now engaging with that content or relatively new to that content, um that
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can actually obscure the basic mental model that they need to create first around that information. Um and so it's important that we start simple that we
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establish a framework um and then we can progressively add the complexity in.
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Another approach uh is to scaffold. So before we begin asking a learner to solve a complicated problem
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independently, let them see how we would approach the problem. Um you can provide worked examples that give them a
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structure for thinking um and then help them uh work through a problem on their own.
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Cognitive learn theory gives us another way to think about why some teaching feels manageable and other teaching feels overwhelming. So the basic premise
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here is that learners have limited working memory. Um and that that resource can be spent in either really
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productive ways or not so productive ways. The first type of um cognitive load is intrinsic load. And this is the
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complexity that's inherent in what we're asking learners to understand. Anatomy is complex. Physiology is complex. Um
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anytime there's clinical uncertainty, that can be really complex. Uh if we're asking them to learn about a multi-step
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procedure, that's certainly complex. we really can't and we probably shouldn't uh remove all of that complexity from
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the learning environment because sometimes it's actually the complexity that is what's needed to be learned. But
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what we can do is manage how complexity is introduced and so we can sequence it.
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We can break it into meaningful pieces um and build a foundational set of concepts and move it toward greater nuance.
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The second type of load is germaine load or the mental effort that it's actually uh taking for a learner to build
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understanding. This is the cognitive work that we really want our learners to do. We want their mental effort to be working toward questions like how does
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this fit with what I already know? How is this case different from the last case that I um worked through? Is there a pattern I'm seeing here? And then
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there's the extraneous load. And so this is the cognitive work that does not contribute to learning our learning goals at all for our learners. Um it can
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come from some cuttered cluttered slides that we might be sharing. If we have too much text, if there's unclear sequencing, if we have a lot of jargon
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and we're not explaining it, um or if we're asking learners to divide their attention among several competing sources of information simultaneously.
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So it's really just that distracting clutter all around us. And as educators, we can really impact um that extraneous load.
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Adult learning theory also gives us a useful reminder that adult learners generally engage more deeply when they understand why something matters. When
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they can connect it to prior experience, when they have some opportunity make to make some decisions or solve problems.
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Rather than thinking about our learners as empty vessels waiting for us to fill them up with information, we should think of them as people who are always
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asking the question, why does this matter to the work I'm doing now? Or why will it matter to the work I'm doing in the future? That question is really
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important when we're thinking about brief teaching and shortening our lectures and distilling it down to the most important information because we
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don't have a lot of time to convince our learners that something is relevant. So we need to provide that relevant that relevance upfront and make sure that
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they can make that connection really quickly and really early on. All of our adult adult learners are bringing their
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prior experience with them. Um if we can connect a concept to a patient they've seen or a team they work with or have
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worked with um maybe to a systems problem that they've encountered or even to their um their professional identity
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as that's invol evolving um they can then make the match of the new information to what they already are
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bringing with them to the table. Also adults tend to respond really well to problem solving. So instead of organizing everything around here are
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five things that you need to know, we can u instead make sure that we're organizing learning around things like
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hey here's a decision that you need to make. What information would be helpful to you to make that decision? Something
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like that really moves your learner to a place where they are um re not just receiving information but they're
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actually using information to make some connections.
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So when we put all this together, brief teaching is really about intentional choices, identifying what's important,
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keeping the delivery concise. Um, sometimes that can be difficult, making the learning meaningful and connected,
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and then making sure that you scaffold learners toward a greater understanding of the content and toward um some of that independence and autonomy that they're going to need.
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The common thread across all of this is intentionality. We are deciding what our learners um limited attention span and
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cognitive effort needs to go toward and then we are responsible for designing an experience around that. So I'm going to
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turn it over to Mariah now and she's going to talk through what some of the models are that can help you accomplish this.
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Awesome. Thanks so much Sarah. um fantastic job talking about the science and you know the theory behind a lot of what we're going to talk about now which
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is the fun maybe um practical way that we can apply some micro um you know teaching and learning with within our own um instruction.
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So Dr. parent has done a great job of talking about why brief teaching can be effective. And I'm going to now talk
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about some practical models that can be utilized. Um, and you know, like we talked about, we don't want or expect anyone to throw out all their lectures.
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Um, it's just thinking about where you could incorporate some brief teaching and then what formats, which we're going to, you know, talk a little bit about,
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match the best with what your content is, who your audience is, um, and, you know, what your objectives are for for that teaching, um, encounter.
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So, are you trying to orient learners?
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Are you trying to explain a concept? um make um reasoning visible for your learners, give them practice, or help
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them transfer learning to a new case, a new situation. So, the different models are going to work um better or differently based on your goals for for
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for your teaching. Next slide, please.
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Thank you so much. So, here are the um some of the models that we're going to talk more about in depth in the next
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couple of slides. um but we just kind of wanted to have an overall um comprehensive look at all of them first.
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So there's de several ways to make your teaching shorter um without making it less meaningful or impactful. So
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microlearning works well when you have one um focused objective. Talk chalks uh chalk talks um
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can help make your expert thinking visible um a great visual explanation um behind you know how you want to convey
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your knowledge. TED talk style um presentations are useful when you have you know some a memorable case a memorable story that you want to
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integrate into your teaching. um and they often are accompanied by a strong narrative as well. Um and then the snippets model
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um offers a really structured uh format for approaching a brief presentation. Um
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it and often times we're not suggesting that you focus on one of these, but you know a great brief session might combine
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multiple of these different um teaching brief teaching techniques. Next slide.
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Right. So microlearning. So microllearning is useful um again when you have one goal or one objective that
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that's very specific. Um it can work well for just in time teaching. If you have some, you know, pre-work that you
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want to help to set the foundation for learning, maybe you have remediation refreshers or you want to offer a quick
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faculty development pearl. Um, so you want to start when you're thinking about a microlearning um, uh, teaching to um,
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ask yourself, you know, what should the learner be able to do immediately after engaging in this microlearning session?
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And then only that information that is necessary to support that goal should be included. Um and most importantly it
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should end with some sort of retrieval or application so that the learners can use the information rather than just
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hear it. Um and you know one of the teaching tips we put down at the bottom is think about you know you have that traditional long lecture. Think about
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how maybe you could break it down into multiple microlearning sessions. Maybe you have three or four objectives in that 1hour presentation. Could you break
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it into that, you know, smaller one objective microlearning um teaching for your learners? Next slide.
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Next up, we have chalk talk. So, we um I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, but we had a great presentation on chalk talks. So if you
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ever want a more in-depth um you know uh to learn more in depth about chalk talks on our teach website we have a great
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archived session um all about chalk talks and how to give a great one. But um a good chalk talk is more than just drawing or writing on a board. It should
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um you know be intentionally sequenced before you um you know start your teaching. So start with a question or a
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case um and then you kind of outline your your simple structure. you pause and ask learners uh to predict what
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comes next and then you layer in that detail. So again at the end adult learners we want to ask folks to to
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retrieve um you know some of the learning that they that they've had and um you know think about where they could apply it in their own um learning and um
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practice and you know they can redraw the model explain it or again utilize a new case to apply the learning. Um the
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value is that learners can see how you as the expert organize the information and then reason through the problem and
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it's really a nice visual way um to do that. All right, next slide.
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All right, so next up we have TED style talks. So you know we're not asking anyone to go and sign up to give a TED talk. We're just thinking about how we
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can utilize, you know, the TED talk framework and elements to um create memorable and engaging um brief learning
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um experiences. So TED style teaching is useful when you want learners to remember one central idea. Um the power
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of a TED talk comes from the structure, the brevity, and the clear purpose that you know is conveyed with one of these talks.
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So, I'm sure many of you guys have listened to TED talks before, but they always open with something that gains the learner or the audience attention.
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Um, the middle builds a simple narrative or argument for the point that is being conveyed and then it ends with a clear
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takeaway. So, again, the purpose is less about a TED talk format exactly and more about being intentional about what you
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want people to remember after they leave. Um and so this TED t um style
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talks and then also snippets. We have um an empowered workshop series and we've covered actually both of these um
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presentation styles in um our empowered sessions. So if you ever want to dig a little bit deeper into you know how to
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frame a TED talk or um the snippets model which we're going to talk about in the next slide, we're happy to come and talk more about them as well. All right, next slide please Sarah.
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Um so snippets are a really practical model for um I think for faculty development or teaching. Um they're brief, they're structured, and they're
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easy to fit into um you know a short amount of time, which is sometimes all we can get when we um are in front of
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learners. So in about 10 to 20 minutes, you can introduce a clear objective, share a few key points, and include a
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short activity, and then again close with a nice take-home point.
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um the structure that is um you know prescribed for a snippet really helps to things keep things focused um while also
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creating space for learners to interact with the content. Um like I mentioned we did uh empowered presentation on the
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snippets model and then we also try to you know embody the snippets model and all the presentations that we do through the empowered workshop series so that we
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do leave lots of time for that brief activity where um all the learners in that are engaged in the session can really apply the learning that has taken place.
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And for snippets, um, it's usually 10 slides maximum. And as you can see, you know, each of the areas within the
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slides are really predetermined. So like these are the the discrete elements um that should be within a snippet's presentation. It's that forced concision
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to really force you to think about like what are the essential elements that I really want to convey to my audience.
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And then you know a level further than this um never done it but I've heard people talk about it is um a pachukucha
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style presentation where it's all visuals same kind of um slide uh maximum
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like I think it's 5 to 10 slides and no words on the slides and you're using simply visuals to convey all the
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information um that you want to um that you want to share with your learners.
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Um, and it's something that I think is is a really fun way to to um frame a presentation, but I've never gone fully
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there before. So, all right, next slide, please.
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Can I add something just really quickly um about snippets? So, like Mariah said, we we use this in a very specific
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context for um some of our sessions. But one thing we've also done is we've taken that snippets model of that 20-minute
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content and partnered it with 40 minutes of handson application. And we found that that is uh really helpful for folks
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particularly if it's something that is brand new to them, they haven't had a lot of experience doing. um it's it's
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something that they they could take that content and go back and try, but we want to make sure they have the opportunity to do it with some subject matter
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experts in the room helping them. And so we've been able to to marry that in a really nice way um that keeps the
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content short and then focuses most of the learning on that hands-on experience. So um please come to one of our empowered workshops and you can see
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that in action for yourself. So great plug. Thanks. moving to the next slide. Yeah. Next one.
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So, um you know, I think when we think about the long lecture too and you know how we we do typically fall back to, you
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know, a a slide deck that we typically have used before and now AI has made it even easier to create a nice slide deck
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with information um on the topic that we want to present. So, AI can be a great teaching partner.
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um it can but it can also be helpful in brief teaching but only when we're using it um to support good instructional
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design. So it can help us you know generate practice or um refine explanations, reduce some of the
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preparation burden from us as um teachers or educators. But what it should not do is replace you know our
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own expertise um or the responsibility for accuracy. I think you know time after time we hear this like we want to
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keep the human in the loop um when we're using AI making sure that we're you know giving them AI good prompts and then
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also checking the accuracy um after we've prompted and gotten whatever the result is. So thinking about AI as a
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design partner to help you work more efficiently but not as the educator for your content. Um next slide.
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So, you know, AI can be supportive in the before, the during, and the after for a session. So, utilizing AI to help
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draft objectives, cases, um any kind of anticipated misconceptions or gaps that
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um your learners may have um based on the the specific area that you're teaching. Um during teaching it can support polling uh prompts live
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summaries of information that's collected after um it can help create retrieval
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questions, study guides or spaced um follow-up activities that could then you know be given to learners after the
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session. So whatever tool you use um AI tool you use um we still need to again
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review the output carefully and avoid entering any kind of learner or patient information um into these systems uh
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especially ones that aren't uh supported by Krillian or Virginia Tech. Um we we don't want to put those out there into
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any of these large language models that that aren't closed. So we have lots of relevant tools listed here. I'm sure you've used many of them. I know um
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Virginia Tech just released um information about Hokei AI um that is
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available to all Virginia Tech um staff and faculty. So if you have a faculty appointment at Virginia Tech, you have
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access to Hokei AI as well. Um we've used Slido today to demonstrate, you know, some engagement as well, but there's so many more out there and more
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being added every day um that that are available to to us all. but just you know using them responsibly
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um and again using it as a partner in teaching not relying on it solely um when putting something together.
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Next step uh next slide.
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So um in addition to you know checking the output of your AI and making and making sure it's accurate, we also want
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to put it in a good prompt to get the best information out. So, you know, the output of AI depends heavily on the
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prompt that is put in. There's lots of different prompting models available.
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Um, you can um a quick Google search will give you several of them. Um, and
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but it helps you really refine your prompt to make it the best and most clear that that it can be. Um, so these
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uh examples that we've put in here work well because they tell you the tool, the audience, the level, the purpose, and
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the constraints. So, you want to think about also that, you know, while the prompt is going to hopefully help you
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get the best answer, you're always going to want to review the output. Like, there are other things other than accuracy that you'll want to look at.
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References oftentimes are not accurate within um AI.
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It's gotten better. Um, I know that chat now will link you to the specific reference that it pulled something from, but double-checking those to make sure
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that it's where you want your information to be pulled from is critical. Always look at the tone. Um, sometimes the tone that's p, you know,
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AI will spit out isn't exactly how you would um, present your information. Um, look at the inclusivity um, that is
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36 minutes
included within the response. Um, and then also, you know, be mindful of the policies, uh, that, you know, our
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organizations have about AI use. Um, and, you know, make sure that you're um,
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aligning with that as well. All right, next slide.
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So the Mariah before you move on, there is a question in the chat about uh the Claude
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model and if we know why Curillion blocks Claude.
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I unfortunately do not know why, but I have experienced that myself. I believe Virginia Tech folks can access Claude on
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um on their devices, but it is true that Currillian does not. I assume it's because we have an enterprise chat license and maybe it's because they're
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competitors. I really don't know um why Claude is um is blocked. But it it could
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just be something that you know security um it security has determined we don't have access to. But I know that um you
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know for a while Notebook LM which is a Google product was um blocked on curling computers but it's opened up now. So, it
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could be something that we'll have access to in the future, but right now I don't have a good answer as to why that decision was made. Um, unfortunately,
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but I would love to use Claude. I've seen really great things come out of Claude. So, if it ever does open up, um, I'll be excited. So, um, so I think, you know, both Dr.
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Herren and I have I hope hopefully conveyed that we're not suggesting that you should be getting rid of lectures.
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Um, and it's not always going to be that the short lecture is best either. Um, it's about designing the learning for um
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for what you're trying to teach and also, you know, thinking about your audience and the content. So lecture still has value when it helps orient
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learners prioritize what matters or model expert thinkings, but we also need
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to design for um you know that intense cognitive load and you know thinking about building in opportunities for retrieval and spacing and application.
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So brief teaching can become powerful when it's meaningful, active, and memorable. Um I it's really about the
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circumstance um the objectives that you're trying to to make sure that you um are hitting within your teaching and
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then also the audience that you're trying to engage with. All right. Uh next slide, Sarah.
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So, um, as we wrap up, we we want to leave a lot of time for you guys to to ask questions, but I wanted to just kind
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of wrap things up a little bit. So, remember, a few practical habits can help make brief teaching more effective.
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So, starting with the end in mind, what should the learner be able to decide, explain, compare, or do by the end of
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this brief teaching session? um you know cut the content before you spend too much time polishing it. Rehearse those
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transitions, interaction points. Um you know not just you know the narrative or the lecture portion. Um plan a
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meaningful learner task when you can maybe you know there again there's you know no oneizefits-all on how often you
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should be integrating engagement. Um, but you know, move details um that maybe don't need to be taught or you know,
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conveyed during the lecture or into like the in-person teaching element into a handout handout or follow-up resource.
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Um, that can leave more time for that meaningful interaction during the time that you have together with learners.
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So, um, shorter teaching works best when it is, you know, designed in a way to to meet the needs of the learners and the
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content, not when it's just simply con compressed or condensed. So, um, we'd love to hear from you guys.