by Scott McLeod | Jun 5, 2026 | Higher Education, News and Events |
It is hard to remember that Iowa once was a solidly-purple state, politically speaking. For example, Iowa was one of the first states to recognize gay marriage. During my 14 years in the state, I remember a strong commitment to its citizens and a deep pride in its children, education, and state universities. Business leaders, educators, and policy makers came together regularly to wrestle with key questions like How do we prepare our students for a technological future? and How do we combat our state’s ‘brain drain,’ which is one of the largest in the country?
Since I left in 2016, Iowa has moved sharply and quickly to the political right, as it apparently tries to outdo Florida, Texas, Alabama, and other deeply conservative states. The Republican Governor and legislators now regularly pass laws that limit civil rights and attack public schools, unions, women, and LGBTQIA+ persons, among many others. I’m glad that I’m now in Colorado.
Now the Iowa legislature has decided to mandate undergraduate student participation in the so-called Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa. The Center was created last year by Iowa legislators to counteract the ‘liberal indoctrination’ that they stated was occurring on college campuses. However, very few students actually chose to register for the Center’s new courses. Instead of leaving course offerings and enrollment in the hands of students and faculty, where they have always lived, the legislature decided to intervene by requiring that every student participate in conservative indoctrination.
The irony of requiring college students to take particular classes that are mandated by an authoritarian legislature in the name of ‘intellectual freedom’ is lost on no one. Iowa has decided that students exercising their intellectual freedom to NOT take the courses is less important than political posturing and wasting families’ money. As Iowa Senator Janet Petersen said for a recent article, “We saw that no students really wanted to participate in that program, but this legislation will require families who are paying for college education for their kids, which is not cheap, that they would be forced to take these freedom classes. Six hours at the University of Iowa and that comes straight out of student and parent’s checkbooks.”
I feel both sad and embarrassed for my alma mater. University of Iowa students and faculty deserve better than this idiocy.
by Scott McLeod | Jan 7, 2026 | Higher Education, Miscellaneous, Podcasts |
Will Deyamport (Dr. Will!), educational technology expert and entrepreneurship guru, invited me to appear on his podcast and talk about how to get a teaching job in higher education. Our discussion was wide-ranging, but the core of our conversation probably happened between 10:22 and 18:22 when I shared the three primary possibilities for postsecondary teaching. Will asked me numerous insightful questions. Hopefully we demystified together what it’s like to go after a higher ed teaching position, including what to think about as you choose a doctoral program or line up your professional qualifications with a postsecondary pathway in mind…
Happy listening!
by Scott McLeod | Nov 29, 2025 | Higher Education, Leadership and Vision, Podcasts, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration |
Episode 003 of the new CASTLE Conversations podcast is now available on most major podcasting platforms. I talked with CASTLE Co-Director Sara Dexter, who helps educators and schools think about technology integration, leadership, AI, educator simulations, and digital case studies. Sara is super busy!
Happy listening!
!
by Scott McLeod | Jul 17, 2019 | Higher Education, Mind Dump |
Anthony Kronman said:
When it comes to campus speech, the adversaries tend to divide into two recognizable camps. On the one hand are those who say: This is a special community, an inclusive community, we care about the well-being of all its members and we must see to it that they are not made to feel excluded, wounded, or depreciated. And to that end we need to be careful because speech hurts and offends and demeans. On the other hand, there are the speech libertarians who say that the tradition of free expression rests on the axiom that speech is the great engine of truth, and if that axiom applies to society at large, it applies with quadruple force on a campus, which is after all devoted to the truth.
They’re both wrong because they both miss something important.
The speech libertarians fail to understand that a college is a special community, but not the kind that those who are in favor of trimming speech for the sake of protecting feelings and inclusiveness conceive it to be. The idea of free speech, as a political value, has nothing to do with the idea of a conversation, which lies at the heart of the very distinctive community that a university represents. In the book I use the example of a speakers’ corner, a soap box in the park set up for whoever wishes to use it. People come and go, they talk about whatever they wish, they insult, they harangue, they respond. And that’s great, that’s an important part of our political culture. No one would wish it otherwise. The people who speak and the people who listen are trying to persuade or resist being persuaded. But you cannot describe what is happening as a conversation.
But talking past each other in a classroom: That is out of keeping with the requirements of the conversational ideal, and it is the responsibility of the teacher to keep that ideal in view at all times. That is a special, rare, and valuable enterprise which the speech libertarians simply don’t notice. By the same token, the defenders of limits on speech for the sake of inclusion do not have it in view either. What they miss is the way in which institutionalized forms of sensitivity compromise the conversational ideal and reinforce the idea that what ultimately matters is how I see the world, rather than the prospect for achieving some shared foothold on the ground of reason and truth. Always an aspiration that we fall short of achieving – I have no illusions about that – but the fact that you don’t achieve it does not to my mind deprive the ideal itself of its magnificent force.
via https://www.chronicle.com/article/Elite-Schools-Are-National/246657
We need our classrooms to be safe spaces that value a diversity of perspectives and experiences. We also need them to be spaces in which we can have conversations that may push on our existing worldviews and make us uncomfortable…
by Scott McLeod | May 18, 2019 | Activities, Higher Education, Leadership and Vision, Professional Development |
This past Thursday I created 25 professional learning ‘conversation stations’ for my principal licensure students. I printed them all out and spread them around our classroom (which is a school library). Each printed station contained a link or two – or a short reading (and a source) – and some questions to consider. The idea was to expose our preservice administrators at the University of Colorado Denver to a variety of ways to foster and facilitate adult learning beyond schools’ traditional, moribund professional development sessions.
My students traveled around the room in pairs or trios, visiting whichever stations they wanted (they had a shared notes document that listed all of the stations). Each group stayed at a station for as long or short a time as desired. Most averaged about 7 to 10 minutes per station, but some talked for nearly 30 minutes at a single station. At several points during our two hours on this activity, they got together with another group and shared what was resonating from their station visits. We learned a lot and had some awesome conversations together! At the end of the evening I gave them a link to all of the stations, so that they could later peruse whatever they hadn’t visited yet.
Here are links to both the conversation stations and the shared notes document, as well as the slide I used to introduce the activity:
Both of the main documents are editable. Feel free to modify them and make them better for others. If you use this activity in your principal licensure program or school district, let me know how it went!
We also had 3 pre-class readings and 5 beginning-of-activity provocations just to get us in the right mindset:
Pre-readings
Beginning-of-activity provocations
If you have any thoughts or questions about all of this, please get in touch. Otherwise, hope this is useful to you!
How are you introducing school leaders and teachers to alternative (better) forms of professional learning?
by Scott McLeod | Dec 17, 2018 | Blogging, Communication, Higher Education, Social Media |
[Every week a ‘Monday Morning Message (MMM)’ email goes out to all doctoral students from a faculty or staff member in the CU Denver School of Education and Human Development. Here’s my second one, which came out today.]
[Please join Dr. Heather Johnson and me for one or both of our two Spring 2019 social media workshops for SEHD faculty and students!]
In my previous MMM, I noted the power of having an active and visible online presence as part of our professional and scholarly work. In this MMM, I want to follow up on some of the ideas that I articulated in my previous message.
I had an opportunity recently to participate in a gathering of CU Denver faculty and staff at which we discussed and debated the merits of including our digital work in our tenure and promotion portfolios. I advocated strongly for the idea that the more visible we are, the more impact we can have. Not every scholar or educator wants to be a public intellectual. But for those of us who want our ideas to spread and who actually want to influence practicing educators and educational systems, participating in these online spaces is critically important.
Unfortunately, two decades after the Internet became accessible to the masses, many educators still are slow to realize the possibilities that accompany our new digital tools and online environments. As a faculty member who has an outsized social media presence (53,000+ Twitter followers; video series with 100+ million views; one of the top education blogs in the world, etc.), I can attest that there is great power in being engaged in relevant online communities. Every day I learn with P-12 and postsecondary educators who are doing amazing things in their domains.
One of the reasons that I think many educators and faculty are hesitant to participate in social media spaces is that we incessantly hear about the negative aspects of those platforms. Tales of “Bad Twitter” are legion, for example. We hear less often about the numerous ways to use “Good Twitter,” professional blogs, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, Pinterest boards, Facebook groups, and other platforms in ways that are productive and empowering. There always will be those who engage with our work in negative ways, but we can utilize a variety of strategies and techniques to manage our networks, decrease our exposure to bad actors, and engage with the audiences that we are trying to reach in order to share ideas and resources and have productive conversations.
I would encourage you to see how the following scholars are engaging online. They are great models for how to use social media in empowered ways for research dissemination, policy advocacy, and educational impact.
- Tressie McMillan Cottom, @tressiemcphd, tressiemc.com (sociology and higher education)
- Julian Vasquez Heilig, @professorjvh, cloakinginequity.com (P-12 educational equity)
- Chris Emdin, @chrisemdin, chrisemdin.com (#HipHopEd and science education)
- Sara Goldrick-Rab, @saragoldrickrab, saragoldrickrab.com (college affordability)
- Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, @vamboozled_, vamboozled.com (educator assessment)
- Bruce Baker, @schlfinance101, schoolfinance101.wordpress.com (school finance)
What these postsecondary educators recognize is that if we don’t engage online, we cede conversational ground, policymaking influence, and mindshare around good educational practices to others who ARE willing to chime in, regardless of how inaccurate or harmful their contributions are. That’s the ultimate point of this week’s MMM. Are we just going to sit back while others offer misinformation and educationally-unsound practices or are we ready to engage?
Previous MMMs
Image credit: Social media class, mhmarketing
by Scott McLeod | Nov 30, 2018 | Higher Education, Our Changing World, Research and Evaluation |
I had the privilege of participating in a conversation today at my university about how (and whether) the digital work done by faculty should count for promotion and tenure. (I also had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes; here are my slides). Here are four thoughts that are spinning around in my brain after a couple of hours of discussion…
First, if we publish an article in a traditional journal which happens to post that article online and it then gets a few social media shares, that does not make us ‘digital scholars.’ That’s definitely a step beyond traditional analog publishing. But to be relevant to the digital, online, hyperconnected, participatory, interactive, highly-distributed information landscape in which we now live and work, we need to expect more from ourselves. Not all of the time, but sometimes. And more often.
Second, why is it that the faculty who ARE trying to be relevant in our new information landscape are the ones that always have to justify their work to those who are less responsive? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Which side should carry the burden of persuasion regarding relevance and quality?
Third, no one owes us anything, no matter how good the work is that we do. We have to prove ourselves every day. Just because we did good work a decade ago doesn’t mean that we are doing so now. Just because we believe that our work is valuable doesn’t mean that others do – or should. As Seth Godin says, “If [our] target audience isn’t listening, it’s [our] fault, not theirs.” Make the case. Be engaged. Help others see the meaning and value in what we do. All the time. (These digital tools can help…)
Finally, we need to be less dismissive of the public and of publishing for non-academics. We ignore engagement with the public and policymakers at our peril.
With appreciation for all of the complexities behind these fairly simple assertions… let me know what you think.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 1, 2018 | Blogging, Communication, Higher Education, Social Media |
[Every week a ‘Monday Morning Message (MMM)’ email goes out to all doctoral students from a faculty or staff member in the CU Denver School of Education and Human Development. Here’s mine, slated for tomorrow.]
If you ask them, many faculty members and staff will admit that they wish that their work was more visible. They feel that they are making solid contributions to the field, and they wish that their work had a larger impact on other scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in their discipline. Unfortunately, traditional mechanisms for getting the word out about our work limit our overall visibility and impact. For instance, publishing an article in a peer-reviewed journal may move us closer to tenure and promotion but prevents most practitioners from accessing our work because of paywall and other barriers. Similarly, presenting at conferences may bump up our visibility and standing with colleagues but has little to no impact on policymaking or practice outside of that event or our closely-defined academic realm. For those staff who are doing great work but are not publishing or presenting, the opportunities to have a larger impact may seem few and far between.
Fortunately, we now live in an era where anyone can have a voice. We are no longer constrained by the whims and dictates of editors, broadcasters, governments, and other information gatekeepers. If you have a computer or a smartphone, the costs of creating one’s own newspaper, radio station, TV broadcast, photography studio, or other publishing channel are essentially zero. They just take new forms: blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, Instagram and Snapchat accounts, and so on. But two decades after the Internet became accessible to the masses, we still are slow to realize the possibilities that accompany our new digital tools and online environments. As a faculty member who has an outsized social media presence (53,000+ Twitter followers; video series with 100+ million views; one of the more visible education blogs in the world, etc.), I thought that I would follow up Dr. Verma’s February 2018 MMM contribution with a few thoughts of my own.
First, recognize the tremendous power that is at our fingertips if we choose to take advantage. A few minutes of our time, a few clicks of the mouse, and we have the ability to potentially reach many thousands or millions of people. Few journals or newsletters can make that claim. Instead of wondering why the work that we do never impacts practice, or wishing that our work translated better into policy- and decision-making, we can put our work in places where professionals and legislators can find it, learn from it, and use it. My blog posts and tweets, for instance, reach audiences that dwarf my readership in academic journals, often by factors of a thousand or more.
Second, this work doesn’t have to take a lot of our time. The traditional path of publishing in a research journal and then reworking it for a practitioner magazine can be re-envisioned. As we do our day-to-day research and professional preparation work, we come across and create resources that would be immensely helpful to others. That amazing article that you just read? Hit the tweet button and share it with others, preferably using a few key hashtags. That new protocol or resource document that you just created? Hit the record button and give us a several-minute audio overview – along with a download link – that explains how we might use it in our practice. You have expertise and experience in a particular area and hope to influence policy and organizational decision-making? Push that button on your smartphone and make a short video that helps us think about that issue in more robust ways. As we do this work, we become a trusted voice, accessible to others who care about the things that we do. Oh, and by the way, publishing to multiple platforms can be automated, saving you time and energy that can be better spent in other areas.
Third, realize that there can be incredible worth in publishing our thoughts in less formal ways. Shorter sound bites, smaller blocks of text that focus on a particular idea or resource, a quick reflection on a reading or an experience, using non-academic voice to explain complex topics… all of these can help us refine our own thinking but also impact and influence the thinking of others. For example, the most valuable aspect of my blog is that it gives me a place to wrestle with ideas, reflect, try out thoughts, and attempt to make meaning. But the second most valuable aspect of my blog is that it is public, allowing others to see my thinking and offer resources, suggestions, critique, and dialogue that extend my work in new directions and make it better. That interactivity – that ability to work together to create value – creates nearly-unlimited potential as we tap into our collective experience and expertise. Rather than being a one-person idea transmission platform, my blog instead becomes a learning and dialogue space for a global community.
Finally, note that the barriers to this work usually are neither technical nor organizational. Instead, it is simply a matter of us choosing to share our thoughts, our expertise, and our resources in places other than age-old publishing outlets. There are people all around the world who are eager to interact with us and to learn with and from us if we shift our mindsets a smidge and give them the opportunity. When we push out helpful resources on our Twitter feed, when we connect people to ideas through our videos, when we shape people’s thinking through our podcasts and other conversation outlets, we move beyond our small, local, disciplinary communities and join the global community of people who are trying to make the world a better place. That sounds pretty good to me. How about you?
Image credit: Social media class, mkhmarketing
by Scott McLeod | Jul 30, 2017 | Higher Education, Tech Integration |
[I’m one of five Digital Pedagogy Faculty Fellows this year at the University of Colorado Denver. I’ll be sharing my thoughts all year on this experience, starting with my time at the Digital Pedagogy Lab in Vancouver, Canada.]
Just a quick thought…
In K-12, we struggle with access. Most schools are trying to get more technology into their classrooms. It’s not a given yet that students will have regular access to digital tools and adequate bandwidth in their learning spaces. That said, most schools have expectations of teachers that they will integrate technology into learning experiences whenever they can and provide often-mandatory professional learning for instructors on how to do that with the students in their classrooms.
It seems to me that the opposite is usually true in higher education. Bandwidth is pretty robust on most postsecondary campuses and most students are bringing computers of some sort with them to college. Access seems to be less of an issue. That said, institutional expectations of instructors for technology integration in classrooms are fairly low. Professional learning opportunities for faculty are mostly invitational rather than mandatory and tend to focus more on moving courses online than on how to use technology with students in face-to-face classroom settings.
In short, access and expectations regarding usage are flipped:
[download this image]
Agree? Disagree? What is your experience?
[cross-posted at Thinq.Studio]
by Scott McLeod | Jul 28, 2017 | Higher Education, Learning and Teaching |
[I’m one of five Digital Pedagogy Faculty Fellows this year at the University of Colorado Denver. I’ll be sharing my thoughts all year on this experience, starting with my time at the Digital Pedagogy Lab in Vancouver, Canada.]
I help prepare principals and superintendents. Like other educational leadership programs across the country, my program is supposed to prepare teachers and administrators to take on new leadership roles. Students come to us with expectations that they will learn how to be successful in new, usually very challenging, administrative positions. Sometimes we do that well, sometimes we don’t.
One of the biggest complaints about many educational leadership courses and programs is that they’re too theoretical and not practical enough. This is true. Many of us faculty aren’t as connected to the day-to-day work of practice as we should be. The most common rejoinder – particularly from research faculty (folks who literally are paid to think) – is that narrow, time- and context-bound leadership preparation doesn’t foster graduates’ ability to work in different settings or across varying policy and practice eras. Both sides are right.
I wonder if there’s a third dimension – beyond the thinking v. practice dichotomy – that’s also worth considering. When I think about the times in my life when I feel most energized and ‘in flow,’ many of them revolve around opportunities to be creative. I write, I take photos, I create slides and presentations, I design a new course or workshop experience… and I usually share those publicly with others. As I was driving up and down the Sea to Sky Highway yesterday attempting to capture the natural beauty with my camera, I began to wonder what skills and talents, interests and passions, and professional and hobbyist expertise the students in my new Boulder principal licensure cohort will bring to our collective learning experience. And whether they feel as energized when they do those things as I do when I do my stuff (no matter how amateurish).
Can we bring in students’ “outside,” perhaps non-education-related, expertise and experiences into a professional preparation program that’s designed to get students ready in real, practical ways for incredibly complex and demanding jobs? I’m not sure, but I’d like to try…
[cross-posted at Thinq.Studio]
