92: Breaking the Lecture Mold: Innovations in Teaching and Learning with Barbi Honeycutt, Speaker, Consultant & Podcast Host Lecture Breakers

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone and welcome to another fantastic episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and my name is Nadia Johnson and we're your host, and we are very excited because we have a very special returning guest with us today. We have Barbie Honeycutt, who is, she does all things lecture breaker. She has her own podcast, she has an app, and she's back to talk about all the things that she's been doing for the past two and a half, I don't know, one and a half, two years. It's been since we chatted. Barbie. Welcome back.

Barbi Honeycutt (00:36):

Thank you so much. It's great to be here again.

Holly Owens (00:39):

And I like to tell everybody in the audience that your podcast was the first podcast I was ever on, and it was amazing. It opened up a whole new world for me, so thank you.

Barbi Honeycutt (00:49):

Oh my goodness. Thank you. I think you've been on the show a couple of times now, and then you did the conference, so I just absolutely love working with you and again, thank you so much for this opportunity to come back on your show.

Holly Owens (01:00):

Absolutely. So for the people who haven't got a chance to listen to the other episode that you've been on, give us a brief intro about yourself and remind us about your journey into this education space.

Barbi Honeycutt (01:10):

Yeah, so I have been in professional development, mostly working with faculty development, graduate student professional development for the last 22 years. I used to do this type of work on a college campus, did that for a long time through a teaching and learning center and a graduate school. And then about a decade ago, I decided I was ready to stretch my wings, so to speak, and launch my own educational consulting type of business where I was traveling and speaking a lot, leading a lot of on-campus workshops and just really getting out there and learning what faculty needed beyond the walls of one institution, which really opened up my world and showed me all the different ways that people talk about teaching and learning and how we're transforming the teaching learning environment in the college classroom. And so I think I launched my podcast back in 2018 or 2019. I was ready to step into that space, try something new, and that was amazing. So you talk about opening doors, the Lecture Breakers podcast is my show, and like I say, I've met so many amazing educators through that podcast and that has now transitioned into a virtual conference. As you mentioned, I try to do a lot of innovation, which I know we'll talk about through here, and just trying to stay on the cutting edge of offering new things for faculty, instructional designers, educators, instructors. It's just anyone who's teaching college level courses.

Holly Owens (02:40):

Yes, you do a lot of amazing stuff and you've definitely grown. So you started your podcast pre pandemic. I remember everybody else got into the podcasting thing kind of around the pandemic time, but you were before that.

Barbi Honeycutt (02:54):

Yes, I think I had my well into more than hundred episodes before the pandemic hit. So yeah, that was something I started just to see what I could do with it and just have a new medium for professional development and faculty. Yeah, so I know a lot of new podcasts have sprung up since the pandemic, but yeah, pride myself in kind of, I guess paving the way for others maybe. I don't know.

Holly Owens (03:20):

Absolutely. Being the og, the original. Absolutely, 100%. All right. So let's talk a little bit about what have you really been up to the past? Give us some details of the things that you've been generating the past couple of years. And I loved your conference. You send out newsletters every Tuesday. I read those about different things you can do to break up your lectures. So tell us about some of the specifics.

Barbi Honeycutt (03:52):

Yeah, so the sort of brand, if you will, is lecture breakers, and I didn't really explain what that is, but you kind of alluded to it there, which is all about encouraging educators to break up their lectures and break away from that sage on the stage model where you're talking at your students for 45, 50, 60 minutes and really thinking about how to create a space for active learning, student engagement, problem solving, creativity, and just opening the space for that. And so on my show, we've talked about everything from the flip classroom model to service learning to improv, to how you create really great online learning experiences for students and break up that experience to make it more engaging. And I learned something new every day and I stay so inspired from my listeners and from my audience. And the lecture breakers community is just so creative that a couple years ago, well again before the pandemic, so in 2019 I thought of the idea to create a virtual conference. So I offered that in 2020 and because I had been planning it for a whole year when everything shut down in 2020, I was ready to go. So my conference was ready. Yeah,

Holly Owens (05:00):

You're already on and ready to go. I'm already doing this people,

Barbi Honeycutt (05:04):

Yes, it's just like, come to my conference since you don't have, everything was getting canceled. And I'm like, well wait, I've been working on this for the last nine months, so come on. So that was an awesome experience. I offered that for three years. And then I tend to get, I don't know if antsy is the right word, but I like to try new things. I am not bored, I just like to try new things. And so I sort of started to transition and offer online professional development. So sometimes I'll custom create an online course or workshop for a group of faculty members at a campus or a group of graduate students, a group of instructional designers, a group of whoever wants to come and do a course, and I'll custom design that for them. And sometimes I'll offer just one off courses, like an active learning course or something like that and open that to anyone who wants to attend.

(05:52):

And so I played with that space for a while and I still do some of that kind of work, but this year I have stepped into looking at more mobile learning experiences and audio learning experiences. I've fallen in love with podcasting, and I don't know about you, Holly and Nadia, but this is where I consume content for me. I am washing dishes or doing laundry or walking around the block or whatever it is, and I am listening to whatever it is that I want to learn at the time, a lot of business, podcasts, marketing, education, things like that. And so it has really changed the way that I do my professional development. It's very rare for me to sit down at my computer and sit through an hour long webinar and go through that whole process. Now I feel like my learning is changing and I can't speak for everybody, but I like the flexibility of mobile and audio experiences.

(06:51):

I like the convenience, I like that it's on demand. I can do it when I want. I do still of course, that interaction with the community and talking with others, but in terms of getting that content, that's kind of the direction I'm headed, which I'm sure we'll talk about through the show. But that's kind of where I am right now. And I do have a weekly newsletter, if you will. I try to share a teaching tip or a strategy and a resource every week along with the latest episode of the podcast, and that's free. And so I'm always trying to highlight and spotlight new things that are happening in the higher ed space.

Nadia Johnson (07:26):

Yeah, that's awesome. I think you brought up a good point, and I feel like I'm starting to become that way too. I was working on an e-learning course module for my onboarding right now, and I was kind of just sitting there. This is actually kind of cool, but I'm starting to go in and out. I'm losing, and I know now lately I've been doing a lot more audio books I've been doing and I'm able to, and honestly, I think as you get used to it, you kind of get better at being able to do other things and still listen to audio. At first I was like, I don't think this will work for me because I'm very visual. But I think the audio is starting as our lives get busier, it's starting to become easier to consume information this way. So I think that's also a really great point. I would like to dig into a little bit more about what these audio course, a little bit more about your courses and how that works. So because I find it very actually intriguing and want to dig into that a little bit more, can you tell us a little bit more about the structure of the audio course with the digital workbook?

Barbi Honeycutt (08:40):

Absolutely. And it's brand new. So this is the first podcast. I've talked about it. I haven't even talked about it on my own podcast that Oh man, I'm sorry.

Nadia Johnson (08:50):

No, we're good.

Barbi Honeycutt (08:52):

We'll take it. We'll take my season six isn't coming out until later this fall, so then I'll talk about it there. But I'm super excited to launch it and talk about it here because this audience is so innovative with teaching with technology and kind of leveraging that space. And that I think is what I'm looking for. I'm just looking for something new for faculty development. I've been in this for 22 years, and it has always been traditionally where faculty or instructors, whoever that is, comes to a space in person. There's a keynote speaker or workshop facilitator that's very much been me. I mean, I've built my whole career on that. And then the pandemic sort of fast forward and launched it into, Hey, we can do these things virtually. Okay, awesome, let's do that. But now, like you said, Nadia, I have started to learn in new ways.

(09:44):

I'm getting curious about what else I can do. And the cool thing is the technology is keeping up. Back when I did my first virtual conference, and you'll appreciate this because just shows you how fast technology changes, but no one had heard of Zoom. I actually had to teach people how to use Zoom. That's crazy. And I had to hire, I hired a whole team of people to do live transcriptions for me, cost me thousands of dollars, but I had no other choice. There wasn't a way for me to offer that to my audience, and it was so important to me to do that within a few, the very next year after the conference, it totally, now it's just hit a button and you get instant transcriptions and live captions. So just to show you how fast technology is changing, I say all of that to preface that.

(10:31):

Now I'm stepping into a mobile learning space and an audio course space, which the technology is now here to do it. It still has some things that can improve on, but that's where I'm headed to talk about the audio courses. I'm going to launch with three audio courses, and I'm trying to hit different points of people's career. So the first one that I'm launching is about the business side of being a speaker in higher education. So I have a lot of people who have contacted me through the years to talk about, Hey Barbie, how do you even do this? How do you get started as a speaker? How do you get paid? What does that look like? And so I'm just doing a five lesson course. It's all audio comes with a digital workbook Right now. The digital workbook as I'm going to launch this is going to be in a Google Doc so that I can change it as I get my first cohort in there and we're going to go through it and see what happens.

(11:22):

So I am actually using sort of a private podcasting platform called Hello Audio, which has been founded by a former professor Lindsey Padilla, and I love what's happening here. So it allows you to send a personal customized link to a person who purchases the course, and then they are able to listen to it just like a podcast. It shows up in their little podcast feed, has the little icon, has a little player bar everything that they need. Then they can click on a button and go to the download. And so it makes it really easy because if I do decide to add more modules to the course at any point when I do that because they're subscribed so to speak, they've purchased it, that new lesson will show up in their feed just like a private podcast. I think it's a really innovative tool. I know there's other types of audio course platforms out there.

(12:15):

I've experimented with a few, but I love the ease of this. And I actually experimented with it the first time about three years ago when I offered an online workshop for a group of faculty members from I think in Washington state. And I said, Hey, do you mind if I try something with this group? I'm going to offer you the same video experience and the same forum and worksheets and downloads everything that they traditionally know as being in an online course. I said, but hey, I'm going to throw this in for free and give me some feedback on it. And what I did is actually stripped out all the audio from my course videos and I turned it into a private podcast for them and they loved it. They said, Barbie, finally, it didn't rain today in Washington state. And I went out in my garden and I listened to lesson two and I was able to work in my garden, enjoy the day and continue my professional development. And that kind of sparked me to think, okay, there might be a space here for a podcasting space or online learning in a different way or audio in a different way. And so that's where I'm headed. So that's the first course I'm going to launch with. I'm also going to do something around introduction acts of learning and developing your teaching portfolio. So some different topics out there. So I'll pause there, I could talk all day about it.

Holly Owens (13:32):

Yeah, no, those are good. I was just thinking, I was thinking about how this is going to translate actually into higher education for students. I know some LMSs have the RSS S feeds and the podcast feeds and things that you could do. And then also in my head, things are going around adaptive learning and all that. If they need the other lesson, then the other lesson spits itself out. It's cool stuff. I like

Barbi Honeycutt (13:59):

It. Well, and I don't know if you remember or not Holly, but I think it was the last year I did the conference, I actually did this same thing where it might've been the last two years off of the conference. I did the exact same thing where I said, Hey, we have nine sessions. I threw it a bonus session, so we have 10 sessions. I realized that you're not going to have the visual with you if you just listen, but I want to offer you this experience, so I'm going to turn this into a private podcast. It's totally free. I didn't do an upcharge or anything. I was just like, if you want an alternative learning experience other than sitting in front of your computer and watching the speakers, then you can listen to the recording later. And I pushed it out and through the Hello audio feed gave everybody the link, and I had quite a few people that were like, oh, I missed this one because of whatever they were doing.

(14:43):

I listened to it later. It was great just to listen. So it is an alternative way to offer that. I realize though, some people want the video, some people want the transcript, some people want to just listen. And so I think you're right, Holly, it opens up the possibilities for lots of different ways to learn. And I think this was first planted in my mind when I was talking with Tom Tobin on my show about U D L, universal Design for Learning. And he's like, it's just what's the plus one? He keeps talking about this plus one. What's the one additional thing you can do to reach a learner in a different way? And I'm like, this is going to be my plus one is to offer an audio experience because I do the video, I do all of the things, all the worksheets. Yeah,

Holly Owens (15:25):

You do the things,

Barbi Honeycutt (15:26):

Yes, but I want to do the plus one. My plus one is going to be tapping into audio. So I guess that's kind of where that started many years ago. And I'm just now able to do it, but also the technology is finally here to do it.

Nadia Johnson (15:40):

I think when you were talking about the course too, I was thinking, yes, there are visual, there are a lot of people who are visual learners, but we're almost forgetting about that small group of learners who prefer audio and who learn best that way. And I think this covers that, and I think this does open the door for more opportunities like that to serve those learners because I think we're always geared toward visual learners that we kind of forget that not everybody learns that way. So I think that's absolutely amazing.

Barbi Honeycutt (16:14):

Well, and I think it depends too on what you're learning. If you're going to sit down and show me a tech tool, I need you to show me a video of click here, push this button, fill in this box. I need you to hold my hand. But if we're talking about me thinking about something or my professional development or crafting or creating something, then I like to not have that distraction of the video. And I like to think about the possibilities. But again, I'm just one person. But I think my biggest thing is I work directly with faculty and faculty development professionals and people who lead these programs. And the number one challenge is like, how do I reach more faculty? And I'm like, well, here's a way to do that is they can listen to something. They don't have to always come to your conference room and have a conversation in person. They can, but here's another way. So that's kind of what inspired it. I think

Holly Owens (17:05):

I like it too because the faculty, they don't come to the workshops all the time. A lot of the time they're not inspired. They're teaching. I feel like this is something they can do while they're in their office or over the summer, over a break. This is something really quick that that's digestible and they can absorb.

Barbi Honeycutt (17:25):

Or even in

Nadia Johnson (17:26):

The car on the,

Holly Owens (17:27):

Even in the car, yeah, I know some people have to go back to the office. I forget working from. I know.

Barbi Honeycutt (17:35):

It's true. It's true. And it's not to say that I'm not going to build something around it that includes maybe an option for downloads or maybe a community to go with it. But right now with this first launch out of the gate, I just want to get this out there. Let's start having some conversations about this type of faculty development, this type of professional development, and see what happens.

Holly Owens (17:57):

I think it's going to be really good for them. I really do. That's definitely good audience to test it with and I think you're going to get a lot of great feedback.

Barbi Honeycutt (18:05):

Thank you. Appreciate the support.

Holly Owens (18:08):

Absolutely. I'm right there with you. I still teach in higher education and we do at my institution, they do some workshops in the evenings, but it's like after you teach or it's like when the days you're not teaching and it's just so difficult. So if they were just doing something like this, I feel like people would be more receptive to consuming the content instead of the old click through the slides or sit through a synchronous presentation and check it off the list, that kind of stuff. It really needs to be more engaging

Barbi Honeycutt (18:39):

And I'm just looking for something different. And Nadia, you mentioned listening to audiobooks. I'm trying so hard to listen to audiobooks. I haven't quite embraced the audiobook format. I keep trying. My brain just will not go there. But man, I love podcasts. I love podcasts. So I think there's something there. And the other thing that I developed and experimented with was a mobile learning professional development experience. So just did this summer. So I actually created through Ed app, an actual faculty development program about teaching and learning. And at the time I called it the lecture breakers academy, and I had 10 faculty from all over the world. I kept the cohort very small so I could get some feedback and see if this thing is even going to fly. It's nine modules with these little individual micro-learning lessons in there. We haven't done a whole lot in faculty development related to micro-learning across the board.

(19:38):

I've seen it in nursing, I've seen it in some of those professional places. Like nurses, they're on the floor, they're working, they have time quickly to scroll through a lesson and then move on. So I've seen it in those kinds of places, but I haven't seen it across the board where I work with faculty from every kind of discipline. And so these nine modules are interactive experiences. They take one to three minutes to complete. You scroll through, they're interactive. There might be some q and a questions or a little quiz or something you type if you want to reflect on it, and it's all right there in your phone. It's amazing to me that we have this capability and they moved through the lessons. Now I built a whole community and learning experience and modules and videos to go with it for this first time out.

(20:25):

But the feedback that I got for the mobile app piece was very exciting and promising. And I'm like, okay, I think I could do something with this. So I think I'm going to kind of rebrand that and launch it as something like a fundamentals in teaching in college teaching or introduction to college teaching. I think it could be a great way to connect with new faculty for orientation or graduate students who are just learning just a taste of how you get started teaching in higher education. And so that's been a lot of fun to develop as well.

Holly Owens (20:58):

I'm enjoying this conversation. I have so many ideas going through my head. I'm trying to figure out which question that,

Barbi Honeycutt (21:05):

Sorry.

Holly Owens (21:05):

It's

Nadia Johnson (21:06):

Inspiring me. The whole micro-learning thing. It's something that I've started to become obsessed with. So I have all these ideas going through my brain

Holly Owens (21:18):

And

Barbi Honeycutt (21:18):

I tend to talk really fast. So let me just jump in with any kind of question. This is such a learning curve for me. I will say that is that I was never considered myself like a techie. And then even with a podcast, I took an online course to learn how to do a podcast and I step by step and it took a while, but I did it and gained that confidence. And now I am stepping into these worlds that are brand new to me and trying to apply it to what I do. And so it is pretty exciting, but sometimes that learning curve's a little slow, but it's exciting.

Holly Owens (21:50):

But you've come such a long way, I mean in a short amount of time.

Nadia Johnson (21:55):

And I think that's the beauty in just the evolution of technology and especially post pandemic, how we're starting to have all these new ways of learning. The mobile learning thing I think is such a good idea because it's one of those things when you're on the go, you're at a doctor's appointment and you need to quickly learn something. You can scroll through and you can learn very quickly. I think I'm just super obsessed now with this whole idea of micro-learning, and mobile learning, and it's one of those things I'm super excited to see what industry education does with these new ideas and trends now.

Barbi Honeycutt (22:35):

I agree. And when I learned about Ed app, it was being used primarily on the frontline for frontline training. Now in higher education, we don't really embrace the word training unless we're kind of learning a new tool or a new process. We really leaned more on professional development as our terminology. But what they were using it for was like if you are a cashier and you are on the front lines at insert any restaurant or insert any, it could be McDonald's, it could be whatever. And the people there are literally on the job training, just in time training, you have a difficult employee, what do you do? And they click through and that's how they learn. They're right there in the front lines. They're learning on the spot. They're learning when it's relevant to them. And it's small, like you said, it's microlearning, it's relevant, it's practical, it's not, let's go sit for hours and hours and hours and hours and learn something and then try to remember it.

(23:31):

It's right there on the spot. And I'm like, well, professors are on the frontline of teaching and I know we're not training them, but is there a way we can embrace this model where it's the short bursts of knowledge that we build a foundation for our teaching and we get inspired and we can go try it in our class the next day? And that's kind where that started to bubble up. And I started to think about it. And like I say, we'll see the first 10 faculty who went through it really enjoyed it, and I enjoy creating it and we'll see what happens. But yeah, happy to answer any other questions as you're brainstorming. There's a lot of potential.

Holly Owens (24:07):

I'm thinking about what we do at Pharmacy and Amazon Pharmacy, and I can't talk about too much, but we do a lot of simulation based stuff. And that's what popped into my head is they have the agents anywhere. Anywhere you're in customer service, you have to go through certain screens and do certain things to make things happen. And that's kind of like what you're saying here. It's like right there at your fingertips.

Barbi Honeycutt (24:30):

I didn't even think of pharmacy, so I did. I worked with pharmacy school in California several years ago, and at that time we were doing kind of a flip classroom, kind of an innovative model to teaching for them. And so yeah, pharmacy is another one. I see a lot of innovation happening in the health education space with nursing and pharmacy, and there's a lot of potential there. And they're also very innovative with the way that they look at teaching and learning and training and preparing their future professionals. And so yeah, there could be something there. It's exciting.

Holly Owens (25:03):

It is. I'm enjoying watching all the stuff that's happening there too. I never was a health person. I never worked in, I was a teacher, but I never worked in healthcare. But seeing some of the things that are happening in the background, I'm like, wow. I'm like, this is really crazy. Amazon Pharmacy is a digital pharmacy. Who would've thought that there'd be a digital pharmacy that could send you your medications?

Barbi Honeycutt (25:26):

Yeah, it's all changing so fast.

Holly Owens (25:29):

And I feel like

Nadia Johnson (25:30):

In that sector, there's just so much to learn. There's just so much to learn when it comes to health.

Barbi Honeycutt (25:39):

Well, and higher education, I'll say, has always been, it seems like to me, slower to embrace the changes of things. And I think that was one of the things that came out of the pandemic was it forced higher education's hand to like, no, you really need to look at alternative ways to offer what you're doing. And so I think the space is ready maybe to try these new things. And so I have worked with a lot of nurses, been to a lot of nursing conferences, and they're some of the most creative and innovative people that I've seen and energetic and enthusiastic and ready to try anything. And so it's been fun to work with them. And like you say, Holly, really see the innovation that's happening there. So yeah, I'm ready to try some new things with faculty development and professional development for educators. And also just curious myself to see what's possible. And I think that curiosity is what's driving me to keep asking these questions and saying, well, why not? Why can't we try an app? Why can't we try audio courses? So we'll see. Yeah.

Nadia Johnson (26:45):

So what did we miss? Did we miss anything? Is there anything else that you'd like to share about lecture breakers or just anything that you're working on? Anything that we didn't cover that you want to share?

Barbi Honeycutt (26:58):

Those are my main things. You're catching me right on the cusp of creating all these new opportunities. And so those are my big ones. I'm still going to continue my podcast. My podcast, I run it seasonally. So the first 100 episodes I did every single week, and I edited all of them myself. I really got in there and learned the tech. And then I'm like, okay, where are we? Seriously, you can pass off some of this work now. So now I have team. We

Holly Owens (27:22):

Understand. Yes, we

Barbi Honeycutt (27:23):

Understand.

Holly Owens (27:24):

We

Barbi Honeycutt (27:24):

Get it. And all the people out there who have podcasts, you can let go of the editing. It's okay, you can do that. And once I did that, I changed it to seasons. Now actually I have more energy to bring to the show and I can kind of theme the seasons or I can quickly change the seasons based on what a current topic is. And so I really like that model. And so my season six will launch later this fall, but that's really all that I'm working on. Like I said, I still do the custom workshops and online programs for faculty and instructors, and my lane is higher education, so that's the one that I know the best. And then trying to just experiment with the new technology and reach more educators out there who want to transform the way they teach college courses.

Holly Owens (28:12):

Well, that sets us up before you have to come back after you launch all these things and tell us how it went. And then next thing

Barbi Honeycutt (28:19):

Come back and say, it did not work, Holly, it didn't work. No,

Holly Owens (28:22):

No. You're going to have some great feedback. I feel like this is going to be something. I hope so. Going

Barbi Honeycutt (28:26):

To be really good. I need that positive energy. Send me all the positive energy.

Holly Owens (28:30):

Yes. We'll, and for those of you who don't, podcast recording is the easiest part. Yes, the recording is the fun part and it's the easiest part. Everything else is, it's a lift, but we love doing it and we're passionate about it. And you're going to be able to go on the show notes and see all the things that Barbie talked about, including we're going to go access lecture breakers and all her wonderful content and free things. So Barbie, thank you so much for coming on the show again and chatting with us.

Barbi Honeycutt (28:56):

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to coming back and talking about what I've learned about audio courses and mobile learning experiences. And I look forward to connecting with your listeners and anybody who wants to connect with me, you can go to barbie honeycutt.com and I spell my name B A R b i. So it's not like the movie, the Barbie movie. I know. I was

Holly Owens (29:16):

Going to ask your name got pretty popular this year, didn't

Barbi Honeycutt (29:19):

It? Yes, it did. Yes, it did. That's all I've heard this summer. And so you can go there or you can go to lecture breakers.com. I'd love to have new subscribers, love to have new people in the lecture breakers community.

Holly Owens (29:33):

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Barbi Honeycutt (29:35):

Thank you.

Nadia Johnson (29:36):

I can't wait to catch up with you.

Barbi Honeycutt (29:39):

Thank you.