iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

PSA: Effective immediately I will no longer be active on this account. The account will stay open, but I will not be logging in, posting, or responding to replies or DMs at this website. You will still be able to interact with me on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Chalk needs to die off. Sorry/not sorry

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

If AI tools had been put into development five years earlier, so that in 2020 they would have been at 2025 levels in terms of power and features, how would education during the pandemic have played out differently?

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

The authors of this paper are either ed-tech bros, or are being paid by them, or just woke up one morning and said "YOLO" then decided to come right out of the gates with debatable assumptions.

Educational technology exists because of the urge to solve learning problems.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Just read a paper from 2020, pre-pandemic, that talked a lot about "21st century skills". Pretty startling to think how that concept has changed in five years. The 21st century didn't follow our blueprint it turns out.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Journals that make authors include key artifacts from their research studies in an "online supplement", but then do not post a link to the supplement in the article or on the journal website, can also go frak themselves

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

My POV chasing down papers to read for the literature review for my flipped learning book, about half the time

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

It's always cool to find yourself cited in a research paper. Less cool when your name is misspelled. Between this and having "G. Valley" listed as a co-author I'm starting to feel like I get no respect 😂

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

New at Grading For Growth: Jane Wageman shares strategies for tracking growth through the revision process in a university writing class.

gradingforgrowth.com

Feedback, revisions, and the writing process

Tracking growth across drafts in an undergraduate research course

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Went to a home football game last night and had to meet up with my wife outside out of the classroom buildings on campus. She gave me the name and I simply could not recall where it was. I think that means my sabbatical is going well.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I like this observation about flipped learning (made by Russian scholar Irina Gnutova) very much. Flipped learning doesn't take sides in the "lecture v. active learning" wars. Instead it tries to get both approaches to coexist harmoniously and play to the strengths of each.

The close relationship between constructivism and the pedagogical concept of flipped learning is expressed primarily in the fact that the latter creates an optimal structure for the effective application of active learning methods, making learning based on constructivist principles possible. However, flipped learning does not exclude traditional ways of acquiring knowledge. In terms of its structure, a flipped lesson consists of two components, the first of which is individual and involves independent learning with the help of computer technology, which includes a lecture component. As a result, the two opposing approaches to cognition within the framework of flipped learning are not mutually exclusive but complement each other, allowing for a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to the cognition of complex objects and phenomena in educational reality.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Oh, the irony that every single one of the research papers I'd found that deal with flipped learning and student equity and access, are behind paywalls.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

A friend asked me last night, as a trivia question, what is the smallest number whose spelling has the letters in alphabetical order. My answer: e.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

This quote from a research paper I am reading right now hits hard. #practice

According to dancer Martha Graham (1998), practice involves “times of complete frustration ... daily small deaths”

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Proposed definition for active learning: Activities done by students in an organized group setting that instantiate deliberate practice.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Didn't expect this to come up in my JSTOR search for papers about flipped instruction. Sadly, it didn't make it through my exclusion criteria. #badminton

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Reminder that there is no such thing as "college algebra".

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Reading through papers on flipped learning, I found this citation to one of my early publications -- with my esteemed co-author "G. Valley". 😂

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Today at Intentional Academia: I realized that the Clarify process for email was missing a big piece, and I think I know how to fix it -- giving us a Grand Unified Theory of Academic Email. intentionalacademia.substack.com/p/a-grand-un...

intentionalacademia.substack.com

A Grand Unified Theory of academic email

Filling in the missing links in the Clarify process

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Journals that charge you to access articles that are 10+ years old can go frak themselves

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Reviewing flipped learning research from 10 years ago, one of the main criticisms was that students didn't have a way to ask questions about pre-class assignments while outside of class. AI has definitely changed that up a little, hasn't it?

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

I think so. The Zotero Integration plugin needs a lot of TLC to work. But now I can import annotations to Obsidian with more or less the right data, formatting, and tagging. But only "more or less".

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I was hoping to have 15-20 interviews to include, covering a wide range of applications. Now it looks like I'm going to have a hard time choosing! Very grateful for that, and for those who submitted these interviews. You're going to really like the second edition of this book I think. (4/4)

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

- ~1/4 of them have class sizes of 100 or more, with 3 of them at 300+. - Includes graduate level classes, and an undergrad class taught by a grad student. - Roughly 1/4 of them do not use video in a significant role in the course. Many use alt grading along with the flipped structure. (3/4)

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

- 27 interviews submitted (so far; "deadline" is Monday) - Includes all areas of STEM plus finance, sociology, poli sci, TESOL, linguistics, psychology, and gen-ed humanities courses. - All kinds of institutions represented, from SLACs to R1 universities and a handful outside the USA. (2/4)

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

This morning I completed an initial read-through of the case study interviews submitted for the second edition of _Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty_. I'm absolutely stoked by what I've received. Some fun facts: (1/4)

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I just spent the better part of yesterday trying to get Obsidian to play nice with Zotero. AMA

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

New at Intentional Academia: Who says you have the right to have purpose, productivity, and meaning in higher education? Today I present and argue for a principle that goes to the heart of it, that I call the Law of the Whole Person.

intentionalacademia.substack.com

The Law of the Whole Person

An underlying axiom for intentionality

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Slightly diminish a band: Just-OK Funk Railroad

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Great idea to turn your interview questions into a blog post Cathy. I'll make sure to bookmark this for when I start the writeup process!

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

I'll be speaking this Thursday at Dunwoody College in Minneapolis, about a subject very close to me: Habits of productivity that promote purpose and meaning for higher ed people. Here is the resource page I'll be using, with links and other goodies: docs.google.com/docu...

docs.google.com

Taking Charge resource page

Taking Charge Resource page Curated by Robert Talbert, Ph.D. Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash Contact information Email: rt@rtalbert.org Website: http://rtalbert.org Social: Twitter | LinkedIn | BlueSky For information on speaking and workshops: https://www.rtalbert.org/speaking Mater...

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Working on a talk next week on faculty productivity and I happen to really like this slide that I just put together.

The Law of the Whole Person

Each individual is made up of uncountable essential components that cannot be separated into discrete parts.

Not “work life balance”
Presumption of separability is dehumanizing
Each person has a right to preserve coherence
Each person has the responsibility to do so

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

New at Grading For Growth: A look at the connection between deliberate practice and alternative grading. The connection is closer than you think, and there's a lot to unpack. gradingforgrowth.com/p/alternativ...

gradingforgrowth.com

Alternative grading and deliberate practice

A framework for feedback, and thoughts on using it

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

New at Intentional Academia: I'm concluding "tool month" by focusing in on @todoist.com, my personal operating system for intentionality. intentionalacademia.substack.com/p/how-and-wh...

intentionalacademia.substack.com

How and why I use ToDoist

A personal operating system for being intentional

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

..."Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

While I'm on the subject, if you are looking for a speaker or workshop facilitator for 2025 or 2026, I'd love to work with you and my Fall schedule is wide open at the moment. I do in-person and online, big scale and small scale. Let me know what you're thinking about. www.rtalbert.org/speaking

rtalbert.org

Speaking and Consulting — Robert Talbert, PhD.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

I'm happy to announce today something I've been working on for some time: A redesigned version of my professional website, rtalbert.org. The new site has updated info on my speaking and workshops, a much-improved layout, built-in contact forms, and a searchable archive of blog posts back to 2015.

rtalbert.org

Robert Talbert, PhD.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Hypothesis: If every college student were required to learn a sport or a musical instrument that they didn't already know as part of their graduation requirements, pushback about alternative grading would disappear.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

That was David (Austin)'s sabbatical project from last year IIRC. So yeah we had a full department discussion about how cool it was going to be.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

I definitely include music and other arts education in that question, in fact I'm wondering specifically what the rest of us can learn from music educators on this.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

The problem with "work life balance" is it assumes there are two discrete parts to a person: The work part, and the life part, and these must be kept in "balance". But the things that make a person human are uncountable and cannot be separated. There are no "parts".

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

New at Grading for Growth: First of a two-part series on creating an alternative grading setup that fits what students need, by combining the best aspects of different approaches. gradingforgrowth.com/p/mixing-and...

gradingforgrowth.com

Mixing and matching SBG and Specifications (part 1)

How I use multiple grading approaches in an intro-to-proofs class

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Also - I will be starting the writing process in mid-August so if you can get responses to me by August 1, I guarantee they will be fully looked at!

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Also - I will be starting the writing process in mid-August so if you can get responses to me by August 1, I guarantee they will be fully looked at!

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Also - I will be starting the writing process in mid-August so if you can get responses to me by August 1, I guarantee they will be fully looked at!

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Is she on here? I can hit her up via email if not.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

And to clarify, I'm looking for use cases in specific classes. So if you could pick your favorite class where you've done this and focus on that, it'd be perfect.

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Robert Talbert @roberttalbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Thank you! Here is a Google Doc with some interview questions: docs.google.com/document/d/1... It will ask you to make a copy first. Do that, then respond to the Qs. Then change permissions so everyone with the link can edit, then send me the link by email, talbertr at gvsu dot edu. 🙏

docs.google.com

Google Docs: Sign-in

Access Google Docs with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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