Together with our guests, Dr Clara Sitbon and Dr Benjamin Miller (both from the University of Sydney), we talk about assessing students through interactive oral examinations. Teaching class sizes from 20 to 900 students, Clara and Benjamin share how they are using oral examinations as a means to understand, see, and assess the learning that sits behind the students’ work.

Mindfulness enjoys a lot of popularity these days. In this episode, we talk to Professor Karen Brounéus (Uppsala University) about how we can integrate mindfulness exercises into our classrooms and how mindfulness can assist student learning. Not only has Karen been using mindfulness in her own peace and conflict studies courses, but she also offers mindfulness training to Swedish members of parliament. Karen shows how a lay person can make of these techniques and even offers an example of how this can be done.

This episode is all about taking risks, not just as teachers, but also as something we can encourage in our students. To take risks and experiment can be liberating and extremely beneficial for learning. Our guest, Associate Professor Helen Marshall (School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland), shares with us how she fosters risk taking and a spirit of experimentation in her creative writing courses.