Agile Ed

Dr. Lindsay Richardson and Dr. Ashley Thompson

Welcome to "Agile Ed", the podcast that redefines teaching and learning! Join us in exploring learner-centred education fuelled by curiosity and critical thinking. Each episode features conversations on unlearning, relearning, and innovative practices that foster engagement and durable learning. We believe teaching should be agile—responsive to learners and the evolving social context and community dynamics. Whether you’re an educator or a lifelong learner, Agile Ed offers fresh ideas to inspire growth and explore innovative strategies for lifelong learning!

  1. Oct 28

    The On-Air Lasagna Check: Scaffolded Experiences (Part 2)

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we continue our lasagna check with a deeper look at what happens after the scaffold is in place.We turn our attention to feedback: how much to give, when to give it, and how students learn to receive and use it. We reflect on the difference between being the person who judges the final product and being the person who helps students make it better—and why that distinction can completely change the learning relationship.From honours students receiving pages of feedback to first-year students refining research questions, we explore how feedback itself can be scaffolded. We talk about creating low-cost opportunities to try, fail, revise, and try again before students reach the moment when performance actually counts.That leads us into productive failure, feedback literacy, student choice, and the importance of responding to mistakes and questions in ways that preserve trust. We also consider what happens when students have not completed every preparation activity, when the semester gets heavy, and when instructors need to decide whether to push forward or adjust the support in the moment.As always, the layers of the lasagna keep blending with one another: relationships make productive failure safer, scaffolding makes feedback more useful, and both help create the conditions for intrinsic motivation.It’s a conversation about what it means to calibrate the appropriate amount of support students need—and how thoughtful and intentional scaffolding ultimately prepares learners to continue without us.

  2. Oct 21

    The On-Air Lasagna Check: Scaffolded Experiences (Part 1)

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we continue to put our own courses through the lasagna check.This time, we dig in to discuss scaffolded learning experiences: the pasta sheets that give structure to learning. We start with the familiar idea of scaffolding—breaking a large assignment into smaller pieces and providing feedback along the way—but quickly discover that scaffolding can be much more than an assessment strategy. It can happen within a single class discussion, across a course, through an experiential learning activity, or in the ongoing dialogue between students and their instructors. In any context, well-designed scaffolded learning experiences help students move from needing support to being able to stand on their own.Drawing on examples from our own classrooms, we explore what scaffolding looks like when students develop research questions, work through complex concepts, visit an art gallery, and receive feedback before something is graded. We also reflect on why we have moved away from attaching “little trinket percentages” to every step of the process and toward creating more opportunities for rehearsal, revision, and learning before the final performance.Along the way, we keep running into the other layers of the lasagna: relationships make students more willing to seek and use support, student choice can strengthen intrinsic motivation, and carefully designed scaffolds create safer opportunities to try, struggle, persist, and improve.It’s a conversation about moving beyond scaffolded assessments toward scaffolded experiences—and rethinking what it means to support learning long before we get to the grade.

  3. Oct 7

    The On-Air Lasagna Check: Relationship Rich Environments (Part 2)

    n this episode of Agile Ed, we continue to put our own courses through the lasagna check.This time, though, our courses are well underway: it’s Week 4. Before digging into the lasagna to discuss scaffolded learning experiences, we decide to revisit the relationship-rich foundation of our courses to ask a different question: How are those relationships going? What looked thoughtful, intentional, and perfectly organized on the syllabus in August is now being experienced in real time by real students, real classroom dynamics, and the ups and down of real teaching.We reflect on the slow work of building trust, the awkwardness of starting over with a new group of students, and the moment when a class finally starts to feel like a community. We talk about creating meaningful opportunities for connection, co-creating with students, and recognizing that relationship-rich education is not about having an intimate relationship with every learner. It is about intentionally creating the conditions for students to build relationships with us, one another, the teaching team, the course content, and the wider world.Along the way, we also check in on what hasn't gone exactly as planned. We revisit ambitious course-design choices, recalibrate expectations, and consider how unintended outcomes—like helping a student make a friend—might be just as meaningful as the outcomes we originally designed for.And, because this is a lasagna check, we discover once again that the layers refuse to remain separate. Relationships quickly lead us into scaffolded experiences, productive failure, and intrinsic motivation. What starts as a check-in on one layer becomes a reminder that sustainable teaching works because of how all the layers are baked together.It’s an early mid-semester reality check on what happens when our carefully designed courses meet actual learners—and why things “not going exactly as planned” does not mean the design has failed.

  4. Aug 30

    The On-Air Lasagna Check: Relationship Rich Environments (Part 1)

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we put our own courses through the lasagna check. …or at least we start to. We only got through the first layer: the dish! With our fall syllabi and course calendars open in front of us, we turn our layered model for sustainable teaching into an on-air course design consultation. Rather than simply saying we value relationship-rich education, scaffolding, productive failure, and intrinsic motivation, we start asking a more challenging question: can we actually see those things in the courses we’ve designed? We begin with the dish that holds the lasagna together: relationships. From designing meaningful interactions on the first day of class to building grade negotiations into a 200-student course, we explore what it means to create opportunities for students to build relationships with instructors, peers, TAs, course content, the wider university community, and beyond. As the consultation unfolds, those decisions lead us into questions about difficult conversations, flexible deadlines, feedback, student choice, TA involvement, and how much support is enough before scaffolding starts getting in the way of learning. It’s a live, imperfect course-design conversation about trying to walk the walk—and discovering what changes when you use the lasagna model not just to describe good teaching, but to examine your own.

  5. Aug 14

    The Pretty Pencil Case Principle: Instructor Edition

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we turn the Pretty Pencil Case Principle around on ourselves. As a new semester approaches, it’s easy for instructors to fall into the same trap as students with their fresh notebooks and brand-new school supplies: this time, everything is going to be perfect. The syllabus will anticipate every question. The course calendar will be flawless. Every activity will be meaningful, every deadline intentional, and somehow we’ll manage all of it without creating an impossible amount of work for ourselves. Starting with an 18-page syllabus, we unpack information overload, “Frankenstein” course outlines, duplicated deadlines, first-year students learning how to navigate university, and the tension between being comprehensive and actually being useful. We also get into the messier work of course redesign: giving each other feedback, letting go of things we’ve already carefully planned, making space in the semester, and asking whether all that extra effort is actually helping our students—or us. Along the way, we rethink the end of the semester, experiment with grade negotiations and scalable oral defences, and remind ourselves that sustainable teaching means designing for the humans who have to teach the course, too. Because instructors get excited about pretty pencil cases in September, too.

  6. Jul 23

    What Does Education Look Like When We Prioritize Cooperation and Collaboration?

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we ask what education might look like if we stopped organizing so much of it around competition and started prioritizing cooperation and collaboration instead. We explore the ways competition is baked into academic culture—from authorship and intellectual property to teaching, grading, and the pressure to protect our own ideas—and what can happen when we deliberately push against those norms. Along the way, we turn the conversation toward course design: collaborative learning, group formation, student choice, feedback, grading, and creating opportunities for students to learn with one another rather than simply alongside or against one another. We also get practical about the realities of doing this work. What happens when class sizes grow, TA support shrinks, and the course you imagined is no longer sustainable? Drawing on our lasagna model for sustainable teaching, we reflect on how relationships, scaffolding, productive failure, and intrinsic motivation can help us decide what really matters and ultimately what we can let go. It’s a conversation about de-centering ourselves, sharing ownership of learning, and designing educational experiences that make cooperation more than something we say we value.  Attributions Megan Barker (colleague mentioned regarding approaches to group formation): linkedin.com/in/megan-barker-a9661960/

  7. Jun 25

    Grande Expectations: More than a Starbucks story

    In this episode of Agile Ed, a rant about inconsistent Starbucks service opens into a much bigger conversation about inconsistency in teaching and learning. From customer service and classroom culture to grading, feedback, trust, and workload, we explore what happens when educators say they value care, flexibility, and community but design courses in ways that send very different messages. Along the way, we reflect on the tensions between relational teaching and scale, the emotional labour of supporting students, the role of TAs as part of the teaching team, and the practical realities that shape assessment design in large classes. This episode is a candid and thoughtful exploration of what it takes to align educational values with educational practice, and why trust, transparency, and intentional design matter so much when we want students to feel supported, challenged, and genuinely included in the learning process.

  8. Apr 6

    The Learning Lasagna: What Sustainable Teaching Really Requires

    In this episode of Agile Ed, we start with habits and end up somewhere much bigger: student learning, perfectionism, and what sustainable teaching really requires. From Duolingo streaks and guitar practice to classroom trust and unfinished assignments, we explore why all-or-nothing thinking can be so damaging and why relationships, scaffolding, productive failure, and intrinsic motivation matter so much.  Along the way, we introduce a new metaphor for their emerging framework: the teaching-and-learning lasagna. We explore practical examples of embodying this type of approach in classes of any size.  It’s an episode about practice, progress, and creating learning environments where students do not have to be perfect to keep moving. Attributions This episode references ideas related to habit formation discussed by Mel Robbins.The conversation also gestures to themes discussed in Huberman Lab around reducing friction and designing systems for action.Special acknowledgment to Jodie Medd for the inspiring work that harnesses relationships and showcases the value of relationship rich education. Jodie has shared many of the works that have gone into shaping her practice. The phrase “the community is the curriculum” is in reference to Dave Cormier’s work.Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu made the distinction between rigorous and vigorous on a podcast with Angel Acosta.

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About

Welcome to "Agile Ed", the podcast that redefines teaching and learning! Join us in exploring learner-centred education fuelled by curiosity and critical thinking. Each episode features conversations on unlearning, relearning, and innovative practices that foster engagement and durable learning. We believe teaching should be agile—responsive to learners and the evolving social context and community dynamics. Whether you’re an educator or a lifelong learner, Agile Ed offers fresh ideas to inspire growth and explore innovative strategies for lifelong learning!

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Lindsay Richardson and Dr. Ashley Thompson
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. Lindsay Richardson and Dr. Ashley Thompson
  • Show Website
    Agile Ed