Skills for Higher Education Pofessionals

Dr. Ibrahim Elsayed
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Skills for Higher Education Professionals is the go-to podcast for higher ed staff, faculty, and administrators who want to elevate their careers and drive meaningful change on campus. Join us for bite-sized strategies, expert interviews, and real-world advice on leadership, student affairs, campus operations, and personal professional growth. Tune in to turn your daily campus challenges into stepping stones for success.

Episodes

  1. How to Create MCQ Questions

    Jun 26

    How to Create MCQ Questions

    In this deep dive, we tear down the incredibly fragile architecture of multiple-choice tests. Based on a masterclass manual designed for higher education faculty and instructional designers, we explore why writing a fair question is notoriously difficult. All too often, poorly written exams end up testing your reading comprehension or working memory instead of your actual content knowledge. As an AI, I find it fascinating how easily human test-makers fall into these mechanical traps—and it certainly makes you wonder what will happen when AI takes over generating them!### 🧠 Key Takeaways & Psychological Traps* **The Golden Rule:** The question's stem must be entirely meaningful by itself. It should present a definitive, self-contained problem before you even look at the options.* **Cognitive Overload:** When instructors use twisted sentences, double negatives, or fully capitalized words like "NOT," they distort the measurement of your knowledge. Instead of testing what you know, they are maxing out your brain's short-term working memory.* **Visual Hacking:** Instructors often get anxious about bulletproofing the correct answer, which causes the "key" to balloon into a dense, grammatically perfect paragraph. Students can easily spot this length discrepancy and visually hack the test.* **Lazy Crutches:** Using "All of the above" or "None of the above" are universally abused testing crutches. They create logical loopholes that allow a student to bypass required knowledge and get 100% of the credit while only demonstrating partial competency.* **Climbing Bloom's Taxonomy:** The most persistent criticism of multiple-choice tests is that they only measure superficial, brute-force memorization. To move up the pyramid of human learning, test writers must transition from asking for basic definitions to utilizing real-world scenarios, case studies, and interpretive data. #Education #Psychology #TestTaking #MultipleChoice #StudyTips #InstructionalDesign #DeepDive #Learning #EdTech

    22 min
  2. The Backward Design Blueprint: Transforming Course Creation for Educators

    Jun 26

    The Backward Design Blueprint: Transforming Course Creation for Educators

    Welcome to the complete guide on the Backward Design Blueprint, created specifically for higher education professionals, adjunct instructors, and subject matter experts. Are you designing your courses for "coverage" or for true student learning? This video explores how to move away from the traditional, content-heavy syllabus that rushes through textbook chapters and leaves students with only surface-level understanding. By entirely flipping the traditional process, you will learn how to architect deeply aligned, student-centered learning experiences using the three stages of Backward Design developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. In this explainer, we cover: The Coverage Trap: Why the standard approach of picking a textbook, dividing the timeline, and writing lectures first is fundamentally flawed. Stage 1 - Desired Results: How to filter your course material down to core "Enduring Understandings" and craft strong, observable learning outcomes using action verbs from Bloom's Taxonomy. Stage 2 - Acceptable Evidence: Why you must stop writing lectures and instead focus on "Constructive Alignment" by designing authentic lab simulations, formative check-ins, and summative assessments. Stage 3 - Learning Experiences: How to ruthlessly eliminate extraneous cognitive load and build active learning environments using strategies like the flipped classroom, Think-Pair-Share, and Jigsaw reading. The Alignment Audit: A four-part checklist to guarantee your outcome tests, assessment tests, content tests, and practice tests are perfectly aligned before you publish your syllabus. Stop teaching just to cover material, and start designing for true, long-term retention. #BackwardDesign #InstructionalDesign #HigherEducation #CourseCreation #ActiveLearning #TeachingStrategies #SyllabusDesign #ConstructiveAlignment #Professors #AdjunctInstructors

    19 min
  • 2 Episodes

About

Skills for Higher Education Professionals is the go-to podcast for higher ed staff, faculty, and administrators who want to elevate their careers and drive meaningful change on campus. Join us for bite-sized strategies, expert interviews, and real-world advice on leadership, student affairs, campus operations, and personal professional growth. Tune in to turn your daily campus challenges into stepping stones for success.

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