Liquid Syllabus

When we began, I was intrigued by the idea of a liquid syllabus, but intimidated by the idea of creating a google site. I assumed the website would be much more time consuming that it turned out to be, and I was also happy with what I was able to produce. 

The liquid syllabus seems like a valuable tool for helping open up the door to a friendly, student centered environment in our course.  Trust between students and their instructor needs to be established early n, and often our first impression sticks, so having a high quality, friendly liquid syllabus, with a warm welcoming video, can go a long way toward establishing that trust with students. I also hope that the liquid syllabus will help put students at ease before the semester starts, and also offer them ways to get their questions answered before we've even started classes.

Course Card

When selecting a course card image, I was looking for something that would be welcoming and hopefully send a message that would indicate the students in the photo were having fun. It's not uncommon for students to dread a class like small group, and I find focusing on fun really helps them put their best foot forward. I also wanted to select an image that, at the very least, hinted at diversity. These subconscious cues from that image can be really important in terms of setting a welcoming and inclusive tone for the course.

Homepage

I hope my homepage serves as a kindness cue to students as well as helps orient them in the first week or so of class. The homepage includes a welcoming, student-centered banner as well as my biographical video, both of which hopefully set a welcoming tone. The homepage also includes links the first week's module and information on how to navigate canvas, to help orient new students to the environment, which can be key in the first week. 

Getting to Know You Survey

The "Getting to Know You" survey serves as a kindness cue to students by asking them important questions about themselves, which will help me better serve them in the classroom. The questions in the survey are the kinds of things that might come up in a face-to-face class in the first week or two, but are not often addressed directly in an online class. Asking students what name the prefer to use, how to pronounce their name correctly, and more, can go a long way toward showing them that you care, right from the first day. These kinds of behaviors can also help set the tone for the rest of the semester and encourage students to trust and interact with their instructors in the longer term.

Ice Breaker 

For my icebreaker assignment, students are asked to introduce themselves to the class in a short video, using an app called Flip. Students are asked to reflect on why they are at Butte College and what inspires them, as well as tell their classmates and myself how to pronounce their name. The hope is that the questions in the icebreaker will help foster a sense of community by asking them meaningful, value-based questions that are simultaneously easy to answer in a way that hopefully feels comfortable. 

Getting to know a bit about each other can be key to fostering a sense of inclusion in the classroom and this icebreaker can be a great first step in terms of students creating a sense that their classmates are real, live people, not just names behind the text on the screen.

Bumper Video

Because bumper videos are short, they can be a great way to introduce an important topic or even a unit in your class. I chose to make my demonstration bumper video on a short, concise, important topic that I hadn't covered much in my first week of class - contacting your instructor.

The bumper video I created is designed to encourage students to contact me or any of their instructors. In the video, I provided three quick but useful tips for contacting any online instructor. The tips are practical in nature and great advice for any student. I also emphasized the importance of contacting your instructor regularly and I hope that clearly addressing this important topic in a warm way will help encourage students to take the important step of reaching out to their instructors when they need help or have questions. 

Microlecture

Mircolectures embedded into your content pages in Canvas are a great way to maintain instructor presence outside of regular announcements and class feedback. It's a way to pop up at just the right moment for all of your students. When you create the mircrolectures, it tells the students that you're with them, and that you are doing more than just grading and answer your email; It demonstrates to them that you have a command of the content for your class are are there to help them with their own knowledge.

Microlectures help students understand important topics better. Savvy instructors can use them to illustrate ideas and add examples to content, much as we might do in a face-to-face class. Mircolectures can also be a great place to share the wisdom you've probably gained through many years of teaching the same course! For my mircolecture introducing the idea of persuasion, I tried to focus on important ideas related to persuasion that students would not easily find in a text, highlighting how persuasion can affect and audience and the ethical issues that come up when giving a persuasive speech. I also gave some relatable examples to illustrate the content ideas. The video starts with a brief preview of what I hope students will learn, which relates to a learning objective, and then takes a quick tour through each of the three topics, before finally summarizing the talking points at the end, all in less than 12 minutes, so as to not overwhelm the students.