Humanizing STEM Showcase
Tommy Cox, Professor of Chemistry at Butte College
This site provides examples of instructional resources created in the Humanizing Online STEM Academy, a professional development program funded by the California Education Learning Lab and administered by the Foothill DeAnza Community College District.
Reflections
Where I was
Before this academy, I felt like I wanted to make my online courses feel my presence as an instructor. This is the one of the reasons why I decided to participate in the Humanizing STEM Online Academy. My other overall goal was to discover what I was already doing well in the online modality and what I ciuld improve upon, as well as learn or explore other "tricks" of the trade and become familiar with other online teaching tools.
Where I am
Through this process, I have gained more personal experience in what works for students in the online format and what can be a nuisance and lead to an overall frustrating experience. I became confused as to what was wanted for some assignments and what the learning objective was for some of the assignments. As a participant, I must have missed the memo on what I was supposed to gain or learn from some of the projects and/or assignments. And after watching several of my colleagues' Online Student Voices videos, several suggested that courses that required making new accounts in other programs was frustrating and a distraction - I can relate to that. For this course, having to make new accounts for FLIP and others ended up becoming a distraction and not a tool. So where I am at now: I am more aware of what students go through when navigating online coursework and the importance of clear and concise instructions and expectations. This experience is making me a better instructor and I can now relate to my students and their potential frustrations.
Where I am going
Whereas I started this Academy in a bit of a nervous state, I feel like I am headed towards a much better place now. I am comfortable developing a liquid syllabus as well as making a more human presence on my Canvas pages. And I am also highly aware that despite adding a human element to my Canvas course and bringing my learning modules to life, that does not mean my students will be successful in my chemistry classes. I have accepted that they have the opportunity to be successful in my class but are not guaranteed success. I now know that I am not inhibiting my students and neither is my Canvas course - they still might not pass chemistry class despite the bumper videos or warm / engaging interactions that I leave for the students. In the very first module, we heard that attending classes in person is a privilege; after this course, I am aware that it is also likely a privilege to have enough time and energy to complete assignments, reflect on graded assignments & feedback, as well as grow through time and practice. But what I have gained from this course is to always remember to be empathetic and be lenient. You never know where someone is at in life. And I am grateful for taking this workshop series and thankful to the facilitators and organizers.
CHEM 2 Liquid Syllabus
At this point, I am quite proud of how my Liquid Syllabus has evolved over the last couple of weeks: there are now more bulleted items and less text in paragraph form, I have included images of the required course materials as well as links on where and how to order them. I have also made a short 60-second warm welcome video with my dog Palmer (and the video is posted to youtube with closed captions). And the liquid syllabus looks significantly better on both via an iPhone (my phone) and an Android (my wife's phone). For future courses, I can simply send the link for my liquid syllabus to my future students prior to the start of the course
Course Card
I have chosen an image of me conducting or performing the "Whoosh" bottle demo - which hopefully guides students to think "whoa, what is going on there?" and "are we going to be doing that in class?" and gets students somewhat excited about chemistry class
Homepage for CHEM 2
This will be the first page the student views when entering the course through Canvas. My hope is that with the banner along with both the welcome video and the picture of me smiling project a feeling of warmth to the students. The homepage also gives some directions as to how to begin the course and how to reach out to me with any questions.
Getting to know you Survey
The "Getting to Know You" survey will be assigned in the first week of the course. One reason for having this survey is for students to have a feeling that their instructor (me) cares to get to know them and I have their future careers in mind. The other reason is so I have an idea of who they are and how I can help them on the class as well as make the class relevant to them. A couple of questions I ask are:
What is their major and why are they taking the class?
What other obligations do they have on a weekly basis (number of classes they are taking, part time or fulltime job, family obligations, etc ) ?
Wisdom Wall
The idea behind this specific Wisdom Wall was for current CHEM 2 students to provide advice and suggestions just after they take their first exam. It is my hope that students reflect on how they prepared for the exam as well as what might have been surprising or caught them off guard, and then provide advice or suggestions for future chemistry students. This is meant to be both an exercise in reflection post-exam as well as being able to put the reflections in to context and form suggestions from the reflection.
Bumper Video
I really had fun with the bumper video on introducing entropy via "interpretative dance." Many students struggle to grasp the abstract concept of entropy as available microstates instead of chaos or disorder. And the interpretative dance component in the video helps students visualize what a microstate is and how a liquid and gas have more entropy than say a solid does.
Microlecture with Macro-level relevancy
My lecture video is on unit conversions and dimensional analysis - many students regularly ask what equation do they use for a given problem. Through this video, I incorporate a real world problem that does not involve an equation but more a problem-solving process through converting one unit into another unit. And many students have pets themselves, and as such, this video and practice problem brings the relevancy of unit conversion right into their daily lives.
This site is by Tommy Cox and is shared with a Creative Commons-Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 license. Creation of this content was made possible with funding from the California Education Learning Lab.