Having a Liquid Syllabus to give to students to welcome them to class is the piece I feel I have been missing in my classes. Not only was it a blast to create, I feel like it is a great way to ease my students into class and give them an opportunity to see what to expect. My hope is to create a welcoming atmosphere for students who might especially dislike English and groan at the prospect of "reading works from old, dead, white men." I want students to feel this is a class for them...whether they are sharing their culture, identity, experiences, etc. I will be using my Liquid Syllabus at the beginning of the semester and have it available on my homepage so they can access it at anytime. 

I am an eclectic person if you couldn't already see that. My goal with this image was three-prong. One, I want my students to see that our class includes connectedness and diversity. I also want my students to feel creative and inspired when they first see the course card. Lastly, the artist, Jon Heresy, uses his art as social commentary and does a great job emphasizing the importance of diversity, love, and empathy. 

My homepage serves as a cue of social inclusion for students by including images, a warm welcoming statement, and a humanizing welcome video. I continue with my unique sense of weirdness so students know what they are getting into in this class with images and memes. On my homepage, I try and keep it simple with links to the syllabus, the calendar, and Butte resources. 

For my "Getting to Know You" survey, two of the most important questions (although I find them all to be important)I ask is my students' preferred pronouns and how to pronounce their names. Knowing students' names (correctly) is very important to me and it is important that students feel heard and seen within their identity. As a "Kyleen," I have always recognized my "importance" in someone's life by their willingness to say my name right, if at all. If I was ever called "Kylee" I knew for sure they were a "foe" as it were. As a student, being seen and recognized by your name is incredibly important for feeling a part of a community. 

For my English 2 class we cover values, coincidently, as a topic so this fit in perfectly with an assignment I was already doing. My class revolves around identity and values fit in perfectly here. I have students explain to me not only what their values are, but also what prompted these values either a story or an object which was inspired by Ted Talks by Jan Stassen. I also have them understand what "real" and "ideal" values are so they can see what values they use in their lives (real) vs the ones they would like to (ideal). I saw that students connected when they saw similar values of other students and related with stories of their own. I imagine using Flip might expand this connectedness by using student-student interactions. 

This bumper video is a very quick version of my original outline video. I like that it is simple, to the point, and gives students a general idea of what to look for in an outline. I don't like sharing my outline videos with other instructors because I feel judged so this is me being vulnerable. My longer version is more detailed and I offer that for students who need more guidance, which I feel is important. In fact, I use the video below as a microlecture for students who need guidance on doing an outline. 

One thing I notice students struggle with the most is taking a big question (our research question) and breaking it down into digestible pieces. For that, I offer them an outline mircorlecture. While students might feel they can write a paper, often times the ones who don't do an outline are scattered, confused, and just plugging in research where they think it "fits." Students who have done an outline, followed up with my feedback and applied it to their paper have a much easier time and a much more concise and organized thought process in their papers.