Presentations

People are often derided or excluded for speaking a dialect, perhaps especially in schools. In this session, we will see that the idea of dialects as "sloppy" or "improper" forms of a language is a myth---the truth is that all dialects follow their own grammatical rules, and, crucially, one's dialect is not a marker of one's intellectual capacity. We will develop insights into the nature of dialects and why they exist and we'll discuss ways to foster academic success for speakers of all varieties of English.

When introducing students to a new process or method, often the best approach is to give them the steps to follow, and then to supervise them as they blunder through it. Unfortunately, none of the tools of an asynchronous online course seem to be up to the task of recreating this kind of exploratory assignment. In this presentation, I will discuss two easy tweaks an instructor can make to turn the Canvas quiz tool into an interactive assignment that effectively guides students as they work through a step-by-step process.

Faculty and students collaborating to (re)design a course can be used to improve the quality of the course, improve learning for students enrolled in the course, and increase the engagement in higher education for the students who collaborate in the course design process with the faculty. This presentation will discuss the process for collaborative course (re)design and implications for learners' experiences. Both the faculty and student perspective will be presented.

COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have led to a surge in all manner of online teaching that includes the asynchronous format. Home and remote schooling became the order of the day, and the education process cannot be stopped for the pandemic. However, this scenario has increased the chances of some students playing truant as there is little to no monitoring with respect to actual presence in online class, as one could be online without actually dedicating all the time to the course. Thus, the current study attempts to investigate whether there exists any tangible association between actual number of participation hours of a student in the online class to the point scores achieved. Statistical modeling with regression analysis has been performed, and it indicates a moderate but significant association between the time dedicated by the students online and the actual point scores achieved at the end.

I will describe the changes I made in my in-person Math 120 class in Fall 2021 to use more active learning and equitable teaching techniques. These include more tasks that relate to current issues that are worth working on, that offer multiple solution paths, and that are worthy of group work. We also worked on establishing an atmosphere where it is ok to be "wrong in public" as we are all working together to try to figure things out. I also used something more like mastery-based grading, in an attempt to center learning more than grading.

Canvas shells are pretty utilitarian: they do (mostly) what we need them to do. But they are not visually interesting or even exciting to use. What if they could be? If you could insert a module progress bar that allows students to see which assignments they have completed, and how much of their work is still left? Or if you could choose the color and design theme for your classes? What if you could use drop down menus or tabs? All of these things are available as long as you unlock a hidden design software connected with Canvas. Now you can make your Canvas Shells look more like regular websites. One might even say, they could look “fancy”!