Eden J. Donahue | Assistant Professor & Associate Director of Nursing | Cal Poly Humboldt
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.
Before the Humanizing STEM Academy, I had taken a variety of courses aimed at improving online teaching. As I have been teaching hybrid courses since 2015, I had many skills related to online teaching, like working within the learning management systems, recording lectures, and embedding videos. In previous courses, I took a deep dive to understand and analyze my courses from a caring, humanized perspective but my focus was on the written content and policies of my courses. I was in search of a course where I would learn new skills to improve my courses.
After six weeks of the Humanized STEM Academy, I am in awe of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that I have gained throughout this journey. I have gained new skills in video production, quality, timing, and captioning. I have also continued my journey of humanizing an online course, from using images to convey course concepts to creating imperfect videos that reflect my teaching style and humor. I have a renewed passion for creating course content that will engage the learner while also fulfilling course objectives.
After the Humanized STEM Academy, I plan to analyze my lecture videos in order to create smaller videos. I also plan to incorporate more videos using Adobe Express to introduce new concepts. After the course, especially after the online student interview, I plan to increase using weekly announcements as it creates an expected reminder about what is happening in the course. In those announcements, I will include images and videos that provide more context to who I am as a person, like including a brief video from a hike. I am looking forward to re-energizing my hybrid courses!
As NRSG 390 is one of the first courses students will take, I will use the liquid syllabus to welcome students to the class and to the nursing program. As many of my students also work full-time, the liquid syllabus will be a helpful tool to give students the necessary information for the course, weeks before the start date. The liquid syllabus will also serve as a warm-welcome to a hybrid class. Students will be able to learn a little more about me, as a person and as an instructor.
My previous course card contained the course number and name on a teal background. I used the image on my course banner but did not think about creating a humanized course card. As an instructor with multiple Canvas courses, I would often click on the wrong course because there were no images to represent the course! The addition of an image that is representative of the course content not only helped with navigating Canvas, it also provides a more welcoming experience that a course card with only words.
This is my revised homepage for NRSG 390. This course is one of the first courses that nursing students take in the RN-BSN program. I humanized the home page to include a caricature of me and my dog. I also invite students to explore the course over a warm beverage. I provide a screen recording of how to navigate the course, as this might be the first online and/or Canvas course that the student has taken. I also include my contact information so students have easy access to a variety of ways to contact me.
The Getting to Know You survey will be available during the first week of the course. This activity will be optional for students. In the instructions, I explain how the information shared will be confidential and used to guide my interactions and feedback for students. I also provide my phone number if students have questions. As many of my students work full-time, I included two questions to better understand my students:
What is the one thing that is most likely to interfere with your success in this class?
What can I do to support you?
These two questions give me insight into the student outside of the online classroom. Based on the student's responses, I will make grading notes about their preferred method of feedback and be sure to check in about any potential barriers or facilitators that students are experiencing throughout the course.
This ice breaker activity has multiple functions. Although the deliverable is a student video, there are two activities that lead up to the deliverable. First, students must think about and identify values that are important to them. Then, they will engage in reflective writing about the values and how those values have impacted them in a past, present, and future framework. Throughout the nursing program, the students will practice reflective writing related to their nursing practice so this is an opportunity for them to practice this skill.
Students will also get to share and learn about their classmates. This will help students feel connected as they will move through the program in a cohort. There will also be various group assignments and activities that create connections among the cohort.
As many students think that APA is just citations, I created this video to explain how they will use APA throughout the course and nursing program. This video will be placed in the first few weeks of the NRSG 390 course, which is one of the first courses for the nursing program.
The video will serve as a foundation for a more in-depth module on APA formatting and scholarly writing. As students start to read research articles and practice writing skills, they will start to understand how to incorporate citations and organize their writing assignments. The knowledge and skills related to APA will continue throughout the nursing program.
For this microlecture, I focused on defining health literacy and having students reflect on their personal and professional experiences with health literacy. This content will be placed in week three of the semester, as an introduction to health literacy. Students will learn about health literacy to prepare for an assignment where they select a patient education resource, evaluate the resource for accurate information and health literacy, and create a new resource to improve the currency of the information and ensure health literacy.
The outcome of the lecture is: At the end of this lecture, you will be able to understand health literacy and identify one way you are improving health literacy and one way your organization is improving health literacy. This outcome aligns well with the following course objectives: Discuss issues in health literacy for patient teaching and health promotion. This microlecture will also continue the practice of reflective practice, where students learn about a concept and then reflect on the concept in a variety of ways. Reflective practice is threaded throughout the entire course and program.
