Humanizing Online STEM Showcase

Dr. Jeffrey White, Professor of Biological Sciences, Humboldt State University

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

Participating in the Humanizing Online Academy has enhanced my pedagogical knowledge pertaining to online course instruction. Specifically, I have developed new strategies to engage students and acquire new skills (and a new toolkit) to implement humanizing approches to my online course design and delivery. With these, I hope my online courses are more accessible and engaging for all students.

View my Liquid Syllabus

Liquid Syllabus

This Liquid Syllabus is a paired down version of the regular and more formal course syllabus. It contains essential information that students need to know before they log-in to their online course. The liquid syllabus is designed to be easily viewable on a computer, or mobil phone.

Course Cards

Canvas Course Cards are the first thing students see when they log into Canvas. They greet students on the Canvas Dashboard. The effect can be subtle, but we want the course's "front door" to be warm and inviting.

In the case of General Biology Online, there are two course cards. The first represents the lecture portion of the course, the second is the Laboratory.

Homepage

When students log into my online course, this is the homepage they see. I chose this image to portray people walking through nature, akin to a journey through the diverse field of biology. As you can imagine, the people are in the midst of a huge amount of biology all the way from the physiology of their own body while they walk, cellular respiration to generate the energy to move their muscles, the plants and animals in the forest system, and the larger environment in which they live.

I have two people in the image that seem like maybe a guy and a gal (man and a woman, a boy and a girl) but that is not certain. Perhaps they are a couple, or friends, or siblings. Again not certain. It is not possible to tell much about them. Thus, I leave it to the imagination of the viewer to see themselves in this setting portrayed in the image. In this way, I hope that all students feel a warm welcome in this course. It is my way to send a “Kindness Cue.”

Getting to Know You Survey

Here are two example questions from the survey:

1. How would you describe your preferred learning style?

2. What is the one thing that is most likely to interfere with your success in this class?

Responses to these questions will help me understand this student better. In terms of learning preferences, they can vary quite considerably. I can use this to take into account how they approach learning and how they respond to assessments. The second question will give me insights into how the student’s environment or circumstances may affect their engagements and success in the course.

Ice Breaker

This ice breaker is designed to foster social connection among students in the class and with the instructor. It takes place at the beginning of the course. The prompt asks everyone to share a personal experience of their choice related to biology. With this, it is my hope that a sense of a learning community emerges in the course.

Wisdom Wall

The General Biology Online Wisdom Wall provides a space to share your ”learning stories” about approaches you’ve used for success in the course. These stories will be shared with students during future course offerings.

Recording student advice, "golden nuggets of wisdom", reflects their growth over time and recognizes what they did to navigate through challenges. By listening to the advice, future students understand that students have similar struggles and can identify new strategies for overcoming them.

Bumper Video

This bumper video (a brief, visually-oriented video of 1-3 minutes) serves an instructional purpose. In this case, it introduces students to a laboratory exercise in the course that focuses on Human traits. Students gather data about their own traits, record them and then enter them in a Canvas survey so that data from all students can be compiled and shared. The basic steps, including images of the survey are included in the video.

Microlecture

This short lecture provides a brief overview of the Greenhouse Effect and how carbon dioxide affects the Earth’s atmospheric temperatures. It goes on to show data about rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and where it is coming from, fossil fuel use. The learning objectives are:

1. Describe the role that carbon dioxide plays in the Greenhouse Effect?

2. Discuss why scientists are concerned about the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

This site is by Jeffrey White 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.

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