Shi Feng, Center for Teaching & Learning, 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
I had several online courses about teaching online before I had this course. I also taught STAT 108 and learned about how to organize the course content on Canvas from other experienced instructional designers. I also had experiences with making videos although using Wondershare which I liked a lot better than Adobe Express and Flip. Adobe Express or google sites I didn't have any experiences before this course. Flip I had experience with the other two teaching online courses. I did have some experiences with captioning using YouTube. In terms of the content, I had enough knowledge regarding DEI in education that I was able to do all the quizzes without having the read through most of the content.
I'm mostly very grateful of all the technology knowledge and skills that I acquired in this course and honestly, I wished that the course would be more about that. I found knowing how to use Adobe Express and Google Sites. Also through this course I got more familiar with Panopto and Flip. I also found the feedback to be very valuable since Kim was extraordinarily good at pointing out even little things that would really help with my course design, so I really appreciated that. Overall, I really found the feedback and the video/site-making to be the most valuable.
As an instructional designer, my priority as always would be becoming a master at designing websites and videos for content. This means learning new tools and gaining more skills at using technology for designing. This is also important for me as I answer a lot of tickets from faculty members to help with Canvas so that's my number one priority. I don't have any opportunities or plans to teach online so that particular aspect is kind of low on my priority list. I do teach face-to-face classes which will be different but the knowledge I acquired in this course will definitely help me in case one day I cannot hold class for whatever reason, then I can use these skills to design an effective lecture for my students.
I will share my liquid syllabus with my students a few days before the class begins. They will see a brief description of the course material and also my welcome video, where I explain a few of my hobbies and passions outside of the classroom. In the video I try to connect a motivation to learn statistics with the motivation you might have in a hobby of passion, this way they get that humanizing element as well as understanding what this has to do with the course.
The rest of my syllabus contains a lot of information that will help my students prepare for success in the course. I aim to make sure everything is clear to the students and address any questions they may have from the get-go.
I use the same design as my Canvas page and Liquid Syllabus, not only because I believe the image will immediately evoke the subject matter that I'm teaching, but the consistency will make it easy for students to locate the course. This is especially important when they are taking a lot of courses and they need to navigate the courses quickly. I personally have experience in this when the course cards aren't consisten on the dashboard it makes it much harder for me to see it immediately which can be frustrating.
My STAT 108 home page will help students to navigate the course in the most efficient and humanizing way. They can go directly to the syllabus or the modules from the homepage. They are encouraged to go to the Welcome page first because that's where they will receive a lot of the information regarding the course and be met with my intro video. I designed the graphics to be what images invoke math to me and I hope that it will leave a sense of awe for my students.
This survey is given to students on the first week of class. In this survey I ask questions that will help me better know my students. The questions include what to call them (their preferred pronouns if any), how to contact them, what platforms do they use for Canvas, what goals they have etc. These information will make me more vigilant throughout the course regarding my students and their needs.
I have never designed an ice-breaker activity before (in fact this year it's the first time I've heard the term "ice-breaker" being used!), so I'm really happy that I finally get to design one for my class. The inspiration of this activity came from my awareness of the current social media age, and how people communicate and participate in online discussions and debates using social media. So I ask the students to present one they feel strongly about. This not only will let me get to know my students better but also it gets them in the zone of critical thinking which is a key component for a statistics class! The activity will be given on the first day of class.
This video is a quick explanation of one of the key concepts of probability. It was really important for the students to understand what statisticians mean by "randomness" and why it's important when dealing with statistics. This bumper video will be given at the second lecture on introduction to probability and probability calculations. I will remind the students to revisit it again when we discuss topics like the central limit theorem and standard normal distributions.
In the second lecture I go over basic probability calculations with my students. I go over this topic very early on in the course because I think the organization makes sense and also this I believe is a very difficult topic for the students so it's best to get it out of the way early on so students won't have to learn it when they developed fatigue later on in the course.
Probability calculations are especially difficult when using formulas so I developed a technique using contingency tables with my students that will make it very easy, and it will also get them used to looking at graphs and tables for other skills they need from the course as early preparations.
