California State University, Fresno
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.
At the start of the Academy, I made it a priority to connect with my students in the digital environment. My strategies were to use videos of me "as I am" to provide orientations to learning modules that were primarily comprised of cultivated internet resources. I designed assignments for my students that encouraged connection through video and text discussion assignments. I also worked to connect with students by providing feedback with tactics informed by behavioral change theories. And, I used a lot of words of affirmation in text feedback. I would use videos when students needed more support to develop skills needed to produce effective responses to assignments. I did not make it a priority to produce good-looking videos or to enhance the information I presented in my course with images. The course layout was organized, but did not demonstrate best practices in using visual cues to help engage students. I took this course to develop fluency in using tools like Google Sites and Adobe.
I have overcome my avoidance/resistance to improving the visual impact of my courses. I am more fluent with my video editing skills and I like the Adobe video editing tool. I still struggle with the time demands of using images because I have to search for them and pick them. My perfectionism continues to make me search longer than I should. I also struggle with the time demands of creating bumper videos and making explicit connections to learning objectives before, during, and after presenting the learning activities.
To be honest, I'm not sure where I am going. The time demands and my limited skills in these areas continue to be barriers to implementing some of the techniques in my courses. Also, I'm more interested in developing some new classes that utilize high impact learning activities in the asynchronous environment like planning and implementing mental health workshops and research projects. I wish we had the resources to provide assistants to do the work required to have good visual communication that is important for humanization. Now that I've finished my class, I'm going to work on my extemporaneous oral presentation skills. I talk to much and get off track. Also, many times my sentence structure is poor. If I use better oral presentation skills it will be easier to edit videos and captions.
I will use the course preview website to help students who are nervous about the upcoming semester. They will get some basic information that can help them plan ahead for success.
I hoped that the course preview page would save time in the "Introduction to the Course" learning activities in a synchronous course in the digital classroom. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.
I don't think they looked at the course preview website before they came to class.
For my course card, I chose an illustration with a person who has a brain surrounded by images of helping. Many people are using similar images to communicate that their information is about Psychological Science and/or Mental Health. I thought this image was appropriate because it had people with white coats being helped. White coats usualy communicate the person is a doctor or scientist. So, I liked the way it communicates that doctors and scientists are helped by connecting with other people.
It welcomes students because it is interesting.
The humanized homepage shows students that they will have a visually interesting experience in the course. In other words, it won't be all text all the time. My picture helps them know what I look like - literally giving a face to the course before it begins.
My contact information on the homepage shows them that I am eager to connect with them. And, the module information front and center respects their time because it gets right to what they need to do to complete their first activity.
This survey serves as a kindness tool by communicating several important things about how I think about students:
I understand the various time demands that students manage outside of class.
I have a sense of what a students' life might look like outside of class: commuting, children, personal responsibilities.
I want to understand what their lives are like outside of class.
I want to consider work styles as I support them in working with other students.
The video is wonky because I chose the wrong screen to capture while I was using our Canvas tool at Fresno state to record it for the class. The good news is that the students will see only the video with me talking in the corner rather than this weird screen cast of the video. I decided not to redo it to support my learning go of not having to be perfect :)
My Icebreaker assignment is a video discussion that encourages students to share something that supports their wellness. The assignment introduces two important course concepts: peer support and strengths based interventions. Students then apply the basic concepts in their icebreaker videos.
The next lesson will be about a semester long project focused on wellness (see my microlecture introduction to the assignment). I like how this icebreaker provides them an opportunity for experiential understanding before working to develop academic understanding.
This bumper video welcomes students to the course. It focuses on the story that inspires the course. So many of our students put up with learning the science of Psychology in order to progress in acquiring the credentials they need to become a mental health professional. I want them to love the science as much as the practice. My hope is that the story will plant a seed for this love to grow.
This microlecture introduces a wellness project that will support students as they develop the knowledge and skills required to acheive the following learning objective:
Integrate personal wellness practices with those supported by psychological science.
It will support students' learning by giving them images to which they can anchor their understanding of the nature and purpose of the project.
This site is by Christine Edmondson 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.
