Before taking this professional development opportunity, I had five years of teaching experience in Civil Engineering from three different institutions. I taught entry-level engineering courses, engineering mechanics, and senior-level engineering design courses, including capstone designs. Rather than during the pandemic, I do not have online teaching experience. I like to explore this Humanizing STEM opportunity to further improve my teaching portfolio, particularly in an asynchronous online course setting.
After taking a 6-week training with hands-on assignments, I have now learned many interesting tools for engaging student learning and interactions. Some of the notable findings include using the video filming feature embedded in Canvas to offer feedback on students' assignments, proposing a Self-Affirming Ice Breaker activity online, establishing a liquid syllabus, filming short videos via Panapto or Adobe Express, and using YouTube as the platform to publish video clips.
I will utilize the skill sets that I learned from the Humanizing STEM initiative in my engineering education. First, I will adopt some of the items above into my teaching of CE 2 Engineering Communications and Essentials, where the majority of the students are first-year second-semester students. By adding the humanizing aspects to the course materials, I hope the student engagement will be enhanced throughout the semester, which is critical for their long-term success for the studies in our program.