The liquid syllabus will be very helpful for students who use devices other than a computer to do a lot of their learning. This page is able to be viewed on a mobile device without a loss of quality so students can access it whenever and wherever is convenient for them.

On this liquid syllabus, I have included a video with pictures of my family. In the past, I have chosen to keep those aspects of my life private from my students, but showing them my family really is the best way I know how to show them me as a person instead of just an instructor.

I choose this image specifically because often the thought of "what a scientist looks like" is a middle aged white man in a lab coat (often with crazy hair!). I liked this image because it shows two scientists in safety gear, meaning they are going to do some important work. One scientist (on the left) appears to be a person of color, and the other scientist (on the right) appears to be a woman. Hopefully this shows the students a scientist can be anyone...and anyone can be a scientist!

While my Canvas shell is incomplete because this is not a course currently running, I have provided a link to my liquid syllabus to be more accessible to the students, my contact information so they don't have to go looking for it, my response policy so they aren't waiting around for me and information for technical support in case they need help with Canvas. Hopefully including these things will show the students I care about them and want them to do well.

I will deploy my "Getting to Know You Survey" during the first week of class. One question from my survey asks what type of device students will mostly use to access the course (e.g. mobile, computer). If the majority of students are using a mobile device, I will do my best to have assignments, webpages, etc, that look good on mobile and non-mobile devices. Another question asks the students what they hope to learn in the class. If some students want to learn a concept I wasn't planning to cover, I can try to add that material in where it would be relevant in the course. This is an upper division GE course, so I will have some flexibility to tailor the course to student interests.

For my ice breaker assignment, I ask the students to share 2-3 important values and an object that represents one of those values. I then ask students to comment on 2 posts from students with whom they have at least one value in common or, if they don't have any values in common, someone whose values they find interesting. This will help them connect with one another because they will identify similarities with their classmates or areas where they might admire another classmate's perspective.

For the wisdom wall, I have asked students to think about what strategies they used that helped them to be more successful in the course, at least one thing they would change if given a do-over, and something maybe they would have liked to have covered if given more time. The students should then leave a comment for two students who used different success strategies and talk about how those strategies would have been helpful for them. This will allow the students to reflect on their own study habits and perhaps be able to improve their study habits for future courses.

My bumper video is an explanation of the major assignment in the course: the infectious disease assignment. This will be published at the beginning of the semester so the students can begin right away. It briefly describes all major sections of the assignment and directs students where they can find additional resources for completing the work. I think hearing an explanation of the assignment instead of just reading about it will help students clarify exactly what the major components are.

This is a microlecture designed to further clarify the concept of single nucleotide polymorphisms. The learning objectives of this microlecture are:

1) Describe SNPs and how they can were used to correlate to coronary artery disease risk.

2) Compare and contrast the use of SNPs, RFLPs, and STRs for correlation to disease risk.

I like that I was able to summarize this difficult concept into 10 minutes. I did provide this video to the class I am teaching this semester and the students said they found it helpful. Going forward, summarizing concepts in small chunks will be helpful for in person classes and making sure all lecture chunks are no more than 10 minutes in future online courses will help students clarify concepts and focus on important details in small bits, rather than all at once.