Humanizing Online STEM Showcase
Yvan Mendoza, Earth Science Adjunct Instructor at Porterville College.
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
Where I was.
Geology is a hands-on discipline that (I feel) is best learned in a in-person setting, whether it be in a classroom or outdoors. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no options for online or hybrid teaching for earth science. In March of 2020, we all had to adapt and get a brief crash course on how to move everything for online learning. As time progressed, I felt the need to improve my online/hybrid courses. On my own account, I could see room for improvement. When the opportunity to enroll in the Humanizing STEM Academy presented itself, I was hoping that I would get selected because I knew I could benefit from this professional development opportunity. I was not disappointed since I was able to learn a few new tricks.
Where I am.
After taking the course, I have acquired a new perspective in online/hybrid teaching. Specifically in the tools I can use to record audio, video, and how to present my material more effectively (bumper video, micro lectures) and just being able to present myself as a more approachable person. On top of the learning new ways to present my material and personal professional development, I learned how to be approachable (Kindness cues) and becoming a warm demander (Wise feedback). There are several other things I learned from the course however, these are the ones that resonated the most with me. Understanding the influence of becoming a warm demander and not feel like an automated/machine behind the screen is going to be an improvement for my courses moving forward.
Where I am going.
Knowing what I know now, I have a lot of work to do to prepare myself for the next semester. I have a lot of ideas going through my head, I recently bought a new microphone and stand set up so I could improve the video and audio I will be publishing. I will be utilizing flip, adobe express, and YouTube. There will likely be a combination of them but currently thinking of using Flip for discussion based assignments and to post announcements. I enjoyed the editing process for closed captioning in YouTube and I will implement that. If I have a fully online course ( I have mostly hybrid), I will implement micro lecture videos explaining the lab assignments. I have always posted frequent announcements to let my students know that I am present, however, I will be using more video and audio based updates. I enjoy the idea of connecting with my students in a more personal way by posting more videos of things going on in my life or just updates from a random location in the hopes of having a more natural feel and effect. Another thing I will be implementing in the liquid syllabus as I found it as a very neat way to present a mix of media (video, images, and text). My goals is that by implementing these changes, I will have better and more accessible content to students that will have a positive learning experience with students.
Liquid Syllabus
Typically I send a welcome letter introducing myself. For future courses, instead, I will send a link to my published liquid syllabus. This will provide an overview of the course including expectations for both the students and myself, learning outcomes, my teaching philosophy, available resources and introduction to who I am as a person. This liquid syllabus should help students gauge whether or not my course will be right for them.
Course Card
When students log into canvas they are greeted with course cards. The image I chose is from a field trip I attended during graduate school. I choose this image because it is warm, inviting, and it shows a lot of students having fun.
Homepage
Once greeted by my course card, the students will click on it to access the material and this will prompt them to come across my Homepage. This homepage is geared to be a welcoming but simple page with basic information. By this time, the students would have already been introduced to my detailed liquid syllabus.
Getting to Know You Survey
The getting to know you survey is geared to be deployed early on into our Humanized STEM courses. This is a way to connect with the students and get to know each student's preferences. We started off with a template that had the questions and I edited some of the wording to a few of the questions.
Ice Breaker or Wisdom Wall
This ice breaker activity is geared towards connecting students but also introducing a basic topic such as scientific communication. By going through an activity with a classmate, students will begin to get more comfortable and lears to collaboarte. After all, collaboration is encouraged in my courses, especially in lab! The activity involves using one student using toothpicks and placing them in a random shape that they prefer while describing it to their activity partner. The other student cannot see what the person with the toothpicks is creating, they can only listen and attempt to draw the shape their classmate is describing and creating with the toothpicks. Once they run out of toothpicks the students have to see if they got the drawing right (or close enough). The roles are then reversed and the activity is attempted again but this time there's already some knowledge gained. This can be attempted as many times as they want.
Bumper Video
The purpose of the bumper video is to provide a visually oriented video that is no more than 3 minutes in length. It is shorter than a "microlecture" video. I will be using bumper videos to explain some homework, prelabs, or discussion based assignments. In this video, I do an overview of the introduction to impact and planetary surfaces prelab assignment. I can see this being a useful tool for some of the more simple assignments.
Microlecture
For the micro lecture, the learning objective is to learn the difference between the definition of a mineral and the physical properties that help us identify a mineral. My video was approximately 5 minutes and it explains the definition of a mineral and what some of a mineral's physical properties might be. I plan on recreating the video before my next online course since I can do some improvement in editing. I might also try to incorporate flip more.