CTTL and the Puente Learning Community were pleased to host a series of faculty workshops from the Puente Project state-wide program. During these three sessions, over 30 faculty members explored identity and intersectionality, reclaiming the STEM legacy, and promoting community care and wellness.

Recognizing the importance of acknowledging and embracing students' multifaceted identities, faculty members explored practical strategies to create a learning environment that values and celebrates diversity.

STEM faculty joined the second session to address equity in STEM fields, exploring ways to dismantle barriers to success for marginalized students. Through interactive, collaborative activities, faculty gained insights into nurturing a sense of belonging, passion for STEM, and empowering students to overcome challenges.

In the final training session, the focus shifted towards community care and addressing the basic needs of students in teaching. Recognizing the impact of well-being on academic success, faculty members explored strategies for creating a nurturing environment that promotes mental health, facilitates access to essential resources, and cultivates a sense of belonging.

The Puente series encouraged faculty to reflect on their teaching practices, challenge biases, and embrace the diverse perspectives and experiences of their students.  Thank you to the Puente Project, Lucia Lachmayr, Marisa Thigpen, and Andrea Fuentes for coordinating this effort.

-initial draft written by ChatGPT edited by Marisa Thigpen & Andrea Fuentes

Our first winner has been described as “bringing perspectives, exercises, assignments and voices that represent who the students are and who they can become. She teaches with utmost love and commitment to our Skyline students and goes above and beyond in her intentional curriculum and in her way she role models her own work in the community as an artist.” Congratulations,  Janice Sapigao winner of the Meyer Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Our second winner has devoted his time at Skyline to helping students define their goals and explore the career opportunities ahead. He won a President’s Innovation Fund for his work on the Explorers program, which benefits students by creating a clear, guided pathway which helps eliminate unnecessary and excess units, and is developing a career exploration student club. Congratulations,  Kenny Gonzalez winner of the Meyer Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

In addition to being a time for rest and relaxation, summer is a perfect time to prepare for the fall semester. You may be planning to design a new course this summer, or to redesign an old one. In my years of experience, I have learned that jumping directly into the LMS to design a course can result in unforeseen amounts of work later down the road. 

Although it is tempting to want to jump right into Canvas (or any other LMS) and start adding content and activities; it often results in some usability (also accessibility) issues that the students will certainly catch later during the live course session.

Courses are user experiences

A simple yet powerful tool often used by course designers and other professionals whose day to day involves course design is storyboarding. Designers think about courses from different angles; one of those perspectives is to think of a course as a user experience. What is the quality of experience I want the students in this course to have? How easily will students navigate through my courses? What mood or tone do I want to set for this course? What kinds of multimedia should this course include to augment the educational experience? How will this course be sequenced? These are some of the questions coursedesigners ask themselves as they storyboard a course when thinking about it as a user experience.

What is storyboarding?

Storyboarding is a visual planning tool that can be used to map out the flow of a course, lesson, or other learning experience. It can be a helpful way to visualize the content, identify potential problems. Typically done using pen (or pencil) and paper, but also effective when done digitally, storyboarding is a low-stakes low-resolution prototype method with high rewards. This is a very forgiving method because mistakes are made early, and one can easily erase or get another sheet of paper. Making the same mistakes in the LMS can take much longer to correct, and usability and accessibility issues may go unnoticed until students find them.

There are many benefits to using storyboarding for course design. In addition to helping align the course experience with the learning outcomes, storyboarding can help you to plan the content of your course in a logical and sequential order. This can help to ensure that students are able to follow the material and progress through the course at a pace that is right for them.

Storyboarding can also help to identify potential problems with your course design. For example, if you are planning to use a lot of video, you may want to consider how you will break up the video into shorter segments so that students do not get overwhelmed. Storyboarding can also help you to identify areas where your course may be too complex or difficult to understand.

If you are designing a new course (or redesigning an old one) this summer, I encourage you to consider using storyboarding. It is a valuable tool that can help you to proactively create a more effective and engaging learning experience for your students.

Tips for creating effective storyboards:

• Paper is best — Low resolution prototyping is the most forgiving!

• Start by brainstorming the main points that you want to cover in your course ensuring they align to your learning outcomes.

• Once you have a list of main points, start to organize them into a logical sequence.

• Use simple sketches to represent each main point. Stick figures are fine!

• You can use sticky notes too!

• Add text to your storyboard to provide additional details about each main point.

• Feel free to book a meeting with me to help with your storyboard and transferring your plans from paper to digital bits. 

Once you have a finalized storyboard, you can use it as a guide to create your course in Canvas. By following these tips, you can create a storyboard that will help you to design a more effective and engaging course. 

Interested in storyboarding a course? I’d love to help. Contact me for an appointment.

M. Ricardo Flores, Instructional Technologist

floresr@smccd.edu

650.738.7147

Are you ready to enhance your online teaching and learning? 

QOTL 2 is an advanced online teaching training that builds on QOTL 1 and goes beyond the content in that course. The goal is to invite you to look at one of your existing courses and re-imagine any components that you feel could be improved upon and/or enhanced. This training is designed to fit each of your individual needs by utilizing a Choose Your Own Adventure format. The course begins with choosing your professional learning journey across three categories; Course Structure & Navigation, Interaction and Communication, an Assessment. The culmination of the QOTL 2 training is a final activity where you display the artifacts you created throughout the course and how you plan to utilize them in your future online and hybrid classes.

Fall 2023 Cohort: Course begins September 11 - October 16
Spring 2024 Cohort A: Course begins February 12 - March 24

Spring 2024 Cohort B: Course begins April 1 - May 5

Summer 2024 Cohort A: Course begins June 3 - July 7

Summer 2024 Cohort B: Course begins June 24 - July 29

For registration details, please feel free to reach out to the Chris Collins, Distance Education Coordinator.