California State University Channel Islands
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.
Before starting this course I thought I had the best syllabus ever as it was fast for my students to find what they wanted. To me, the Canvas page for my class was the coolest. I certainly had emoticons for the assignments and instructions I consider clear. I did have an intro video where I told my students about me. In summary, I thought my Canvas site was cool and warm.
Today, after taking this course and after talking to Alex, I learned many things from them. Now, the new syllabus version I have feels really welcoming. The pictures place there really talk right away about who I am. The language in my new syllabus is less academic and more student-oriented. It is straight to the point wo what students are looking for and provides a really human-welcome to the students. The format that includes the welcoming video and the grading as well as the philosophy of teaching really shows that I am interested in the common task, that is, to cross the student to other side of the river of knowledge in a safe boat that may feel some thunders but that will surely arrive with will and a positive attitude.
I will continue learning from each class experience, cut here, add there. I will continue attending some work-shops, talking to other faculty and more students. I will design new things taking into account my journey to provide better learning experiences to my students.
To establish trust, I will present this syllabus as the entry door to my Canvas course as it is designed to make students feel welcome, safe and connected with the instructors. This will provide some insight points and it will contain some learning points just before the course starts, not only for the students who like to advance but for everyone.
The reason I chose the fish is because my incoming freshmen will be like little fish swimming around and somehow then they see the image they feel a bit similar to the fish and that is a way to connect. It is like little nemo. In addition, it is very quick to find this course by searching for the fish.
The cartoon image of two students of different genders on the homepage serves as a kindness cue of social inclusion for students. The fact that they have questions is also reflected on the image. The fact that has a sentence in Spanish reflects that our institution is a Hispanic serving one.
You can appreciate the welcome video from the professor as well as another video on "How to navigate this course". It has the start here link that takes you directly to the module in question.
This video serves as a kindness cue of social inclusion as it is trying to obtain information that may be essential to the teaching. With the information provided by the students, the professor will be able to deliver presentation that reaches to all the students and provides inclusion.
By listening to others and placing their answers on this wall, students will feel that there are other students that may have the same fears and how other students did it when they were about to dropping a course. This wall foster the sense that we all are in the same boat and really belong here.
This video fits at the beginning of the course, it is thought to be seen during the first week of the semester. It is made to awake the student's interest on the subject.
Particularly, here we discuss the Modern Newton Binomial, that is, a way of expanding (x+y)^4 using Pascal's Triangle. Very nice!
This micro-lecture address a learning outcome for the course as it helps the students to improve their mathematical skills. The concept we touch here is "Sets". The micro lecture starts with a bit of live music performed by the professor (no image though) and welcomes students in a warm way and points out to the class objective we are addressing
It is merely a visual representation of sets and it allows us to compute the intersection and the union of two sets. Thanks!
This site is by Jorge Garcia 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.
