Dr. Ari Grayson, Professor of Architecture, Saddleback 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.
I found the learning curve to creating videos and editing closed captioning may be a bit steep initially, but it quickly eased-back. I have a new course that is being taught for the first time this semester. Although I do not care for "course building" as I go along, I want to create a more humanized course experience in the course and in revising materials as I go forward in other courses.
Using the information that I acquired in the Humanizing Online STEM training, I plan to use this knowledge in conjunction with recent training in accessibility. People learn differently from one another, have different skill sets, and are often stereotyped, leading them to believe that they cannot succeed in a STEM discipline. With carefully and thoughtfully created materials and compassionate/humanized materials, I hope to be able to help people that may otherwise end their STEM path, see that that can succeed and have the STEM career they feel passionately about! It is wonderful having secured the tools to humanize my courses and the knowledge with which to execute them.
The liquid syllabus is the first impression that my students will have of me, the course, and the topics they will be learning. Also sets expectations that I have for myself and the respect I have for education and learning.
The course card that I created provides an image of a cantilevered hillside home. The image was selected to visually capture the attention of my students and to inspire them to think creatively.
I created my Home Page to provide a welcome-friendly letter to my students and letting them know that I am here to support them in learning. I provide the students with a brief description of the course and how we are going to explore and develop their creative and their technical skills. My goal is to provide helpful information and a few hints for successful completion of the course. I have included my picture so that my students can begin to connect with me as the professor guiding them in their learning.
For my Getting to Know You Survey, I asked my students questions that will help me to learn a little bit about my students and why they are taking the course. My goal is to help students to feel welcome and valued. Understanding who my students are enables me to to identify both challenges that may need to be overcome and opportunities that will help ensure that my students can grow and develop their confidence and their skills in architecture.
In this Ice Breaker activity I ask my students to think about architecture differently, to consider and reflect upon what people need in the environment to perform and to thrive.
In this lecture we discuss electric lighting design. Our Learning Objective is illustrate for you some of the techniques and outcomes of carefully considered electric lighting design.
This site is by Ari Grayson 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.
