Prior to taking this Humanizing Stem Academy, there were many online teaching and learning principles that had crossed my mind, but I never thought I would take away so many more important elements to the online learning environment. I did not know that my “imperfect human presence” is important to my online students' learning or that “warm demander pedagogy encourage students to apply themselves at a higher level and build intellectual capacity.”
I am glad to be a part of this academy. It is truly one of the best professional developments I have participated in. I have gained more knowledge than I expected. Not only did I learn about the different teaching components such as the “get to know you survey and the bumper video” but the tools like Adobe Creative Cloud and Express that are used to create these teaching components.
I will carefully reflect on the courses that I have taught and work on areas I think can improve upon by utilizing the tools and the humanizing elements I’ve learned from this class. I will then apply them to my future courses both online and in person. I will also build upon what I have created in this academy, such as building more robust activities around student-to-student interactions; remembering to provide warm and wise feedback that supports high standards, effect, ability, and specific action via text, voice, and/or video; and create short videos using Adobe Express to introduce a new module or concept.