Pedagogy, Design & Assessment

Overview

I believe creating welcoming spaces is fundamental to student success and retention, and that flexibility is a critical design foundation to foster engaged and self-motivated learners.

Core values of my approach to learning design include:

• clarity students know what they need to do and why it is relevant to their lives or career goals;

•  a regular presence in the course (esp. online), supportive feedback, and caring responsiveness to students' questions;

• developing authentic assessments where students create or apply skills in meaningful (to them) ways;

• scaffolding skill development, interleaving and spaced retrieval practice of critical skills or knowledge, and articulating objectives or expectations for students to self-assess learning;

• research-based design of multimedia, materials, course structure, and activities;

• motivating students through agency in choosing pathways for content and demonstrating learning or skills;

• engaging students with creative, innovative, and fun projects or gamification techniques;

• providing accessible materials and assignments for a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent learners.
  
  

My efforts are documented with examples below, but also through fully enrolled courses, student evaluations that score in the highest percentiles across the university, and leadership roles for instructional design in my college (2018-2021) and university assessment (2022-present). I was also honored with the 2022 Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

Related Work Examples
  

• History of Flight course
  HIST 4328 is a course I developed and added to the curriculum here at UCM. It is based on my life-long interest in flight and my experiences working at NASA's Johnson Space Center. 

  • • Assignments include innovative technology and creative group projects like video and augmented reality content for a local museum. 

    • Here is an interview with Michael Gawlick, a student who worked on the augmented reality project.
      
      

• Choose-Your-Own Adventure style website
  The Civil War Lives website allows learners to delve deeper into the interconnected nature of peoples' lives in the American Civil War era, either by exploring pathways of various individuals or studying moments in time and space that brought disparate stories and people together.

  • • Learners construct coherent narratives of events, ideas, and people to better understand U.S. History.

    • Learners vicariously experience history-in-progress, rather than viewing it only in hindsight, and develop empathy skills.
      
      

• Interactive Visuals
  This interactive map for the War of 1812 unites historical content with engaging visual displays that layer images, videos, spatial connections, and chronology in one learning tool.

  • • Padlet is a simple to use resource that also allows students to post their own pinned topics and respond to one another easily, adding social learning and community-building elements to the activity.
      
      

• Senior Capstone in History course
  HIST 4500 is the summative assessment point for our undergraduate program. The course centers on guiding individual student research from topic ideation through to complete research paper, which essentially becomes an individualized learning experience for each student within the larger course design.

  • • One element I designed is an individualized, open-ended class objective and assignment where students collaborate with the instructor to identify knowledge or professional skills they still want to work on before graduation. Below are three examples I developed with students in spring 2023.

      • • Course Outcome A

        • Course Outcome B

        • Course Outcome C

    • In addition to the individual agency in the research project, students also find these authentic assessments to be highly relevant and meaningful for their career goals as they approach graduation.
      
      

• Program- and University-level Assessment
  As Chair of the History Program Assessment Committee from 2016 to 2023, I led the research, development, and implementation from scratch of assessment for the History Program (the first assessment plan ever developed for our program). 

I also serve as a university-wide faculty liaison in UCM's General Education Program for the Inquiry and Analysis Student Learning Outcome and Rubric.  Some university-level assessment projects I spearheaded include:

• Designed and led Gen Ed faculty development training for writing ten different Gen Ed competency rubrics;

• Guided the development of common assignments for Gen Ed assessment through faculty workshops;

• Implemented assessment tools, strategies, and review processes for assessment at all levels of the university.