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 joining the Humanizing Online STEM Academy, I felt like I was great with building a rapport with my students when teaching in person, but I struggled to connect with them when teaching online. I found myself seeking all knowledge I could find to help me get my students to be more interactive during our online class, but I consistently have the same 2 or 3 students speaking up whenever I ask a question.
I am the tortoise in that famous story. While I am not in a race, I feel like I am slowly making it to the finish line, although I have just started my journey on humanizing my course. I feel better equipped to humanize my course with the goal of making my course more equitable for all of my students by adding more videos, words of encouragement, and Canvas pages showing better instructions and more course details. I have learned a lot about the software that I did not know was already available to me, and how to use that software in my online course in ways which would best serve my students.
Something I learned that I did not realize is that teaching online is best when offered asynchronously. I thought students would appreciate the teacher being present during their online classes. Now, thanks to this humanizing course and the online student interviews, I understand how I can have a great presence and rapport with my students through video, rubrics, and proper course design. My college does not offer my online courses as asynchronous courses yet, but I would like to see if I can change that to ensure that we are meeting our students' needs. Therefore, I plan to survey my students to see if they would prefer asynchronous online chemistry courses. If they do, I would like to work with my colleagues to build out that course and get it offered within the next 12 months.
I will use the liquid syllabus to establish trust in my course by making sure it remains up to date and contains easily accessible information that will help my students navigate through my course. In addition, my plan is to show my students how much I care about their learning by including things like videos for content knowledge building, references that may help keep their interest in what they are learning in my course, and resources that can help them inside and outside of the classroom, such as links to scholarship opportunities and free study aids.
At my campus, we serve a high number of students who are people of color. I chose this image for my course card because I wanted the image to depict a person of color as well. Doing so helps my students feel more welcome because when they are scanning my online class searchign for things thatare familiar, the person in this image would seem a bit familiar to them since they may assume that they share a similar background to the person in the image. Additionally, I think using this course card helps them see that I am aware that representation matters.
My course homepage serves as a kindness cue for social inclusion to my students because It includes features that are likely familiar to them and are a bit of fun. The bright colors and animation make my homepage playful from the start. It sets a tone that this course is not only about being strict or rigid, and that I am a professor who likes to bring fun things to the class. Additionally, I embedded a video by Snoop Dogg (found on Youtube), a figure with whom my students are likely familiar, and I added a smiling picture of myself. All of these features of my homepage were added with the idea that my students would receive them as kindness cues.
Chemistry is already an intimidating subject for many students, so seeing that there can be an element of fun in the class immediately on the homepage will, hopefully, help my students' open up a little towards the idea of learning this difficult subject.
My survey serves as a kindness cue of social inclusion for my students by asking questions that convey to my students that I care about their learning experience. It includes questions that lets my students know that I care to understand their learning environment both within my class and outside of my class. Additionally, it includes questions that asks them to share a little about themselves, such as "What is your favorite song?" When I learn my students' favorite songs, I will create a song list of everyone's songs and share it with their class so that they can learn a bit more about their classmates indirectly. I also plan to use the song list for background music at the start of class or for videos that introduce a new module or assignment, or anywhere else I can throughout the course. Doing so would provide yet another opportunity to help my students settle into a more comfortable mindset before they start learning.
My wisdom wall assignment invites my current students to leave words of advice or encouragement for my future chemistry students. This assignment fosters a sense of belonging by connecting students with each others' lived experiences which were had in my particular chemistry course. The assignment will be offered as an extra credit assignment. My students tend to take advantage of my extra credit opportunities, so I anticipate that they will want to participate in this assignment. However, I know that I will need to get them used to creating videos throughout my course if I want a higher participation rate for this assignment.
This bumper video fits into my course as an introduction to the acids and bases module. This video serves to pique my students' interest and leave them wanting to learn more about acids and bases so that they can answer the question the video leaves them with. I expect this video to positively affect my students' learning experience by increasing their engagement with the course material. Additionally, I included part of a video that my children and I made so that I could bring another humanizing piece to my course.
My microlecture fits within the design of my course by serving as an instructional aid for a topic with which students typically need more practice. This video includes a little bit of lecture, but a lot of practice using their new knowledge about valence electrons. The video begins by identifying the learning objective with which it is aligned, helping to improve my students' learning experience because it provides a clear understanding of the learning goal. Additionally, this microlecture improves my students' learning experience because it is a way for them to experience my presence in the course, leading to a more humanized online learning experience.
