Humanizing Online STEM Showcase
Sam Lee, Associate Professor, San Diego Mesa 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.
Reflections
Where I was
My syllabus was mostly text based. I did have a beautiful course card. The image was a photograph of the building where I teach, taken during the twilight hours. However, the photograph did not contain any people. My homepage was the same as the Modules page. So, when the students logged in to the Canvas course, they will see all the modules, from the first module to the last module. I did have a self introduction section in the discussion board. It is somewhat similar to the "get to know you survey". In the self introduction, I ask the students to write about their major, their career goal, their hobbies, etc. On the eve of the first day of each semester, I usually sent an email to all the students, introducing myself, and welcoming them to my class. It is somewhat to the icebreaker. I did not have a wisdom wall.
Where I am
Now that I've completed nearly all of the assignments of the academy, I have many pieces in place for humanizing STEM online. I have created a liquid syllabus. It is no longer text only, but includes images and videos, making it more dynamic and colorful. I have created a new course card, which contains real students of my college. I created a new homepage. I used images from the Canva application, which makes the homepage look more polished. I created a stand-alone "get to know you survey", instead of as part of the discussion board. I created an icebreaker video, introducing myself. Instead of being text based as before, it has many images, making it more interesting to watch.
Where I am going
Beginning next semester, I hope to integrate most of the projects of this academy into my real courses. Since I teach both computer science and mathematics, when I integrate my Humanizing STEM Academy projects into my real courses, I will customize whenever it is appropriate and possible.
Liquid Syllabus
Before my course begins, I will send the link to my Liquid Syllabus the students. This way, they will know about my academic background, my professional background, and my interests and hobbies. They will also know that I am here to help them succeed, and that they are not alone.
They will also know how to contact technical support for Canvas and the publisher. They will also have access to my instructions to set up their computers to program Java before the first day of the semester.
Course Card
I chose this image because the students in the image are real students of my college, and the building and courtyard in the image are real ones of my college.
I think when my students see this, it will give them a sense of familiarity, because they may have seen some of the students in the image on campus, and they surely have walked by this building many times. The familiar faces and familiar surroundings are more likely to generate a feeling of belongingness and security. Without fear or anxiety as distractions, they can devote more brain power to acquiring knowledge.
Homepage
The homepage includes a banner. I chose this banner because the image shows both people and computer, giving a sense that we have “humanizing” in mind with this class. The banner also contains essential information about the class, such as course number, course name, and the name of the college. The color contrast is sufficient between the background and the text.
This page includes a "Start Here" link to guide students to the instructions for the first task: to set up their computers to program Java.
Getting to Know You Survey
Here I list two questions from the survey:
Have you done any computer programming before?
If you have done some computer programming, what programming languages did you use?
I will use my students' responses to adapt my teaching. If some students have done some computer programming before using some other programming languages, I will discuss the differences between Java and other languages in my teaching.
Ice Breaker
In this assignment, I instructed the students to think about how a list of values played a role in their lives. I also instructed the students to reply to other students who share their values. Before the students begin to learn the content of the class, they will have a chance to identify the commonalities with their classmates. This will help them to establish a sense of belonging.
Wisdom Wall
In the Wisdom Wall assignment, I ask my current students to leave a tip to the future students of the same class. I think this is very beneficial to the students because the current students might have paid some price to learn a lesson, and by passing a wise tip to the future students, the future students will save some time because they can avoid the pitfalls.
I think this is beneficial to the current students, too, because by looking back at the semester and reflect on a challenge they had overcome, they will remember the lesson better.
Bumper Video
This bumper fits into my course by explaining a key concept in object oriented programming. It serves the instructional purpose of using analogies, photographs, and narration to make the concept easier to understand. I expect it to improve my students' learning experience because it went beyond just plain text, and added more ways to communicate. It will be especially helpful for the visual learners.
Microlecture
This microlecture fits within the design of my course which is to add more ways to communicate beyond just plain text. This microlecture is aligned with the learning objective of understanding the relationship between classes and objects in object oriented programming. I expect that it will improve my students learning experience, because in addition to plain text, it also has analogies, photographs, and narration. These additional modes of communication stimulate more senses of the students and I believe will achieve better learning outcomes. Compared to the bumper video, this microlecture does not have music, and the students can see me speak.
This site is by Sam Lee 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.