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
When I began this course, I had already implemented many practices I learned from various equity and anti-racism trainings I've taken over the last few years. I was pretty satisfied with several assignments that I created that prompt students to share about their backgrounds and reflect on impacts of identity in mathematics. I also had tried to incorporate options for students to share their work and communicate in a variety of mediums to accommodate different preferences and backgrounds, and my syllabus allows students to choose their own path if they'd like to. However, I knew my course was lacking in humanizing elements such as videos that weren't simply screencasts, as I was quite nervous about filming a less-than-perfect video. This was one of the skills I hoped to gain confidence when I signed up for this course.
I have learned so much in this course! I am proud of the videos that I've been able to create, even though filming them was not easy for me. I've learned that having authentic and imperfect videos is better in terms of humanizing, as well as learning how to use various tools such as Flip, so my confidence in this matter has certainly improved. Additionally, I created a liquid syllabus, which is another item I had wanted to implement before but didn't have the technical skill set to do so. I am confident that my students will feel much more at ease going into the first week of class after viewing my friendly and inviting liquid syllabus. My re-vamped "Getting to Know You" survey now includes more questions that encourage students to share about their backgrounds and individuality. I believe this will serve to increase their engagement in the course, encourage them to appreciate their unique backgrounds and experiences as assets in class, and will allow me to tailor the course even more to their personal strengths, interests, and priorities.
I have quite a few long-terms plans and modifications for my course! I will be exploring how I can use my Google Sites liquid syllabus throughout the course in a meaningful way, and I will experiment with adding content to it through the quarter. I also will be reviewing all of my weekly Canvas discussion assignments and determine which ones could be moved over to Flip. My goal is to include Flip in at least every other such assignment to increase community-building among students. Third, I will be creating many more videos regularly. I will provide video feedback to students who inform me that this is their preference in the "Getting to Know You" survey. I will also record a short weekly video for my homepage that summarizes exciting or meaningful insights from students from the last week, as well as introducing students to the upcoming module. I also will be working on breaking up most of my lectures into microlectures. I'm excited to review my students' anonymous feedback at the end of Fall quarter to determine which changes were most meaningful to them!
I'm really glad that the liquid syllabus was one of the products of this course! I had previously found it intimidating to learn how to set up a site to host such a syllabus. I will be able to easily share my liquid syllabus during the week prior to the official start date of my course. Previously, I would send out an email containing some of this information. However, the liquid syllabus is much more visually engaging, and it allows students to see and hear me, which is much more welcoming than the text email that I used to send.
For this element, I selected images of mathematicians from underrepresented groups that were shared in one of my recent classes for an assignment. I think this not only serves to honor mathematicians who don't normally get represented, mitigate negative stereotypes, and provide role models, but it also acknowledges my students' choices in who they are interested in learning about. For each of my future classes, I will update this image with the faces of the mathematicians (from underrepresented groups) who students select as most inspiring in my "Introduce a Mathematician" assignment (which will now use Flip instead of a Canvas discussion).
In my new homepage, I added a friendly video that I hope conveys that I am here to support students as they work towards achieving their goals. Adding a video that includes a video of me and my voice will likely serve to make students feel like their are interacting with a person online, not just a computer screen. I have also included ways for students to connect with me, and reminders to help students stay on track to succeed. I will update this page weekly with a new video summarizing what we've accomplished in the last week and where we're going next, relevant weekly reminders, and a link to the first page of the current module to make it easy for students to get started with each week's content.
I've added a few new things to my "Getting to Know You" survey. The first item I add is a questions that prompts students to record an audio clip of themselves saying their name. Students will know that their individuality and preferences are important to me, and I want to get to know them. I have a number of open-ended questions, and I've added an option for students to record an audio clip if they choose to instead of writing text. Providing students with options will show that I want students to communicate in the way they prefer and the way that is best for them, not exclusively in the format that I prefer. I added a question asking students to let me know what is the best method to get in touch with them. Similarly, I think this shows that I'm willing to accommodate my students' preferences instead of enforcing my own. Finally, I added a question asking students about what their aspirations in in life are, so that I can get to know their values and goals, and not just related to academics.
I will likely break up this ice breaker into a couple assignments. However, I intend to implement Flip regularly in my class instead of just relying on Canvas discussions. Flip is so much more user friendly than Studio (which I previously provided as an option, though students rarely used it), so I think it will serve to create more community among students as they will get to see and hear each other regularly.
Students will introduce themselves on Flip as well as discuss "who is a mathematician." Students will be encouraged to reflect on their values and how this informs their opinions on how we define "mathematician." I have also adapted my "Introduce a Mathematician" assignment to Flip (from a Canvas discussion), so that I can hear students talk about the mathematician they chose to introduce and why they are inspired by them. Students will then get to vote on the mathematicians who they found most inspiring from this assignment to populate our Canvas course card. I believe this will create more active engagement in these assignments as well as make them more meaningful to students. The course card will serve as an inspirational reminder to students throughout the course as well.
I chose to create a bumper video on a "sticky point" that comes up every time I teach different equations - almost equivalent equations. I will share this short video along with the lesson on the Existence & Uniqueness Theorem in the beginning of my class (which is where I first see some mistakes related to this topic). I hope that this brief video will help clarify this point early in the quarter to avoid frustration later on. I also added some upbeat music and photos of diverse groups of people appearing to enjoy working together in classroom settings to keep hopefully keep students positive as we discuss this potentially challenging topic.
I chose to record a microlecture related to the objective "compute annihilators of exponential functions." This is a difficult topic that occurs in the second half of this course. I hope that this brief video will help to ease the cognitive load of learning such an abstract concept. It will also be easy for students to reference as needed while they work through the related homework set or when they review for the final exam. I also found that I was able to maintain a more energetic tone throughout this brief video than when I lecture for over an hour, so I hope that will also serve to maintain student engagement.
