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.
Where I was...
I was the first faculty member in my division to teach online. I began in 2009, or 2010 (it's hard to remember) with hybrid courses for night students. Over the years, I transitioned to fully asynchronous courses and was the only faculty member in STEM at my college to have part of my load online. When Covid hit and we were all forced to go online, it wasn't that much of a transition for me...I had been teaching online for years. Of course my in-person classes transitioned to online, but the transition wasn't difficult for me. What did change is the students who were taking the online courses. Before Covid, students self-selected to be in an online class and suddenly we had students who didn't want to be there at all. It was so heart breaking to see and hear frustrated students who didn't choose to be online but needed to finish their education. 😔
Where I am...
Last Fall, one of my colleagues said "Hey, let's do this Humanizing STEM thing together". I'll be honest...I thought ya, that sounds fun, thinking I'd learn a few things here and a few things there. Boy, was I wrong! Our course started and right away I had technical problems. It took almost a whole week to figure it out. What a frustrating experience. I'll admit, seeing those assignments in our Humanizing grade book say "Late" didn't make me feel good, even though I had no control over it. However frustrating, I'm glad it happened! It wasn't until the 2nd week of our course that I began to think about my students. I wondered if this is how they felt seeing a "Late" mark in their grade book. I'm overwhelmed with emotion, thinking about how frustrated my students must be when they can't get Proctorio working or the Canvas page won't load. Yes, I'm glad my start to this course was rough, even though I still complain about it to my husband. I feel like my sympathy for students has turned to empathy!
Where I'm going...
I plan to utilize what I've learned here in all my courses. In fact, I've already begun building my Fall online courses with fresh course cards and bumper video's. Two words come to mind...ADOBE EXPRESS. I love it and have plans to use it a lot next semester. It's an amazing tool that I didn't know existed and love the music added in the background. My two boys thought these videos were cool so I imagine my online students will love them too.
Typically, I email some introductory information to my students a week before the semester begins. When students view my liquid syllabus the first thing they will see is my welcome video. I hope students will see that I am a "real" person in our community and am excited they are on this journey with me.
After logging into Canvas, a student will see our Statistics course card. I chose a beach course card "theme" because my goal was to convey a feeling of relaxation. Math can be stressful for students and I'm hoping this helps with the level of anxiety some may have.
At this point, students will have been through the liquid syllabus and know a little bit about me. Once my students are in the Canvas course, they are automatically directed to the Welcome page. I tried to make the page welcoming and humanized by including both a picture of my family at the beach, followed by a link to the orientation mdule, and ending with a photo of myself and some contact information. Hoping this communicates I am a "real" person and helps students feel more like connecting with me.
I have listed the Getting to Know You Survey right after the Welcome page in Canvas, located in the Week 0: Orientation Module. By placing the survey right up front, I hope to convey a kindness cue by asking about non-math information.
When you use Canvas (our online platform), will you mainly use your phone, a laptop, a computer, or something else?
In one word, describe how you are feeling about this class.
Asking these two questions, in particular, will help me to guage whether there is some anxiety about starting an online math course. Also, learning about what type of device the students are using may help to prevent common technical problems. For example, my dual enrolled students, using high school provided tablets, are not able to download app's or extensions due to the school's policy. I'll be able to communicate with them about getting the permissions enabled weeks BEFORE we need to use the app/extension. This will save a lot of frustration.
This self-affirming ice breaker is designed to have students engage with each other, reflect on their values, and finally share an object that is important to them. Asking students to share something they value (a non-math topic) this will help students to feel connected to one another and therefore more connected to the course.
My bumper video describes the difference between chance and bias error in statistics. Student can often be confused by this idea when working on their first data set and lab report write-up. I hope that creating this bumper video, with visually appealing photos, will help the students to understand the difference in errors.
This microlecture covers how to use the confidence level area to calculate/determine what the corresponding z-score is. Specifically, I go over what area to include and how to use StatCrunch (our statisitcal calculation tool) to calculate the z-score. Students will often forget to add the additional left tail area in their calculation, leaving them with an incorrect z-score. Z-scores are the precursor to hypothesis testing, a major topic in any general statistics course. I hope this will allow students to watch the microlecture and have a better understanding.
This site is by Dr. Sherie Burgess 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.
