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.
When I first started teaching, I taught mostly in the style that I was taught: lectures with relatively punitive grading schemes. My teaching has come a long way since then to incorporate active learning and use grading policies that give students opportunities to demonstrate knowledge, as opposed to chances to lose points.
Similarly, when I started teaching online, I followed the style of a course that I was shown (I had never taken an online course). My first online course had weekly reading, assignments, discussions boards for asking questions, and e-mails that I sent out. To say they weren't very exciting for students is an understatement. But, as I started to learn more about effective online teaching, my online courses, like my in-person courses, transformed greatly. Before starting the Humanizing Academy, I had already humanized my course, and made my friendly, helpful, and approachable presence visible throughout.
The two things in this course that I hadn't yet created were a liquid syllabus and bumper videos. Although I won't be using the liquid syllabus as a syllabus, but instead as a course advertisement, it is something that I've been meaning to create for a while. I appreciated the push to get it done, and will be encouraging the other faculty in my department to create something similar.
As a member of Mesa's Online Success Team (MOST), I support faculty with online teaching, and will support Mesa faculty who are in future cohorts of the Humanizing Academy. I will be sharing out ideas for humanizing courses while staying true to instructor personality, while reminding faculty that we create courses for students, not for ourselves, so sometimes we need to step outside our comfort zones and try something new.
The term "liquid syllabus" brings up questions about articulation at my campus, so I'm not calling this a liquid syllabus, but instead a course advertisement (notice the articulation disclaimer at the bottom of the page!).
Students are often nervous about learning to program, so this site is designed to help them see that programming is fun, approachable, and something they will be successful in.
Sharing the course expectations helps students to know that although they are expected to spend a lot of time learning on their own, they are not alone; there are built-in course supports and campus supports available.
This course card showcases student work from the first two weeks of class, and is something that I refer back to in the course as inspiration for students.
Based on the course card assignment, I'm going to change one of the assignments from writing a program to draw your name to giving students the option to create a drawing to be used as the course card for the rest of the semester, voted for by classmates with the use of the "like" button in the Canvas discussion.
The course homepage gives students a high-level overview of the course that serves as a "hook" to get them interested in exploring more. It has quick links to useful places in the course as well as my contact information and a little about me along with a welcome to students.
I've been using a Getting to Know You Survey based on questions in a sample survey from ESCALA. In this Humanizing Academy, I adjusted the survey a little; I removed some of the questions that might feel more intrusive, and then I added my responses to questions so that students taking the survey have an opportunity can also learn a little about me.
In previous semesters, I've found that the answers students share to "What should I know about learning challenges you anticipate this semester?" are critical to me providing support. Since Google Forms allows a description with the question, I include "(e.g. 'I'm going to be out of town for a week' or 'I work 3 jobs and try to do my schoolwork on the weekend' or 'I have a form from DSPS to give to you' etc.)" Sometimes this question is the first time that students have heard of DSPS, or it serves as a reminder to students to turn in their accommodation letter, which then opens a conversation with the student about other ways I can support their learning. Other times, students will share that they have a trip planned for a particular week and may not have internet access, or that work has a big deadline and they won't be able to work on the course for a week or two. Knowing about these challenges and making accommodations early in the semester allows students to successfully complete the course.
Another really important question is whether students have a reliable computer for classwork; I ask students to tell me what type of computer they have, since Chromebooks won't work for the class, and also direct them to the free laptop checkout that our campus offers. Ensuring that students have access to the materials they need when they start the class is critical in their ability to learn the material; using ZTC materials isn't enough if students don't have a computer to write programs on!
Finally, I have a question about prior programming experience; although this is an introductory programming course without pre-reqs, I often have students who have programmed in other languages. Being aware of which languages students have learned helps me to draw connections between similarities and point out differences when providing feedback to these students.
This ice breaker encourages students to share favorite photos, stories about themselves, their educational paths, or anything else they want to share with the class. Students often connect over similar interests, and help each other with transfer information when they find they are applying to the same school. Connecting through the ice breaker makes it easier for students to reach out to each other for help in the course.
The Wisdom Wall encourages students to reflect back to how they felt at the beginning of the semester, and to offer advice to future students. They are encouraged to share their favorite things and the most challenging things about the course; I've discovered that when students reflect on the most challenging things in the course, they often come to an understanding that these challenges helped them grow as programmers (and maybe as students!).
This bumper video is on the overview page for a module that is often a stumbling block for students; I'm hoping that by hearing that what they are doing is not so different than what they did before, students will feel less intimidated by the material that actually is new.
This microlecture is part of a series of "instructor explanations" in my course. When I teach this class face-to-face, I use Peer Instruction (think multiple choice clicker questions with a prescribed discussion process to facilitate peer-to-peer learning). I have replicated this asynchronously by putting the question slides in Perusall, where students mark them up and discuss (in groups) what they think the answers are, and why. When students have shared out their answers, then they are supposed to watch the instructor explanation video corresponding to the slide, and possibly report back on Perusall about what they learned.
This particular video is from the first module in the course, in which students are learning a lot of skills, including what it means to declare a variable, and how to "read" the = vs. == signs in code. The code and explanation in this slide are designed to help students understand and start to offer their own explanation of these concepts.
An additional benefit to creating all of these microlectures for online students (it took a lot of time, especially to correct auto-captions!) is that when students in on campus classes are absent, it is easy for them to "make up" and learn the material from the class they missed. Student who are in class also have the option of listening to the explanation again at home, and with captions, which English learners have told me is especially helpful for them.
