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.
I came into this professional development with several years of experience teaching asynchronous online courses. I have a certificate of online teaching from Quality Matters. While I'm comfortable teaching online courses, I am always looking for ways to improve my courses. The idea of "humanizing" my online courses was appealing to me, which is why I signed up for the professional development opportunity.
I am now comfortable using more advanced video creation tools like Adobe Express. While I have recorded microlectures in my courses already, I like the idea of bumper videos and using them in icebreakers. Using Adobe Express can help make my videos more polished and appealing with the addition of animations and music.
I like the idea of a liquid syllabus but intend on modifying it a bit for my courses. I also hope to become more proficient with Adobe Express and add even more video content to my online courses.
I had never heard of a liquid syllabus before this course. The idea of having an engaging overview of the syllabus is appealing to me and offers the opportunity to introduce myself to students as a "real person" instead of just someone they get messages from. While I'm not sure I'll use the liquid syllabus as a separate website, I do plan on incorporating it directly into my Canvas course shell.
I chose this image for my course card for several reasons. Since my course is about how oceans relate to the atmosphere, I wanted an image that included the ocean. I also liked the diversity of gender and race depicted in the picture. I liked that the students were smiling and had their arms around each other. Finally, I liked that the young people shown are wearing scuba diving gear. I hope that all of these characteristics offer a welcoming image for my course.
Even before this workshop, I've struggled with the course homepage. I want it to be welcoming and informative but not overly "busy" in appearance. My main goal is for students to easily be able to find information, with nothing being more than 2 clicks away. I think using some of the strategies introduced in the workshop will help me refine my homepage with a sense of kindness and inclusion.
Using the information and examples provided in the workshop, I created a "Getting to Know You Survey" for my course. I already had a similar assignment, which I called "Let's Get Started!". I modified this assignment to incorporate more personalized questions for the students, such as asking them to create a short recording on how to pronounce their name. I think this can give students a sense of being recognized as a real person and not just another name on the roster.
I chose to do a Wisdom Wall assignment and ask students to give advice for taking the first exam in the course. The first exam can be a source of anxiety for many students, simply because they don't know what to expect. I hope that having students give advice to students can help with that in my course and allow for addtional "humanizing" in my course.
I created this bumper video to reinforce the topic of geologic principles covered in my course. My husband and I like to travel and many of the places we've visited can relate directly to the courses I teach. When time and weather allows, I will record short videos of me "in the field" demonstrating a course topic. They don't have sophisticated production (it's just me, my husband, and an iPad) but I feel they give a "real world" perspective to course content.
The learning objective for this microlecture is "Describe the process of how a hurriance develops over the ocean". I generally have these types of videos in my course modules after any textbook assignments. My goal is that the students will have a general background on the topic from the textbook readings and assignments. These microlectures will emphasize and reinforce the specific aspects of the topic that I feel is most important to the course outcomes.
This site is by Brandy Anglen 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.