Embedded Files
Dawn Heuft, Instructional Design Technology Specialist, Grossmont 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
Reflections
Where I was.
Where I was.
I completed my associate, bachelor and master degrees online. The experiences I had as a student have helped me as I have updated existing training courses, developed new content and facilitated training and workshops for our faculty. I thought that I had already incorporated many humanized features like micro-lectures and videos. These items seemed to work well in the facilitated courses, but the self-paced courses seem to be missing some of the warmth and student-to-student interaction that comes more naturally in a facilitated course where students move through the content together. I kept these courses in my mind as I worked through the content in the Humanizing Online STEM course.
Where I am.
Where I am.
Taking the Humanizing Online STEM course helped me to prioritize some items on my "to do" list, experiment with tools from the student perspective and to look more closely at the language we use in our written instructions. I am excited to finally have a liquid syllabus that I can share with the faculty that complete our training and attend our workshops. I practiced creating, uploading and sharing videos using the Canvas app and my phone. Most importantly, I feel that I am even more aware of the language we use in all of our correspondence and instructions. While taking this course, I found a variety of forms that could use an update.
Where I am going.
Where I am going.
I plan to continue to review and refine my content to look for additional ways to humanize them. In addition, I am planning to use the same approach as I review and refine all of our correspondence with our faculty. I am going to update the language we use on request forms and incorporate more "bumper" type videos in our feature announcements and updates.
Liquid Syllabus
Liquid Syllabus
Creating a liquid syllabus has been on my "to do" list for a long time. I enjoyed spending time thinking about what to include and developing a color scheme that felt cheerful and welcoming. I plan to copy this liquid syllabus and then make some adjustments to better suit my audience. Once that is done, I will update my welcome email to include a link to the syllabus. I think this change will be a better example of how to begin creating connections before the course starts.
Course Card
Course Card
When developing my course card, I wanted to create something that would be easily recognizable, welcoming and a bit light-hearted. The Canvas panda kicking the discussion, assignment and folder icons is meant to convey the message that this training will help the participants gain knowledge and confidence as they increase their Canvas skills.
Homepage
Homepage
The homepage sets the tone for the course. For this reason, I am careful to keep the content brief so that it is inclusive and not overwhelming. I have included my contact information, along with my personal pronouns and a video that is representative of my teaching style. The video adds my "voice" to the course and is intended to help them recognize that I will be present throughout the course.
Getting to Know you Survey
Getting to Know you Survey
I really enjoyed developing the "Getting to Know You" survey. We have always surveyed our participants at the end of the course, but I can see the value in creating that connection at the beginning of the course. Knowing what is important to our participants at the beginning of the training can help us support them better.
Here are two of the questions I included:
What is the one thing that is most likely to interfere with your success in this class?
In one word, describe how you are feeling about this class.
Ice Breaker
Ice Breaker
In this assignment the participants are asked to use Flip to share their favorite online experience as a student or as an instructor. Not only will this provide an opportunity to develop connections with each other, but it will also help the facilitator to get an idea of the participants online experience. Those who are encountering an online class for the first time, may need a little extra attention as they get settled in to the course.
While I enjoyed experimenting with Flip again, I will probably adapt this assignment to use Studio instead. The course I facilitate is already exposing the participants to technology they may not have used before so I want to limit the number of tools they have to learn and use in the course.
Wisdom Wall
Wisdom Wall
I love the idea and concept of using a Wisdom Wall and plan to incorporate it into the training I offer. Not only will it be helpful to share with future participants, but it may also help me to identify areas to review and improve in order to make it a better experience.
Like the Ice Breaker, I will probably incorporate this concept using tools that are more familiar to our faculty, like Padlet. I think Flip is fun and I may incorporate it in other places, but part of humanizing a course is making sure we don't overwhelm our participants with too many new tools.
Bumper Video
Bumper Video
In this bumper video I share three key elements to add to a course home page. I have added the video to the "Create a Course Home Page" assignment in the course. The video will help participants to begin to think about the value and use of a home page as they learn the skills to create one.
Microlecture
Microlecture
This microlecture continues on the theme of the bumper video and aligns with the "Create and choose a Home Page" learning objective.
I use microlectures throughout the course. Each microlectures focus on a specific topic or task in the course and gives a complete demonstration of how to complete the task. I use the microlectures in order to provide the content in a variety of ways. This gives the participants choices as they move through the course. If the topic is familiar to them and they are able to complete it using the written materials and guides, they can skip the video. If a demonstration of the task would be more helpful for them, it is already incorporated into the material. They can watch it several times or start and stop it as they mirror the steps in their own course.
This site is by Dawn Heuft 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.
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