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.
At the start of this academy, I was approved to make instructional videos for 3 classes as my Professional Development project next academic year. To prepare for that, I wanted to establish a reliable workflow for creating, captioning, and organizing videos in YouTube playlists. My intention is to redesign 3 classes in Canvas to better support my high opportunity students and myself by: more effectively leveraging humanization in Canvas; creating a Liquid Syllabus, as a means of communicating with prospective students; creating a more sustainable workload for both myself and my students--by being more strategic in how I design the course and how I spend my working time; and incorporating more beauty and imagery into my course shells.
I have successfully completed the assignments in the class. I can create a video on my phone, a screencast on my computer, and an Adobe Express video on my computer. I can upload each type of video to YouTube and edit captions. I have created a Liquid Syllabus and plan to provide a link to it in my college directory listing. I am confident that I can edit it further once my next teaching assignment approaches.
I feel like this Academy has provided me with enough guidance and resources to redesign my courses to better support my students. Currently, I am still slow and awkward with Adobe Express and I am looking forward to playing more with that kind of video. I am gaining efficiency with the process of uploading and captioning all forms of videos. And I really enjoyed creating a thumbnail. I want to create a few thumbnails to represent different kinds of videos (introductions, sticking points, 'want to know more') to create a visual theme that helps to orient my students to what kind of learning is about to happen.
For a long time, I have felt like it is important to get good information to prospective students, to help them figure out if my course is a good fit for what they're looking for and also to reassure them that it is. In recent quarters, I have received emails from 30-60 students, making inquiries before the start of the quarter. I will use my Liquid Syllabus to get information to students before the start of the quarter, even if they are not enrolled in one of my classes. I will do this by including a link to my Liquid Syllabus in my college directory listing. Additionally, now that I know how to create a liquid syllabus using GoogleSites, I plan to also create a separate FAQ and Strategies site that I will also include in my directory listing. That will make it very easy for me to reply to student inquiries, because I can share those links to humanized and caring resources. By sharing the liquid syllabus with enrolled students well in advance of the quarter, I will build trust, conveying that I care enough about their success to reach out early with relevant information. In addition, the inclusion of the welcome video will help to establish a relationship with the students and also an expectation of engagement, something that will support their learning and success.
I chose this course card image for my statistics class because it displays a lot of elements and tools relevant to statistical work. In addition, I felt like the working doc in the image was fun and interesting. Although most students don't enter statistics class thinking it's going to be fun and interesting, many later report that it was, surpisingly so. I hope that this imagery witll activate that sense of excitement and expectation each time students log in to the course in Canvas. My students report that they come to college to create their future life and develop the skills to support themselves through enjoyable and fulfilling work. This image shows two people working together, using computers and cameras in a pleasant work space. The image suggests that the work is both analytical and creative. With this image, I welcome my students and invite them to envision and work towards the life and work that they want.
I made the banner at the top of my homepage using Canva. I intentionally included plants and computer work, to represent the importance of balance in our learning and work. I put the two people together to signify the importance of community, connection, and collaboration, something that students worry won't be part of an online class, especially a math class. I then provide limited information on how to get started, where to find important information, and how to contact me. Through the words I choose and the photo I include, I offer a warm and personalized message and support all students with the information needed to get started in the class. That serves as a kindness cue to students who are uncertain whether they belong and assures them we will be in relation.
My survey serves as a kindness cue of social inclusion by sending several messages to my students. First of all, it shows that I care enough to want to know more about them and take the time to ask. It also gives them voice, allowing them to feel heard, something that I think we all want. It also serves as part of the establishment of a dialogue between me and each student. I push out a lot of information as the teacher, and it can help a person be engaged and feel included if they are given a turn to "talk." It gives them the opportunity to feel respected, through my interest in their preferences and self-knowledge. It also gives them the opportunity to share concerns and information about their life, something they might not otherwise feel comfortable doing.
This ice breaker assignment asks students to consider and share their values as well as describe how those values have manifested themselves in their life. This allows students to learn about and express aspects of their personal culture. Students are asked to create a video that shares an object from their life that symbolizes or relates to at least 1 of their values. Students then watch the videos of others to identify something they have in common with others, which they then leave a reply to.
This assignment can be completed through a smart phone or a computer, so it should be accessible to everyone. The details of how to complete the assignment and my inclusion both of a tour of the ice breaker in Canvas and also a starting video in FLIP give students lots of support to complete this assignment, even if they haven't used FLIP before. By sharing their object and their value(s) and their face and their voice, students can hear about each others' real world experiences and connect on a human level, an important prerequisite to trust and effective working relationships in High Context Cultures. This lays the foundation for a more widespread sense of belonging than might be realized if we jumped straight into the math.
This bumper video will be part of the wrap up of the study of "Examining Distributions of a single quantitative variable." Many of my students struggle with generating, interpreting, and comprehending boxplots. This video will reiterate the connection between the 5 Number Summary and a boxplot. In this way, I will make that connection explicit at the end of the module, after students have had a chance to grapple with their questions. As I monitor the Q & A Board, I can include a link to this video, as appropriate. In this way, I can let students know that they're not alone, that many people struggle with this, and that I'm aware of that and designing for their learning. I'm give them another opportunity to consider the meaning of the 5 number summary and a boxplot and the connection between them.
Of all the graphs that I have students generate using Excel, boxplots are the ones they struggle with the most. In this microlecture, I show students all the steps of how to use the tool Excel to generate a boxplot and then enhance it to create a powerful and informative graphic. Importantly, I also show them how to assess their work, by checking the reasonableness of the graph they created. This will be their first lesson on how to create a boxplot (using technology). I plan to create many more of these microlectures and organize them in both a YouTube playlist and also in a Canvas Page for easy reference, as they will periodically create this kind of graph throughout the quarter.
