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 the academy, I had been teaching online courses, in hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous format for the past three years. Up to this point, I had created full sets of videos for all of the classes that I teach. My courses were well structured, organized and professional. However, just before this academy, I was given the recommendation to put more of my personality into the course. Essentially, the recommendation was to humanize my courses. For me, this training came at the perfect time as all of the mathematical content for my online courses was created, and I could now greatly improve building community in my online courses by implementing what I have learned in the Humanizing Online STEM course.
Today, I am at the point where I have learned how to humanize my online mathematics courses. I have created a welcoming homepage, liquid syllabus, a self-affirming icebreaker, a welcome video that welcomes my students to the class and tells them a little bit about myself, a "getting to know you" survey that gives students the opportunity to tell me a little bit about themselves, a bumper video introducing my semester long project, a micro lecture introducing students to mathematical proofs, and I have learned how to include a welcoming course card on my Canvas shell.
I have implemented the course material from the "Where I Am" section in my Linear Algebra and Calculus II course shells. I am going to work towards including these elements in all of the courses that I teach.
The liquid syllabus is one of the first things about the course that my students will see. Therefore, in my liquid syllabus, my goal is to establish trust, begin to build community in the classroom and demonstrate that I care about my student's learning before my course begins. To do this, I include a welcome video that tells students a little bit about myself and that I am happy to be their teacher for the semester. I have a welcoming and clear communication plan, a week 1 success kit that clearly lays out what is due for the first week and when, along with a learning pact, statement of my teaching philosophy and I share my advice on how students can be successful in the course.
I chose this course card because I believe that it illustrates many of my goals in my online classroom. This course card does a great job of showing a community of students working productively together, listening to one another's ideas, and shows that students are part of a rich learning community. This aligns with my goals of building a productive community of learners in my online classes.
I believe my homepage serves as a kindness cue of social inclusion for students by providing a fun Canva Banner about the course, Linear Algebra, a warm welcome letter that lets students know that I am excited to be their instructor, want them to be successful, and that we will be building a learning community in our course by working together. I also believe having links to the important material for the first week will make the course easier to navigate. Finally, I believe that by having my contact information available, along with the best way to reach out to me with questions, lets students know that I am there for them and happy to help.
Here is my "Getting to Know You Survey." Here, the student tells me their name, how they prefer feedback (written, video comment, or voice comment), how they best learn, what their major is, and they answer a few other questions. I believe that by taking the time to ask the student to answer these questions, and them implementing their responses throughout the semester, shows that I, as an instructor, care about them and their success in the course.
This is my ice break assignment. Here, students make a short video, or video comment, in "Flip." Students find an object that symbolizes something meaningful to them, such as family, or a value. Then, they create a video, or video comment, sharing with the class why that object symbolizes something important. Finally, they watch their classmate's videos and leave either a video comment or written comment on why their classmate's video resonated with them. I believe this is a great way for my students to begin to get to know each other at the beginning of the semester and build community in the classroom.
This bumper video provides a brief overview of our semester long, three-part, Calculus II project. This project applies the tools of Calculus II to ultimately prove the irrationality of pi. This video briefly introduces what each of the three parts of the project are about. This will improve student's learning since they now have a video overview of the project (as opposed to a written overview of the project).
This microlecture is on an "Introduction to Proofs," and the learning objective is for students to create and prove their own conjecture about the integers. This microlecture is designed to support students completing the first part of our three part Calculus II project on the proof of the irrationality of pi. This microlecture will improve student's learning experience by providing a video in addition to the written examples contained within the project.
This site is by Jack Bennett 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.
