By embracing my courses as a student-centered process, I empower my students to be independent, critical thinkers who boldly explore new ideas. I calibrate the class environment and its outcomes but allow my students to chart the course of their own education. It means being flexible with my approach and willing to embrace my students’ diverse perspectives. I want to create a dynamic learning environment that’s enriching and fun for my students.
Involving students in developing course content encourages them to find new practices and meanings to class concepts. While I have a detailed lesson plan and clear objectives for the class, I encourage my students to explore topics relevant to their experiences and goals through student-led discussions and personalized assignments. I allowed my students to vote on class topics and accompanying readings for the second half of my virtual world course. The students picked topics that not only expanded upon the ones I had already chosen for the first half of the course but also catered to their interests and the direction they wanted to take their final projects. One group of students wanted to learn more about applications of virtual worlds in various industries such as education and healthcare. Another group chose topics about storytelling and immersion because they wanted to successfully create immersive virtual experiences with a strong storytelling focus. Students told me it’s empowering for them to have a say in how the class proceeded, and that it made the course more flexible, resourceful, and engaging for them.
I help students chart the course of their own learning by offering multiple options to complete an assignment, allowing them to pursue their interests in a way that works with their skillset. For the final project of my Communication in a Changing World course, students pick between writing an essay or building a critical making project. My students produced excellent essays such as one student’s history of the intersection of queer identity and electronic music. They also produced amazing projects such as one student writing and composing their own song about hegemony and another creating their own video game in Unreal Engine to artistically represent the negative consequences of social media use. My students found my approach freeing and made assignments and learning feel more personal.
Providing options helps support students who have disabilities and other challenges that might impede their education. I took every letter about a student’s disability very seriously and often worked with them on an individual level to meet their needs. I take advantage of the multiple affordances of learning management systems like Canvas and Moodle and other software to provide accommodations, such as classroom recording and livestreaming class sessions via Zoom. The hybrid format for one of my courses helped one of my students attend classes even though they couldn’t drive to the university due to a roadblock in their route. I know students can face challenges with funding, so I use free to access readings and course materials wherever I can. Everyone deserves to learn and thrive, and so everyone in my classroom deserves to get what they need to achieve their goals.
I choose grading formats where students reflect on and evaluate their own practice and learning in the course. This is done to help them concentrate on their own growth and learning through hard work and collaborative efforts. The approach has been received well; students told me they appreciated the ability to choose which course topics they wanted to go deeper in through optional readings and assignments, and the format encouraged them to apply themselves more than the minimum required to pass the course.
My teaching emphasizes digital media literacy; I strive to help my students direct the critical thinking skills they already have toward analysis of the digital media they encounter daily. I constantly evaluate how the skills students learn can be useful outside of the classroom. Drawing on examples from advertising, news, and video games allows students to apply their skills to “real-world” situations. I challenge students to use what they learned about communication and rhetoric to analyze the world around them and construct compelling arguments to help explain it. During my lesson on AI in my Communication in a Changing World course, I had my students use ChatGPT to write their final essay and then they graded the assignment ChatGPT wrote using the rubric I provided. My students not only learned not to rely on ChatGPT to write assignments for them (most essays didn’t score higher than a “B” and my students noted that ChatGPT can make up sources and confidently say falsehoods), but it led to a class-wide discussion on how AI could potentially shape our communication practices as well as the potential negative consequences of relying too much on AI for communication. Through my student-led process, I encourage my students to take a critical look at communication and technology.
I promote collaboration between my students so they can learn how to work within groups in their future careers. My students’ projects in my virtual world course exceeded my expectations; one group taught visitors about ocean conservation through a virtual installation, another group created a room in a castle that invited visitors to unravel the deadly mystery, and another created a virtual sculpture museum that unfolded into a surreal horror experience. You can see pictures of my students’ projects on my website. It was exciting to see how my students came together and pooled their unique skills toward their projects. I had students focused on video game design combine forces with English literature students to produce virtual experiences grounded in proven theories of immersion and worldbuilding. Practice-based learning allows students to directly apply what they learn in class toward something they can be proud of while preparing them to work as a community.
Teaching online courses is second nature to me, having taught three semesters of Environmental Ethics and one semester of Public Speaking online and asynchronous, as well as teaching two semesters of Critical Analysis of Communication Media in a hybrid format. A successful online course is one where students are as engaged as they are in a face-to-face course. This is done by taking advantage of online platforms and software to adapt the interactivity and engagement of a face-to-face course. One exercise in my Public Speaking course involves dividing students in a Zoom call into two breakout rooms. One group watches a TED Talk while the other group reads a transcript of the same talk. The two groups then rate the speech and then come back together to discuss it. The group who watched the TED Talk always rated the speech higher than the group who only read the transcript, demonstrating to students how important the speaker’s performance is for how memorable a speech is to an audience. I ensure an engaging online course by embracing its unique properties and opportunities.
A successful learning environment is one where students feel empowered to experiment and participate in ways that are meaningful for the class and for themselves. I motivate my students to be active, engaged learners by allowing them to contribute to the dynamic flow of the course. I provide my students with plenty of options for engaging with my course and encourage them to share their unique skills and perspectives. Through my student-centered, practice-based teaching, I prepare my students for fruitful careers and embolden them to take a critical look at the world and change it for the better.