Humanizing Online
STEM Showcase
Kiet Vo, Math Instructor, Sierra 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
Where I was.
I started teaching online classes during the pandemic. My video lessons during the first two years of teaching online are usually at least an hour long, and only a handful of my students watch the videos every semester. My discussion prompts were mainly text-based. I always feel that there is very minimal interaction between students in my online sections. I was frustrated with putting a lot of hours into making the video lessons, but very few students watched the videos.
Where I am.
I wish I took this class before I picked up a completely new online class this semester. I feel much better about how to make my online classes more inclusive, more equitable and more engaging after working on the assignments in this class. I have never used Adobe Express before taking this class. Now, I think creating bumper videos with Adobe Express is the coolest thing even though it took me more than an hour making a two-minute bumper video. Being an online student in this class also reminds me to be flexible and empathetic to my students.
Where I am going.
I plan to use the liquid syllabus I created in this class for my online elementary statistics class next semester. I will also make more unedited videos and incorporate video/audio options for my discussion prompts. I am not used to making microlectures - my video lessons are typically long, but I see the benefits of microlectures. So, I will definitely make more microlectures to meet my students' needs.
Liquid Syllabus
I believe my liquid syllabus is still a work in progress. There are some minor details that I would like to change. However, it is the best syllabus I have ever created. I feel that my students will know me better through my introduction video and my teaching philosophy on the syllabus. I hope the syllabus helps them have a better experience during their first chaotic week of the semester because everything they need to know for the first week is there. Through the liquid syllabus, I want my students to see that the college and I will support them to be successful in our courses.
Course Card
I chose this image because I believe it sends a warm, inviting cues to students. The image shows a diverse group of students learning together. It also shows bar charts, pie charts, histograms, and time series plots. My students will learn how to plot these graphs on Excel.
Homepage
My homepage has a picture of me holding a beer before having my son. I want my students to know that I understand what life's like outside the classroom. Everyone has some obligations including me. So, I will be understanding and flexible when life gets in my students' ways.
Getting to Know You Survey
In the survey, I ask my students to share their experience in taking an online math class if they had one before. I encourage them to share both positive and negative experiences. I also ask them to share pictures/videos of their favorite food/drink. I believe these types of questions help us connect and understand each other better.
Ice Breaker or Wisdom Wall
I like the Wisdom Wall because future students will get concrete tips/advices from former students. Specifically, tips/advices on what they did or did not do to prepare for the exam they recently took. I hope that hearing/watching/reading the words of wisdom directly from former students will give future students a better idea on how to prepare for the exams.
Bumper Video
I did a bumper video on confidence intervals because this is one of the most important topic in inferential statistics. I want to give students an overview of what confidence intervals are about and where they can see confidence intervals in research and news articles.
Microlecture
In this microlecture, I show students how to use a free, online calculator to draw a scatterplot, to compute the correlation coefficient and to interpret it. I use real, up-to-date, local data to make the example more relevant and meaningful. This is important when we discuss linear regression later.