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.
The image above shows both halves of a cut and polished geode that just happens to look like a very happy Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.
I began teaching at Sierra College during Spring semester of 1998. Early in my career I took the Instructional Skills Workshop through Sierra’s Professional Development Department. I taught lecture and lab courses in-person only for a couple of decades, all the while evolving my courses. During Fall 2015 I took the online teacher training in hopes of teaching online during Spring 2016. I had the opportunity to teach Introduction to Earth Science online during the Summer of 2018 and another 8-week course in the Spring of 2020 that ended just as COVID-19 forced us all online. Since then, I have taken accessibility training, the Equity & Inclusion Series, and the inaugural Equitable Instruction Workshop at Sierra College. As a part-time instructor I have struggled with feelings of being “less than” and being humiliated by some full-time instructors in my department. I use those feelings to inform my teaching so that I lift my students, make them feel welcome, and respect their life experiences and goals. At the beginning of this training, I was looking forward to learning new STEM-specific techniques that I can use to facilitate learning for both non-majors and majors.
I am in my 25th year of teaching part-time at Sierra College, but I feel like everything is brand new. Nothing is as it was when I started teaching, even the science is advancing. I am ready to learn new strategies and techniques to engage and excite the new generation of Earth science learners I have the pleasure to teach. I am beginning to incorporate interactive assignments that engage students and make them feel like part of a community. I am working on making my presence more felt and seen in the course.
Armed with new insights into creating a welcoming, non-threatening, supportive atmosphere in my online courses, I will strive to create that environment. I plan to add “myself” to my videos by adding introductions to each. I will have to take my current PowerPoint videos and insert them into Camtasia, along with “imperfect” video clips of my introductions. I would like to use Flip or VoiceThread to make discussions more “personable”. I don’t really like the limited integration of Flip with Canvas, so I will explore the possibilities of VoiceThread as another option, since Sierra does pay for that external tool.
My liquid syllabus is a gateway to my course. It is a complete syllabus that gives all the information contained in my pdf version, which is available on the Course Schedule page. I realize that some students want to be fully online and paperless, while others still want to be able to print out the syllabus so they can make notes in the margin. I have two welcome videos on the first page. One tells students about the class and the other is my personal introduction.
I generally send out a welcome letter with a link to my liquid syllabus a week or two before the beginning of the session. I want them to know that I am a human and I am available by phone or text 12/7/365. I am always available to support them.
I chose an aerial view of the lava lake in Kilauea Caldera with a happy face drawn with red hot lava as my course card.
A happy face always seems welcoming.
A happy face made of lava is unusual and eye-catching.
Volcanism is one of the coolest hot topics of the course.
My homepage is short, to the point, and makes people laugh. In addition to some basic information about me and the class, it has a photo of me with a baby goat on my shoulders. The banner screams, "Welcome to Earth Science" from Sierra College. I have buttons below the banner that link to the first page, the Canvas syllabus, modules, and additional resources. Because many students access Canvas via their phone or a tablet, these buttons provide quick access from my homepage, rather than have to navigate to another page to find those links.
My Getting to Know You survey is the first activity students participate in. The next thing they do is call me for a Meet & Greet, where we talk for five or ten minutes about their goals, responsibilities, and how the class works. In both the survey and the Meet & Greet I ask if they have everything they need to succeed. If they tell me they don't have a printer, I mail them a packet of all the assignments they will need to print during the semester. I also ask students for some suggestions they have for me that will help them be successful in this class and some things that make it hard for them to learn or be successful in an online class.
This ice breaker assignment is a Flip discussion that allows students to introduce themselves to each other and myself. By getting to know each other a bit through telling our stories and sharing our values and interests we will begin to build trust and community.
This Wisdom Wall follows the first exam. It is designed to help students learn by reflecting on what they did prior to the exam that helped them succeed or what they didn't do that kept them from being as successful as they had wanted to be. This reflection will require students to think about their learning, thereby fostering development of their skills as a problem solver. They will develop the skills to monitor, plan, and ultimately control active learning. They should understand the words and processes, not just memorize them. their
This two and a half-minute video explains what Earth would be like if it were not spinning on a tilted axis – that is, if it were spinning with its axis perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. This was an essay question that everyone is asked on the third unit exam. This short video discusses the answer with students following the availability of the exam. I have added it to my class in the module following the end of availability for the exam in which the question was asked. If students are paying attention, they may get a heads-up that a similar question about a hypothetical situation about Earth's rotation is on a future exam.
This video is part of the unit on astronomy in my Introduction to Earth Science course. The learning objective for this microlecture is “Describe the Milky Way, the structure of our Local Group, and the galaxies of which it is comprised”. Before this microlecture I have another lecture, about 11 minutes in length, that talks about types of galaxies and superclusters of galaxies. Following this lecture is a series of lectures discussing inhabitants the origin of the universe, nebulae, and the formation and life cycles of stars. This particular microlecture, with an introductory video of me talking about the spectacular Milky Way galaxy, will put our solar system’s position in context within our galaxy and our galaxy’s position in context within our Local Group.
This site is by Kimberlee Stevens 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.
