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.
I have taught many online courses over the years. I received good feedback from my students and on the few formal review that I have received everything was good.
At Foothill we are working very hard on Equity, but I assumed equity meant recruiting, basic skills courses, and counseling. I really never understood what a big part my Canvas classes could play in my contribution to Equity. I am embarrassed to realize that I paid almost no attention to the issues addressed in this class. My entire focus was on my content as a replacement for a textbook.
This class has given me incredibly important insights into what it means to be a teacher. I have started the process of reinvention. My online and on-campus teaching are both going to change.
I came into the class with almost no video production experience, I started out feeling very self-conscious and nervous, I still am but I'm feeling more comfortable and I will continue to make videos. I am comfortable with Flipgrid, Spark, and Studio. The Microlectures will change my students' experiences. I am comfortable and supportive of all of the Humanizing concepts. Michelle taught me how to be a supportive instructor
I intend in applying all of the skills that I have learned. The first and easiest place to start is with my new Getting to Know You Survey. Then I will focus on building community and getting students to interact with each other and with me. I will increase my use of video and audio. I will start this early in the quarter, hoping that the student's interest and involvement will be increased and that it will carry on through the entire quarter. I will also focus much more are helping my students achieve their personal goals.
Overall I will create a plan to Humanize each of my classes, I will of course be using the Liquid Syllabus immediately.
My Liquid Syllabus will enable me to reach students prior to the start of the course. I will email a link to it and I will also post it on my Web Site so that it will be publicly available.
The Liquid Syllabus will allow me to reach our students who access the Web and Canvas through their mobile devices since it is designed to be mobile-friendly. This tool enables me to communicate a warm welcome before class begins.
My Course Card is designed to illustrate the diversity in my class and to provide a whimsical introduction to the course.
I am hoping that every time the students return, they will feel a light-hearted reminder and encouragement to continue their journey in the course.
My humanized homepage has a welcome banner (which I created in Canva) that shows a female and a male student working together on a programming assignment.
I stress that learning is a community activity and that students are never alone, they are part of the learning community. I mention that they will learn programming through practice. In addition, I remind them to always keep in mind that I am here to help them!
At the bottom of the homepage, the students are encouraged to select the Start Button to start the class.
This survey is the first assignment of the class. It serves several purposes; it provides me with information that will help me jump start my relationship with the students, it provides me with information that I can use to tailor my course content to the needs of the students, and hopefully, the students will appreciate that I want to get to know them as individuals.
Two of the questions in the survey are "Why are you taking the class" and "Would you please tell me a little bit about your work background?" Both of these questions give me insight into the student's motivation for being in the class. I will use this information when placing students into groups.
The Ice Breaker assignment uses Flipgrid and asks students to respond to the Genie prompt.
After the student responds to the prompt, they are asked to comment on the responses of two other students.
Since the students are all responding to the same prompt, I am hoping that a sense of community is being created early in the class and this gets them ready to engage in upcoming collaborative activities!
All quarter the students have been reflecting on their activities in the class, now they are being to ask to reflect on the class in order to provide guidance for a new student.
This certainly provides value to the new students, but it actually provides much more value to the student providing the reflection.
They are now taking on the role of the expert, they have learned and grown, now they are going to pass their wisdom on to another, this should be a very powerful experience for them.
Thinking through what advice to give will cause them to examine their role in the class.
My Bumper Video provides an introduction to the first Laboratory activity in the class. The activity itself is fairly straight forward but the software that they are installing and learning to use can be very challenging for the beginner.
The instructional purpose that this video shows the student how to install software necessary for the class. It will improve the students' learning experience by setting their expectations and asking them to be patient and learn how to use it based upon the instructions provided in the lab documentation.
This Microlecture helps the student meet the learning objective of being able to compare and contrast the Python built-in container objects.
It will improve the learning experience by providing a clear, concise, and understandable presentation of the material.
