Humanizing Online STEM Showcase
Nick Strobel, Professor of Astronomy, Bakersfield 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.
My online courses did not have good engagement of the students with each other and with me. I had attended some one-hour workshops at my college about humanizing my courses but I had not known about the low/high context cultures and the importance of sharing about myself outside of the classroom (what I did and what I liked outside of the classroom). I did have some of those "outside classroom" information items available on the web but they were buried down several layers. I had already created video lectures during the pandemic and a detailed video orientation for my classes before the pandemic and they were posted on YouTube, so my video creation skills were pretty much already developed.
Where I am.
I have added more video introductions and warm, encouraging language to my class syllabus and pre-term liquid syllabus. I now realize the importance of sharing more of myself in order to make learning possible for students from high context cultures. I created a short video that shares more about my personal interests and the importance of my family and church in order to make a better first impression which we've found in the humanizing course is critical.
Where I am going.
I need to continue to do more self-analysis of what I can share of myself and incorporate personalized video/audio feedback to my students in order to have a fuller presence of myself in the course. I'm definitely coming from a low context culture that keeps interactions in the cognitive sphere and minimizes the affective domain, so I'll do more exploration of how I can incorporate more high context culture features to make my course more welcoming.
Liquid Syllabus
I've had a class pre-term landing page for a number of years and sent pre-term messages to my students but it was just text-based. Because of the STEM Humanize course, I've re-organized the content, added some graphics, and added a warm welcome video.
Course Card
This image has people and the people are exploring space with inexpensive equipment (binoculars and the naked eye). It shows that astronomy is a human activity and that it can be done by anybody---binoculars or just naked eye works fine!
Homepage
My Canvas Homepage has the essential information to start the semester as well as information that applies to the entire semester. It includes my contact information, links to a detailed video orientation for the course (chunked for the student's convenience), study skills tips, how-to pages, Education Pays! page, student services pages, etc.
Humanizing elements include: easy-to-find pointer to prerequisite module, easy-to-find pointer to the first week's astronomy content, more graphics, pointers to my video lectures and the Canvas Student app (something my daughter who just completed her Bachelor's at OSU said was a lifesaver for her), chunking the original big list of links and making them hidden at first so it's not so overwhelming (also makes page less cluttered), my contact information along with a smiling picture of me, a warm, welcoming video (increasing my social presence in the course), and the Getting to Know You Survey that signals my desire to better help the students succeed in the course.
Getting to Know You Survey
The Getting to Know You Survey asks for the traditional things and then I ask the students to share how I can help them in their learning. There are open-ended questions that show I care about their learning. I created a Canvas page to show how to record audio/video responses.
Wisdom Wall Tour
The Wisdom Wall is an optional assignment that invites students to share their success tips with future students for how to do well on the monthly exams. It shows that I value their opinion/experience as well as has the student do some meta-cognition work. I have the students use the Flip system. It is placed in the Week 6 module which is the week after the first exam.
Bumper Video
This video describes how to use the NAAP Labs Motion of the Sun simulator to show how the shadow changes with the position of the sun. This is helpful in understanding the Sun Path tutorial as well as the Tracking the Sun’s Motion skywatch project. Seeing the simulator in action will show the great power of the simulator and hopefully, encourage students to try it out for themselves.
Microlecture
This is the first video of the Introduction lecture set which has a total of three videos. This video covers the size and time scales of the universe. A scale model of the solar system is shown on the Bakersfield College campus. The cosmic calendar is described as well as a time scale model that paces out the long timescales.
The video also includes comments about how to use the lecture outlines in the Student Guide and the lecture slides posted in the class Canvas to succeed in the course. Other micro-lectures would not have that information because the students would be familiar with how to use the lecture outlines and slides by then.
The three lecture video set is posted at https://astronomynotes.com/internet/introduction/introduction-videolecture.html .