Teaching with OER OpenStax Canvas Course Shells

In this 9-minute video, Dr. Jennifer Carlin-Goldberg from Santa Rosa Junior College shows how she uses Canvas Commons to import sample course shells with free OpenStax textbook content. Jennifer also gives us a tour of her hybrid Statistics class in Canvas and explains how she integrated OpenStax content with her own materials along with shared quizzes and YouTube videos designed to go with the OpenStax textbook.

OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University that creates peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks available in free, digital formats to students and for a low cost in print. Since it launched in 2012, OpenStax has produced 45 textbooks in Math, Science, Social Sciences and Humanities that are free for faculty to use “as is” or to download and modify. Starting in December 2017, Canvas users can use Commons to import OpenStax content that the California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative (OEI) has embedded in Canvas course shells.

Equitable Access to Educational Technology Tools

""Founded in 1998, the Foundation for California Community Colleges (Foundation) is the official 501(c)(3) auxiliary to the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors and Chancellor’s Office. Since 1999, the Foundation has operated the CollegeBuys program to support systemwide procurement needs by leveraging the collective purchasing power of the California community colleges to create voluntary cooperative purchasing agreements.

Central to our efforts is the notion that cost should not be a barrier, and all California community college students should have equal access to educational technology tools. Through specially negotiated pricing, CollegeBuys has enabled students to purchase mobile internet service, software, and tablets/computers, which may have otherwise been unaffordable, collectively saving students, faculty, and staff millions of dollars.

One important offering that supports this work is the California Connects Mobile Internet program. A 2016 field poll by the California Emerging Technology Fund shows that 30% of Californians do not have meaningful broadband access at home, and income is a significant factor in broadband adoption rate at home. California Connects provides an affordable home internet option for students that cannot access the internet during conventional school hours. California Connects is only $19.99 a month for 30GB of data and no overage fees, and has already helped to bridge the digital divide for hundreds of students, faculty, and staff across our college system.

Awareness about California Connects and other technology offerings remains a major hurdle for our students and colleagues, so please help spread the word about these discounts on your campus.  Electronic versions of outreach materials can be found at https://foundationccc.org/CollegeBuys/Champions-Materials.

To learn more about California Connects and other CollegeBuys offerings, visit http://store.collegebuys.org.

 

Building Relationships with Faculty as an Instructional Designer

Instructional Designer infographic pointing out the diverse roles of an ID

My office door with an illustration by Robert Kilman from the Arizona State University website TeachOnline

When I began my position as the Instructional Designer in Distance Education at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) in the Fall of 2015, my new supervisor printed the illustration shown in the photo above and gave it to me. I taped it to my office door. Who wouldn’t like to be depicted as a fashionable superhero-explorer with a split personality? It’s also a pretty good representation of an action-packed job that marries creative thinking with technical problem-solving. Flexing different parts of my brain throughout the day keeps me excited about my work and on my toes.

Among the many roles I play, the one I reflect upon the most is Relationship Builder. The caption for the illustration states: “We are skilled at building relationships and rapport with faculty, staff, and clients. There is the potential for a lot of emotion around what we do.” The emotion was immediately evident to me at SRJC. My position was created at the same time that our college adopted Canvas to replace Moodle and a home-grown system called CATE. Emotions were loud and clear: many faculty felt overwhelmed by the transition, especially when it meant significantly reorganizing course materials to accommodate the Canvas interface.

Fortunately, many of those faculty attended our in-person Canvas workshops and appointments for help, and I was able to calm nerves by listening carefully to their concerns and providing support. I also encouraged faculty to share problems and solutions with each other. Building face-to-face relationships came easily to me and helped faculty make the transition.

Now that the transition to Canvas is complete, fewer faculty attend our in-person workshops and more often send me emails and enroll in my online courses and programs. I am happy to provide support remotely, but I find that building meaningful relationships with new faculty now requires more deliberate planning and cultivation. I’ll share two of my strategies:

  1. I now use ConferZoom to “meet” new faculty who take our Online Special Expertise certificate training, a six-week online course that I teach in Canvas. I offer Zoom sessions each week, and participants are required to attend at least one session. The stated purpose of this requirement is for faculty to experience the Zoom interface as a teaching tool, but I also value the sessions for relationship building. Conversations take off into many directions, just as they do in person. Sometimes the encounters are even more personal than they would be in person --I’ve met more than a few babies, kids, and pets through Zoom! I’ve also invited guests to join us, including @ONE’s Michelle Pacansky-Brock and Lené Whitley Putz.Zoom session require advance planning (although on occasion I launch Zoom screen-sharing for support calls). For the Online Special Expertise sessions, I survey participants at the start of each course to determine everyone’s availability. I then post session dates as ungraded Assignments in Canvas so the “due dates” appear in Modules, on the Calendar, and in the To Do list. I set up Outlook meetings as a reminder. I also make appointments with faculty who can’t make the sessions, and I note session attendance in Grades to be sure everyone participates. Building new relationships makes it worth the effort.
  2.  I interview faculty for my Online Faculty Spotlight video series, which I post on our DE Blog and on YouTube. Response to the series has been very enthusiastic because a common request I hear from faculty who are new to online teaching is to see example Canvas courses. I ask the faculty I interview to imagine they are sharing their course with a colleague who has never taught online before. It’s the type of interaction that might happen informally in offices or workshops, but many of our adjunct faculty miss out on those opportunities for interaction.Some faculty I invite for interviews are hesitant to be recorded at first, but I sit next to them at my computer and we have a conversation while recording with Screencast-o-matic. I promise to edit out anything embarrassing to put them at ease. I ask them to give me a “tour” of their course and explain their teaching goals and strategies. I usually include the webcam so it’s clear who is talking. The videos foster relationships among faculty who may never meet otherwise.

My future plans, if I ever find the time, is to do a podcast. The only slack time I have during the day is lunch, so perhaps I’ll call it “Lunch with Liz at SRJC.” I won’t pull off something as slick as Teaching in Higher Ed while eating, so perhaps I’ll have informal lunch conversations with faculty about kids, pets, or favorite fonts. I keep meaning to get a Helvetica Forever t-shirt.

Helvetica Forever t-shirt

 

Learn more about the Robert Kilman's Instructional Designer infographic.

Professional Development: Connecting is Key

Social Reinforcement

Think about your most meaningful professional development experience over the past year. What was it? Were you sitting in your office watching a recording of a past webinar? Were you at a workshop passively listening to an expert lecture to a room full of people? Or, were you engaging in dialogue with a group of your peers? Odds are, your most meaning professional development experience didn’t occur in isolation.

Professionals attend workshops, participate in book clubs, contribute to blogs, comment on blogs, reply to Tweets, and go to conferences because these events offer social reinforcement – we derive knowledge, meaning, and professional insights from our social interactions with peers. Connecting with others—in person or online—is key to professional growth.

Peer Mentoring

Heather and Flower

Pictured: Heather Garcia and Flower Darby, ID2ID buddies, at the ELI Conference in January, 2018.

One way to connect with others and develop professionally is to participate in a peer mentoring program or a professional community. My most meaningful professional development experience over the past year occurred in the ID2ID program. The ID2ID program is a peer mentoring program for instructional designers (IDs), sponsored by Penn State and EDUCAUSE. The program matches instructional designers and places them into mentor-mentee or buddy-buddy pairs, based on information provided by each ID during the application process. Throughout the program, the pairs meet regularly and work toward achieving their identified goals and program milestones. An outcome of participation in the program for me was presenting with my ID2ID buddy, Flower Darby, from Northern Arizona University, at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January 2018.

While this program may not be for everyone, if you’re in an instructional design or faculty support role, I highly recommend applying for the next cohort. It’s free! You have nothing to lose!

Making Connections Beyond Your Campus

With so many opportunities to engage with peers, why is it that so many of us continue to feel isolated? One reason might be that, as we continue to specialize in our fields more and more, we need to reach farther and wider to access people with professional experiences that we can relate to and learn from.

Schwier, Campbell, and Kenny (2004) indicate that most instructional design communities are “born of convenience” (82). These communities of convenience typically include people working in physical proximity to one another. Communities of convenience exist everywhere. You probably engage in more than one without even realizing it. While colleagues are a tremendous resource, it’s important to reach beyond our local communities to access the wealth of resources and knowledge beyond our institution’s walls.

We are lucky that we live in world, where we can use digital technologies to connect with our peers and build our communities. Not even two weeks ago, @ONE offered their first fully online, untethered conference. CCC Digital Learning Day was a remarkable success. Just take a look at some of the tweets sent by educators across our state and beyond about #CCCDLDay:

#CCCDLDay Tweets

These folks got something from their digital community that they wouldn’t have experienced otherwise.

Building Your Network

So where do you go to build your network? @ONE is a great start. Their professional development offerings are designed to foster community among educators. As a current participant in their Reflective Writing Club, #CCCWrite, I am grateful for the opportunity to hear from my fellow educators, have a dialogue with them, and reflect on my practice in a supportive environment.

Another great place to get involved is the Canvas Community. The CCC Group is a place where you can connect with other California Community College educators using Canvas, ask them questions, and make feature requests. You can also find an extensive line-up of CanvasLive events in the Canvas Community.

Below you will find some other professional communities that may be of interest, especially if you are in an instructional design role. Please add to this list by sharing your own resources in the comments for this post.

So, get out there. Connect with a professional community. Find a professional learning network. Apply to be a part of the next ID2ID cohort. Sign up for an @ONE class. Get connected on Twitter. See you online!

Pedagogy of Love: Teaching for Humanity

Pedagogy of Love: Teaching for Humanity

an image of a woman representing love and social justice

All Rights Reserved, Jose Ramirez, La Maestra, 2004. Image used with permission. ramirezart.com

Love is Essential

Valentine’s Day celebrates love.  Whether it’s romantic, fraternal, familial or personal, many recognize the power of love. No matter how you splice it, love is essential in building humanity.  And building humanity takes work.

Musicians, activists, academics, to name a few, invoke their perspective on the power of love in their work.  John Lennon simply sang, “All you need is love.” Argentinian revolutionary and political activist, Ernesto Che Guevara, explained love as a personal philosophy when he stated, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”  Now, of course, Che Guevara did believe in armed revolution, but I’d like to think he was conveying a balance between compassion and making hard decisions without flinching.  Feminist writer bell hooks stated in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, “When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning.” And then there is the work of Paolo Freire, which deserves a deeper consideration.

Love as a Learning Theory

Paolo Freire’s learning theory invokes a profound position on the efficacy of love. His theory is grounded in educators teaching with love. It promoted love as a necessary component for humanization and liberation.  In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, love is essential when students are introduced to oppression through problem-posing education.  When faced with the truth of oppression, love is the act of courage that enables students to find their freedom to dialogue about humanization and love.  Freire states, “Only by abolishing the situations of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love—I cannot enter into dialogue.” His theory of education incorporates love as a conscious act in the pursuit of humanity through dialogue in the classroom.

Many of our students arrive in our classes with some form of internalized oppression.  If we, as educators, ignore this variable, our students may not recognize their potential to contribute to the world.  In Mike Martin’s self-help book,  Love's Virtues, he states, “Internalized oppression violates the procedures that promote mutual autonomy through subtle forms of inner coercion, both from negative attitudes toward oneself and ignorance about one’s possibilities.”  Yet according to Freire, education can be an act of love because educators themselves can intentionally choose to value and present love onto their students and into the pedagogical process.  The pedagogy of love humanizes learning by engaging students in an ongoing process of self-exploration. When love is embedded in our pedagogical practices, we enable students to recognize that their needs, their desires, their wants, or whatever it is that motivates them, matter. And when a human recognizes that those things matter, life is forever changed.

Strategies for a Pedagogy of Love

How does this translates to our lesson design?  How can the heart and the brain be encouraged to connect? Zaretta Hammond focuses on culturally responsive teaching and brain-based learning strategies from neuroscience in her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.  She provides six core design principles for learning:

  1. The brain seeks to minimize social threats and maximize opportunities to connect with others in community.
  2. Positive relationships keep our safety-threat detection system in check.
  3. Culture guides how we process information.
  4. Attention drives learning.
  5. All new information must be coupled with existing funds of knowledge in order to be learned.
  6. The brain physically grows through challenge and stretch, expanding its ability to do more complex thinking and learning.

Although culturally responsive teaching is about empowering systematically disenfranchised students through challenging our teaching practices, Zarettta Hammond states, “We have to create the right instructional conditions that stimulate neuron growth… by giving students work that is relevant and focused on problem solving.”  Only then can we build brain power while affirming and validating our students’ ongoing pursuit of full humanity. That is what makes us human and enables Freire’s vision to create “a world in which it will be easier to love.”

This year, fall in love all over again with teaching by reading these books. Do it for yourself, for your students, and for humanity.

 

Tweeting Your Way to Professional Growth

Tweeting Your Way to Professional Growth

This post is the third in a series about principles in teaching and learning with contributions by Jim Julius and Lene Whitley-Putz.

passion led us hereSocial media is a topic that stirs a mixed bag of reactions with college educators. Some shake their heads and speak of a generation of souls lost on screen-time, superficial Snapchat stories, and fake news. While each of those topics are worthy of a critical discussion, social media means something very different to other educators, like myself. To me, the topic sparks a reflection about lifelong professional growth and development.

I have had a very non-traditional career path for a college educator. And through the ups and downs of my journey, I have benefited tremendously from my participation in social media. As I look back on roughly ten years of blogging and tweeting, I identify countless virtual connections that have grown into meaningful professional relationships, I’ve become a more well-rounded, reflective practitioner from the resources shared by peers, and I even received an offer to write a book along the way.

And now, in my new role with @ONE, my team and I are shepherding educators into the networked era by designing professional development opportunities fueled by social media to improve their digital literacy and prepare students for professional and personal success after college. Through the use of our new hashtag, #CCCLearn, we are helping educators to demystify hashtags by lurking in our feed or by sending a Tweet with the hashtag #CCCLearn that describes what they’re learning/trying/reflecting on. We also just kicked off our first @ONE Reflective Writing Club, a 6-week community-based blogging experience designed to support educators in examining the unique opportunities and challenges of public, digital writing (peek into our journey by searching for the hashtag #CCCWrite on Twitter or viewing this RSS feed of our blog posts).

Along the way, I realized that educators embarking upon their first experiences with social media as a form of professional growth may need advice and some guidance. As I looked back on my own journey, I asked myself, “What do you know now that you wish you had known then?” To answer this question, I searched the web for existing resources, but did not find what I had in mind. I located many institutional policies about social media, most written through the lens of public relations or marketing. But I did not find a concise and focused resource supporting professional learning. So I wrote my own and, in the process, reached out to a few of my peers, Jim Julius, Katie Palacios, and Lene Whitley-Putz, for some feedback. The five finished principles are provided below. They draw upon my own practices and experiences with social media and I hope they will serve many of you as you embark on their own journeys.

5 Social Media Principles for Professional Growth

Beginning a journey to become a lifelong digital learner can be a daunting task, especially for educators who are used to having all the answers. The principles below are offered to help you get started, guide you, and motivate you through the twists and turns ahead. Enjoy your journey!

Experimentation

As you look down the path in front of you, you may feel uncertain about where you are headed and how you will get there. Keep wondering about what’s ahead; curiosity will keep you moving forward. You’ll need to make choices that you may feel uncertain about at times. That’s why becoming a digital learner is, in many ways, like a long-term experiment. As you try new things, remember to look back and recognize what you would like to do differently next time. Trial-and-error is a way of life in digital culture.

Kindness

As you start your journey, you may question the value that you have to contribute to the public web. Self-doubt is common when engaging in an open digital community. Remember that you are surrounded by individuals who feel the same way. When you participate, you are taking a leap of faith and you will recognize and appreciate those who are kind to you. When others take the time to comment on your work, make it a priority to listen and respond.

Community

Know that you are not alone in this endeavor. Being a digital learner means you are part of a community. Lean on others for support and, in return, encourage your peers. Give to your community by sharing your ideas, your resources, and engaging in dialogue. Over time, you will begin to see your generosity come back to you in unexpected and beautiful ways.

Mindful Participation

Developing a professional learning network is a fulfilling experience, but it is a practice that involves care and attention. Because the lines between our digital and physical networks may blur, it is important to be clear about setting and maintaining boundaries.  As you engage, take care to set priorities, be present when in the company of your family, friends, and co-workers, and allow yourself to take a break. In digital culture, all of your actions matter. Develop a practice that involves pausing to consider your words before you publish/tweet/post. Sometimes choosing not to comment can be the wisest choice to make.

Curation

As you grow and change, your professional learning network should too. Developing your PLN is a continuous process of refinement that involves filtering out the noise. At the same time, making a conscious choice to seek out and include diverse perspectives in your network can open your eyes to new ways of seeing things.

If using Twitter and blogs for professional growth is new to you, are these principles helpful? If you are an experienced user of social media, do they resonate with your experiences?  Leave us a comment below and let us know!

Social Media Principles for Professional Growth by Michelle Pacansky-Brock is shared with a Creative Commons-Attribution CC-BY 4.0 International License.

 

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Online Teaching and Course Design

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Online Teaching and Course Design

This post is the second of a series about principles in teaching and learning with contributions by Jim Julius and Michelle Pacansky-Brock

coinsLike Fred and Ginger, peanut butter and jelly, the Patriots and the Super Bowl, some things are so closely linked that they simply don’t make sense without the other. For online education, how we design our course and how we teach our course are the inseparable pair--two sides of the same coin.

The professional development program developed by @ONE has long focused on both sides of this coin. In 2011, we used the iNacol Standards for Quality Online Teaching as the criteria for our online teaching certificate, and in 2014, we customized these standards to develop the @ONE Standards for Quality Online Teaching. The @ONE Standards were the foundation for the design and teaching practices that underpinned the @ONE Certificate in Online Teaching, representing both sides of the coin in one essential set of standards.

In 2014, though, the Online Education Initiative developed the OEI Online Course Design Rubric. This rubric focused solely on foundational criteria for course design, and pushed the shared standards for designing quality courses well beyond the @ONE Standards. Over the course of two years, as the rubric was used by faculty across the state, it went through some major revisions, and sets a gold standard for course design quality. In essence, the OEI Rubric advanced the initial design criteria offered in the @ONE Standards.

This caused a bit of a rub when using the @ONE Standards. Participants moving through the @ONE courses sometimes struggled with determining which set of standards or criteria they should be privileging. Participants in our courses were not always able to see which document was driving course design decisions--the Rubric, or the Standards. Moreover, as technology changed, and as more data about student success in online learning became available, we realized that the teaching practices outlined in the @ONE Standards needed some careful revision to better reflect the mission of the California Community Colleges (CCCs), including an emphasis on student success and equity.

So, this fall, we drew upon the collective wisdom of experienced online teachers from across our system in a collaborative effort to articulate a set of teaching principles that reflect the specific needs of our students, staff, and faculty. Our first step was to remove the course design elements--now the purview of the OEI Course Design Rubric--and focus our attention on the other side of the coin, the practices and behaviors that support quality online teaching.

Working from the original set of standards and resources that helped us better understand the national dialog around great online teaching (including those outlined by Jim in his post on Monday), carefully examining data about our online students, and drawing on the knowledge and expertise of our peers across the system, we developed a set of principles for quality Online teaching tailored to the CCCs. The principles state that effective online teachers:

  1. Are present within their course;
  2. Apply equitable methods to promote student access and success while acknowledging institutional obstacles;
  3. Respond to student needs and use data for continuous course improvement;
  4. Teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop digital literacy that will poise them for success;
  5. Recognize ongoing professional development is a central component of their success.

We would like to invite you to read the full text of the Principles for Quality Online Teaching, and hope the principles give you some ideas to mull over and discuss with peers. Most importantly, we invite you to participate in developing our communal understanding of these principles by joining us in a webinar, writing a blog post, or participating in a course.

We think the pairing of the new Principles for Quality Online Teaching with the OEI Course Design Rubric lays the foundation for your success and the success of our students, but the reality is, Ginger and Fred engaged in a lot of practice before they became Hollywood legends. The Principles provide the initial steps for the intricate dance of teaching and learning, but our continued conversation and engagement with one another is the music that breathes life into the dance.

Teaching--face-to-face and online--is hard work, and our students may need to surmount many walls along their path to success. The Principles remind us that the unique mission of the CCCs is not to separate the wheat from the chaff, but rather recognize the human potential in all of us.

 

Using Principles to Guide Professional Practice

Using Principles to Guide Professional Practice

This post is the first of a series about principles in teaching and learning with contributions by Lené Whitley-Putz and Michelle Pacansky-Brock.

""In early December, Inside Higher Ed published an article on the need for a theory of learning in which the authors, Chew and Cerbin, decried a “buzzword wasteland” and pursuit of “simplistic solutions” in higher education teaching and learning. Comments on the article were fascinating, and I was drawn into a subsequent Twitter discussion. (The Twitter conversation included Michelle Pacansky-Brock, who encouraged me to expand upon my thoughts here.)

The primary concern of Chew and Cerbin is that too few faculty are guided by a “valid theory of learning” informed by cognitive research on how students learn. They acknowledge that a theory meeting this perceived need would be complex, and has yet to be developed. Yet they believe that development of such a theory is a prerequisite for college teaching to become a “coherent set of effective practices.”

Theory vs. Best Practices vs. Principles

As a former K-12 teacher and teacher educator who has been working at the intersection of technology and faculty development in 2- and 4- year institutions for the past 15 years, I understand the desire to see educational practice consistently grounded in some sort of coherent theory. But in my experience, while some college faculty find discussion of the distinctions between connectivism and various flavors of constructivism mildly stimulating, most would prefer to cut to the chase - just tell me what works.

At the other end of the educational development spectrum, this leads to the proclamation of “best practices,” a concept that has origins in regulatory compliance in the business world. Because teaching and learning is affected by many contextual factors, evidence-based conclusions about the effectiveness of pedagogies and technologies can be difficult to reach. Sharing practices that have some evidence of effectiveness is great, but perhaps we could strive for a bit more nuance and contextualization.

For me, the sweet spot in teaching and learning between theory and “best practices” is principles. A good set of principles typically has a coherent theoretical underpinning, as well as at least some evidence of effectiveness. Good principles provide direction without overspecifying implementation. Principles are most effective in faculty development when they are accompanied by a variety of examples in order to illustrate multiple applications in varied contexts.

An oft-heard phrase in educational institutions these days is initiative fatigue. A common language to describe our collective work may help to counter this sense of fragmentation of efforts focused on the latest iteration of identified problems and solutions. At the institutional level, this language often consists of mission and vision statements, shared values, and institutional outcomes. Most institutions have these, but their authenticity and utility varies greatly.

I would suggest that at the classroom level, instructors often experience a phenomenon similar to initiative fatigue. Chew and Cerbin point out the many pedagogical trends and technological “advances” which can overwhelm any instructor wanting to remain current in their practice. It’s my belief that individuals and institutions which adopt and use a common, consistently applied set of teaching and learning principles will have an easier time staying grounded.

Finding Principles that Resonate

So, which principles to follow?

For me, Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) 7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education have aged well. Research and experience continue to affirm the simple message that

“Good practice in undergraduate education:

  1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
  2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
  3. Encourages active learning.
  4. Gives prompt feedback.
  5. Emphasizes time on task.
  6. Communicates high expectations.
  7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.”

For the most part, these principles speak to faculty as teachers, informing our teaching behaviors. But faculty, especially in the community college system, are also designers of learning experiences and environments. Some have taken Chickering and Gamson’s principles as starting points to provide teaching and design guidance aimed at online instructors (see examples from VCU and from my own MiraCosta College).

Other useful principles focus on more specific aspects of learning, teaching, and the design of learning experiences and environments.

If you review every link above - good on you. Hopefully you’ll feel inspired and informed, and will start to see common threads that speak to you. Please don’t be overwhelmed. There is no expectation that you must be the master and fulfiller of every principle. As Thomas Angelo says, “It's up to individual faculty members to determine which principles apply to whom, when, where, and how.”

But I would love to hear if something above has inspired you. Which of these principles could be helpful to you personally? To your department? Your college? And if you have another set of teaching and learning principles you think is worth adding, please share here!

 

Online Teaching Confession from a Convert

streetlampsI mentally stomped my feet when our counseling faculty recommended that, to better accommodate students, I offer my English 101 course, which is contextualized for first responders and administration of justice majors, online.  

But I’m an English professor, I thought.  My bread and butter is helping students tease nuance out of text. My job is to steer them toward recognizing a strong critical interpretation while I watch for faces to blink on like a row of streetlamps, circling back to any that are still flickering. In my discipline, I sit with students, knee to knee, eye to eye, and ask them to “read that back to me,” so they can discover for themselves where their prose falters and, together, we can figure out how to improve it. None of this is online work. This is real human connection in the real human world.

After thinking through my discipline-based worries, it appeared I had epistemological ones as well! Isn’t face to face something that our younger students need more of anyway? Don’t they spend enough (way too much!) time on their devices already? And aren’t the socio-emotional skills that are derived from our courses the skills needed to navigating the real world? Such as the skills of problem-solving and working together that come from cooperative learning. Such as the ability to engage in respectful, challenging dialogue with others. Such as the skill of artfully and persuasively expressing their ideas to others.

Yes!

And no.

Making a Mindshift

I have been teaching for some time in the manner in which I settled on in graduate school pedagogy courses. My face-to-face classes mostly go very well. I thrill in the strides my students make, in the many recommendation letters I write, and in the students who keep in touch over the years, and who attribute some of their success to what they learned in my courses. Yet, in my resistance to online teaching, I was neglecting three crucial tenets of teaching: meet students where they are, use content and methodologies that are authentically relevant for students, and let data inform pedagogy.

After a little light research, I began to understand that the skills of critical analysis and expression are needed, perhaps in even more abundance, in the written world (a world whose presence has, perhaps most surprising to us English instructors who were told it was disappearing entirely, only increased). Students are communicating greater and greater portions of their lives through the written word. Between texting, emailing, and social media of all sorts, they are navigating much of the public sphere, the work sphere, and their intimate social spheres, through reading and writing. And I came to believe that students are not being challenged well enough around their virtual written presence.

So I decided to give this online thing a go.

Learning from Peers

Now, I am not afraid of serious effort. I love a good challenge. The phrase it’s going to be a lot of work is more likely to make my eyes light up than to scare me. But online teaching nearly did me in! As many of you know, online differs radically from face-to-face teaching. In order to make my courses meaningful and steer my students toward the outcomes that my face-to-face students achieve, I had to rethink everything.

I was lucky to have friends and colleagues in the DE world who could mentor me. I was able to look at archived examples of online courses that showcased the best and the worst of what can be done in the online format. I saw courses whose instructors who were clearly “phoning it in” and teaching the dreaded “correspondence course.” Those courses echo the most jaded beliefs about online teaching -- that online instructors simply “set it and forget it,” loading a course with multiple choice quizzes and pre-recorded lectures and letting a machine take over. But I also saw courses of great beauty – courses where I wondered how the instructor had time to sleep or eat, so hearty was the ongoing engagement, feedback, and “real-time” response targeted toward each student.

In viewing these outstanding courses, I saw possibilities for a shift in my own discipline-based pedagogical assumptions. What if, instead of looking students in the eye, and prizing their ability to verbally articulate their ideas, what if I were to meet students at their written words and, through a steady stream of “low-stakes” writing assignments, guide them toward thoughtful expression which carefully considers a variety of perspectives and evidence? What if I could go one step further and, through requirements, rubrics, and feedback on their feedback, teach them how to evaluate the written expression of others for these same traits?

Embracing the Differences Online Learning Provides

Thus began my conversion to becoming an online instructor in earnest. Through workshops, trainings, and trial and error, I learned that careful, creative, objective-oriented planning, and consistent communication and follow-through, can create a learning environment in which students can go as far, and perhaps further, than in a face-to-face environment.

In my online courses, students experience a near-daily stream of individualized, yet public, feedback on their writing, as well as private feedback on higher stakes writing assignments. I am able to guide students not only in their own writing assignments, but also in how to provide guidance to other students, who then use that to provide further guidance, which in turn has its own feedback loop, from me, and from peers. And if that sounds like the verbal equivalent of an M.C. Escher painting, I admit that managing the class does sometimes feel just like that. Yet, although class management is complex, the payoff is astounding. I have been seeing students make leaps in achieving clear, thoughtful analysis much earlier in my online classes than in my face-to-face classes. And I am seeing a pattern of stronger overall gains as well.

That discovery alone has been extraordinary. Additionally, I have learned how important online teaching is to student equity. Online courses are a way to level the playing field for students with disabilities, for students with work and family commitments that preclude commute time and campus involvement, and for students with intermittent or “on demand” jobs whose schedules are not consistent.

On the other hand, I am finding online teaching to be more time consuming than face-to-face teaching. While this is certainly a challenge, I’m also energized and motivated by my own feelings of discovery and exploration. Online teaching is newly charted territory and there is a lot to learn, with new data, new or improved technological tools, and pedagogical innovation happening all the time. It is clear to me that there are new discoveries yet to be made, and I am honored to be working with the DE mavericks at my institution, and at @ONE and the OEI.

It’s hard to believe how resistant I once was. These days, when I log into my online courses, I see a vibrancy of student connection and learning. It reminds me of a row of streetlamps coming on, virtually but brightly, one by one.

 

How Snapchat, Zombies, and Twitter Can Humanize Learning

 

How Snapchat, Zombies, and Twitter Can Humanize Learning

Recently, I sat down with Mike Smedshammer from Modesto Junior College to discuss his thoughts about humanizing online learning. In our conversation, he shared why this topic is so important to him and the students we serve in the California Community College system. He also shows how he used Snapchat, Twitter, and zombies to make himself more approachable.

Research about online learning shows that having an engaged, caring instructor is a critical part of supporting the success of college students, regardless of a course's modality or the type of institution a student attends. A recent Gallup poll showed that college graduates who recall "having a professor who cared about them as a person, made them excited about learning, and encouraged them to pursue their dreams" had more than twice the odds of being engaged in their work and being personally fulfilled. In fact, that poll showed that meaningful, supportive relationships with instructors played more of a role than the type of institution the student graduated from.

When we hone in on this topic and apply it to students who attend community colleges, it becomes an even more vital component of student success. At community colleges, we serve more students who are the first in their family to attend college. First-generation college students often experience self-doubt, come from lower income households, work full-time, and juggle a complex array of family responsibilities. Further, a 2017 report from Community College Equity Assessment Lab (CCEAL) found that about half of the 2.1 million students enrolled in California's community colleges have worried about where their next meal will come from and one in three feel uncertainty about where they will sleep tonight.

When underserved students learn online, the importance of having an approachable, caring, supportive instructor becomes even more critical. Studies show that community college students who learn online are more likely than face-to-face students to report needing to teach themselves, which is a result of having a poor connection with their instructor. On the flip side, online community college students who report having an instructor who cares about them are more likely to succeed in their class.

The evidence is clear. Instructor-student relationships improve student success, especially in online community college classes.

Creating a safe, trustworthy environment in which our underserved students feel comfortable to approach their instructor, ask questions, and share their challenges is an important part of serving a diverse student population. But when you teach online, you must deliberately and mindfully craft your human presence through the use of digital tools, which can feel like a daunting task. Fortunately, there are plenty of tips and strategies to consider. And @ONE has you covered with a new course coming this spring!

Enjoy the video of my chat with Mike. We invite you to share a comment at the bottom of this page. We'd love to hear your thoughts about the topic of humanizing.

Managing Microagressions for More Inclusive Online Learning

I am sure some of us have a story (or 6 or 20) describing incidences in which a teacher or another student made us feel inferior, or out of place, or just plain dumb. Maybe such an incident created an evaluation of yourself that altered your academic identity and intellectual performance. I remember my high school teacher telling me that girls don’t succeed in Chemistry because it’s a man’s job. And when an undergraduate classmate told me I could never go to Wesley College because it’s only for rich women. And what about those movies from the 80’s? I never saw a Latina represented in a positive role. Come to think about it, I never saw one represented in any role.

Did these messages affect my academic choices? Absolutely. I gravitated to the discipline of Ethnic Studies, an area in which I felt safe. But to be clear, I am happy where I am today. After all, I have a full-time, tenured position in Ethnic Studies. Yet, I often wonder what could have been. These formative messages I received are examples of microaggressions.

Lifelong Dangers of Microaggressions

Microaggressions can be overt, covert, and/or unintentional. Either way, messages can inflict injury or insult. Microaggressions communicate realities, definitions and expectations. Yet, many folks resist understanding or accepting microaggressions because many feel identifying microagressions creates victims and fuels the ideas of liberal college professors

The question I’d like to pose here is, “Is it wrong to provide students with a space to ‘call out’ hurtful statements?” My Ethnic Studies degree inspires me to scream, “No!” Students who are aware and confident in airing their grievances are a sign of progress. But are institutions listening or instigating?

Institutions of higher education must practice vigilance in day-to-day instructor-student and student-student interactions. Providing safe spaces encourages trust, mutual respect and authentic care. These are essential to student success, especially since most of our students have lives that are very different from ours. Here is why enabling a safe space is key to students lifelong success.

Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Threat

Many community college students are confronted by two dangerous, alienating forces that are augmented with microaggressions: the “imposter syndrome” and the “stereotype threat.”

Symptoms of the imposter syndrome are feeling like one does not belong, is undeserving, unaccomplished, and not welcomed in a college setting. Do you remember feeling dumb in a group setting because everyone around you made you feel less than? If not, you’re lucky. If you have, it probably still haunts you.

The stereotype threat is the debilitating feeling one gets from the constant fear of playing into a stereotype about people from one’s identity group. Remember feeling like you represented your whole community and your failure would make them look bad? Well, the fear of this self-fulfilling prophesy can cause extreme anxiety.

How can instructors strive toward a safe learning space in an online environment?

Creating Expectations for a More Inclusive Online Learning Environment

Some might say that an online environment may create a virtual veil free from racial and gender identities. After all, there is no face-to-face contact and students can be careful about what they write in discussion forums. Let’s call it impression management. It’s a social media behavior. However, from the instructor’s vantage point, it is vital to establish a safe space zone for all learners. So I have some recommendations that are ever-evolving but can inspire a start:

  1. Establish an anti-microaggression netiquette. Don’t enable a tone deaf ear to microaggressions. Instead, do some research and identify examples of it in pop culture, curate some engaging articles defining microagressions, and create a mandatory “Welcome Ice Breaker Check-In Assignment.” Have students authenticate themselves in the class (a good idea for a future blog post). Know that you, the instructor, have your own implicit biases and may not be able to identify a manifested microaggression. From the very beginning of the course, encourage your students to inform you when they feel a microaggression went undetected or was ignored.
  2. Do not misinterpret poor participation in group work. Communicate with all students individually and ask them about their experiences accessing the project’s information and communicating with their group members. Establish clear directions and expectations.
    Follow the breadcrumbs. If you discover evidence of a microaggression in a discussion forum, read all previous comments. Aggressors may be repeated offenders and might enable others to continue the offense. Understanding the factors that surrounded the microaggression helps evaluate the next steps strategically rather than reacting emotionally.
  3. Lean on your peers. Accept and understand that all instructors struggle with the line between freedom of expression and confronting offensive content. So instructors need to keep reaching out to colleagues, research and maybe even constructing classroom climate surveys to explore how to reduce the proliferation of macro-level prejudices through microaggressions.
  4. Add meaning. As you begin to learn about your student population, be aggressive with your academic discipline and include content, data, images and/or narratives representing all of your students as genuine and essential stakeholders of the course. One story, data set, or image can inspire success or enable empathy.

Do you have a suggestion to add to this list? Or a reflection to share about how micro aggressions have affected you? I warmly invite you to leave a reply below to keep the conversation going!

Learning Quirks: How Macaroons & Pinterest Made Me a Better Teacher

Learning Quirks: How Macaroons & Pinterest Made Me a Better Teacher

To have a craft means you have something to offer/produce through a skill. To have a craft takes practice, exercise and discipline.

Well… learning is a skill.

Most of us in academia believe the university gave us permission to be the expert in our craft by jumping through their required hoops. Once we are done jumping, we graduate and place our diploma in our office so people can see it and think, “They are legitimate.”  I admit I have my degrees hanging in my wall. I paid a lot of money for them. But does that mean I should stop learning?

Instructors Are Learners Too

“Disciplines don’t change. But the way teachers design learning experiences for students must change.”
-John Landis, Apple, Keynote Speaker at the 2017 Directors of Higher Education (DET/CHE) Conference

How do you, as a college instructor, ensure your teaching adapts to meet the needs of your students’ learning? I have found that trying new tools enables me to uncover new teaching strategies. For example, I discovered a new way to learn with Pinterest. My Pinterest venture started with my quest for a single recipe – french macaroons. I was curious to understand WHY macaroon are so expensive, so I decided to learn how to make them. That curiosity led me to Google and Google led me to Pinterest.

Embracing Our Learning Quirks

I am a product of 70’s & 80’s inner-city public school. My K-12 experiences taught me to shut up, have “quiet hands and a quiet mouth.” Therefore, I was a solitary type of learner. I was taught that I should not ask for help, work with others, or speak up. However, using Pinterest gave me a chance to experience the value of socially-constructed online information and put it into my own practice. At first, I was just a Pinterest voyeur. But as I browsed, I began to interact. And that led me to failures and successes, which empowered me to identify the quirks of my own learning. I started clicking on links associated with macaroons and soon I was making macaroons, beignets, soba noodles, my own shampoo, lipstick, deodorant, makeup remove. I became addicted to learning.

I could follow directions no problem, but I discovered much more value in the reviews, tweaks, and suggestions made by other Pinterest users. Through Pinterest, my learning was enhanced by the learning of others. As I was given access to this socially constructed knowledge, I realized I was becoming empowered to understand and value my own individual quirks.

I don’t like salty food.

I don't like very sweet pastries.

I have sensitive skin.

I have thick curly hair.

I’m a quirky gal.

Quirks are peculiar habits. Habits in learning are part of our identity and we all have peculiar ways of learning. Identifying and understanding our own learning quirks can helps us become more empathetic to our students' needs. What kind of learning quirks do students have? Some might identify learning styles as quirks. Here are some learning quirks as defined by the fabulous Howard Gardner. If you want to learn more about Howard's multiple intelligences theory I recommend "Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice.”

Learning Styles: What’s Your Learning Style? Verbal - Words are your strongpoint. You prefer to use words both in speech and in writing. Visual- You prefer to use pictures, diagrams images and spatial understanding to help you learn. Musical / Auditory - You prefer using sounds or music or even rhythms to help you learn. Physical / Kinesthetic - You use your hands, body and sense of touch to help you learn. You might act things out. Combination - Your learning style is a combination of two or more of these styles. Solitary - You like to work alone. You use self-study and prefer your own company when learning. Social - You like to learn new things as part of a group. Explaining your understanding to a group helps you to learn. Logical / Mathematical - Learning is easier for you if you use logic, reasoning , systems and sequences.

Applying Learning Quirks to Our Teaching

Now I ask students to identify their own learning quirks. This helps me design my instruction and communicate with individual students. And when I struggle, I use Google for inspiration to empower me to discover more of my learning quirks and disrupt the limited views about learning that are often a result of K-12 experiences. Today, one way I develop my craft in learning is through Pinterest. By learning how to make the perfect macaroon, I tapped into other learning styles I never knew I had.

Join me!