All posts by Rose Tirotta-Esposito

Join us! The Faculty Commons in the Melville Library (E1332)

Updates

Updated: 11/8/22

The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) would like to invite you to join us in the Faculty Commons in the Melville Library (E1332). We are excited to collaborate with you in this space this fall and beyond.

The Faculty Commons will be available for faculty to collaborate with CELT and with each other. 

Hosting a presentation? Meeting with a group of faculty to discuss active learning? Need a space to work on course development? Schedule the Faculty Commons via R25. Please submit your request at least 48 hours in advance. Email celt@stonybrook.edu with questions.

Faculty Commons

The Faculty Commons will host workshops, discussions, and events. 

Interested in scheduling a workshop or discussion for all faculty? Email celt@stonybrook.edu! Some suggestions would be: a workshop about ways to engage students in a large class, a faculty book club, or a discussion about the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The Faculty Commons will be open for drop-ins.

The Faculty Commons will have drop-in hours where faculty can stop by to discuss teaching and learning with one of our experts. Check our Faculty Commons calendar for more information. You can also schedule a consultation at a time convenient for you by emailing celt@stonybrook.edu.

Staying Safe.

In order to stay safe, we request that you wear masks while you are visiting the Faculty Commons. Also, coffee/tea service is not available at this time. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

2020-2021 COVID Teaching Hero Award: Congratulations to Dr. Georges Fouron

Equity and Inclusion, Online Learning, ,

Rose Tirotta  Rose Tirotta, Ed.D., Associate Director of Teaching Excellence

Dr. Georges FouronOn May 6th, 2021, Dr. George Fouron won the 2020-2021 COVID Teaching Hero Award at CELT’s Celebration of Teaching. 

Despite the challenges involved in moving to a remote teaching environment, Dr. Fouron displayed grace under pressure as he adapted to teaching over Zoom where he demonstrated compassion and empathy for his students while maintaining academic rigor and teaching effectiveness. In referring to the educator John Dewey, Dr. Fouron remarked that teachers “shouldn’t be strangers to the realities of students’ lives.” Teaching during the pandemic taught him that students are resilient in the face of difficulties, and often says that he is not interested in having students agree with his views, but rather he wants students to be able to articulate their own perspectives as both teachers and learners.  His calm and determined demeanor throughout a difficult semester was inspiring not only to his students but to all of us here in CELT.  

I had the opportunity to sit in on two of Dr. Fouron’s courses and was impressed by the way he facilitated his courses. Dr. Fouron consistently asked for student feedback and, most importantly, asked students to share their stories. Dr. Fouron also had many interesting and powerful stories, which addressed race, gender, and class, among other issues. Any questions that were asked were addressed positively and I felt like his class formed a strong community with each other, overcoming the challenges that COVID pressed upon them. Starting each class he also addressed the students saying that this class was for them, that every student had a voice, and that voice had the right to be heard. 

What I think was the most powerful is that Dr. Fouron, after being a target of some horrible “Zoom-bombing” experiences, was able to accept me (and others) into his class for the semester and meet synchronously. He continued to teach Socratically and support his students during this difficult time (COVID) which provided them a sense of  community.

Thank you Dr. Fouron, and congratulations!

Online Teaching Certificate (OTC) Courses Start in October!

Instructional Design, Online Learning, Updates

Join the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) for one of our Online Teaching Certificate (OTC) multi-week courses:

Please register in advance. Email celt@stonybrook.edu if you have any questions.

path through fall trees
Image by Valiphotos from Pixabay

Congratulations to Sue Ryan! Our 2021 Excellence in Assessment Awardee!

Assessment,

Sue RyanSue Ryan, an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Development and a distinguished soccer coach who led the SBU women’s soccer program from a Division III program to a perennial contender in Division I in the America East Conference,   leading the team to 229 victories, is a familiar face at many of our sessions. Her background as a professional soccer coach informs her teaching in her graduate courses in leadership. She sees her role as meeting students where they are and that it is “her responsibility to take them someplace new; a new place of thinking, collaboration, and self-discovery.” 

In her course on Effective Professional Action & Leadership, Sue has several innovative assessments that help students make connections to course concepts. She uses the discussion boards to have students post lyrics to a song that reflect their values and thinking. Sue also has students select someone from history that exemplifies leadership for a case study analysis. Sue has found that connecting the curriculum to students’ own lives leads to real engagement and transformation for students. 

CELT would like to thank Sue for being engaged with us and would like to congratulate her on being awarded the 2021 Award for Excellence in Assessment at CELT’s Celebration of Teaching this past spring. 

 

Using Polling with Zoom?

Educational Technologies
Join our partner, DoIT Training, at their Mini Byte (short online training) on Zoom Poll data tomorrow, Wednesday, 7/21 at 10am!

The way Zoom poll data downloads is not easy to read or use: Pivot tables to the rescue! Learn how to analyze Zoom Poll Data using Pivot Tables to better see how attendees responded.

Please register in advance and check out DoIT’s other upcoming Mini Bytes!
Did you have questions about how to best use polls as formative assessment in your classes? Request a CELT consultation!
Missed the session? Watch below!

Reflections on Remote Teaching

Instructional Design, Online Learning, Updates,
multiple lightbulbs
Image by chenspec from Pixabay

In March 2020, the pandemic pushed all faculty and students to a remote teaching reality. CELT is hosting two online conversations where faculty members can get together to talk about what worked well, what they might want to incorporate into their teaching practice moving forward, and what they wish they had known back then.

When you register, you will have the option to respond to three reflective prompts. Using those responses, we will take a deeper dive into what actions faculty can take as they prepare to teach in the fall.

Your responses will remain confidential and will only be shared in aggregate as part of our study on the overall effectiveness of CELT. Your participation in this study is voluntary and you may continue to participate in CELT services even if you withdraw from the study of its effectiveness.

Register in advance to attend either of the CELT Reflections on Remote Teaching. Even if you cannot attend, register so that you can receive the recording and resources.

 

Congratulations to Dr. Virginia Coletti

Online Learning,

Jennifer Jaiswal  Jennifer Jaiswal, Instructional Designer & Sr Instructional Technologist 

Dr. Virginia Colletti

Congratulations to Dr. Virginia Coletti who received the Excellence in Teaching a Synchronous Online Course award at CELT’s Celebration of Teaching Awards on May 6, 2021, for development of HNI 373, online, Psychosocial Mental Health Nursing. This course, when taught face-to-face, enrolled about 80 students each term it was scheduled. When COVID-19 shut down the HSC last spring Dr. Virginia Coletti, Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, collaborated with CELT to develop a synchronous version of the course that would support active learning.

In changing a course with many practical and active learning components in it, she started with the learning outcomes. Working with Jennifer Jaiswal from CELT she created new learning objectives for each session of the course that would serve the students as a measure for what they would be learning and engaging with each week. Redesigning the learning outcomes allowed her to narrow down the topics to what was essential and ensure that all activities were aligned with the course level outcomes.

Once the course was redesigned and reorganized, a question arose: when should the content be delivered? Psychosocial Mental Health Nursing is a 6 credit course with 3 credit hours of in class lecture and work and 3 credit hours of clinical experience. Virginia worked closely with her clinical instructors to move content between the weekly class and the clinical experience to ensure the learning outcomes were met each week. Group texting with her 10 instructors ensured that they knew what was covered each week in lecture and what needed to be covered during the clinical sessions.

One of the major changes in the course was to take time to show processes, such as making nursing diagnosis, or hosting group therapy sessions, before requiring students to complete the task. Previously these would be completed in person with students asking questions as they worked through the process. In her Zoom sessions, Virginia scaffolded her lessons so that she could walk students through the project before allowing the students to complete the project on their own. This led to more insightful comments about the nursing process and patient care.

Virginia recommends:

  • 6 seconds of silence to give students time to think, reflect and respond to questions,
  • Don’t forget to look at yourself in Zoom as you speak, ensure you are expressing yourself correctly and that students are able to see you,
  • Using breakout rooms for group activities, try to visit each group for a short period of time
  • Communicate well and often with your Clinical Instructor, TAs, and/or Co-Instructors,
  • Use written Announcements more frequently in Blackboard to address student questions,
  • Find out more about your student’s needs. Do they like recorded content, what types of notes and making your presentation files and lecture notes available. (Recordings, Notes, Presentations)

What students appreciated the most about the course was when Virginia would take time to listen to the students about their concerns. Using formative evaluations and communicating frequently with students through the semester allowed Virginia to assess when things may need to be changed,  make adjustments to how and when content would be covered, and when to take a break in the course to give students time to prepare.

Congratulations to Virginia. CELT is delighted to have honored her work. If you missed it, you can watch the entire ceremony. 

CIT 2021: Working Together to Prepare all Students for a Lifetime of Learning

Assessment, Educational Technologies, Online Learning, Updates, , ,

ipad with cupFrom May 25th-27th, the SUNY Center for Professional Development hosted the annual Conference on Instruction and Technology (CIT), which took place virtually this year. The theme for CIT 2021 was “Working Together to Prepare all Students for a Lifetime of Learning” and included the following tracks:

  • Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion
  • Emerging Technologies and Digital Strategies
  • Measuring Effectiveness
  • Open Education
  • Pedagogically Speaking

The Keynote speaker was Jesse Stommel, Ph.D, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington, co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy and co-editor of Disrupting the Digital Humanities. In addition, there were concurrent short talks, poster sessions, exhibitions sessions, and FACT2 Excellence awards. With the shift to remote learning during the pandemic, many presentations focused on innovations in online learning and teaching including strategies for large enrollment online classes, gamification, Open Educational Resources (OERs), equitable assessments, tools for engagement online, and effectively teaching music/art virtually. 

There were many great tips and resources presented, so we hope you explore the recordings here! 

 

David L. Ferguson Award for Inclusive Teaching: Joseph M. Pierce

Equity and Inclusion, ,

Carol Hernandez  Carol Hernandez, Senior Instructional Designer

This year CELT introduced a new award, the David L. Ferguson Award for Inclusive Teaching.

Dr. Joseph M Pierce The inaugural awardee is Joseph M. Pierce from the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature. Dr. Pierce focuses his teaching on transparency and invites students into a conversation where they can engage critically with difficult topics. In doing so, it allows students to situate themselves in relation to an author, a body of work, a canon, or a discipline. In his Decoloniality and Queer Studies course, he challenges students to question some of the disciplinary boundaries that he learned in graduate school. Dr. Pierce stated that, “the knowledge that is taken as standard and normative has often been produced through violence and erasure, and by questioning intellectual standards, it opens up the possibility to ask questions that students haven’t had the opportunity to ask, but that brings students into a more ethical relationship with the scholarship.” 

Dr. Pierce is Associate Professor of Latin American and Indigenous Studies. For his course, SPN 405 Issues in Hispanic Cultural Studies/SPN 532 Interdisciplinary Approaches to Hispanic Studies, he demonstrates all of the criteria for this award. Beyond the content, which focuses on Hispanic Visual Cultures/Decolonial Visuality in Latin America, he demonstrates a commitment to inclusive teaching and learning in his practice both inside and outside the classroom. For example, in the syllabus for this course. He is explicit in his own self-reflection on the choices he makes in the course content. He explains why he is choosing to assign readings in Spanish rather than the English translation as a way to address privilege in the academic publishing industry. He provides metrics on gender, race, and ethnicity of the authors assigned. As a way of helping students to feel ownership and a sense of belonging in the learning process, he assigns them to grade their own participation based on written expectations. His assignments include a variety of activities for students to read, annotate, write reflections, study images, and create cognitive maps. He provides an opportunity to submit one late assignment and calls it a “life happens” exception that students can opt for without needing to provide an explanation. In addition to the evidence in his syllabus, Dr. Pierce is a generous public scholar who works to inform the SB community on issues related to diversity, underrepresented populations, and white privilege in the academy.

This award was named after the late David L. Ferguson, who was a Distinguished Professor, former Chair of Technology and Society, and the founding director of Stony Brook’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Dr. Ferguson was a leader in and out of the classroom, driven by his lifelong interest in building diversity in STEM disciplines, and in securing the federal funding to achieve that goal.