Google Calendar invitations will be sent to registrants and all sessions will be held on Zoom.
Seminar 6: Course Design Considerations
What is Backward Design? How can it help you plan/align all the elements of your course or lesson?
Wednesday February 2nd, 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Facilitator: Kimberly Bell, PhD – TA Development Specialist, CELT
Seminar 7: How Do Selected Learning Theories Support Pedagogy? What are Constructivism & Metacognition & how can you incorporate them into your teaching?
Wednesday February 16th, 3:30 – 5:00pm
Facilitator: Kimberly Bell, PhD – TA Development Specialist, CELT
Seminar 8: Effective Teaching Online
How can you engage students online, both in asynchronous and synchronous courses and sessions?
Wednesday March 3rd, 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Facilitator: Kimberly Bell, PhD – TA Development Specialist, CELT
Seminar 9: Panel Discussion with IRACDA Postdocs
How have our IRACDA Postdoc implemented what they learned in these seminars? Ask your questions!
Wednesday March 16th, 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Facilitators: Panelists TBD
Seminar 10: Applying Your Pedagogy to Different Institution Types
How can you teach effectively at different institution types with different populations of students?
Wednesday March 30th, 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Facilitator: Kimberly Bell, PhD – TA Development Specialist, CELT
Jennifer Jaiswal, Instructional Designer & Sr Instructional Technologist
Am I the only one who has heard the collective groan when the class group work project is announced? Am I the only one who has had a terrible group work project, where I’ve been stuck writing the report or presentation on my own? Most students and faculty have had poor group work experiences. What are the reasons for having them in our courses?
As we prepare our students for the workforce, the National Association of Colleges and Employers have teamwork/collaboration as one of the top career competencies that employers are looking for college graduates to have. Working as a team also allows students to develop their competencies in: professionalism/work ethic, oral/written communications, leadership and more. These career competencies can all be developed through group work projects (NACE, 2019).
The group work assignments that we complete in our classes serve as a testing ground for how we should participate in groups in our professional lives after graduation. Assigning a group project with no guidelines or restrictions is not realistic and sets up groups for challenges. But what makes a good group project?
Guidelines:
Don’t assign a group project without a team plan. Planning ahead can help to make sure that everyone in the group has an idea of what the group will be completing and what their own individual responsibilities are. Using a Group Contract can help students think through the key features of a functioning team and what they each will be responsible for in the project.
Contracts should include:
Names and contact information: This helps to set up accountability and the ability to get in contact with each other.
Team roles and responsibilities: Each team member should take responsibility for part of the project and list its responsibilities in the contract. Team members may take on multiple roles as part of their project, but listing out what their responsibilities are helps to balance the workload upfront and create the timeline. Some examples are:
Leader – sets the agenda, sends reminders, and keeps team members accountable.
Researcher – gathers raw material for the group and cites sources; can be more than one in a team
Writer/Producer – connects the research together to tell the story
Editor – reviews the final draft for errors, references, and makes sure that it is ready to be sent to instructor or ready for presentation
Asking this at the beginning helps to avoid the conflict later.
This helps to set up accountability and a schedule for touching base over the course of the project.
You can also arrange your groups based on what times they are most available to help the group have a natural meeting time.
Timeline:
What are the tasks that need to be completed by each member of the group?
What is a reasonable time by which that task should be completed?
The Writer/Producer should work with the Researchers to set a deadline that gives them time to produce the project
The Editor should set the final timeline to make sure they have enough time to review and complete the project before the deadline.
Signatures:
All members should sign to show they agree with the written plan and turn a copy into the faculty member.
Getting Started:
If you are looking for a sample to get started see our Group Contract Template. This has suggestions for information that can go into your contract. You can make a copy and edit it to best meet your needs.
The description of your assignment should be clear and understandable with the knowledge that your students will have of the course and its content. It should be broken down into manageable tasks that students will be able to complete in the time allotted. Offering examples of previous projects that did well can also help students make sure they are not planning the scope of the project to be too big.
Creating a model where the group project can be evaluated on an individual basis can also help the group to function better. This shows that you are interested in all members completing tasks and working on the project together, and can help to prevent group members from becoming estranged, not participating or letting the other members carry all the weight of the project. For example, you can have a joint presentation but also have a reflection paper where students cover what they learned in the process of the project that can be evaluated for an individual grade. For more information and methods on assessing groups please see this article by the Eberly Center from Carnegie Mellon.
Reflection
Last but not least, ask your students to reflect on their process, the project, their participation, and other member’s participation. This gives the students the opportunity to alert you to any challenges in the group and if members were not participating equally. You can have reflections at multiple points throughout the project, not just at the end. Some sample questions you can ask are:
How is the team working as a whole? Are there challenges? What are they? How are they being resolved?
What have you been working on since the beginning of the project?
How have your peers been participating in the project?
What do you think of your own contributions to the project?
Thinking out the process of the group project and what the expectations are can help to make a better experience as students learn how to design and plan a project while learning how to manage and work with a team. For help with your group project please contact CELT.
Reference
NACE Staff. (2019, March 29). The four career competencies employers value most. National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/the-four-career-competencies-employers-value-most/
Be on the lookout for CELT’s Conversations on Inclusive Pedagogy. We will kick off the spring with a panel discussion about feminist pedagogy and the teaching practice.
Schedule a customized workshop!
In addition to our scheduled workshops, we are reaching out to share other topics that may be of interest to departments, small groups, and/or individuals. CELT would be pleased to schedule a session around one of the following topics or a customized topic of your choice.
Design Your Course for ALL Students! Not all students learn in the same way. Creating courses that allow for diversity in how we interact with the content helps students to find different ways to engage and to connect with the course material. In this course we will discuss Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and redesign a course activity to be more inclusive.
What Inspires You to Learn and Teach? Building a Foundation for Your Teaching Philosophy (For TAs and Postdocs): If you are a Postdoc or TA preparing for your future career, join us for this workshop. We will explore and share what learning and teaching experiences have impacted you, what the components of an effective teaching philosophy are, and you will participate in an activity that will help you begin to develop your own philosophy. You will also hear specific advice and strategies for writing your teaching statement for job applications.
Teach All of the Students in Your Course – Developing Inclusive Pedagogy: In this session we will reflect on the connections between social identity, privilege, and equity and how these can influence both you and your students. By becoming aware of our own biases and the identities that may be present in our students, we make great leaps in being able to manage our classrooms, prevent negative influences, and perhaps more importantly, develop strategies for open and honest communication to help us when we inevitably make mistakes.
Setting up Successful Group Work in your Online Course: The Phases of Engagement Model: By applying Conrad and Donaldson’s phases of engagement model, we can build student-to-student interaction in the online course and demonstrate productive group work and collaboration. These strategies have been shown to increase a sense of community and decrease feelings of isolation for students. Tools can include discussion boards, google documents, slides, infographics, and VoiceThread.
Jump Start Engagement with Active Learning: Active learning can improve student outcomes and keep students engaged during and in-between your class meetings. Getting started incorporating active learning, implementing it, and assessing its effectiveness can seem challenging. Join this workshop to hear more about why active learning works and strategies you can implement and assess easily in your courses right away.
Supporting Students’ Self-Regulation Skills in Your Course: In this workshop, we will go over the importance of self-regulation skills and how they are linked to academic achievement and academic success. We will also discuss how to model and help students develop these skills in your course.
Avoid Academic Dishonesty with Assessment: This workshop will introduce you to assessment strategies that you can easily implement to prevent cheating. You will find that small adjustments to your existing assessment strategy can help prevent cheating and encourage student success, both online and in-person.
Happy end of the semester and Happy Holidays! As you prepare for your January and spring classes, please keep us in mind if you would like to schedule a consultation.
While CELT is still available over the next few weeks, we will not be posting on the blog until January 11, 2022.
We wish everyone a safe, healthy, and relaxing break.
You often may hear the term engagement in an educational setting, but what do we mean by engagement?According to a popular framework, Fredricks et al, (2004) describes engagement as a multifaceted, mega construct including behavioral, emotional and cognitive components. It is considered to be malleable and responsive to the environment which means instructors can influence a student’s engagement in their course.
Overall, students who are engaged are more likely to be successful in their courses (Kahu, 2018) as there is research to support that engagement has a positive relationship with academic achievement (Fredricks et al., 2004, Kahu & Nelson, 2018). A recent framework developed by Kahu and Nelson (2018) seeks to expand upon the concept of engagement and describe the complex relationship between institutional factors and students’ backgrounds that influence students’ engagement. There are many factors involved including the University culture, policies, teaching as well as student motivation, skills, background and support. (See Kahu & Nelson (2018) for a more in depth review).
Kahu and Nelson (2018) found through their research four factors that strongly influence student engagement including self-efficacy, emotions, belonging and well-being. While these factors are not a definitive list, they are critical factors to consider. Here are some strategies you can use in your courses to help students increase their engagement based on these four factors.
Self-efficacy: This is the student’s belief in their abilities. If a student believes they can be successful, they are more likely to be motivated, persistent, and use appropriate self-regulation skills. To build students’ self-efficacy, instructors can:
build achievable assignments and assessments early on in their course to help build confidence
break down large assignments into smaller parts to make them more manageable
provide a well-organized syllabus and course with clear expectations
Emotions: Learning is an emotional experience and recent research is paying more attention to academic emotions. Students can be experiencing a wide variety of emotions from enthusiasm and enjoyment to frustration, anxiety, and boredom.
To build interest and enthusiasm instructors can:
relate the subject matter to real-world experiences
incorporate varied and frequent assessments and activities
allow the opportunity for choice when appropriate (but not too much choice!)
incorporate an appropriate level of challenge
To mitigate frustration, anxiety, and boredom instructors can:
present clear and direct instructions for assignments and assessments
avoid questions that are designed to intentionally “trick” students
break down long videos into 8-10 minute segments
provide a well organized syllabus and course with clear expectations
Belonging: Belonging is described as how connected a student feels to their educational environment or the degree of fit they perceive (Kahu & Nelson, 2018). To increase a sense of belonging, instructors can:
practice inclusive teaching by incorporating diverse perspectives, creating an inclusive classroom climate, and examining your own implicit biases
use welcoming language within your syllabus and classroom
Well-being: Well-being is influenced by a students’ stress level. Stress can come from both school and personal factors and all can affect engagement. High stress levels are linked to a decrease in motivation and lower levels of enjoyment (Kahu & Nelson, 2018). All of the strategies listed above can mitigate stress levels and increase a student’s sense of well-being and in the end, can increase a student’s engagement. In addition, instructors are encouraged to:
include resources to support services on campus including Counseling and Psychological Services, Dean of Students, Academic Advising and Academic Tutoring
If you are interested in learning more about incorporating any of these strategies into your courses, feel free to email CELT.
References:
Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59–109. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074001059
Kahu, E., & Nelson, K. (2018). Student engagement in the educational interface: Understanding the mechanisms of student success. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(1), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1344197
As everyone prepares for finals, I’d like to remind you that CELT is here if you need us! We are thankful for everyone we have the opportunity to work with.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Break and Happy Holidays!
Over time, faculty have been using more and more technology in their teaching. As we continue to live through the COVID pandemic, this has never been more evident. Here are some tips on how to be secure while teaching!
Share Your Screen Cautiously
When you share your screen, make sure you are only sharing what you want your students to see. Shut down your email and personal accounts, sign out of chat apps, and review what tabs and bookmarks are visible. If you are sharing your Blackboard account, show it in “student preview” so you don’t accidentally show the grade center or other sensitive information.
Protect Your Devices
You don’t want anyone to get a hold on the information on your laptop, phone, or mobile device, so be sure to always lock your screens in case you misplace a device.
Protect Your Logins
Speaking of passwords, be sure to use secure passwords for your SBU logins! Passphrases (very long passwords in the form of a sentence) work best – they are more challenging to hack into. Multi-factor authentication is also beneficial. You can request a Duo account from DoIT here if you don’t have one already, and make sure to set up the Duo application on your smartphone or tablet, which is the easiest to use when logging in. Also, remember to set up a second device if you have one, such as a tablet or desk phone using the self-service portal. Never show your screen while logging into an account. This may give an indication as to what your password may be, and some logins show the actual character before changing it to an unidentified character.
Click Cautiously
Be careful when clicking on links or opening attachments if you don’t know where they originated from. Tell students and colleagues you will only address emails sent to your SBU email address and sent from their SBU email address, so you don’t have to wonder who that suspicious email is from.
Model Safe Tech
Knowing how to use technology well is not always the same as using it safely. Those who grew up with technology being a part of their lives from a young age may not always give security the attention it deserves due to their increased comfort level. Others may overshare personal details about themselves without concern for the privacy or cybersecurity risks they may inadvertently expose themselves to. Model safety when using technology in your classroom and caution students when posting personal information online.
A year ago today, CELT launched its blog during National Distance Learning Week. I would like to thank the CELT staff and the faculty who have contributed to the blog over the past year. A big thank you to our readers as well!
Later today, at noon, you can join us for the CELT panel discussion: Gender Inclusivity and the Teaching Practice.
In this session, panelists discuss ways to acknowledge, incorporate, and include gender identity and sexuality in course design, readings, assignments, and assessments. In terms of gender, we include trans and nonbinary identities, the use of pronouns, and how our disciplines are adapting to gender inclusion. Panelists discuss how they incorporate these topics into their teaching practice and why. We also weave in online delivery for National Distance Learning Week.
Panelists include:
Mei Lin (Ete) Chan, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Chris Tanaka, Assistant Director of LGBTQ* Services
Andrew Rimby, Ph.D. Candidate and Queer Activist, English Department
Facilitators:
Carol Hernandez, Senior Instructional Designer, CELT
Catherine Scott, Assistant Director for Faculty Development – Testing, Assessment & Evaluation, CELT
This week is National Distance Learning Week (NDLW). If you would like to participate in NDLW, both SUNY and the United States Distance Learning Association are offering webinars:
We appreciate all the time you spend with us. If you have any suggestions for upcoming posts or if you would like to write a guest post, please reach out to us at CELT@stonybrook.edu
Image by U.S. Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/
The pandemic forced many, if not all instructors, to move their courses online or to a hybrid format. In that shift, questions of copyright have come up. In order to help instructors navigate through these questions, the SBU Librarians have created a newly updated Copyright Guide, a comprehensive resource that includes information specific to online teaching and learning.
Start with the copyright basics page to get a foundational understanding of U.S. copyright law, what is protected, and how. Copyright is a form of intellectual property law that protects original works of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture (U.S. Copyright Office, n.d.). Copyright protects both published and unpublished works. One or more authors or creators of the work hold the copyright except in cases where there is a “work-for-hire” agreement or a “collective work” where the authorship is transferred.
Instructors may want to know more about how and when they may legally and ethically use copyrighted works as part of their course materials without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. There are circumstances when this can be done under Fair Use. These include teaching, research, criticism, commentary, and news reporting. However, it is important to do a self-check to assess whether your intended use of the material falls under Fair Use. Consider these four factors:
What is the purpose and character of the use?
What is the nature of the original work?
What is the amount of the work you plan to use as compared to the work as a whole?
What is the effect of using the work or part of the work when on the protected work’s market or value?
What if you must ask for permission to use a copyrighted work? This guide walks you through the process. Keep in mind that you might not need to ask for permission if:
The specific use is covered by the fair use doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Law.
If you are teaching online, you may want to become familiar with the “Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act” (the TEACH Act) of 2002. TEACH is significant because it explicitly addresses the terms and conditions by which accredited, nonprofit educational institutions in the United States are able to use copyright protected materials for distance education, which includes websites and digital forms, without needing permission from the copyright owner or the payment of royalties.
What if you are already following copyright laws for your in-person course? Do you need to do something different for your online course? Fortunately, there is not too much difference in the way that copyright guidelines are applied. So as long as an instructor was following copyright laws for their face-to-face course materials, they will likely be in good shape for online course materials as well.
What is not covered by copyright law that I may be using online? Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, logos, ideas, concepts, systems or methods of doing something. For those items, you may want to look at trademark law, which is also a form of intellectual property law (Prakash, 2020).
Over time, faculty have been using more and more technology in their teaching. As we continue to live through the COVID pandemic, this has never been more evident. Here are some tips on how to be secure while teaching!
