Linking classroom to community with technology

Posted on September 17, 2018February 3, 2020

A geography workshop paired its students with nonprofit organizations to help solve critical community issues, offering a model of how to bring service learning into the classroom.

Sarah Elwood, Professor of Geography. Photo credit: Lisa Faustino.

Two fundamental questions help shape Professor Sarah Elwood’s approach to teaching a capstone course in the Department of Geography.

“What do I want my students to learn? And what does the world around us need?”
These are important issues for Elwood and the students who participate in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Workshop, an upper-level course that uses emerging technologies and the power of spatial data to tackle the critical needs of community organizations serving underrepresented populations.

“One of the many things we do in the geography department is to share with students our long-term commitment to public service and scholarship,” says Elwood, who has been widely recognized for her work inside and outside the classroom.

“We have a deep commitment to giving students meaningful assignments that engage them in community service and prepare them with the skills they need once they leave the University,” she says.

An example of that commitment was the most recent GIS workshop that Elwood taught, with about 40 students and two TAs working alongside organizations such as the South King County Food Coalition, Northwest Justice Project, Statewide Poverty Action Network, and Real Change News, a newspaper sold by the homeless in the Seattle area.

“All of the groups have pressing needs, and the urgency of the work makes the classroom experience real for the students,’’ Elwood says.

Linking class work to real world experiences is a valuable teaching and learning tool. And the UW geography department offers a model for other departments to emulate those experiences in their own workshops or classes.

It is certainly an approach that has worked well for the students, offering a tough challenge with a great payoff, said Jacqueline Ines, a former student who worked with the South King County Food Coalition, a group of 12 food banks collectively serving more than 35,000 families each year. The coalition partnered with the workshop to help find unserved potential clients and develop strategies to connect people in need to food bank services in a decentralized geographic area.

“This was one of my favorite projects to work on because it was equally fun and stressful to have a real-life audience to present our work to who would be utilizing the findings we ended up producing,” Ines says.

Mapping data to help communities solve problems

Geography students learn to use GIS — at its most basic, a software for gathering, managing and analyzing geographic data. And because it is deeply rooted in geography, that data is integrated into maps — where information is more easily brought to life.

Practically every field of study uses GIS to make maps that help them better understand an issue and solve problems. Whether someone is studying loss of habitat in the swamps of Florida, the effects of climate change on economically undeveloped island nations, or the opioid epidemic in the Midwest, you can bet that GIS tools are being used to map it all in order to understand the root causes and ultimately offer solutions.

These are some of the reasons Professor of Geography, Timothy Nyerges founded the workshop nearly two decades ago. He wanted students to use their GIS skills to gain a better understanding of environmental and sustainability issues. Elwood started teaching the workshop shortly after she came to the University in 2006, shifting the focus of her course to social justice and poverty issues. Today, professors take turns teaching the workshop, with topics switching back and forth. Professor Suzanne Withers will be teaching the workshop in spring 2019.

But no matter the field under study, Elwood says acquiring and working with data is difficult — and often quite expensive. That makes it inaccessible to community organizations, including food banks and environmental nonprofits, seeking to improve their decision-making. That’s where the partnership with the UW students comes in.

GIS has migrated to the web and cloud computing, and accessing, analyzing and applying the needed data is a complex undertaking. Putting a map together for use by a client such as a food bank requires specialized skills and teamwork, and GIS students are versed in a number of the technologies needed.

As geographers, says Elwood, “we bring the technical expertise, but our students quickly learn that our partners bring rich community expertise.”

How one student project showed food banks where to focus efforts

Consider the work of Ines and her fellow students with the food coalition, Elwood says.

“We use Census data in a lot of our GIS work,” Elwood said. “But the Census doesn’t ask, ‘Are you hungry?’ And that’s a fundamental question that needs to be asked if we are trying to analyze gaps in services in a particular community.”

The South King County Food Coalition was seeking to answer that fundamental question, as well as several others, when it started working with the geography department. The coalition has been considering whether to start a mobile van service to deliver food to some of their most vulnerable clients, including elderly residents living in isolated areas with no public transportation and single parents who have little time to travel to a food bank. But it needed to know where those clients were.

Ines and her team set to work. Using GIS, they identified and mapped regions in South King County that were underserved by the food coalition, explored the prospect of introducing a mobile delivery service to the Des Moines Area Food Bank’s operations, and compiled an analysis of data to locate potential long-term volunteers to help grow the coalition’s fresh produce at Elk Run Farm.

“While we all collectively worked on the end-product, we were able to split parts of the projects out to those who were comfortable extracting and analyzing the types of data we had to investigate for each individual part,” Ines said. “Two of my partners focused more on the bivariate choropleth map (a map that uses color to show quantities within a geographical area) because they did the most research on the data that was used to create that map, while another partner and I were primarily responsible for the hot spot map (a map that uses statistical analysis to define areas of high occurrence versus areas of low occurrence).

I think we created a helpful map for them,” she said.

And their work is likely to pay off in big ways, Elwood said. “They built a realistic model that showed a need in several areas.”

Ultimately, the workshop is not just about accurately mapping data. “We want our students to bring together what they have learned here over four years about technology, race, class and poverty,” Elwood said, “and integrate these lessons so they can effectively support communities that are often marginalized and underrepresented.”

Elwood’s top tips for successful community partnerships:

Look for opportunities to bring real world experience into the classroom

Elwood, and Nyerges before her, identified real world applications for what they’re teaching their students. “Our workshop is not just about geography,” Elwood said. “My students learn about social justice issues, public service and collaboration.” They suggest looking for real world applications in your field, such as what the Henry M. Jackson School of
International Studies did for its capstone projects.

Define the relationship

“I don’t use the language of ‘client.’ They are colleagues, project partners,” Elwood says about community organizations that agree to work with workshop participants. “We are working together to find solutions, so we strive to teach humility, and learn humility.” She also makes sure that any organization is committed to a long-term partnership with the UW. She suggests defining what the workshop needs as well as what partners need, and ask organizations to “Be a good partner to our students.”

Balance your teams

Students bring all kinds of experiences, and that’s particularly important in a workshop that relies heavily on tech tools. So make sure each student team is balanced, such as Ines’ team. And don’t overlook the intangibles. UW students come from all social and class backgrounds, and they have much to learn from one another. Help them recognize how these differences can make for a better team.

Learn More:

Read Professors Elwood’s and Nyerges’ biographies, visit a leading commercial GIS company’s showcase site to learn how different groups use the technology, check out how to make a bivariate choropleth map, and don’t miss Real Change’s article that includes GIS workshop data.

The “global flip”: a new model for international learning

Posted on July 31, 2018February 3, 2020

A new course add-on option adds short-term travel to international, online collaboration — helping more students to have rich global learning experiences, at home and abroad.

Teaching sustainability through international partnership

Kristi Straus, lecturer, Program on the Enivronment

Kristi Straus, lecturer in the College of the Environment, knew that her students could learn an enormous amount about sustainability issues if they could place them in more global context. But traditional study abroad programs aren’t always feasible, or accessible, for many students.

So when Straus was approached by the Academic & Student Affairs in Fall 2017 to design and pilot a new “global flip” course model, she jumped at the chance to add a short-term study abroad option to her introductory course on sustainability. Straus partnered with professors at Tsinghua University in Beijing to design an international — and internationally collaborative — component to her ENVIR 239 Sustainability: Personal Choices, Broad Impacts course. The 15 students who enrolled in the “global flip” option (of 80 total students in the course) worked alongside their peers in China to tackle real environmental issues in both countries — first online, then in-person — without the time or cost of traditional study abroad.

Using technology to “flip the classroom” on a global scale

Straus had long practiced the “flipped classroom”: in which students study course content outside of class via recorded lecture or course texts, and do more active learning during class time. The idea — increasingly popular nationwide — is that “flipping” makes best use of learning time, as instructors can support students through the more applied learning activities in the classroom.

A “global flip” course combines a flipped classroom with Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Sometimes called “virtual exchange,” COIL refers to any method that uses technology to bring global experiences into classrooms or curricula. In COIL courses, faculty in different nations loosely sync their curricula so that students collaborate on projects in international groups.

In Straus’ course, “flipping” a COIL course meant that students read materials and watched lectures outside of class; during class, they worked collaboratively amongst themselves and with their Tsinghua peers. Throughout the course, students on both campuses connected online — via WeChat, online discussion boards and video conferencing — to think critically about how personal choices affect social, economic and environmental sustainability. They shared their experiences with assignments and activities, and compared sustainability issues, policies and cultural norms in the U.S. and China.

“It is certainly innovative,” says Straus of combining COIL with a “flipped” classroom. “It helps us to learn together across boundaries, to use technology and the skills of our students, while also teaching our students multicultural, multi-disciplinary collaboration and problem-solving, virtually. I can’t imagine more important skills for this generation.”

Maximizing the short-term study abroad

UW Students at the Gaobeidian Waste Water Treatment Plant learned about how waste water is managed in Beijing. Photo credit: Shunxi Liu.

In addition, the “global flip” includes short-term study abroad — adding travel and on-the-ground applied learning to the experience.

At the end of the term, during exams week, the UW students traveled to Beijing for 10 days. Together with their Tsinghua peers, UW students attended lectures, went on field trips and collaborated on course projects. They saw Chinese sustainability efforts at work through field trips to industry and government labs, and vast solar and wind farms. They also explored Beijing, including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, to learn about Chinese culture and history, and to think about how cultural and political norms influence sustainability.

A short-term study abroad allows more students to access immersive international experiences. The cost of going abroad is much lower than a full-quarter program, and students with tight timelines to graduation or restrictive course requirements in their majors can more easily manage the travel schedule.

Placing learning in global context

For UW students, says Straus, there is enormous value in having cross-cultural conversations around pressing global challenges, including sustainability — whether those conversations take place online or in person. Students not only learn about another nation’s sustainability issues and policies, but they learn that sustainability has everything to do with cultural norms and ways of thinking about the environment.

Straus emphasizes that the diversity among both UW students and Tsinghua students enhanced everyone’s learning experience as well. About half of her 15 UW students were international students from China — and many of the Tsinghua students were international students as well, from Spain, Brazil, Hong Kong and elsewhere. For the UW Chinese international students, the course offered an opportunity to work with scholars at the prestigious Tsinghua, and to learn about environmental sectors in China where they might return to work after college. For all students at both universities, international and domestic students alike offered distinct insights around relationships between sustainability and culture.

A model with far-reaching impact

“This program is not just about environment and sustainability. It’s about comparing two countries and building a community of global citizens.”

— Mike Liu, class of 2018, Environmental Studies major

The “global flip” builds potentially long-lasting connections across institutions, faculty and even nations. “I see this program as planting the seed for future environmental collaboration between the U.S. and China,” says UW student Shunxi Liu, “and it was exciting to be part of it.”

This highly transferable model is inspiring others, across disciplines. UW instructors in departments ranging from English and Philosophy to Oceanography are currently seeking partners in countries around the world to teach global flip classes of their own. Proposed courses include titles such as PHILOSOPHY 149: Existentialism and Film and ENVIRONMENT 300: Diversity and Ecology of Coral Reefs.

“Global flip” tips

Sync schedules carefully. Syncing courses across nations means accounting for different scheduling challenges, such as time differences. But it also means making sure that academic calendars can be coordinated. In addition, advance planning is needed to make sure that assignments follow similar sequences, and that topics are introduced at a similar pace.
Set clear expectations for all partners. From the start, communicate with partner instructors to make sure expectations are clear for all sides (for example, what will collaboration look like? For students? For instructors?). Keep lines of communication open, and check in with partner instructors regularly.
Recruit early (and everywhere). A mix of student disciplinary backgrounds, and of international and domestic students, brings diverse perspectives and adds to everyone’s experience, says Straus. Make use of advisors and reach out to specific schools and colleges to recruit a wide range of students. Students can also be encouraged to apply for scholarships through the Office of Global Affairs — which can often cover the full cost of short-term study abroad.
Choose tools strategically. Decide what COIL platforms will be easy and accessible for students on all campuses to use. Also, get help from UW Academic Technologies, who Straus says were an enormous help in navigating the complex challenges of the Chinese firewall.

Watch the global flipped classroom video on YouTube.

Resources for faculty:

UW Study Abroad partners with faculty to develop, plan and run programs on programmatic, logistical, and health and safety fronts.

UW Bothell COIL Initiative: A fellowship program to support faculty and staff across UW’s three campuses to establish online international collaborations.

UW Tacoma COIL Fellows Program: A fellowship program that links UW courses with courses in different countries through real-time and asynchronous technologies.

Global Innovation Fund: A fund to provide initial support for initiatives and programs that enhance the UW’s global engagement and reach.

The Center for Teaching and Learning and Academic Technologies offer support for global teaching collaborations.

Bringing the ‘real world’ of language to the classroom

Posted on November 12, 2015November 12, 2015

Linguistics Professor Betsy Evans strategically deploys classroom technologies to help students grasp complex language theories

Photo of Betsy Evans — Betsy Evans, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics, uses Canvas with clickers to offer students multiple ways to help them see and share the real world of language.

Betsy Evans, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics, uses a number of technologies in her classroom to help students see and share the real world of language—deepening their understanding of complex linguistic theory.

These technologies include Canvas, UW’s learning management system, and clickers, an audience response system that allows an entire class to respond to questions displayed on a screen—with students clicking their replies with remote devices. Multimedia presentations, including video and audio recordings, help her explain subtle concepts to her students, such as listening for slight variations in language use across different cultural or societal groups, or how speakers shift when speaking to different audiences.

This strategic approach to using technology has paid off in big ways, allowing her students to get more out of her courses, inside and outside the classroom. Canvas also has allowed Evans to collaborate more effectively with her teaching assistants (TAs).

“The best effect is that [the technology] helps students relate the course content to the ‘real world’…

“It’s enabled me to not use classroom time for testing and to engage students with course content outside of the classroom,” Evans says. “But I think the best effect is that it helps students relate the course content to the ‘real world’ by seeing and sharing real occurrences of linguistic phenomena.”

Canvas supports online homework to save time and deepen student learning

Because a key element of her course content concerns regional patterns and dialects of the United States, the maps, videos and recordings Evans uploads to Canvas are all key learning aids. She and her TAs use Canvas to manage homework assignments, peer reviews, discussion boards, testing and grading, as well as an online evaluation system. Evans also shifted homework assignments online with multiple choice, pull-down menus, or open-ended questions. Students saw the connections between online material and in-class lectures and discussions, and they reported in course evaluations that the multi-pronged approach improved their comprehension of the subject.

For low-stakes homework assignments or quizzes on Canvas, Evans allows students to work together over the course of a week. She finds the ability to easily upload and share multimedia files and links particularly useful for creating and updating online homework quizzes.

“For example, one assignment presents students with voice samples of different pronunciations that they play and then answer questions about what they’ve heard,” says Evans. She is able to set a time limit for completing the assignment and then Canvas grades it automatically once the closing date arrives.

In another assignment, her students watch two videos of President Obama and are asked to think about his use of language in the different situations.

“So instead of only reading and writing about sociolinguistic phenomena, they can see or listen to speakers and use their knowledge to arrive at a better understanding of how it works,” she says.

Self-paced online practice benefits all students—especially English language learners

When students work at their own pace to complete a homework assignment, they are able to play recordings as many times as needed.

“We get a significant number of people for whom English is not their first language, so allowing them to do those activities on their own time is really helpful for them, partly because they haven’t been exposed to a lot of American English accents,” Evans says. “I think they feel like they really learn a lot even if it takes them longer.”

Flexible online assignments help TAs learn best-practice evaluations

Canvas helps Evans and her TAs automatically grade assignments and quickly evaluate which questions work better than others, making it easy to throw out a question that didn’t work and return points to all students. Collaborating through Canvas also helps Evans guide her TAs as they learn more about teaching while sharing the workload.

“Last quarter, I said to my TAs, ‘The Chapter 10 assignment didn’t work very well, so can you brainstorm some ideas about how we might make that better?’” says Evans.

The TAs analyzed why the questions weren’t effective, developed a new assignment, and then Evans worked with them to review and revise it before it was implemented.

Creating online tests with the Canvas quiz tool

Screen capture of Canvas — Evans uploads maps, videos and recordings to Canvas to use in homework assignments, quizzes and tests.

“What’s really changed for me in using Canvas with this class is the testing,” Evans says about how she now balances class time.

Using the Canvas quiz tool enables Evans to spend less of her class time on testing and more on lectures and discussions. With the tool, she can develop online timed tests with questions that randomly mix to make collaboration difficult among students.

Evans learned how to use the tool while participating in the Teaching with Technology Fellows program, a 2013-2015 pilot project led by the Center for Teaching and Learning and UW-IT to help faculty redesign courses to incorporate technology in ways that put learning first.

“I take advantage of multimedia and videos with homework assignments, but with online tests I don’t want to have to worry about some failure with a video or other problems. So since some of our content is about regional dialects and patterns of linguistics, I use maps and other static images to ask questions for tests,” says Evans.

Using clickers to reward in-class participation

While Evans manages an active discussion board through Canvas, sharing news items and recent media clips, she chose not to assign participation points for online discussions, instead rewarding in-class participation with clickers.

“I get class discussions going through using clickers with the audience response system,” she says. “I’ll ask three to six questions per class period, and students get points for responding to a question with clickers. It’s low stakes—they don’t have to have a correct answer—but it allows me to see if a big percentage of people aren’t getting something right, and we need to go over it again.”

Evans always begins class with a clicker question on a topic from the day before to refresh material. She also sometimes starts discussions by asking opinion questions and having students talk with their neighbors before answering with a clicker.

“It gives them practice for the test because the questions that I use in class for the clickers are the same type they can expect to see on the test,” she says. “It also breaks up the lecture. I really enjoy doing them.”

Evans also received positive feedback from class evaluations that the clickers were working. Students said the clickers “incentivized me to show up and pay attention,” with one student commenting, “I also liked the clickers because the questions helped to test us on our knowledge of what we had just gone over in the lecture.”

Through creative use of Canvas and clickers, Evans is able to get her students to think about course material—from current events to real Washington state accents—in multiple ways and apply that knowledge to the real world.

Evans’ top tips for integrating Canvas in a class and getting the most out of clickers:

1. Post videos online, providing examples that can be played multiple times

Students can replay examples as many times as they want, which lets students go at their own pace and evens the playing field for English language learners.

2. Spark discussion by asking a question students answer with clickers—and award participation points at the same time

Clickers allow class participation to be about more than simply showing up or posting a sentence in an online discussion. This technique also allows instructors to check for general understanding of a concept while accomplishing multiple teaching objectives.

3. Create and give online tests in Canvas, freeing up time for in-class discussion

This approach allows more effective use of class time while also providing an opportunity for instructors to evaluate how well test questions are working and make improvements.

4. Provide opportunities for TAs to easily practice their teaching style with guidance using Canvas

The flexibility of the Canvas platform allows TAs to develop lesson plans and try new quiz questions. Then they review data from Canvas with Evans to see how effective it was for students.

Classrooms without borders

Posted on October 1, 2015May 3, 2016

UW Bothell lecturer Ursula Valdez uses Facebook, Skype and other social media tools to bring together students in Bothell and Peru

UW Bothell lecturer Ursula Valdez learned social media can be adapted to the classroom for effective teaching and learning.

In spring 2015, Ursula Valdez, a UW Bothell lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, used readily available technology and social media tools to bring Peru and its people right into her Bothell classroom.

She teamed up with a colleague in Peru to teach the same class in two countries at the same time, creating a dynamic virtual learning community that encouraged students from vastly different backgrounds to work and learn together.

“Working with students who are thousands of miles away is not impossible anymore,” says Valdez, who is encouraging colleagues to consider launching similar classes. “We can be in China, in Egypt, in Peru or in a classroom in Seattle. It doesn’t matter. We can use all the offerings of the modern world to help us make global connections.”

“We can be in China, in Egypt, in Peru or in a classroom in Seattle…

Valdez’s class—From the Andes to the Cascades along the Pacific Coast: Environmental issues in Peru and the Pacific Northwest—was taught as an advanced seminar for 10 Bothell students. Valdez designed the class as a collaborative international learning experience, partnering with Dr. Armando Valdes-Velasquez, who taught a parallel class for his 20 students at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in the capital city of Lima. Both classes were taught in English.

“Collaborating with the Peruvian students online was an amazing opportunity that challenged my communication skills and significantly helped to prepare me for working with colleagues internationally,” says Kramer Canup, a UW Bothell student.

“This was an experience that made me realize how small I am in this world,” says fellow student Kanwal Yousuf, “yet there is so much one person can do to make a difference.”

Creating a study abroad experience without leaving home

To make the class a success, Valdez knew she needed students in her classroom and in Peru to engage in deep discussions on environmental issues that affect both their countries. And they had to interact and collaborate with one another to find potential solutions.

Valdez, who received her PhD in biology from UW, and her Peruvian colleague relied on social media tools that are ubiquitous around the globe to bring their classes together. They used Skype to create a single virtual classroom, allowing the students in both countries to make voice calls, chat and message, and also to conduct live video conferences over the internet. These sessions brought the parallel classes together as one, even as they were being held concurrently 5,000 miles apart.

To encourage and enrich further interactions among students outside the classroom, Valdez asked students to use social media tools such as Facebook and WhatsApp, a free instant messaging app for smartphones, which allowed students to talk to one another inside and outside the classroom.

There were communication challenges, for sure, but the efforts paid off in huge ways, says Peruvian co-lecturer Valdes-Velasquez.

“Designing and developing a course that took into account two distinct realities and two languages was a huge challenge,” he says. “And one of the most rewarding initiatives I have been involved in.”

Globally networked learning is possible

The seeds for Valdez’s class were planted a year ago, when she attended a UW Bothell Global Initiatives seminar and heard about the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellows program.

The fellowship supports UW faculty and staff from all campuses in developing multicultural learning environments that link UW classes to those at other universities across the globe. Instructors use various communication technologies to engage students from different countries, with lecturers from each country co-teaching and managing course work.

“…to create an international and intercultural learning community that broke boundaries.

With COIL, Valdez saw an opportunity. “I kept thinking about how I could bring some of these experiences from my native Peru to my students in Bothell. But I was also thinking about how I could bring the rich history and biodiversity of the Northwest to Peruvian students,” she says. “I wanted to create an international and intercultural learning community that broke boundaries.”

Valdez received a COIL fellowship to develop a collaborative international teaching and learning experience that focused on biodiversity, climate change and other important issues that face the Northwest and Peru. With assistance from Valdes-Velasquez, she spent several months designing her course.

“It was not difficult to find parallels between the two countries,” Valdez says. “Armando and I wanted students from each country to relate to each other’s problems.”

Valdez’s six suggestions for creating parallel classes

1. Find a committed teaching partner and connect with UW resources for support

Support is available for UW faculty and staff who want to pursue teaching globally. The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellows program can guide you on how to successfully carry out globally networked learning, from finding a faculty partner to gathering institutional support and negotiating course content with your teaching partner. Demonstrating her commitment to co-teaching, Valdez used her fellowship funds to bring Valdes-Velasquez to Bothell to help lead classroom discussions for a week, and she traveled to Peru to teach in his class as well. While having global connections was certainly helpful to Valdez—who grew up and studied in Peru and continues to teach there—they are not required.

2. Apply to be a UW COIL Fellow

UW faculty from all three campuses are encouraged to apply for the 2015-16 cohort of UW Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellows. Successful applicants will receive $2,000 in funding and individualized support to implement an international collaboration course.

3. Focus tightly on engaging topics that cut across borders

Finding areas of common interest to students in both countries is one of the most important components of any co-taught international class, Valdez says. Working together, Valdez and her teaching partner settled on four major topics for discussion that had parallels in both countries: biodiversity and iconic species of the Pacific Northwest and Peru; use of forest resources and the impact of human activities on habitat loss, conservation and the economy; mountain ecology and climate change; and fisheries and conservation.

4. Collaboration leads to higher engagement

Interaction and collaboration with Peruvian students was highly motivating for her class, Valdez says. It led to higher engagement with class materials and better learning outcomes.

“You begin to see things you didn’t see through the eyes of someone who may live in a very different society compared to yours,” says Yousuf, of UW Bothell. “You get to compare issues that happen around your area to issues that are happening around the world. I learned a lot about why our ecosystem is so important, but most importantly I learned why collaborating and researching with other people from other parts of the world is so important.”

Canup, a fellow student, agreed. “It was a truly unique interdisciplinary experience, with a diverse class structure that always kept me engaged and excited, as the class combined group discussions with students abroad, and outdoor workshops and field trips with professional conservation biologists.”

5. Social media is your friend

There are many ways to communicate across the globe but Valdez settled on Skype, both for its large number of communication features and because it is readily accessible to Peruvians.

So is Facebook, and Valdez decided to create a private group to allow students to share information outside the classroom.

Facebook post — Valdez posted often in a private group in Facebook for both classes to encourage discussions across borders—and got lively responses.

“I never imagined that Facebook would have been such a powerful tool for learning,” says Valdez, who posted often to encourage students to discuss issues.

COIL facilitator Greg Tuke was impressed by the use of Facebook. “It was so clear to me when I read the student Facebook exchanges that they were connecting with each other both from the head and the heart.”

“Anyone can research, then compare and contrast bioregions of the world,” Tuke says. “The information is easy to access. But as these students learned about their local bioregions and how it impacted people they now were getting to know, students started gathering and posting additional information to benefit each other, not just to get a better grade. That is motivated learning at its best.”

Valdez also created a blog for students to share their ideas, and during field trips to Mount Rainier and other Cascade Mountains destinations, she encouraged them to make short videos that could be shared with their Peruvian counterparts.

This diverse array of communication tools made it easier for students to exchange ideas inside and outside the classroom.

“Yes, there were language barriers, technical barriers, but students felt empowered,” says Valdez. “They could talk to one another, exchange ideas and have lively discussions. We used everything we had at our disposal to help them learn together.”

6. Move students to action

Valdez wanted her students to understand that research for research’s sake is not enough. She wanted students to take action that would encourage real change. So, students were asked to write articles and letters to editors and politicians to bring attention to environmental issues. At Bothell, students assembled a display table at the center of campus with information on protecting water quality in Puget Sound, and asked fellow students to sign a petition.

UW Bothell Students Petition to protect water quality in the Puget Sound — UW Bothell students set up an information table to discuss water quality issues in Puget Sound and asked fellow students to sign a petition to protect it.

The Peruvians took similar actions back in Lima. “We were able to do concrete things to solve problems such as writing letters to various authorities, whether the head of state, ministry of environment or fishery, and letters to the editor in magazines,” Peruvian student Romina Najarro says. “It was rewarding to have new ideas for problem solving, as well as cultural exchange among students.”

Beyond moving students to action, the joint classes showed the incredible potential of connecting students around the world.

“Watching my students explore the similarities between the past and current issues in Washington and Peru, engage in heated discussions with their US counterparts, and work jointly to come up with great presentations and great work has led me to believe that the skills to work internationally should be an intrinsic part of our career programs,” Valdes-Velasquez says. “It creates new and enriching opportunities for students and, most importantly, helps create a new kind of professional capable of generating global initiatives and answers to today’s problems.”

A classroom veteran tackling new technology

Posted on October 31, 2014October 12, 2016

Professor of Philosophy, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, shares how she transitioned to a hybrid-online class set-up

“I encourage collagues to take a workshop. When I go, I learn, I get refreshed, I get invigorated.” Lynn Hankinson Nelson Professor, Philosophy — *“I encourage colleagues to take a workshop. When I go, I learn, I get refreshed, I get invigorated.”*

**Lynn Hankinson Nelson**
Professor, Philosophy

There’s a learning curve in setting up a hybrid course, says Lynn Hankinson Nelson, “especially for those of us my age, with 35 years of teaching experience. But the support is wonderful.” Nelson, who was a Teaching with Technology Fellow in summer 2013, credits the staff at the Center for Teaching and Learning, UW Information Technology, and UW Educational Outreach (UWEO), with helping her set up her first hybrid and online courses. “The UWEO Instructional Designer, Maggi Kramm, walks on water, as far as I’m concerned,” says Nelson. Here are Nelson’s suggestions for adding technology to teaching:

When creating a video, imagine you’re facing a class, not a camera: Nelson was nervous at the thought of filming a dozen videos for an upcoming UWEO online course. “I’m really camera shy,” she says. However, she says the process was easier than she’d feared, because Kramm and the UWEO videographer were so helpful and professional, telling her they could re-record any portion of a lecture and setting lights at a comfortable level. “What happened finally, with that kind of encouragement and the knowledge that I could do any lecture over, I just forgot I was speaking to a camera,” says Nelson. “I just made believe I was standing in front of 200 students, which doesn’t frighten me at all, and the muse took over.”

Take advantage of the Active Learning Classrooms in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library: The round tables facilitate discussion, says Nelson. So do the computer screens at each table. At the beginning of class, which Nelson opens with a mini-lecture, she sends her presentation to the screens at the tables. When the class breaks for small group discussion, “the recorder for each group can link his or her laptop to the screen and take notes that are visible to the whole table so the students can edit together. When the time comes to report out, I can send the presentation from each group to all the tables,” says Nelson, adding that groups can also choose to write their report on one of the room’s orange glass walls, which function as white boards. “There’s also a microphone at each table, which can be important for students who have softer voices.”

ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOMS

“The Active Learning Classrooms are just fabulous,” says Lynn Hankinson Nelson, meeting in an ALC with students in her hybrid class, Philosophy of Science (PHIL 460). “The flexibility is great. I can roll my chair from one group to another, or I can say, ‘Roll to the middle of the room, we’re all going to work on something together.’” The course meets officially once a week and a subgroup of students also meets in the room informally for additional in-person discussions.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.

Replacing the five-page paper with online exhibits

Posted on October 31, 2014October 13, 2016

Students becoming authors through the UW Cities Collaboratory

“I see grad students in our department engaged and entrepreneurial, asking not just ‘How can I learn this tool?’ but ‘How does using this tool change the questions I ask and the answers I discover?’ That’s the great promise of digital scholarship and teaching, that you can present evidence in ways that lead you to new discoveries.”

**Margaret O’Mara**
Associate Professor, History

Margaret O’Mara’s urban history students used to write a five-page research paper that only she and peer reviewers read. But when she most recently taught The City (HSTAA 208), the students’ work was posted on a public website, available to anyone interested in Seattle history. Students learned that they could become authors who drew new insights from source documents. “You learn history in 4th grade,” says O’Mara, winner of the 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology. “You produce history in college.”

Each of O’Mara’s students created a multi-media blog post detailing the history of a single block in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. “The students did as much work as they would have for a paper, in some cases more, with more enthusiasm and often better results,” says O’Mara. “They took ownership. They’d talk about ‘My block this, my block that.’”

The student work was posted in the Lake Union Lab, part of the UW Cities Collaboratory, an interdisciplinary effort led by O’Mara, History; Kim England, Geography; Susan Kemp, Social Work; and Thaisa Way, Landscape Architecture. Classes taught by Way and England have also posted exhibits in the Lake Union Lab, and additional courses are planned for 2014–2015. The team is mentoring an interdisciplinary group of graduate students in a project to research the history and changing geography of North Lake Union neighborhoods.The UW Cities Collaboratory is an experiment in collaborative research and teaching among the more than 100 UW faculty who study and teach about urban issues. “In addition to serving the students in our classes, the Collaboratory is also proving to be a great platform for research and scholarship,” says Kemp. Here is some of the team’s advice for managing digital projects:

“This kind of digital scholarship allows us and our students to understand place, environment, and urban change through multiple layers and multiple connections that you can’t get off a flat page.”

**Susan Kemp**
Associate Professor, Social Work

Budget time for start-up challenges: “When engaging in new technologies in the classroom, a range of unanticipated issues arise,” says England. The complex website presented a host of technical issues, as well as some academic challenges. Because students’ work is public, the team must hold them to higher standards for attribution and other issues than they would for a traditional final paper. “Our students’ research is now reviewed in ways never possible before, which is both exciting and intimidating. We need to develop new ways of curating materials for accuracy, appropriateness, and usefulness,” says Way.

Bring in speakers who are experts in digital skills: Guests in Way’s classes included an expert on sound environments, who taught students not only about the technology of recording and mixing sound, but also a little about how to listen. “He went out with us into the city and taped places that we thought were quiet,” says Way. “And then we played back the tapes and realized how noisy these spaces really were. We also learned how illiterate we were about sound, that we couldn’t tell the difference between the sound of the wind and a passing bus.”

Find technical support: “Teaching with technology requires more human power than less. So it’s really important to have your village around you, to have that support,” says O’Mara. Technical support, both from UW Information Technology (UW-IT) and IT staff in their home departments has been critical, according to the team. The History Department provided TA support in the quarter prior to the course to create a tutorial for the web platform, and scan historical documents.

“To me, learning always engages student initiative. That means in good teaching you should always get to a point where you’re not sure where the students are going to go, what connections they’re going to make.”

**Thaisa Way**
Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture

Be willing to experiment with technology: The team started with the digital platform Omeka for class projects and is now adding another platform, Scalar, that facilitates research collaboration and deep annotation. The Simpson Center provided training in Scalar, as well as support for faculty and students to attend the Digital Humanities Summer Institute.

Develop protocols for use of materials from archives and other sources: Team members realized that they needed to help students learn to trace the source and ownership of seemingly anonymous images and resources found online. They are developing protocols for citing sources to help students gain an understanding of professional practices in research, “what attribution and authorship mean,” says O’Mara.

Curate and promote student work: O’Mara is grateful that once her students’ site began to draw media attention (see Resources), the History Department paid for a research assistant to improve the presentation of student work by editing site content and creating an interactive map on the landing page.

Allow students who don’t want their work posted publicly to opt out: The default for O’Mara’s class was that students’ work would be public, but she offered an option that students could, with no impact on their grade, request that their work be visible only to the class.

“There’s a long tradition in geography of having students get out into the city to smell it, taste it, experience it. Now my students can share that experience online by taking photographs and recording sound, and linking those sights and sounds with census data and historical maps.”

**Kim England**
Professor, Geography

Know your metadata: As the team worked with the technology, they realized the possibilities for using metadata, the information attached to every digital file. For example, geocodes in the metadata of photos allow them to be linked to interactive maps. “The good news is that photos students take on their phones include geocodes,” says O’Mara. Unfortunately, files for historical photographs do not. The team is developing a protocol for confirming or adding geocodes before new images are posted, as well as site standards for all types of metadata, which will facilitate searches and the ability to link and annotate site resources.

Assign projects that meet community needs: The teaching team decided to research neighborhoods undergoing rapid change, to document issues such as the historical sources of industrial pollution in Lake Union, and current social stresses such as those caused by loss of affordable housing. Another key decision was that students should present their findings in ways that community members could easily understand, for example by describing issues without disciplinary jargon and illustrating findings with clear infographics. Students interested in research need to become familiar with visualization technologies and learn how to work with designers, so their findings on critical urban issues are accessible, says Way. “Then you can start talking to community groups and explaining complex issues in a way that makes sense and encourages engagement.”

Resources: Article on Lake Union Lab student histories: Robin Lindley, “Cities are the Living Embodiments of Past Decisions,” History News Network, 22 April 2013.

IN THE FIELD

Above, a team of graduate students are studying both the north shoreline of Lake Union and its “blue space,” submerged lands and the lake’s waters, to develop an interactive exhibit for the UW Cities Collaboratory. Pictured here at Waterway 15 in summer 2014, the team has also supported the development of digital tools for teaching and helped curate undergraduate and other Collaboratory exhibits.

Left to right, Jennifer Porter, Geography; Odessa Benson, Social Work; James Thompson, Architecture; Eleanor Mahoney, History; Megan Brown, Geography.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.

Expecting the unexpected in a dynamic group project

Posted on October 31, 2014September 30, 2015

*“Running a simulation in a class is more work than giving lectures. But the students retain more. And it’s so much more interesting, for the students and for me.”*

**John Wilkerson**
Professor, Political Science

John Wilkerson’s initial goal in developing LegSim, a web-based mock legislative session, was to find a more convenient way to manage the one- or two-week capstone of his course on the United States Congress (POL S 353). Now LegSim serves as the centerpiece of the course, and is used by thousands of college and high-school students, whose fees help pay for maintenance and continued development of the site.

Running the simulation presents a multitude of challenges, including balancing the breadth of conceptual knowledge that can be presented in lectures against the depth of operational knowledge that project-based learning promotes, says Wilkerson. He was pleased a recent study showed high school students in classes that used the simulation had better scores on the Advanced Placement exam on U.S. Government and Politics and other measures (see Walter et al. in Resources). Engagement among Wilkerson’s students is high during the simulation, and the majority report that they enjoy the experience. Here are Wilkerson’s suggestions for managing a simulation, advice that can apply to other complex, collaborative group projects:

Develop your inner coach: Wilkerson begins the class with a few weeks of lectures, and then steps down from the podium to serve as a coach and consultant. As the quarter progresses, demand for his time is so high that groups must make appointments to meet with him.

Boost your tolerance for ambiguity: Despite his years of success with LegSim, Wilkerson still worries when the class inevitably stalls midway through the quarter, after students have completed the straightforward assignments required to set up the simulation (e.g., claiming legislative districts and setting policy agendas) and are faced with the complexities of actually crafting and passing legislation. “At this point in the course, as with any coaching assignment, there are moments of doubt,” says Wilkerson. “How long will it take students to figure out that they should not be waiting for me to tell them what to do? Will the Defense Committee overcome its collective action problem? When will someone discover the power of the Previous Question motion?”

Trust the process: Inevitably something, often a surprising defeat, will galvanize the class, says Wilkerson. Participation shoots up. Posts and views on LegSim soar, from hundreds to thousands per day, and students query Wilkerson about details of Congressional procedure he had covered in the weeks earlier in lecture. “The students take ownership and that makes a huge difference in terms of their level of interest and involvement,” says Wilkerson.

Embrace the unexpected: “After using LegSim for 10 years, I am confident that students are going to have a positive experience,” says Wilkerson. “I am much less certain about how events will unfold. This makes the class eminently more interesting to me as the instructor.” Once, he had to improvise a Supreme-Court–style arbitration to settle a dispute between two groups of students. One group wanted to extend the LegSim session by a day to hold a legislative vote; the other had thus far successfully delayed the vote and wanted the session to end so it couldn’t occur. Wilkerson scrambled to find a qualified volunteer willing not only to evaluate student briefs, but to do so overnight. A local attorney stepped up and rendered a decision in favor of the students who wanted to extend the session.

Resources: Walter Parker, Susan Mosborg, John Bransford, Nancy Vye, John Wilkerson, and Robert Abbott, “Rethinking Advanced High School Coursework: Tackling the Depth/Breadth Tension in the AP US Government and Politics Course,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 43, no. 4 (2011): 533-559.

Wilkerson and a long-time student collaborator, Nicholas Stramp, have also developed Legislative Explorer (http://www.legex.org), a site that visualizes the progress of more than 250,000 Congressional bills and resolutions introduced since 1973. Through the site animations, students and citizens can see, for example, exactly where and when bills get stalled. The site has been featured in The Washington Post (John Wilkerson, Nick Stramp, and David Smith, “Why bill success is a lousy way to keep score in Congress,” 6 February 2014) and The Huffington Post (HuffPollster, 28 April 2014).

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.

Using video to create a community of practice among online students

Posted on October 31, 2014September 30, 2015

Early Childhood & Family Studies Online Degree

“Last year I taught a class of 50 students that I never met in person but saw via video at least 18 times in 10 weeks. Using online tools, we were still able to build a community of reflection and practice.”

**Gail Joseph**
Program Director, Early Childhood & Family Studies; Associate Professor, Education

Faculty in the online Early Childhood & Family Studies (ECFS) degree learned that video feedback can help student-teachers progress as quickly, or even more quickly, than in-person coaching. Their techniques could also be used to coach students practicing other interpersonal activities, such as leading discussions, says Gail Joseph.

“In our program, students video themselves teaching children, using a practice that we’ve discussed in class, and receive quick, targeted feedback from the instructors and a small group of peers, their community of reflection and practice (or CORP, for short),” says Joseph. In addition to frequent feedback linked to coursework, a key factor in students’ learning is the ability to observe themselves and reflect on their own work practices. Joseph says that even students who are initially uncomfortable with the video assignments quickly come to see their value. “One student said, ‘I hated the idea of video in the beginning. It was the worst part of the program for me, but now I can’t ever imagine teaching without a camera in the room, capturing what I’m doing so I can go back and watch later.’”

The video assignments used in the online ECFS program, the first online bachelor’s degree offered by the UW, build on techniques developed for in-person ECFS and other classes, and by the National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning (NCQTL), which provides professional training to teachers in Head Start programs. The ECFS program has been recognized for its efforts by Nonprofit Colleges Online, which ranked the ECFS program the nation’s No. 2 online education bachelor’s degree. Here are the team’s suggestions for coaching students through video and online discussions:

*“Seeing a recommended teaching practice makes all the difference in the world. That’s what makes video so crucial in training teachers.”*

**Susan Sandall**
Principal Investigator, National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning; Professor, Education

Create assignments that build observation skills over time: Video assignments are part of almost every ECFS course. This allows time for students to build observation skills before they’re asked to analyze their own work. Through a process the team calls “Know, See, Do, Improve,” students learn about teaching techniques in online lectures and videos and practice identifying them (see Joseph and Brennan in Resources). Students then post baseline videos of themselves at work, and observe and reflect on their own use of a specific teaching method. They make a plan to improve, and record themselves again. Students comment on their own teaching as shown in the videos they’ve posted, and on the videos posted by other students in their learning community.

Train students in effective evaluation: ECFS instructors provide feedback on three levels: on students’ teaching as shown in their videos; on students’ understanding of their work, as shown by their comments on their own videos; and on their ability to coach others, as shown by their comments on other students’ videos. The feedback on comments is a critical part of helping students hone their skills of observation and reflection. Joseph says, “I might ask a student for more detail, or tell them ‘I think you did this very well.’“ The goal is for students to learn how to give very specific feedback and constructive comments to their fellow students. “We call that providing coach-quality feedback,” says Joseph.

*“In our discussion forums, we’ve found that we’re hearing more equally from all of our students, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how deeply they’ve taken these discussions.”*

**Colleen O. Dillon**
Clinical Psychologist and Director of Training, Barnard Center for Infant Mental Health and Development; Senior Lecturer, Family and Child Nursing

Require students to keep evaluation videos short: For each assignment, students post only three to five minutes of video. “Selecting the video is an important problem-solving exercise,” says Susan Sandall. “The students have to be able to distinguish a specific teaching activity from others that may be similar.”
Schedule time for video reviews: Reviewing student videos “isn’t easy and you have to keep on top of it. It’s a substantial commitment,” says Sandall. “Tell yourself, ‘I’ll watch the videos every week at this time’ or ‘I’ll watch some videos every day.’”

Require students to obtain permissions from video participants: “Students are required to get permissions from parents to video the children in their class or childcare, as well as from any adults who may appear in their videos,” says Joseph. “When they upload a video, they click a box stating ‘I certify that I have all the permissions on file.’” Students keep the paper consent forms. Faculty need to decide how broad they want to make consent forms, especially if they want to build a library of video examples.

Have students use the same equipment: ECFS faculty require students to purchase a specific technology bundle in lieu of a textbook. “In other courses that used video where I didn’t specify a certain camera, all my TA’s time was taken up with technical issues, such as trying to figure out how to get video off of someone’s phone,” says Joseph. When students use the same equipment, Joseph can instead direct TA time to developing tutorials and providing extra help for students uncomfortable with technology. To help offset the costs of the equipment, the ECFS faculty assign free open-source readings as often as possible.

“Our goal is to create online forums that allow for deep reflection in a safe and protected community of learners. That means breaking a large class into multiple subgroups or ‘neighborhoods,’ ideally of no more than 15 students.”

**Miriam Hirschstein**
Senior Research Scientist and Director of Evaluation, Barnard Center for Infant Mental Health and Development; Lecturer, Education

Keep discussion groups small when discussing emotional topics: Most ECFS classes also involve discussions of videos curated by the instructor. Keeping discussion groups to 15 or fewer students is important when discussing emotions, say Miriam Hirschstein and Colleen Dillon, both 2014 Teaching with Technology Fellows. They are translating another ECFS in-person class to an online format, Infants and Young Children: Risk and Resilience (NSG 432/ECFS 302). In addition to asking students to identify interactions between babies and caregivers in videos, Hirschstein and Dillon will also ask them to monitor their own reactions. “We might ask them ‘What did you notice or feel as you watched the older sibling pushing aside the baby? What did that bring up for you?’“ says Dillon. “Essentially, we’re asking students to reflect on how their emotional responses influence what they notice, and perhaps what they don’t notice in the videos. Our experience has been that this kind of sharing and reflecting goes very deep quickly in an online forum, perhaps more so even than in face-to-face coursework.”

Resources: Gail E. Joseph and Carolyn Brennan, “Framing Quality: Annotated Video-Based Portfolios of Classroom Practice by Pre- service Teachers,” Early Childhood Education Journal 41, no. 6 (2013): 423-430, doi: 10.1007/s10643-013-0576-7.

UW Today reported the stories of ECFS students after one year in the online program: Molly McElroy, “‘I see it, learn it and do it’: A peek into the lives of some of UW’s online students,” 2 July 2014.

With support from the College of Education and the NCQTL, the ECFS team developed the “Coaching Companion” tool, an online system for coaching via video. “Coaching Companion” is available for use by UW faculty through UW Educational Outreach.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.

Helping students learn to work on professional teams

Posted on October 31, 2014September 30, 2015

*“I want students to leave the class able to participate in a professional software development team.”*

**Sean Munson**
Assistant Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering

In Sean Munson’s introductory course in Interactive Systems Design and Technology (HCDE 310), students learn computational thinking and gain experience with tools they would encounter on a professional software team. This requires them to learn to program software, a prospect many find intimidating. So Munson crafts programming assignments that build to a capstone project, designing and coding an application in an area of interest to them. “I wanted to empower students,” says Munson. “To get them to think, ‘This is cool! I can make something!’”

Student capstone projects have included an application that translates text messages, a tool that pulls up recipes by ingredient, and a parking spot reminder application that was a semifinalist in the Shobe Startup Prize. “My goal is that students understand how different pieces of a development team fit together and how to communicate with other members of the team,” says Munson. This includes being able to ask appropriate questions, developing design specifications, and submitting useful error reports, as well as using tools common to modern development environments. Several students told Munson they believed their learning in his course was a major contributor to getting industry jobs and internships, and that it prepared them to meaningfully contribute to research groups in the department and elsewhere on campus. Here are some of Munson’s thoughts on using technology to help students gain professional practice:

Record lectures for students who need extra help or want additional challenges: Munson says he is gradually recording lectures that review material for students who need more time to cover the material, or provide advanced content for students wanting to move ahead of the class. He says that recorded lectures are also a good place to cover step-by-step technology set-up for students who need that support.

Standardize software to reduce time required for tech support: At the beginning of the quarter, Munson distributes open-source software to his students so that each has the same “virtual machine” to use for programming. This reduces support time and confusion among students who have little or no programming experience. Munson uses the same software during demonstrations, so students can follow along in the same interface. Some students with more experience ask to work in a different environment. Munson tells them, “We’re not responsible for supporting that platform, but you’re welcome to make that choice.”

Give students practice working with professional tools: Repositories of computer code are a crucial tool for large collaborative software projects. Therefore, the virtual machine Munson provides to students connects to a basic repository that hosts lecture and assignment code. Students also set up their own repositories, where they check in code that they have written and tested so it’s available to their teammates, just as they would on a professional development project. The repository also serves as a backup if a student’s computer crashes.

Provide a safe place to ask questions: After exploring several options for discussion spaces, Munson settled on an optional Facebook group. Students primarily answer each other’s questions, but Munson and a teaching assistant drop into the discussion to coach students who ask incomplete or confusing questions, for example, by neglecting to include the code that is failing or the error message it generates. This practice in asking questions effectively prepares students to ask for help in a professional environment, such as Stack Overflow, a public question-and-answer site for programming and development issues, says Munson.

Model professional practice and problem-solving: Munson polls students during class using a basic tool he built. His polling tool gives him a way to gauge student understanding and also gives students an unintimidating window into software development, in this case, detecting, reporting, and repairing errors. “I deliberately left some bugs in the software, ways that students can submit an answer a thousand times if they want to,” says Munson. “So, as they learn about the technologies the tool is based on, they have fun seeing if they can break it.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.

Sharing teaching strategies throughout a department

Posted on October 31, 2014October 13, 2016

“Recording some of my lectures gave me the flexibility to have students do group work on case studies several times a quarter. These were optional class meetings but students still came. They were really interested in the chance to apply chemistry concepts to a real problem.”

**Colleen Craig**
Lecturer, Chemistry

Chemistry faculty build on a long tradition of collaboration to share best practices in teaching with technology. “There’s very much an open-door policy about help with teaching. That really set the tone for me,” says A.J. Boydston, who has advised numerous Chemistry faculty about setting up online office hours, recording lectures, and other technologies.

Many other faculty also share their experiences with using technology to increase in-class time for active learning. For example, recording some lectures allows Colleen Craig to offer students in Introduction to General Chemistry (CHEM 110) the option to work on case studies, and Boydston to have his organic chemistry students tackle problems together in class. “I break lecture to pass out slips of paper with exam-level questions on them and have students work on them in small groups,” says Boydston. The problems are set at a level that challenge the majority of students, so there’s inevitably an initial stunned silence, then a buzz of discussion. After about five minutes, he asks for students to volunteer their ideas and guides them to a solution. “It’s not that hard to have the discussion in a large class of 300 because the three or four responses you hear on how to approach the problem end up representing everyone in class.”

“My quality of life improved when I stopped teaching the textbook in lecture. By putting lectures of basic material online, I was able to reclaim class time for discussing, for helping my students learn to think like a chemist.”

**A.J. Boydston**
Assistant Professor, Chemistry

Boydston, Craig, and Stefan Stoll were Teaching with Technology Fellows in summer 2013.

Initial, informal results indicate that the changes faculty have made can improve learning. Stoll, who created about 70 online lectures for the winter 2013 session of his course Physical Chemistry (CHEM 455), found that average student scores increased about 10 percent on mid-term and final exams that were similar in complexity to those offered in previous quarters. “The students had a very, very positive response to the video lectures,” says Stoll. Craig reports that students showed higher levels of engagement and demonstrated greater achievement on assessments after she redesigned her course.

Producing these materials can involve substantial time and thought. “The mini-lectures don’t come out of thin air,” says Boydston. However, once a module is created, maintenance and revisions take considerably less time, according to Boydston and Stoll. Modules can also be shared with other faculty, a process that is easier in the newest version of the Canvas learning management system. Once a faculty member gives other faculty access to modules, they can pick and choose elements to transfer to their own course modules. “Maybe they like and use a third of the lectures,” says Boydston. “Or maybe they revise or add to the information in ways I can transfer back and use.” Here are suggestions from the Chemistry faculty on using technology to enhance teaching and learning:

*“Creating online videos is an upfront investment that’s going to pay off. Now that I have the slide designs and scripts, I can modify and re-record them, which takes a fraction of the time.”*

**Stefan Stoll**
Assistant Professor, Chemistry

Record nuts-and-bolts lectures to free up in-person class time for more interesting topics: “The first lecture I recorded was basic chemical nomenclature,” says Phil Reid. “That was really liberating for me because I hated that lecture. I was bored giving it, so you know the students were bored.” Boydston records two to five short lectures on fundamental, introductory material for each week of his in-person organic chemistry class. Each lecture, as is common among Chemistry faculty, shows the screen of Boydston’s tablet with voiceover. One of the topics he recorded first was how to draw molecules using software. Students who already have this skill can skip the lecture and go straight to the module quiz, while those who need more help can re-watch if they need to. “That way when we get to class, we can move onto more interesting topics, such as how a molecule’s structure affects the way it reacts with other molecules,” says Boydston.

Record lectures to provide an introduction to difficult material: By recording seven lectures a week, Stoll says he created a sort of video textbook for his section of Physical Chemistry (CHEM 455), which covers quantum mechanics. The online lectures provide an introduction to concepts and equations that Stoll explains more fully during in-person class. “You always need to reinforce the basic concepts,” says Stoll. “Just because students have seen a video once, that doesn’t mean they really understand the topic. They’re just a little prepped.”

Stoll’s video presentations start with an empty slide and then show him hand-drawing a series of equations, diagrams, and terms while explaining them via voiceover. “Because quantum theory is such a scary subject for students, I wanted to convey, at least subconsciously, the fact that you don’t need fancy graphics to understand it. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen.” While Boydston posts his videos through Canvas, Stoll has opted to post his videos on YouTube (Stoll’s YouTube channel). When the class was in session, Stoll made videos available only to his students, so he could track analytics. After the end of the quarter, he opened them up to the public.

Focus on audio quality when recording presentations: “The podcasting literature says that if your audio quality is not good, you’re going to lose audience,” says Stoll. “You need to make sure your voice is clear and there’s no noise in the background.” Stoll purchased his own microphone to improve recording quality and, to minimize background noise, records late at night in his kitchen with the refrigerator turned off.

*“The key is to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish and find the simplest method to accomplish it. Sometimes that’s with technology.”*

**Jasmine Bryant**
Lecturer, Chemistry

Require a syllabus quiz: Craig has begun requiring that students in her introductory chemistry class pass a quiz about the class syllabus before they can access any other course materials. “Students don’t have to memorize the syllabus, they just need to know that they can look up information there on things like department policies, important due dates, and what students should do if they miss a lab or an exam,” says Craig. “The goal is to empower them to answer their own questions.”
Create video quiz keys: “I’ve recorded a short five-minute video where I work through the answer key of the weekly quiz and explain my reasoning,” says Jasmine Bryant, adding that she got the idea from Boydston. “A minority of students viewed the video, perhaps 80 out of 300, but those students really liked it.”

Offer online office hours: “When you offer online office hours on Sunday evening, you’ll have 60 to 70 percent attendance; it’s just amazing,” says Stoll. About 120 students attended office hours that Bryant recently offered on the Sunday just prior to the final exam. “Most just listened,” says Bryant. “The students with questions type them in the chat window, and I answer them. I share the screen of my tablet so I can draw pictures to explain concepts. It’s basically a broadcast.” Boydston’s advice on online office hours is available on page four of the Provost report “Putting Learning First: How Students Learn and How Technology Can Help.”

Jasmine Bryant in organic chemistry lecturing

Chemistry faculty such as Colleen Craig and Jasmine Bryant (above) informally coordinate their teaching of large undergraduate classes, which primarily serve non-majors. The department runs three sections of general and organic chemistry series in parallel, often with different instructors. Therefore, each quarter hundreds of students shuffle sections and instructors.

“We need to make sure students get what they need in each course to progress successfully to the next,” says A.J. Boydston.“So we’ve developed team-based knowledge of what students need to cover in each quarter in the sequence.”

Technology helps them coordinate. Boydston and colleagues voted to use a common online homework system, and they share course content such as recorded lectures. “Recent changes to the Canvas learning management system make it easier to share materials on the fly, even during a course,” says Phil Reid.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.