We started with a brief discussion about several recent articles from EDUCAUSE Review that caught our attention:
At UMBC, 2020 was a time of shifting on-campus programs and courses for new students to the virtual environment. Helping us understand what this meant for students, instructors, and staff was Dr. Laila Shishineh, Director of First-Year & Transfer Academic Programs in the Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs (UAA).
In this role, she oversees several campus initiatives: Academic Transition Courses (FYS, IHU, and TRS), Summer & Winter Bridge Programs, and the Living-Learning Communities. These two categories, courses and programs, support all new students with a strong academic core and engagement opportunities.
Academic transition courses and programs are not required, yet high numbers of new students who complete these experiences share feedback that indicates value in helping students understand the academic climate, connect with other new students, and have a successful first or second semester.
The new student population at UMBC is split almost evenly between transfer students and freshmen, which drives the need to deliver courses and programs that help all new students connect with resources and staff. “When this shift happened last spring, we started like so many on campus,”Laila said. “Our core focus was how do we continue to engage new students, create a sense of connection, and make it fun and interesting.”
In a typical year, more than 500 students will take a transition course, between 300 and 400 students will participate in a Living-Learning Community, and another 60-70 will complete the Summer Bridge program. However, in the remote setting that COVID-19 required, Summer Bridge was the first program that transitioned to fully online and the number of students in the virtual environment doubled.
“We assess our programs and courses a lot,” Laila said. “For Summer Bridge, students enjoyed the opportunity that might not have been available otherwise.” For the transition courses offered fully online in fall 2020, students felt connected to the instructor, other students, and resources, but also expressed a desire to do more on campus. “Students got what they wanted,” she said, “but they were also looking for a little more on campus and we were limited in what we could offer.”
Looking ahead, there are valuable lessons learned from offering an almost completely online semester. “The LLCs might be the one place where we can go back to what we were doing,” Laila said, “and that’s the nature of LLC. But for our transition courses and programs, this opens a huge door for us. When you think about scaling these to do more in person, that’s almost impossible with limited space, but if we take what we learned this year the opportunities for hybrid or fully virtual puts us ahead of the curve because we’re solving a problem.”
Check out the full GO Chat here for the complete interview.
Our next GO Chat takes place on Friday, March 26:Matching Technology to Pedagogy with Derek Bruff, director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching and a principal senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics, about research-based principles for matching technology to pedagogy.
We interviewed Derek following the March 9 book discussion of his 2019 book, Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching.
Arguing that teaching and learning goals should drive instructors’ technology use, not the other way around, Intentional Tech explores seven research-based principles for matching technology to pedagogy. We hope you will join us!
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Last month, we kicked off our GO Chat series for 2021 with a dive into all-things-open, as in Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Pedagogy, and Open Science.
We started with a brief discussion about several recent articles that caught our attention:
Helping us understand this journey about all-things-open was UMBC alumni Dr. Karen Cangialosi, a Professor of Biology and Open Education Faculty Fellow at Keene State College (KSC) in Keene, New Hampshire.
Although she regularly incorporates open pedagogy in all her courses, Karen explains her journey started with an episode of the podcast, The Future Trends Forum by Bryan Alexander. During the episode featuring Gardner Cambell (2016), Karen recalled, "I'm a biology professor who used mostly traditional materials, but I did a complete 180 when it came to open education after listening to Gardner Campbell."
A proponent of Open Educational Resources (OER), Karen says OERs are an important gateway to open education in terms of people, practices, and content. Open pedagogy is about access, agency, and community. Karen describes a learning environment where her students can work with her to create content or learning outcomes, write an attendance policy, design self assessments, or determine how they will be graded.
While students can be unsure, or even resistant to this approach, Karen suggests that since most students will not know what this process can be about she still offers more traditional methods, content, or assessments. And what often ends up happening in those instances is that a few weeks after watching classmates create and share content, students will come to her and ask, "Can I change? I want to do what they're doing instead of this 25-page paper I said I'd write."
When it comes to students sharing content, Karen never requires them to create openly licensed work; however, she provides examples and opportunities that make it possible. For example, her BIO 318 students created a textbook -- A Student's Guide to Tropical Marine Biology that is utilized by other students across the open education community.
Karen acknowledges open education has been building slowly and she frequently guides colleagues to start with "your desire as a professor and what you want students to do and learn in your course." As higher education is changing dramatically now due to COVID-19, Karen sees faculty ideally positioned to shape those conversations and changes. Read more about Karen at her website: https://karencang.net/