FACULTY INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATION STUDIO
WEEK ONE: Thursday April 27, 2017
Learning Innovation Panel
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
PANELISTS I Open the e-Handout
Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Science
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Research Area
Professor Ford's research is focused on understanding the properties, structure and dynamics of the Earth’s crust and mantle through the use of passive source (i.e., earthquakes as a source) seismic imaging techniques, with a decided emphasis on better understanding the rheology and evolution of the continental lithosphere in various tectonic settings. A key component of her research involves integrating the work of other geological disciplines, including, but certainly not limited to other geophysical methods, geochemistry/petrology, mineral physics and geodynamic modeling.
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Interested in developing study skills an self regulation in an academically diverse, large enrollment class
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Goals include teaching students how to independently, efficiently and effectively synthesize material prior to an exam
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Use of metacognition: the process of reflection on and direction one's own thinking (Pellegrino et al., 2001)
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Introduce students to self regulation - planning, recognition, and reflection
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Assigning students to complete study plans prior to the first midterm
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After the midterm, students are to fill out a study survey that asks them to reflect on study habits, performance on the exam, and whether or not their work produced their desired grade
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Student's self-reflection is vital for a larger class
How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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The metacognition survey was given as an extra credit assignment and located on the course management system (Canvas)
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Students responded positively and more than half of the class completed the survey
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Aiming to take a more deliberate, carefully executed approach in the future
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Hoping to find any correlation existing between exam grades and survey results
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Goal include crafting more carefully constructed surveys in the future, complete with a form to be filled out prior to, and after, midterms
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Considering creating an optional online accountability group, somewhat akin to the "14 day writing challenge"
Media
Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Large lecture classes are an inherent obstacle to student engagement
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Goals include more engagement inside and outside of class
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Professor Levy flipped the Face-to-face (F2F) classes, turning lecture into discussion time and breaking up the students into groups
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In online classes the strategy is two-fold: 1) content delivery has to be minimal = short video lectures or podcasts 2) learning has to be tangibly rewarded, short feedback loops, zero redundancies and clear path through the curriculum and assignments.
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For any type of class (online and F2F) a discussion board is the main forum of communication
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Because of discussion boards like Piazza, students become stakeholders in the questions and answers and the instructor is able to model a transparent and supportive intellectual environment
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Meaningful games and activities are also a crucial part of the course
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All assignment s come with detailed rubrics in order to help the student understand what the instructor is essentially looking for
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Rubrics allow for easy and transparent grading
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How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Students like games
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A good game will be a much more efficient teaching tool than a lecture
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Active learning is more effective than passive learning, and student will corroborate it (in grades and evaluations
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Students like the open discussion boards - they don’t like to be forced to comment, but they love to learn
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Technology can be challenging and if you use tech in class, account up front for the fact that some people will challenge this - model the behavior, be kind and patient and allow students to help each other -- tech issues should be resolved in public on the discussion board to benefit everyone
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Media
She is currently collaborating on cross-country comparisons of informal credit markets, and on the function of markets in the Mexican Revolution. Levy also studies the interplay of technology and the humanities, and has created a learning game (digital zombies.ucr.edu) and is working on virtual reality teaching modules for online and F2F course work in the humanities. Research Area: Latin American Economic History, Modern Mexico, digital history, digital humanities.
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Juliette Levy, Ph.D
Associate Professor of History, Department of History
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Research Area
Prior to receiving her Ph.D. in History from UCLA, Levy received a MSc from the London School of Economics and spent the next 4 years working in finance in New York and Mexico City. Levy's previous career and her years living in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela influence her research, which studies the making of economic markets in Latin America in their legal, social, cultural and ethnic contexts. Levy's first book analyzed the development of credit markets in Yucatan during the nineteenth century.
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Working with then my PhD student, Corrie Neighbors (now Dr. Corrie Neighbors), to update a large lower-division, undergraduate course in Geology, which was largely paper based and labor intensive
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Finding the UCOP ILTI program to assist with a course redesign and funding made a significant difference in infusing robust educational technologies into a Hybrid course, and later an Online course: ArcGIS mapping software, Zoom web-conferencing and virtual field trips
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Additionally, there was the opportunity to collaborate with a colleague, Prof. Lisa Ludwig, Public Health at UC Irvine and share the ILTI teaching commitment
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Finally, the cross-campus course would become both a Geology course and a Public Health course (students could take it as either.) and increase the accessibility of students to General Education courses, which in turn, supports the UC system’s goal of graduating students on time
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How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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With the versatility of the "learning glass" video technology, we were able to create short, compelling documentary style videos
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These micro-lectures (5-7 minutes) provided students the ability to watch and review areas they did not understand.
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Students have noted that being able to see the joint instructors themselves in the videos (rather than only PowerPoint slides with voiceover) has made the online course more interesting and engaging
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This coupled with the use of other educational technologies (Zoom web-conferencing, etc.) in the course has helped me rethink online courses in general
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How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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The course has received positive response from students from both the hybrid and online courses.
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Students have noted that the instructor presence in the videos (personal interviews, learning glass, virtual tours, etc.) are more engaging that a recorded PPT lecture, with just voiceover.
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The multidisciplinary aspect of the course – as well as the experience students get using web-conferencing and other tools – helps them build the technical and team building skills required in today’s workplace
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Media
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David Oglesby, Ph.D
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences
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Research Area
David Oglesby develops computer models of the forces acting on faults that develop into fault ruptures and fault slippage, and the transmission of seismic waves from slipping faults. His modeling predicts the wave propagation and ground motion caused by different faults. He can answer how and why faults slip, causing earthquakes. His recent projects included developing ground motion forecasts for the Rose Canyon Fault in San Diego and computer models of earthquakes on segments of thrust faults.
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Identifying and implementing available technologies for online collaborative group work; getting students to collaborate together online on group projects.
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Getting "discussion question"-type responses built into the course
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Attempting to get students to engage with the video lectures and readings
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How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Breaking down the course using individual and course Wikis
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Attempted different technological tools (mostly outside of the current learning management system)
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Hoping to obtain an easy-to-use, collaborative, building tool that students in groups could use, preferably one that could assign roles
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Also hoping to find a better way to make videos more interactive for students (i.e. using tools like Zaption and PlayPosit)
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How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Sometimes the technology isn't available or compatible to use in large-scale settings, or compatible
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One lesson learned was perhaps to slow down and try and do less at first
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Media
Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Department of Dance
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Research Area
Jacqueline Shea Murphy teaches courses in critical dance studies in UCR's Dance department. She is author of "The People Have Never Stopped Dancing": Native American Modern Dance Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), awarded the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize® for outstanding book of the year in Dance Studies by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), co-editor of the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance (Rutgers University Press, 1995), and has published in journals including Biography, Discourses in Dance, American Literary History, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and several anthologies.
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She was the 2009 recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Aotearoa New Zealand, and is writing a new book about ways that contemporary Indigenous choreographers in the U.S., Canada, and Aotearoa are inhabiting Indigenous epistemologies and thereby reframing colonizing institutions in their dancing and dance making. Professor Shea Murphy coordinates annual "Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside" events that have been bringing Indigenous dance artists, and discussion around contemporary Indigenous dance, to the UCR campus regularly since 2004.
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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How to get students to read before class, so that class time was better utilized
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Solution was to create highly-interactive online learning material, with recording of activity so that points could be awarded
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Developed such material from scratch using modern interactive web technologies that provide immediate feedback and improve student learning opportunities.
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How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Students indicate they like the material, studies show they learn more. Material now used in 500 universities.
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Media
Frank Vahid, Ph.D
Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering
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Research Area
Dr. Vahid received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1988 Frank Vahid is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on embedded computing system design, and more recently on interactive web-based learning content for engineering/computing college education. He is co-founder of zyBooks.
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