Summer 2020

Miramar’s Faculty Learning Online Community (FLOC) has been busy the past month with 7 FLOC mentors and 80 participants. This learning community is a supplement to the District's DE Certification course.  FLOC aligns theory with practice to assist faculty in more fully developing their proficiency with an online modality.  It engages faculty in training, interaction with peers, and discussions of course design. 

Below, hear from some of the FLOC Mentors as they share a few words of advice to faculty about teaching online.

FLOC Mentors

Jae Calanog, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Physics/Astronomy 

Jae's advice: 

Practice what you preach. If we encourage our students to focus on the learning, then be willing to be a student yourself. Right now we're all learning new teaching methods, technology, etc. and it can seem overwhelming. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and trust that you will get better over time. 

View Jae's video: How I use Socrative in my Course

Mary Klann

Lecturer, History Department. My Twitter is @mcklann and my Instagram is @prof_klann. 

Mary's advice: 

My main piece of advice comes from a blog post by Sean Michael Morris: “You will need to improvise and be patient.” This goes for designing and setting up your courses and the way you interact with students. Trust yourself, and stay focused on your content and your pedagogy. The technology is just technology. The class isn’t a class without the instructor, you! Also, get on Twitter because wow, there are a lot of experienced online instructors just freely pouring out wisdom and tips! :)

Laura Pecenco, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Sociology & Faculty Advisor, REACT & Co-Advisor, Urban Scholars Union IG: @MiramarSociology, Twitter: @MiramarSOCO

Laura's Advice:

Embrace it! Online teaching can seem constraining and isolating at first, but it can actually open up all sorts of new opportunities. For example, is there a guest speaker from another state (or another country!) who might now be able to contribute to your course? Or maybe you used to run out of class time but have so many more amazing resources to provide and now you can add them in a "further exploration" section. How can you collaborate with other instructors, campus services, community organizations, etc. in ways that you haven't been able to previously? Realizing that our classrooms now have fewer limits can really expand the possibilities in supporting our students and become very exciting for us as instructors and engaging for our students!

Patti Manley

Assistant Professor, History

Many instructors moving to online environment want are encouraged to make their courses engaging for students. With that thought in mind, they might jump to finding new apps to use for assignments & student engagement or try to be creative in their course design by adding images, interactive materials, videos etc. All of these are great ideas and can be accomplished over a semester or two. You want to start off by focusing on ways to engage students and keeping student equity in mind. 

#1 - (do this before anything else) Create a fun, engaging homepage  with video that will captivate your students interests as soon as they enter the course. You can do that by easily adding images and video directly from Canvas into your homepage. Remember this is not a paper homepage or paper syllabus so you can be creative. 

#2 - Use the apps & resources within Canvas to accomplish what you want to do if at all possible before incorporating new apps or learning new tools.  You can add more ideas, apps & tools through the semester. 

• Try small easy ones such as Padlet or Answer Garden for quick fun ways to increase student engagement. 

• If you want to quickly communicate with students, show them how to use Pronto in Canvas.  Its a quick messaging tool that you can use as reminders & to send out fast notices to students.  Instead of adding an app or constantly checking your email - use what Canvas already has built into it - Pronto.

• If you want to create videos, be sure to activate the Screen Cast O Matic app that easily integrates within Canvas.  It's free, ready to work with Canvas.  You can create videos directly in Canvas, no need to upload anything or send students outside your course to Youtube for example. There are many tutorials on the Screen Cast O matic website to teach you how to use it. Its easy to install in Canvas as well. I can send anyone a tutorial on how to install within your course in under 5 minutes.

• Rather than send students outside your course or use an app for blogging or journaling, use the features already in Canvas to do that. Although there is no Blog or Journal assignment type, it can easily be done right in Canvas with just a few fast tweaks of an assignment.

• Looking to have students make presentations - Don’t send them to Youtube or have them use their own video’s - teach them how to use Zoom and record their sessions/presentations. Its a great group presentation tool as well.

• If you’re interested in fun apps, go ahead and try them but start slow with 1 or 2 apps and make sure you know the in’s and out’s and have the ability to instruct your students on how to use it. If you’re already using an app or program, see if it can be integrated in your course easily.

• Always start off by “checking the tech” For example, if you create an assignment or assessment that requires students to edit PDF’s  and some students might not be can afford to buy a PDF editing software (you’ve unintentionally excluded some students from succeeding) Plan out how else might they can accomplish that assignment? (BTW there are free PDF editing softwares available). 

Ann Gloag

Associate Professor, Math

View Ann's video: Welcoming Students to the Online Classroom

Exciting Things Are Happening at the REC

Rechelle Mojica, MS, CRC

Professor/Access Technology Specialist/Counselor

Tanya Hertz

Associate Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship at Miramar College and Lecturer at San Diego State University

The San Diego Miramar College REC Innovation Lab launched its first cohort in March, just as shut-down orders were being issued across California. We had to quickly pivot to a virtual environment to ensure that everyone had access the information and services needed to continue building their businesses remotely.

 

Since launching on March 4^th, The REC has held more than 147 virtual events. All of the presentation recordings are available on our YouTube channel.

 

Upcoming Workshops:

 

We have experts in a wide range of fields providing workshops on topics such as: writing social media ads, how to obtain government grants, finance, and how to alleviate stress and how to create dynamic videos, just to name a few.  If you would like to learn more about any of these subjects, make sure to register for one of the workshops!

 

Join us for a workshop designed specifically for SDCCD online educators to learn how to create brief, engaging videos for your online classes, "Simple Ways to Create Videos to Engage Students with Mike Clark" to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/san-diego-miramar-college-rec-innovation-lab-29696058417 FLEX #5237

 

Our ongoing focus is on underrepresented portions of the population and right now, we are focused on spotlighting our services for black founders. We have several workshops and live webcasts with this goal in mind.

If you would like to learn Just One Little Topic

Join us each week for JOLT LIVE streaming on Social Media

We hope to see you soon!

Learn more about the REC Innovation Lab

Follow the REC Innovation Lab on Social Media at:

LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube

Links and Resources

Coming Soon: What is Canvas Studio?

COVID-19 Reflections from a Community College Student

Confetti for Completed Canvas Assignments

Take the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge and read about Striving for Accessibility.

Don't miss this: Humanizing Challenge August 11-13. Remove your emotional armor. Tell your story. Be imperfect. Build connections (yes .. .online!). Live sessions and self-guided activities.

Cameras Optional, Please! Remembering Student Lives As We Plan Our Online Syllabus

Five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video. (Mayer, Fiorella, & Stull, 2020)