Additional Update on Resources

Dear Colleagues,

This is another update on resources to help you prepare for fall term teaching.

The Faculty Hub has completed the first short course on Effective Online and Blended Teaching. A second cohort with more than 115 of your colleagues is underway. You may still join today and catch up on prior content online before tomorrow’s 10 a.m. class on Zoom. Please email the Faculty Hub now and we will enroll you! (Note: Both sessions have now ended. If you were unable to attend the course but would like to gain access to those materials, we just need to add you. Please email us for access.)

Sandra Joireman’s email on Friday noted that the ACS Pedagogy Workshop dates and registration are now available.

The first ACS workshop is this Wednesday, June 24, 1-2:30 pm EDT:  Purposeful Planning for the Distinctive Learning Experiences of Small, Residential Liberal Arts Colleges. We are hoping to see you there!  [Full disclosure, I am involved in this one]

A number of collaborative ACS working groups will share materials by August 1- some of you will want to review these for advice and resources when they become available. From our faculty, Joanna Wares, Marcella Torres, Laura Browder, and Patricia Herrera are contributors.

Faculty have questions about teaching with a mask on. I want to share some work by a colleague at Roanoke College (attached) on the issue of teachinTeaching in Masks and Shields – An Experimentg in face masks and shields (note that shields are not currently allowed as replacements for masks).

Last week, a group of UR faculty and staff had a chance to speak in a large lecture room with masks on and social distancing. My experience is similar to what Chris Lee reported. You will have to be more aware of the pace and enunciation of your speech. As Chris noted, some masks slip from proper positioning as they get moist and with continual chin and jaw movements, as would happen when you are teaching. Wearing a tight-fitting mask seems to help minimize slippage and tighter masks elevate the need to be intentional about enunciation. Some have found that having a mask with a built-in wire to mold around your nose reduces the fog on glasses, and may help keep the mask in place.

My take home— speaking with a mask on is not the part of teaching I am looking forward to this fall. But, I can make some adaptations to make it work. It will help me to practice with it.  There is some teaching (music, languages, theatre come to mind) where the use of masks will be even more challenging. My current best idea for this is: hold classes those classes outside in open spaces without masks, if allowed (with distancing). I know it does not address all issues (acoustics).

Best wishes,

Linda

Director, Faculty Hub

Update on Resources to Prepare for Fall Teaching

Dear Colleagues,

This is an update on resources to help you prepare for fall term teaching.

Summary List

  • June & July – Two sessions of a 3-week course on online and hybrid teaching, led by John Zinn from SPCS. If you have any questions, please email John Zinn.
  • June – Two sessions of a 3-day course on effective online and blended teaching. (Note: Both sessions have now ended. If you were unable to attend the course but would like to gain access to those materials, we just need to add you. Please email us for access.)
  • July 13-30 – A 3-week course on course redesign for responsive and flexible teaching. This will run once without a registration cap. After July 30, the course will be available for self-paced learning without the synchronous sessions.
  • June & July – Virtual workshops offered collaboratively by ACS institutions on a variety of topics. The Faculty Hub is involved in three of these and UR Faculty are also involved in a working group on Engaging (Outside) Communities in the Remote Classroom. A list is provided below and registration can be found here.
  • By August 1– ACS working groups will provide additional resources for faculty (see below for topics).
  • Ongoing– The Faculty Hub’s Slack workspace is open for the exchange of ideas, problems, and their solutions, and teaching resources. We currently have 177 participants from faculty and instructional/support staff. If you want to join this workspace, please click here.

ACS Summer Workshops and Working Groups

As a member of the ACS Summer Virtual Workshop Taskforce, I am pleased to announce that 12 teaching workshops and 11 pedagogy working groups have been formed (one additional working group is being finalized). Our Taskforce decided to crowd-source some of the many needs we identified in ACS schools. We hope that ACS faculty will find these useful with an added benefit of establishing connections with colleagues at other institutions with similar interests and needs. Collaboration is one way to add to our success in preparation for the fall term.

Workshops are single, synchronous sessions in Zoom (generally 90 minutes) facilitated by faculty and instructional staff from more than one ACS school.

  • This week, we expect the ACS workshop descriptions and on-line registration to become available on the ACS website.
  • Please register through ACS and attend as many of these as you wish.
  • Please consider sharing your post-workshop ideas and questions with your University of Richmond colleagues on the Faculty Hub’s Slack workspace for Remote Teaching or within your departmental discussions about fall term teaching plans.
  • We anticipate that the workshops will be recorded and made available to those who could not attend the live session. A mechanism for sharing the materials is under discussion.

Working groups include faculty and instructional staff from more than one ACS school. Each group is working collaboratively in June and July to produce materials that will be shared with instructors at ACS schools.

  • Materials produced by the working groups are expected to be shared by August 1.
  • A mechanism for the sharing of materials is under discussion.

If you have any questions or need assistance in selecting the University of Richmond courses or ACS workshops that would be of greatest help to you, please email the Faculty Hub.

Thank you and best wishes,

Linda Boland

Director, Faculty Hub

 

List of ACS Teaching Workshops

  • June workshops

Wednesday, June 24, 1 – 2:30 p.m. EDT

Purposeful Planning for the Distinctive Learning Experiences of Small, Residential Liberal Arts Colleges
Nancy Chick, Kent Andersen, Betsy Sandlin, Stephanie Rolph, & Linda Boland

Monday, June 29, 10 – 11:30 a.m. EDT

Making Learner-Centered and Inclusive Pedagogical Choices for an Unpredictable Fall Term
Kent Andersen, Barbara Lom, Kerry Paumi, & Betsy Sandlin

  • July workshops – dates and times should be available this week

Strategies for Teaching and Learning Online and Hybrid Environments Backed by Cognitive Science Research
Jessica Alexander & Jennifer Queen

Designing Student-Centered Class Activities for Blended Synchronous Equation-Based Courses
Andrew Bell & Carol Ann Downes

Near, Far, Wherever You Are: Models for Building Community in the “New” First-Year Experience 
Peter Gess, Michael Hughes, Cathy Jellenki, & Katherine Troyer

Ready When You Are: Flexible Delivery and Excellent Pedagogy in Blended Delivery, Active Learning Classes
Ryan Brazell, Kylie Korsnack, Kimberly McArthur, & Julie Sievers

Technologies, Pedagogies, and Best Practices for Teaching Chinese Online: A Workshop for ACS Chinese Language and Content Course Instructors
Zhengbin Lu, Hongchu Fu, Carl Robertson, & Li Wei

Engaging Second Language Students through Interactive and Student Presentations, Close Readings/Viewings, and Interactions with Native Peers in the Online Classroom
Susanna Weygandt, Mark Preslar, Genny Ballard, & Florin Beschea

STE(ngage)M: Adapting the Case Study Method through Universal Design for Learning
Ellen Barnett, Jonathan King, Aditi Pai, & Katie Troyer

Remote Summative Assessment In Equation-based Courses:  If They Can Look Up the Answer, How Do We Know They Learned It?
Megan Leonard, Prayat Poudel, & Todd Tinsley

List of ACS Working Groups

  • Working group reports and resources/materials will be available by August 1. 

Engaging (Outside) Communities in the Remote Classroom
Kimberly Kasper, Joy Brooke Fairfield, Shaolu Yu, Tom Bremer, Laura Browder, Sharon Green, Amy Hammond, Patricia Herrera, Yinishi Lerman-Tan, Andrew Patrick, & Kaelyn Wiles

Inclusive Pedagogies for Remote and Blended First-year Seminar Courses
Erika Berroth, Julie Sievers, Sasha Pfau, John Krebs, & Maureen McClung

Socially Distanced but High Impact: Exploring Small Group Discussions & Other Highly Interactive Activities in Socially Distanced F2F Environments During a Time of Pandemics
Rachel Newcomb, Laurian Bowles, Amy McClure, Amy Jasperson, Shana Minkin, Matthew Irvin, & Corinna Kahnke

Vulnerable People(s) and COVID-19
Margaret McLaren, Shan-Estelle Brown, Chelsea Ebin, Dawn Roe, Nolan Kline, & Sarah Parsloe

Mathematics and Data Science Resources to Support Societally Relevant Teaching in the Time of COVID-19
Joanna Wares, Zeynep Teymuroglu, Marcella Torres, Cabral Balreira, Casey Hawthorne, & Grace Stadnyk

Choral, Instrumental, and Vocal Pedagogy
Johann Van Niekerk, Shane Lynch, Lester Siegel, Cory Wikan, Kerry Ginger, Tiffany Lu, John Sinclair, Diane Persellin, & Johathan Trotter

Relationship-driven Peer Tutoring in the Age of Covid-19: How Faculty and Peer Tutors Can Work Together to Bridge Hierarchical Gaps between Faculty and Students and Facilitate Student Engagement
Jennifer Rowe, Jessica Reyes, Luke Tunstall, Jennifer Bartlett, Shireen Campbell, Paul Hanstedt, Felipe Pruneda-Senties, & Jean Schwab

Adapting Pandemic Pedagogies in the Performing and Collaborative Arts
Jennifer Goff, Peter Friedrich, John Marshall, Jennifer Matthews, Laura Perkins, Jason Rosenberg, & Robert Seebacher

Online Undergraduate Cell Biology Lab Working Group
Triscia Hendrickson, Mark Lee, Pamela Hanson, Elise Kikis, Jonathan King, Centdrika Hurt, Rebecca Murphy, & Laura MacDonald

Impactful and Effective Preparation of Teacher Candidates during COVID-19: Instruction, Assessment, and Virtual Placements
Nicole Taylor, Khalilah Ali, Richard Benson, Valeisha Ellis, Andrea Lewis, Chatee O. Richardson, Michael Kamen, & Alicia Moore

Curating Connection: The Modified Tutorial Model and Other Opportunities for Small-Group Mentorship
Erin Hoover, Hope Coulter, Mark Hopwood, & Stephanie Batkie

Summer 2020 Faculty Development Opportunities and Resources

SPCS Hybrid/Online Teaching Professional Development Course

A three-week, asynchronous faculty development course designed to support online and hybrid teaching. Beginning with the end in mind, faculty will review the course development process, focusing on desired learning outcomes. Teaching best practices will be considered, emphasizing the creation of an active and engaging learning community.

Topics will include: eLearning Theory, Diversified Instruction, Leveraging Blackboard Tools, Assessments and Rubrics, Student Engagement (Discussions, Asynchronous and Synchronous Lectures, Zoom, Feedback), and more

Course Dates: The June and July cohorts have filled, but they may be able to accommodate a few additional participants upon request.

Time Commitment: Approximately 3.5 hours per week to complete activities.

Cohort Size: 25

Questions? Email John Zinn.

Effective Online and Hybrid Teaching

In three linked sessions, this short course will engage instructors in topics important to student and faculty success with online and flexible courses. This course is a collaboration between the Faculty Hub with Dr. Claire Major. Claire Major is a Professor of Higher Education at The University of Alabama. Her teaching and research interests center on instructional approaches and instructional technology. She has authored or co-authored ten books including Interactive Lecturing, Learning Assessment Techniques, Collaborative Learning Techniques, Student Engagement Techniques, and Online Learning: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice.

Session 1. Creating an Engaging Course: Strategies for Online and Flexible Course Design

Online and blended courses can provide students with an inviting and engaging learning environment. In this session, participants will learn about practical strategies for designing dynamic online and LMS-supported classes.

Session 2. Learning Together While Apart: Tips for Creating Community Online

Research shows that one of the greatest challenges for students in online environments is the feeling of isolation. Establishing connections with others is key to student success and learning. Participants in this session will learn about strategies for creating community in online and blended courses.

Session 3. Assessment for Learning: Techniques for Promoting Student Learning Through Assessment in Online and Blended Courses

Finding a good balance between low stakes and high stakes assessments can be a challenge in any course, including those that are blended or online. In this session, participants will consider a range of options for assessing student knowledge and skills that simultaneously improve student learning.

Course dates: June 15, 16, 18 (M, T, Th) from 10-11 a.m. (Note: This course is full, but we have added an additional course on June 22, 23, and 25 from 10-11 a.m., with unlimited enrollment.)

Time Commitment:  This is a fully synchronous course in Zoom (one hour per session) with activities and breakout sessions. There will be a short reading and homework due for each session (less than one hour of homework per session). Full participation in all three synchronous sessions will produce the greatest learning gains.

Registration: Registration is now open for the June 22, 23, and 25 sessions: https://urfacultyhub.corsizio.com/c/5ed66383b626a66a1ea36afd.

Questions? Email the Faculty Hub.

Professional Development in Responsive and Flexible Teaching

A three-week online course with synchronous components and the option of participating fully asynchronously. The course will mimic a highly flexible course delivery where faculty experience this from a student’s perspective. This online course will be led by the Faculty Hub and will include sessions with one or more online learning experts.

This course is under development. Anticipated learning goals are:

  • To familiarize faculty with good practices in backward course design for online and highly flexible teaching
  • To introduce faculty to approaches for establishing and maintaining an online learning community
  • To help faculty consider options for assessments in online and highly flexible learning environments
  • To help faculty develop pedagogically sound approaches to synchronous and asynchronous discussion
  • To help faculty develop strategies to address the special challenges of starting a class remotely/online and/or having some of the students face-to-face and others participating asynchronously

Course dates: This will run for three consecutive weeks in July. Specific dates are TBD, we expect to begin on July 6 or July 13.

Time Commitment: Modules will include up to five hours of homework each week including a requirement to participate in discussion in one of several formats.

Cohort size: 25

Registration: Information will be communicated from the Faculty Hub by June 17. Based on interest, a waitlist will be created and the course may be offered again beginning the latter half of July.

Note: The asynchronous components of this course will also be made available as single-use learning sessions for faculty development.

Questions? Email the Faculty Hub.

Additional Offerings from the Faculty Hub in June and/or July – Dates TBD

The Digital Whiteboard: Strategies and Tools for Teaching Equation and Diagram Intensive Courses Online

Workshop participants will:

  • Discuss challenges and opportunities associated with teaching equation- or diagram-based courses online
  • Identify the essential components of a course that require a new tool or approach.
  • Learn tools and workflows that take advantage of a digital whiteboard to optimize these essential components.
  • Develop a new digital whiteboard workflow and receive feedback on that plan within breakout groups
  • Receive tip sheets for all the tools and workflows that we cover during the workshop and an opportunity to join a Slack workspace to share ideas over the course of the coming academic year.

Questions? Email Andrew Bell.

Ready When You Are: Engaging Learners Through Asynchronous Discussion 

Whether utilized within online, hybrid, or face-to-face learning contexts, asynchronous discussions provide opportunities for individual reflection, deep engagement with course content, and collaborative learning. In this workshop, we will consider how discussions can be designed to facilitate three types of online interaction: student-to-self, student-to-content, and student-to-student. After participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Design an effective asynchronous discussion assignment
  • Identify and select tools that meet their learning objectives
  • Implement appropriate facilitation and assessment strategies

Questions? Email Ryan Brazell.

Additional Professional Development Opportunities

The Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) will be hosting workshops and working groups to help instructors prepare for teaching in (1) hybrid courses with some remote/online components, (2) fully remote/online courses, and (3) socially distanced face-to-face courses. Some topics are relevant to many disciplines (such as incorporating writing, asynchronous discussion approaches, whiteboard animation), others are relevant to specific disciplines (such as languages, performing arts, science labs, music). All resources will be made available for use by members of the consortium.

ACS faculty and faculty development centers are creating these workshops for delivery in June and July. The sessions will be synchronous, using Zoom, and will include a deliverable/product for participating faculty. We hope to have an initial schedule available in early June.

Questions? Email the Faculty Hub.

Online discussions via a Faculty Hub-hosted Remote Teaching Workspace

Throughout the year, the Faculty Hub will be sharing information via our Slack workspace called Remote Teaching. We encourage faculty and support staff to share resources and seek support via the many different channels within the workspace. If you want to join this workspace, please click here.

Recommended Additional Readings/Activities

1 on 1 Faculty Hub Consultations

The Faculty Hub offers 1-1 support for discussions about pedagogy, including identifying appropriate strategies and tools to help faculty meet their specific pedagogical goals. To schedule a consultation, email the Faculty Hub.

Please note that technical training for Blackboard, Panopto, Zoom and other university-supported software is done by Information Services.  If you need technical support, the HelpDesk is one way to initiate this or click on the button for SpiderTechNet to get started learning about technological tools and software needed for working remotely.

Assessing Learning – Online

Dear Colleagues, 

As exam season approaches, some of you may be thinking about the best ways to assess student learning during these unusual times. In consultation with the Provost’s Office, we have looked into best practices for remote assessment. 

These include: 

Whatever approach you take, please consider regular reminders of our institutional Honor Code and the importance of academic integrity. Please also consider this resource on preserving academic integrity in online assessments and a blog post with options to help reduce pressure and anxiety for students. 

We have also evaluated a number of different online exam proctoring tools, and consulted with other institutions that have either used or evaluated these tools. The listing of tools we considered includes ProctorU, Respondus, Examity, HonorLock, Proctorio, Proctorfree and ProctorTrack. In all cases, our research shows that such tools are ineffective, expensive, raise student privacy issues, undermine our Honor Code and can be off-putting to students. Because of these reasons, some schools have adopted policies asking faculty to not use such tools. While UR is not taking this approach, we are cognizant that students and faculty are all working under very unusual circumstances and these tools may not be especially well-suited at this time. 

However, to support those for whom alternative assessment options are not an option, we are considering the possibility of purchasing a small number of proctoring services. Please contact Carol Parish for more information.  

More information on using open-book assessments: 

http://www.iiserpune.ac.in/~mohanan/educ/openbook.pdf 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477727/ 

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1092705.pdf 

More information on low-stakes assessment 

http://languages.oberlin.edu/blogs/ctie/2018/04/15/less-is-more-low-stakes-assessments-and-student-success/ 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-find-that-frequent-tests-can-boost-learning/ 

As always, we wish you the best and thank you for all you are doing for our students! 

The Faculty Hub 

Faculty Hub Ed Tech Update

Dear Faculty,

If someone said in January that all UR faculty would be teaching remotely right now, we would not have believed that. In the Faculty Hub, this transition has reinforced the importance of a growth mindset, and we are inspired to see our community take on this challenge so thoughtfully. Below are some tips and updates that we hope you’ll find helpful.

Have a great day,

Andrew Bell and Ryan Brazell
Faculty Hub

—-

Setting up Zoom Meetings

  • There are multiple options for setting up meetings. You can set up separate recurring Zoom meetings for each course. You can also use and re-use your automatically-created personal link for any and all virtual meetings. The advantage to using your personal link is that it can be customized to include identifying information in the URL, which may help everyone keep track of which link goes to which meeting. Information Services has published new guidelines for creating secure Zoom meetings and our official recommendation is to NOT use your personal link. Please see this SpiderTechNet article for more information.
  • Zoom’s built-in invite option has proved confusing for many. We recommend that to invite others to a Zoom meeting, copy the meeting link or invitation and post it to Blackboard or send it via email.

    Sharing Audio/Video Files

  • Faculty should upload all audio- and video-based recordings into Panopto through your Blackboard course. This includes Zoom meeting recordings, clips of films, and any other multimedia files. Lecture and desktop capture videos you create using Panopto through Blackboard will automatically be uploaded to the correct location.
  • To collect audio or video assignment submissions from students, please create a digital inbox using Box. If other students need to view these video files, you can share the Box folder with them, or upload the files into Panopto. (Students cannot upload directly into Panopto.)

Captioning and Transcription

  • All videos uploaded to Panopto (including Zoom recordings) are automatically captioned at 75-85% accuracy, depending on audio quality. This is useful if you have a student with a disability accommodation notice (DAN) that calls for transcription of auditory learning materials. Instructions for enabling automatic speech recognition captions are available in this Panopto support article and this SpiderTechNet article.  Please contact Andrew Bell in the Faculty Hub for more information.

Continuing Support

Hub Pub, Resilience, New Resources

Dear Faculty, 

Now that classes are in full swing by new and different methods for teachers and students, the Faculty Hub wants to relay some updates and links to additional resources.  We also know that you are having success along with the challenges and we have  created an opportunity for faculty to share success stories on Friday afternoon this week:   

A Virtual Hub Pub—Wine without Whining 

We have risen to the challenge of teaching remotely while also adapting to our new world of social distancing.  Thankfully, we have technology to help bring us together so let’s use it for a virtual Hub Pub!  Pour your drink of choice and hop into a Zoom room with the Faculty Hub on Friday at 4 pm when we will toast our successes from this week.  Wine without whining is our goal for this Zoom session to mitigate the social isolation!   

Topic: Wine without Whining- Virtual Hub Pub 

Time: Friday, Mar 27, 2020 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)  

Faculty Tip:  Building community while teaching online is often cited by students as one of the keys to their successful learning.  So, how does a teacher build community from a distance?  By being virtually present, responsive, having clear expectations, and designing organized learning experiences that afford students time to interact with you and with each other. 

Faculty Resilience:  The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a weekly forum on faculty resilience.  Each week they will examine issues such as how to support vulnerable students, pivot to online lessons, and manage workloads. To join the open discussion, with Q&A, any and every Friday at 2 p.m., EDT – Sign up here. 

  • The attached article on resilience is from the Vanderbilt University archives on Work/Life Issues and it may be useful reading during this time of enhanced emotional and physical stress. 

AAC&U Webinar:  Safeguarding Quality, Equity, and Inclusion as Learning Moves Online.   

This webinar is on Friday, March 27, livestreaming from 1-2 pm, EDT.  As the undergraduate experience goes virtual in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, how can colleges and universities ensure that the rapid scaling of online learning to unprecedented levels doesn’t come at the expense of their commitment to quality, equity, and inclusion?   Presenters will offer practical advice and effective pedagogical strategies for creating and sustaining high-quality, equitable, and inclusive learning environments online.  Go to this page to register; you will have to create an account (see below) or use your account login.   

  • If you already have an AAC&U account set up, please use that information to register for webinars which are free for faculty at member institutions. If you need to set up an account, please click on this link. 
  • If you have any difficulties setting up an accounts, please contact Abdullah Jones at AAC&U. 

 

ACE Engage has new materials available on implications of COVID-19 policies on diversity, equity and inclusion.   A 30 day free trial for these resources is here.   

As time allows or if you are seeking other types of support, you may find it useful to consult the list of consortia to which we belong.  In particular, there are useful resources at the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) website. 

Please reach out by email or visit our Remote Teaching @ UR website or contact the HelpDesk for technical issues. 

– Linda  

Friday Update from Faculty Hub on Remote Teaching

Dear Faculty Colleagues, 

Thank you for all of your hard work in preparation of our move to remote teaching on Monday. Thank you as well to all who were able to attend the Faculty Hub and Information Services’ webinars on using Zoom and Panopto/Blackboard for remote teaching. We wanted to pass along some resources from those webinars, as well as some new ones.  

  • NEW– Boatwright Memorial Library, The Faculty Hub, Information Services (IS), and SPCS have created a number of resources to support faculty during this shift to remote teaching. They can be found on the Hub’s Remote Teaching site: https://blog.richmond.edu/remoteteaching/ 
  • NEW– The Faculty Hub’s Pedagogy Tips for Q&A and Discussion in a Class Using Zoom:  

Below are some updates on previously scheduled Faculty Hub Events: 

  • April 10: The Hub Talk with Rana Dajani has been canceled. 
  • May 6: The Faculty Development Day scheduled for May will be rescheduled to a future date.   

Have a safe and healthy weekend and good luck to all on Monday morning when we are officially teaching remotely.  Reach out if you still need help from the Faculty Hub (facultyhub@richmond.edu or direct emails or converse with us and the faculty at large via our Slack workspace 

Announcing the Faculty Hub Associates AY20-21

Faculty Colleagues, 

 And now, for some good news. 

 The Teaching and Scholarship Hub is pleased to announce the selection of two Faculty Hub Associate projects for the academic year 2020-2021.  Both projects are cross-disciplinary and have high potential to impact faculty development at the University of Richmond.  Dr. Elisabeth Gruner will complete a project to advance faculty development goals in assessment and grading while Dr. Kristine Nolin and Dr. Kristine Grayson will collaborate on a project to advance faculty development in data literacy.  More information about each project is provided below.  Please join us in welcoming our inaugural Faculty Hub Associates! 

 Assessment and Grading 

 What are the ways in which assessment of student work results in enhanced motivation for continued learning and improvement toward learning goals?  Effective teaching communicates expectations for quality work, provides useful feedback for improvement, and enhances motivation for learning and improved performance.  In this faculty development project, Dr. Elisabeth Gruner (English) will examine different approaches to assessment and grading and how they impact the success of all learners. Dr. Gruner has participated in several faculty learning communities on inclusive pedagogy and mindfulness and the synergy of these efforts has included experimentation with alternative models of assessment and grading and examined their relationship to motivation for learning and student communication of what they have learned. She is experienced in designing and delivering faculty development programming and consultations in prior service as an Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and as the Inaugural Coordinator of the First Year Seminar Program.  As a Faculty Hub Associate, Dr. Gruner will continue to experiment with varied approaches to assessment of student work and grading practices including portfolio grading, contract grading, and ungrading.  In transforming her own courses, Dr. Gruner will generate data on assessment and grading approaches and their outcomes for students, communicate the results, facilitate faculty dialogue on assessment and grading practices, and she will develop resources to guide faculty decision-making around effective methods of assessment and grading. 

Data Literacy 

How do faculty prepare to help students assess the validity of data-based claims, build skills to visualize trends in data, and effectively communicate conclusions from data?  Developing student competency in data literacy is important to many fields including business, government, science, healthcare, and journalism.  In a collaborative faculty development project, Dr. Kristine Nolin (Chemistry) and Dr. Kristine Grayson (Biology) will support the design and execution of Hub resources to advance faculty training and expertise in data-centric teaching practices. Dr. Nolin recently completed the Data Analytics Bootcamp with the School of Professional and Continuing Studies and leads the Faculty Learning Community on Data Science/Analytics. Dr. Grayson serves as co-Principal Investigator for a nationwide network on developing, publishing, and sharing data-centric teaching resources and she engages faculty in professional development on these practices through the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) project and HHMI BioInteractive.  As Faculty Hub Associates, Drs. Nolin and Grayson will each address new learning outcomes focused on data competency and literacy in their courses, facilitate faculty collaboration and dialogue on data literacy, and publish open educational resources on integrating data literacy objectives into campus 

 The Faculty Hub looks forward to hosting and assisting with these projects in the next AY. 

Memo from the Faculty Hub

Dear Faculty Colleagues, 

Well, this is not the version of March Madness that I was looking forward to.  

It is clear that our quick conversion from our normal modes of face-to-face teaching to alternative forms of on-line instruction will require hard work, creativity, and flexibility. I write to remind you that you are not alone! Information Services and the Faculty Hub are among the groups that are working to communicate about tools and approaches to help you.  Please visit the resources we have provided and try some things and then reach out when you need more help.  We are responding as quickly as possible.  As some Hub staff will be working remotely, email is better than phone, but we are also checking our voice messages. 

Above all, it is important that we convey to students that we are here to support them and that we will help them be successful in meeting their academic goals this semester.  The psychological toll this will take on many students should not be under-estimated in the adaptations we make to teaching this semester.  A suggestion is to reach out to your students and advisees now to check-in, let them know that the academic mission is going to work, they will be successful, and you will be there to facilitate their success.  The faculty-student interaction is the number one reason students come to UR, stay at UR, and find success at UR.  Let’s be sure to continue those interactions!   

We have produced a survey you may use to assess your students’ capacity for the on-line work you will do with them and to give them a chance to communicate concerns (thank you to Kristine Nolin and Marcella Torres for ideas).  It would be helpful to also communicate to students your confidence that the teaching-learning partnership will be successful.  Attached is a sample survey– you are welcome to modify this with your own language or add/delete questions as you see fit. Four suggestions for how to administer a survey are also listed. 

It also important to manage the expectations you have for yourself!  We recommend that you first try the on-line tools with which you are most familiar. As you then experiment with new tools, please give yourself time to read up and play around with the new tool before trying it in a classroom setting.  You cannot learn all of the options available to you, so you will have to make some choices and move forward.  To help support your own success, you might consider spending some time devoted to mindfulness.  Special thanks to Monti Datta and the Mindfulness FLC for producing this video for our faculty:  https://vimeo.com/397506535  

Are you looking for remote teaching support and/or consultation? We have many options in the coming week to help you make this transition. 

  • Tool Webinars – a collaboration between IS and the Faculty Hub 

Using Zoom for Remote Teaching: Monday 3/16 at 3:00 pm 
Using Zoom for Remote Teaching: Tuesday 3/17 at 10:30 am
Using Blackboard and Panopto for Remote Teaching: Tuesday 3/17 at 3:00 pm 

  • 1:1 Faculty Hub Consultations on On-Line Pedagogy 

We are available to talk with you 1-1 via Zoom. Faculty Hub consultants will be available on Wednesday 3/18 and Thursday 3/19 to help you strategize about how to choose the appropriate tool(s) and pedagogical approaches for your version of online teaching. One size does not fit all and there will be a variety of ways to have success, from simple to more complex tools.  If you want some 1:1 help, please click on a name to schedule this via youcanbookme:  Andrew Bell or Ryan Brazell  

Please install Zoom and try it out prior to your 1:1 appointment.  If you need help setting up Zoom, please follow these instructions from spidertechnet (a service of IS): https://spidertechnet.richmond.edu/TDClient/1955/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=100515 

You may also contact the IS Help Desk with additional questions about getting Zoom up and running.   

  • Other ways of getting support 

As a reminder, the Faculty Hub has a Slack workspace for faculty to share information and ask questions as they embark on this transition from face to face to online teaching. Join the conversation here. 

For general pedagogy and scholarship support, please contact us at facultyhub@richmond.edu.  

For technical support, please contact the IS Help Desk at helpdesk@richmond.edu  

 

Below are some updates on previously scheduled Faculty Hub Events  

  • March 17: the Hub Talk with David Wilkins has been postponed indefinitely. 
  • March 24 and March 25: our Intentional Tech book club discussions will still meet via Zoom at the regularly scheduled times. Registered participants will receive a Zoom meeting invitation via email.   
  • March 27: our Early Career Faculty group will still meet via Zoom at the regularly scheduled times. Registered participants will receive a Zoom meeting invitation via email. 

Best wishes for good health and our continued successes in teaching and learning next week and beyond – 

Linda Boland 

Director, Teaching and Scholarship Hub (Faculty Hub) 

End of Fall 2019 Updates

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Congratulations on completing another fall semester and best wishes for your winter break.

The Faculty Hub would like to make you aware of our spring term opportunities and highlight some successful programs from fall term. Please see the Faculty Hub website to register for spring programs or email us if you have any questions.

NEW – Faculty Hub Associates – Deadline for application is January 29, 2020

The Faculty Hub announces a pilot program for faculty to share their areas of expertise related to enhancing excellence in faculty teaching and/or scholarship and creative works. Please see the attached call for applications for the new Faculty Hub Associates program. Questions may be directed to Linda Boland, Director of the Faculty Hub.

Sign up now for Faculty Hub events in January

On January 9, the Faculty Hub welcomes Michael Palmer, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, for a workshop on learner-centered syllabi. Registration is required for Creating Syllabi for Courses You’ll Love to Teach and Your Students Will Love to Take. Please join your colleagues for post-new year coffee, tea, and bagels at 9:00 a.m. plus a chance to make a significant change to your teaching in just two hours (9:30-11:30 a.m.). We hope you will join us!

From January-March, we are running a Faculty Hub Book Group to explore how intentional utilization of technology can help students achieve course learning objectives. Two discussion groups are being formed, and we still have some openings in the breakfast group. Please sign up on our events page, and we will send you our guide book Intentional Tech (Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University).

Other spring term events

The Faculty Hub Talks program got off to a great start in the fall term with two sessions led by Nicole Maurantonio and Doron Samuel-Siegel. In the spring term, we welcome David Wilkins, Chris von Rueden, Corey D. B. Walker, and Rana Dajani. Hub Talks start at 12:12 p.m. with an 18-minute presentation followed by a discussion that outlasts the duration of the talk! Faculty are finding these to be a useful form of community-building and engagement across disciplines. Please register here. We offer lunch, so you can visit, eat, and learn — all in one hour!

We are planning ahead for a faculty professional development event on Wednesday, May 6. We have invited Claire Howell Major, a frequent speaker at faculty development conferences and author of many books on pedagogy. She will be working with us on approaches to active learning and engaging our students — all faculty will find this useful. We are working out the details and registration will be available soon.

NEW – We are working on a concept for a pre-summer Faculty Hub Institute beginning on the Tuesday after Commencement, just before the time period when many faculty re-focus on summer scholarship or creative works. We are brainstorming about short, intense (2-2.5 day) learning experiences that will have immediate impact on faculty scholarship and/or teaching. This year’s focus is Data Visualization Using Tableau. Our approach will be a cross-disciplinary experience to help faculty develop new skills to make data presentations more dynamic, engaging, clear, and interpretable. Likewise, this in-house institute will help establish a community of faculty learners. We aim to rotate the Hub Institute topics annually and may be able to offer a small stipend for participation. Would this type of learning experience benefit your work? Please share your thoughts with Technology Consultant Andrew Bell. Our planning process depends on your input.

Highlights from the fall semester 2019:

  • We ran our first Teaching Squares program to facilitate peer observation and self-reflection about effective teaching across disciplines. Early feedback has been positive, and a January gathering of this cohort will help share the value of faculty participation in the program.
  • We initiated an Early Career Faculty Seminar program; the inaugural cohort focused on inclusive pedagogy in the fall term. We will continue our work together this spring with a focus on small-scale changes to enhance teaching and student learning. All early career faculty are invited to join us. Please contact Linda Boland if you are interested.
  • Other successes this fall included several inclusive pedagogy trainings, one-on-one academic technology consultations, development of video training modules, planning for upcoming space renovations for the new Faculty Hub in Boatwright Library, and other behind-the-scenes development of procedures and plans within the Hub. We are excited to continue to expand and improve programming and opportunities to help faculty grow in their professional development.
  • We developed a Faculty Hub statement about confidentiality with respect to individual faculty consultations; please see our website for details.

The Faculty Hub initiated its work in the fall term of 2019 with the goals of fostering excellence in teaching, cultivating cross-disciplinary interactions for scholarly exchange, and promoting professional development for faculty at all career stages. We encourage faculty to contact us if you have ideas and needs that we might help service, or if we can connect you to campus partners who may also be able to assist you.

Best wishes for a healthy and happy holiday season from the Faculty Hub!