Bryn Mawr and Haverford connect students around the world through Transformative Sustainability Project

By T. Donahue-Ochoa, Visiting Asst Professor of Political Science, Haverford College, M. Darwish, Lecturer and Coordinator of Bi-Co Arabic Program, Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, and E. Hartman, Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, Haverford College.

T. Donahue-Ochoa

At Haverford and Bryn Mawr, many students and faculty are co-creating an ocean-spanning online exchange. It’s called “the Transformative Sustainability Project.” In it, these scholars work with peers in the Persian Gulf on some of the world’s largest questions. How can we join cross-regionally to sustain our communities? How can we use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as shared yardsticks of progress? To answer, the peer groups divide into teams spanning the Philly suburbs and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. As they tackle these problems, they swap their localized perspectives. For a time, they see the issues from the standpoint of 7,000 miles away.

With funding from the Stevens Initiative, the Project partners colleagues at Haverford and Bryn Mawr, Dickinson College in Carlisle PA, and American University Sharjah (AUS). It matches seven Pennsylvania-based faculty with six at AUS. The faculty duos work across disciplines in teaching paired courses. These aim to foster ties across cultures and empathy for differences. All course pairs hold several joint meetings. They also group their students into the ocean-spanning teams. Each of those does a term-long assignment on local and global efforts to sustain communities.

We can learn a lot by giving up our North Atlantic viewpoints for a while, instead seeing things from the Persian Gulf.

– – Prof. T. Donahue-Ochoa, Haverford College

Three Haverford-Bryn Mawr faculty currently work on the Project. In the spring, Manar Darwish will offer the course, “Society and Culture of the Middle East through Film.” “Its horizons will be widened by our Sharjah partners,” says Darwish. Meanwhile, Eric Hartman is now teaching “Human Rights in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in a National and Global Context.” And Tom Donahue-Ochoa is offering “Development and Transnational Injustices” and “Comparative and Transnational Studies.” They’re pairing those courses with AUS counterparts offered by Salma Thani and Kristina Katsos

M. Darwish

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LACOL Reading Group – Fall 2021

Attention Faculty and Staff! Consider joining a multi-campus reading group this fall based on the new book,

Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading

Reading Group Meeting Dates, Fall 2021:

  • October 27
  • November 3
  • November 10 discussion with the author Jenae Cohn 

Reading Group Registration: closed

J. Cohn, Cal State

Reading on a screen is a different experience than reading off of paper. But is it necessarily worse, more distracted, or more superficial?  In her new book, Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading, Dr. Jenae Cohn make the case that there are distinct strategies readers can employ for reading in a variety of spaces, from on the screen to off.  This book makes a call for readers to embrace a range of reading practices available to them and to make choices about where, how, and why they read based off of their purposes for reading.

Jenae Cohn writes and speaks about digital pedagogy and online teaching and learning. A trained writing instructor, Jenae has taught online, hybrid, and face-to-face composition courses, and supports faculty in the development of courses across modalities. She offers workshops on topics related to online instruction, humanities pedagogy, and digital literacy. Her research interests include digital/information literacy, metacognitive thinking, and reading and writing across the curriculum. Prior to her appointment at CSU-Sacramento, Dr. Cohn was an Academic Technology Specialist at Stanford University for 4 years where she helped foster remote learning and technology-enriched curriculum for 40+ instructors. At Stanford, she also designed in-person, online, and blended workshops for 120+ students per year. She also developed a Teaching With Technology page for Stanford University.

Jenae received a doctorate in Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition from the University of California-Davis and a BA in English with an emphasis on creative writing from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Book Group Info & Materials

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LACOL 2021 – Featured Session

Aus der Finsternis: Cross-Institutional Intermediate German with Dark (Netflix 2017-20)

Sunka Simon, Professor of German, Film and Media Studies, Swarthmore College
Matthew Miller, Associate Professor of German, Colgate University
Pia Eger, DAAD Fellow, Colgate University

Three colleagues explore both synchronous and asynchronous activities and projects built on cross-institutional team-screenings of weekly episodes of Dark’s first season on Netflix.

This presentation showcases the pedagogical and technological tools utilized to achieve the learning outcomes for the LACOL sponsored cross-institutional digitally connected Intermediate German course in the fall semester of 2020 between Swarthmore College and Colgate University.

Read more about this LACOL project: Intermediate German Digital Link-Up (Fall 2020)

Toward Equity in Assessment … Student-Led Coffee Chats Spring 2021

Toward Equity in Assessment: A Cross-Constituency Dialogue

THIS SPRING, LACOL hosted a series of weekly coffee chats led by student pedagogy partners entitled Toward Equity in Assessment: A Cross-Constituency Dialogue. These multi-campus, multi-constituency discussions build on the Summer 2020 and Fall 2020 series.  

Assessment is one of the thorniest dimensions of teaching and learning, and it has been recognized as an arena in which inequities are particularly severe.

The global pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities and created new ones; therefore, now more than ever faculty, staff, and students need to be in dialogue with one another about how to challenge both existing and new inequities. This coffee-chat series supports faculty, staff, and students in explorations of the possibilities for developing equitable approaches to assessment that honor the diversity of students’ strengths, needs, and aspirations. Each session will be facilitated by a group of experienced student partners, and all sessions will be run as semi-structured conversations that strive to integrate the questions and insights of all participants.

Resources:

Registration is closed (series complete); coffee chats ran February 22 and run weekly through April 12 – details below. 

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Student-Led Brown Bags, Fall 2020

Student Perspectives on Trauma-informed, Anti-racist Teaching and Learning in Hybrid and Remote Contexts

THIS FALL, LACOL hosted a series of weekly brown bags led by student partners on Trauma-informed, Anti-racist Teaching and Learning in Hybrid and Remote Contexts. These multi-campus discussions expand on the high-impact Summer 2020 Student-led Dialogues as semi-structured, open conversations with LACOL colleagues in a small group format. 

The importance of the topic is high in our current moment, as argued in this opinion piece.

With fall courses in progress now, the student partners will engage in aspects with direct relevance to the hybrid/remote classroom, building on a set of curated and annotated resources, prompts, and activities to facilitate discussions based on interests expressed by discussion participants. Read More

Intermediate German Digital Link-Up (F20-S21)

Prof. Simon Swarthmore College

Professors Sunka Simon and Matthew Miller teach Intermediate German as an intensive language class that meets four days a week on campus at Swarthmore College and Colgate University respectively. The curriculum is built to enhance the four language skills (oral, aural, reading and writing composition) through a combination of up-to-date, authentic print and audio-visual geo-political and cultural material to move students from A2 to B1 level proficiency within the span of one semester. Both classes work from a textbook (e.g. Stationen) that integrates Landeskunde (learning about the specificities of German-speaking regions and cities) with B1-level grammar and vocabulary lessons.

Prof. MillerColgate University
Prof. Miller
Colgate University

We carved out the potential of holding a synchronous class together once a week as a joint web conference. Asynchronously, cross-college teams of students will prepare didacticized assignments consisting of blog-posts, a discussion forum and Zoom video-conferencing tools utilizing newly acquired linguistic concepts to react to consecutive weekly episodes of German-language original dramas such as Dark, Skylines, Dogs of Berlin or Berlin Babylon. The semester will culminate with a virtual symposium and/or video-essay student presentations.

On the benefits of linking courses across two campuses, Professor Simon notes:

Our linked class creates a broader cohort of language learners. We are “in it together.”

As the course wraps up, digital student projects will be shared with the LACOL language community, including web-published symposium papers and final video essays.
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Liberal Arts Lecture Exchange (hosted by LACOL)

Liberal Arts Remote Lecture Exchange

LACOL is hosting a Liberal Arts Lecture/Lesson Exchange.  This concept was proposed by faculty at our member schools and is starting to roll out as a response to remote teaching needs.The exchange is open to the liberal arts community. Consider contributing!

Liberal Arts Remote Lecture Exchange

Post to the exchange: http://bit.ly/lac-remote-lesson-form

View the list: http://bit.ly/lac-remote-lesson-exchange

March 2020: Liberal Arts Remote Teaching (hands-on webinar)

WEBINAR EVENT

Dates/Time for Live Sessions:

  • Tuesday, March 17, 2020 – 1:00pm-2:00pm Eastern [FULL]
  • Thursday, March 19, 2020 – 11:00am-12:00pm Eastern  [FULL]

Sign Up: CLOSED
Handouts and Demo Gallery: http://bit.ly/lac-teach-webinar-report
Remote Teaching Tips: http://bit.ly/lacol-teach-online

This LACOL webinar shares hands-on practice with five experienced liberal arts teachers from Swarthmore College, Vassar College, Williams College, and Washington and Lee University.  This team regularly collaborates to deliver online/hybrid classes for the liberal arts.

Description: Many liberal arts colleges are asking faculty to consider how they move their teaching online as part of emergency preparedness in the face of COVID-19 or other disruptions to regular classroom teaching.  Tips and guides are circulating, and faculty get lots of support from their local IT and teaching and learning centers. Read More

Video Creation and the Science of Learning – tips from D. Hurlbert

Dann Hurlbert, Carleton College’s Media & Design Specialist and long-time friend of LACOL, shares three new video guides, drawing on the popular textbook e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by by Ruth Covlin Clark & Richard E. Mayer.  Visit Carleton Academic Technology blog for more tips from Dann and the Carleton ATS team: https://blogs.carleton.edu/academictechnology.

Video 1:  Making Video Work Well

In this short video, one of three in a series on the textbook, ELearning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Covlin Clark & Richard E. Mayer, Dann Hurlbert digs into how these important concepts should impact instructional video production. The book is an in-depth, research-based look into best practices surrounding using audio and visuals in e-learning. In this first video, Dann relays how best to use the dual channels (audio and visuals) to make his or her instructional videos more engaging and more effective. (See full post.)

 

Video 2:  Talk is Cheap

In this short video, Dann Hurlbert digs into the textbook, ELearning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Covlin Clark & Richard E. Mayer. This time, Dann relays why audio alone is often less effective online–and what simple steps an instructor can do to make his or her instructional content more engaging and more effective. (See full post.)

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Spring 2020 – Shared courses in Upper Level Statistics

Jingchen (Monika) Hu, Assistant Professor of Statistics at Vassar College
Prof. Monika Hu, Vassar College

Shared LACOL Course: Data Confidentiality (MATH 301)
Instructor: Professor Jingchen (Monika) Hu, Vassar College
Topics and Objectives: Statistical agencies are under legal obligation to protect survey respondents’ privacy when releasing respondent-level data to the public. Statistical models could facilitate such release by introducing perturbation to the original, confidential data. How to develop suitable statistical models, and how to evaluate the privacy protection they produce, are the focus of this intensive.

 

Shared LACOL Course: Bayesian Inference with Python (MATH 399)
Instructor: Professor Jingchen (Monika) Hu, Vassar College
Topics and Objectives: We will focus on computational techniques using Python programming language to estimate various Bayesian models. In the end, students propose and complete a data analysis project of their interests and present it to the group.

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Book Review: Small Teaching Online

by Liz Evans

A new book, Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, by F. Darby and J. Lang (Wiley 2019) caught my eye last June, initially via this IHE author interview.  The timing of this discovery was perfect for me, since I was helping to support LACOL’s first fully online summer data science class.  So many nuggets from this book prove to be right on target for LACOL’s various pedogogical explorations, I choose it as something to share with my awesome colleagues on the Haverford College Instructional Technology team as part of their summer 2019 Learn and Share discussion group.  This short review highlights some of the authors’ ideas I found most thought provoking and potentially useful to anyone teaching in the classroom, online … or both!

Many faculty and designers may be familiar already with the phrase “small teaching” which was made famous in Prof. James Lang’s 2016 book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning In a nutshell, Lang demonstrates how small, easily-managed teaching modifications – based on the neuroscience of how people learn – can have a positive impact for students.  That is, small adjustments can make good teaching great.

Online professor and instructional designer Flower Darby worked with Lang to bring the small teaching concept into the online realm.  The opportunities for discovery are rich because, as Darby notes, online learning is in its infancy.

The book recommendation is excellent – a lot of useful suggestions which would take years to figure out.
                           -Dr. Natalia Toporikova, Washington and Lee University; online data science instructor, summer 2019, 2020

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Gerrymandering in American Politics – blended learning at W&L

by Mark Rush and Dick Kuettner

The gerrymandering controversy in American politics offers an ideal subject for a blended learning class that draws upon racial justice, electoral behavior, electoral reform, law, political science, data analysis, and the use of geographic information systems technology. We combined each of these themes into a class that entailed the practical application of GIS and data analysis skills to a contemporary public policy issue that animated the news as the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to issue its second gerrymandering decision in as many terms.

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Online Modules for Quantitative Skills: Exploring Adaption and Adoption Across LACOL

Year 1 LACOL IUSE revisedLACOL has been awarded an IUSE grant from National Science Foundation for a project titled, “Online modules for quantitative skill building: Exploring adaption and adoption across a consortium”. This three-year project will research the adaption and adoption of face-to-face and online pedagogies for teaching quantitative skills (QS) with the aim of improving understanding of best practices for the development of online modules to support students’ QS development.

The project proposal was developed by Melissa Eblen-Zayas and Janet Russell of Carleton College and Laura Muller and Jonathan Leamon of Williams College based lessons learned from the QLAB pilot project.

Additional information about the project, including details about the project advisory board, a needs assessment survey for faculty, and opportunities for faculty and staff to get involved, will be be shared later this summer and into the fall through the QS Working Group Forum.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE for ongoing news!

FACING INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS

How important is it for instructors to include their own faces when creating instructional videos? The answer might surprise you. Dann Hurlbert, Carleton College’s Media & Design Guru (and an actor, director, and inventor of the Little Prompter) leans on research and his own expertise to offer guidance.

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CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO

Dann Hurlbert and Palmar Alvarez-Blanco at Carleton College recently co-taught Spanish 206, a course focused on developing language skills with native speakers and fostering civic engagement–while also giving something tangible back to the community. Students in this course worked with under-represented local organizations to help them create a “participatory videos” (short documentaries) to help tell each organization’s story. In addition to having students create video as a portion of their coursework, Dann also used instructional videos to teach and guide the learning. Dann created a successful Moodle-based micro-course that can now be easily replicated and plugged into a multitude of courses in which the faculty member hopes to tie Civic Engagement with his/her own course content, and video production.

Here’s a short video that offers a peek into the course and this engaging instructional method:

*Note: this sample video includes short selections from the following films: Bacon and God’s Wrath by Sol Friedman and Sarah Clifford-Rashotte; Godka Circa by Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora; Damon at 86th Street by Emily Sheskin, and the Price of Certainty by Daniele Anastasion.

For more information on how you and your institution can use this technique and these materials to foster civic engagement in your courses, contact Dann at dhurlbert@carleton.edu

Panel: Teaching Online in the Liberal Arts

Session: Teaching Online in the Liberal Arts
Panelists:

  • Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Professor of Physics and Director, Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, Carleton College
  • Erland Stevens, Professor of Chemistry, Davidson College
  • Chad Topaz, Professor of Mathematics, Williams College

Facilitator: Janet Russell, Director of Academic Technology, Carleton College

WATCH

How is online teaching and learning relevant for small residential liberal arts colleges?

In this panel, three faculty members with hands-on experience teaching online tell their stories and engage in a dialogue with colleagues across the consortium.  How might these insights help us build a vision for online teaching and learning that aligns with the core mission of our institutions?

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