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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Digital Agility and Liberal Arts – collab highlights on the EDUCAUSE Transforming Higher Ed

Digital Agility: Embracing a Holistic Approach to Digital Literacy in the Liberal Arts

A group of institutions is collaborating to identify what digital agility means in the liberal arts and to encourage the use of that definition to guide institutional initiatives that involve digital agility …

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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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Bryn Mawr’s Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts – CFP is Open!

cropped-blendlac_logo_resized-2CALL FOR PROPOSALS – submit by Feb 16!

Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference at Bryn Mawr College, May 20-21, 2020.

Submissions are now open for the Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, to be held on May 20-21, 2020 at Bryn Mawr College. We are open to all topics related to blended learning in the liberal arts. Possible themes include:

  • Digital competencies, digital citizenship, and digital wellness
  • Experiential and service learning
  • Blended learning spaces, libraries and resource centers
  • Critical making
  • Emerging technologies
  • Task-based tech-mediated learning
  • Assistive technology and accessibility
  • Blended learning beyond the single course
  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion in blended experiences

Submit by Feb. 16, 2019 at brynmawr.edu/blendedlearning/conference. Contact Jennifer Spohrer at blendedlearning@brynmawr.edu with questions.

Follow @BlendLAC

 

Introducing CHIANTI – language resources from LACOL

visit chiantiWhat are some of the biggest rewards of learning a second language? As a student, what do you know now that you wish you had known as you began learning your language at college? As faculty, what one piece of advice would you give to students as they are about to start their language learning at college? What are models or maps that integrate all aspects of language learning?

These are just some of the questions to be explored through CHIANTI (https://chianti.lacol.net) a new shared resource for students and teachers of language at the college level.

Over the past year, faculty and language learning experts from across LACOL have been collaborating to develop the CHIANTI concept and prototype.  For students, an initial set of videos are posted that feature LACOL language instructors and students reflecting on the college-level language-learning experience. For language teachers, a self-curated online digital library of shareable tips and teaching resources is developing.

As an ongoing initiatve of the LACOL Language Instruction Working Group, the Chianti site  and team invites contributions from LACOL language instructors in the areas of: General tips for college-level language learning, including research on adult second-language (L2) acquisition. 2) English grammar for L2 learners including models or maps that integrate all aspects of language, 3) Phonology, and 4) An interactive glossary of grammatical and linguistic terms from which instructors can draw for their own pedagogical purposes and to which they can contribute their own definitions and examples. 

Go to CHIANTI

About Bowdoin College

Bowdoin is a college and also an idea that if you give smart, kind, young people access to one of the best educations on earth, they will use it to create good in the world.

Bowdoin College is historic. And selective. And rigorous.

But most importantly, we were founded and endowed with the belief that there is something bigger than ourselves.

What does it mean for a college to do the right thing?

It means building a curriculum that stretches what’s expected of the liberal arts.

For us, it means working for equality, diversity, and inclusion—in our coursework, our staffing, our student body, and our financial priorities.

It means researching and protecting our environment—from the coastal ecosystems that surround and sustain us, to the humid jungles and Arctic poles that inspired some of our earliest students.

A Bowdoin education brings context, history, integrity, and empathy to the world around us.

Who chooses Bowdoin?

Our alumni are scholars, writers, judges, entrepreneurs, business leaders, scientists, activists, tech giants, farmers, diplomats, artists, and conservationists.

Bowdoin graduates of all years are connected by a curious, restless thread that asks: what else can I do? Where can I find answers? Who brings a different perspective?

Who does Bowdoin choose?

We admit students of uncommon promise, and uncommon character. We look for bright minds who want to work together—and live togethereat together, and talk it out.

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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Operations Research – Shared Course Opportunity, Spring 2020

Shared LACOL Course: Operations Research
Instructor: Professor Steven J. Miller, Williams College
Enrollment Info for Students: http://bit.ly/ops-research (Fall 2019, Spring 2020)
Syllabus & Course Website: https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/317Fa19
Course Flyer: Operations Research PDF
Topics and Objectives:

  1. The real world is complicated, requiring mathematicians to approximate solutions and even the statement of real world problems!
  2. While the chess scenario pictured above might appear to be a make-work problem, the efficient solution illustrates one of the most powerful ideas in mathematics, and allows us to tell in many cases how close we are to the optimal solution (even if we cannot find the optimal solution.)
  3. In this class, you will learn powerful methods from classical algorithms to advanced linear algebra and their applications to the real world, specifically linear programming and random matrix theory.
Video - S. Miller, Williams College
Click to Watch Video – S. Miller, Williams College

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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!

Data Science in the Liberal Arts Workshop (June 2019)

Event: Data Science in the Liberal Arts
Date & Location: June 6-7, 2019 at Washington and Lee University
Workshop Goals:

  • Agenda & Program (Background and Purpose)
  • Establishing a Think Tank on Data Science in the Liberal Arts
  • Taking hands on approaches to curating, developing, and sharing liberal arts pedagogies and teaching materials for data science that broadly engage and support our students across the disciplines.

Attendees: members and friends of the LACOL DS+ working group

Scroll down for workshop resources, slides, and video gallery

Keynote Talk:

Data Journalism as a Liberal Art
Prof. Amelia McNamara

Department of Computer & Information Sciences
University of St. Thomas

One of the main ways the general public encounters products of data analysis is through journalism. Data journalists strive to explain complex stories using visualization, statistics, and heavy use of contextualization. As we incorporate data science into the liberal arts, data journalism provides a case study as a field in which the sciences and the humanities are consciously linked. In this talk, I’ll discuss the history of data journalism, how I see it fitting into a liberal arts framework, and experiences from a class I taught on data journalism.

A. McNamara SLIDES

More Workshop Talks and Resources:

1. R. DeVeaux – Data Science for All? 

2. L. Heyer – Starting a Data Science Minor

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Introduction to Data Science (shared course)

In Summer 2019 …

Introduction to Data Science (co-taught course, shared digitally)

Syllabus and FAQ: See course gateway

Learning Objectives:

  1. Familiarity and expertise in basic coding (R/RStudio).
  2. Understanding of theory and application of basic concepts in statistics.
  3. Ability to write and present technical material to diverse audiences.

Course Sequence:

  • Intensive 8-week course with data lab component (fully digital)
  • Student centered learning design including pre-recorded lectures, real-time lectures, and laboratory/supported work time
  • Course co-taught by instructors from LACOL schools 
  • Delivery is fully online with some scheduled and some asynchronous events.

Course Team: see course gateway

Lightning Talk – Learn about this project in just 6.5 minutes!


Presented May 22, 2019 at the Bryn Mawr Blended Learning Conference

Course Topics Include: Read More

Cultivating Student Leadership in a More Inclusive Liberal Arts Classroom

Mini-Conference: Cultivating Student Leadership to Foster a More Inclusive Liberal Arts Classroom
Location: Amherst College Center for Teaching and Learning (Frost Library)
Date: April 5, 2019
Agenda: Student Leadership – April 5 Agenda

Invited Speaker: Bryan Dewsbury, University of Rhode Island
amherst CTLHost: Amherst College Center for Teaching and Learning in partnership with Being Human in STEM and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion Read More

Sensemaker Team Data Review – April 4 at Amherst College

Event: Exploring Complexity through Student Micro-Narratives with Sensemaker
Host: Sensemaker Team Leads (Kristen Eshleman, Brent Maher, Annie Sadler, Paul Youngman)
Date: April 4
Time: 1:00pm-5:00pm (optional group lunch at 12:00pm; details tba)
Location: The Powerhouse, Amherst College
Attendees: Sensemaker Teams (Davidson, Hamilton, Haverford, Washington & Lee)
Sensemaker: http://lacol.net/category/collaborations/projects/inclusive-pedagogies
Project Website: http://emergentedu.org

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