Tag: community

Universal Design for Learning: You Are on Your Way Already!

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The main portion of this tip is brought to you by Dr. Jamie Gunderson from the School of Education and a READI Equity Fellow through Faculty Development.

Here’s an interesting insight – chances are you’re already incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into your teaching methods, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. What is UDL? UDL is an educational framework that aims to create inclusive and flexible learning environments by providing learners with options to engage, represent, and express learning. How am I already implementing UDL? Well, consider if you incorporate peer discussions or collaborative group activities in your lessons. These practices promote collaboration and a sense of community, in line with UDL Checkpoint 8.3. Are you using tools like Canvas or other technologies to share information, interact with your learners, or enhance their engagement? This is a form of using multimedia for communication, as outlined in UDL Checkpoint 5.1. The UDL framework encourages us to reflect on how our existing teaching methods align with UDL’s principles, guidelines, and checkpoints to support all learners.

Another aspect of UDL that I find particularly appealing is its commitment to evidence-based continuous improvement. Did you know that the UDL principles, guidelines, and checkpoints are regularly reviewed, revised, and updated based on ongoing research and feedback from practitioners? Currently, there is a strong emphasis on enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion, which you can explore further by looking into the UDL Rising to Equity initiative. As soon as the updated framework becomes available, I’ll make sure to share it with our campus community. In the meantime, I encourage you to kickstart or continue your journey towards UDL and equity, diversity, and inclusion by exploring the abundant resources on the Instruction page of the READI Hub, a repository sponsored by the Office of Faculty Development. You’re likely to discover numerous strategies and ideas that will benefit your teaching practices and some that you may already be implementing – kudos! 

For more tips, and resources, or to geek out on all things UDL, please contact Jamie Linn Gunderson at jlgunderson@csuchico.edu.

Additionally, we in FDEV want to highlight another great resource from the NCFDD library. We spend a lot of time as tenure-track faculty working towards tenure and promotion, but not enough time thinking about what happens when you get there. Last Spring NCFDD hosted two panel discussions on what happens after earning tenure and one on promotion to full professor. You have to sign up for NCFDD (which you have free access to for this year), but once you do you will have access to an incredible catalog of useful resources for your classroom and professional development. 

Last thing, remember we have a host of opportunities for faculty this Winter and into Spring. Check them out and find something that will help you.

Zach Justus
Interim Director of Faculty Development
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Google Voice/Text: 530-487-4150

Perusall and Classroom Community

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Sent on behalf of Dr. Alisa Wade, Assistant Professor of History and READI Equity Fellow.

Each time I open our Research in Equity, Antiracism, Diversity and Inclusion (READI) hub’s page on teaching instruction, I’m reminded of bell hooks’ powerful quote from Teaching to Transgress. “As a classroom community,” hooks wrote, “our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.”  

Finding ways to build a sense of community in our classrooms—and fostering a safe and accessible learning space for students from a wide array of diverse backgrounds, experiences, identities, and needs—becomes critical to encouraging student success. At the same time, though, this process can feel daunting: especially when taking variations in the sizes of our classes, the unique needs of students, or even disciplinary conventions into consideration. I want to highlight one digital tool that I’ve found to be exceptionally useful in promoting active learning and reading, and, in turn, helping to foster dynamic discussion among a wider array of students in the classroom: Perusall.  

Perusall is a free platform for collaborative, social reading and annotation. It integrates with and can be accessed through our learning management systems, making it easy for students to open through an embedded link and syncing grades back to the class gradebook. Once classes are set up in Perusall, instructors designate materials to assign and design assignments around them (for some examples of how you might do this, see this library guide from Brandeis University). Instructors can choose to leave these assignments ungraded, grade them individually, or use and adapt Perusall’s automatic grading rubric for assessment. 

What makes Perusall so useful for building classroom community and contributing to equitable and inclusive pedagogy? 

Perusall enables faculty to assign a diverse array of material, at low or no cost to students. Faculty can create assignments from Perusall’s repository of existing textbooks and other readings, which does typically require students to purchase materials; but they can also upload their own PDFs covered by fair use guidelines, or channel materials that don’t meet those requirements through Perusall’s Copyright Clearance system (though students do pay a small fee for this process). Instructors can also draw on Open Educational Resources (OER) or link to other forms of digital media—podcasts, YouTube videos, or even open access online textbooks—for free, enabling students to engage with and annotate a wide selection of content representing a variety of mediums and facilitating creative approaches in the classroom (for more information on finding and selecting OER or affordable educational materials, see our Chico Affordable Learning Solutions (CAL$) program). 

It also helps build a sense of community (even in large courses!) and generates discussion inside and outside the classroom. In bigger classes, instructors can create smaller groups that carry over the course of the semester, encouraging students to get to know each other through their comments and annotations and interact in ways that are often difficult in large lecture halls. In smaller seminars, instructors can instead encourage the class to interact as a whole. It works well for in-person courses and can serve as a helpful tool for flipped classrooms, but as Professors Julie Lazzara and Virginia Clinton-Lisell have demonstrated, it is also incredibly effective in online or hybrid courses. And, it functions well across disciplines (see recent studies from the fields of biology, engineering, organic chemistry, philosophy, physics, political science, and psychology, for starters). 

Finally, Perusall also helps enhance student engagement with assigned class materials and address equity gaps in the classroom. Students are empowered, as individuals and collectively, to take ownership of readings and other content by asking and answering questions, making comments, annotating, and upvoting each other’s submissions. Instructors can easily see which portions are confusing to students and can answer any questions students might have as they work. This is particularly useful because academic reading can seem like such an intimidating undertaking for first year students, first generation students, and students for whom English isn’t their first language. Furthermore, a recent study in the Journal for Multicultural Educationcorroborates the impact of Perusall’s open annotation system on fostering inclusive and equitable pedagogy in the classroom and empowering those who frequently feel silenced—students of color, women, nonbinary students, and others from historically minoritized backgrounds—to confidently share their ideas. 

For more details and tips for getting started, see our campus Perusall support page. 

Virtual Faculty Learning Community for you

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Dear Chico State Faculty,

I want to acknowledge your extraordinary work during this pedagogical transition. To support your ongoing efforts, the Office of Faculty Development will host an optional “Virtual Faculty Learning Community (VFLC)” via Zoom on Thursday mornings from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. for the rest of the semester. This is a time for faculty to connect with one another, ask questions, share ideas, and raise concerns. We will spend the first 15 minutes discussing the most up-to-date resources and tools available to you. The remaining 45 minutes will be spent engaged in conversations about topics that you want to discuss with each other. Examples could include administering online final exams, maintaining a sense of community for students online, or staying healthy during this process. Bring your questions and ideas!

Sessions will be NOT be recorded but we will sum up any resources mentioned on the FDEV website. This VFLC is totally voluntary and there is no compensation. You are free to arrive late, leave early, or just be present for any portion of the session that your schedule allows.

-Josh

Faculty Writing Community Summer Opportunity!

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Commencement is this weekend and the last official academic workday for faculty is May 28th. If you plan to write this summer, the Office of Faculty Development is offering support to facilitate your success. From June 3rd – 6th, we’re offering a Summer Faculty Writing Community. This is a community of faculty in a quiet and comfortable room for four days, from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. each day to write. That’s it. Nothing else. Just writing articles, books, manuscript revisions, or other scholarly pieces. FDEV will provide coffee, snacks, and lunch everyday to keep you going. English professor, Kim Jaxon, will facilitate a supportive community and assist you as needed. There will be some time devoted to peer review of drafts so you can get feedback along the way.

Many faculty write in the summer anyway. This community is a great way to hold yourself accountable for your writing projects and be surrounded in support during the process. If you’re interested, complete the application by Monday, May 27th.

Learning Student Names

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Looking for a way to engage students, particularly those who may feel isolated or disconnected? Want to be more approachable to your students? Some evidence suggests that learning students’ names can promote a more inclusive environment, build a sense of community in the classroom, and enhance both faculty-student and student-student interactions. It can be challenging, particularly in large classes, but our students are worth it and they will appreciate your effort in getting to know them as individuals. If you’re blessed with a photographic memory, delete this e-mail now. If name-face recognition is a challenge for you, here are a few tips to make it easier…

  • have students create their own nametags or name tent-cards
  • take a photo of each student and print out with their names on it. Study like flashcards.
  • review photos on your Blackboard roster (for students who uploaded a photo in Bb, go to Course Management on left sidebar, then Users & Groups, then Users)
  • play name games during breaks (e.g. with students in a circle, first person introduces themselves, then next student introduces previous student and themselves, and so on until the last student introduces everyone)
  • take a video of students saying their name and watch before class (bonus tip – videos or photos are handy when students request a rec letter several years later)
  • use association techniques (e.g. If a student has the same name as someone you know, or has a unique characteristic, they can be associated together)
  • greet students by name both in class and in e-mails
  • if you teach online, address students by name in threaded discussions
  • in large lecture halls, invite students to share their name before answering a question in class

The most influential professors in my life knew my name and that felt important to me. In his book, What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain emphasized the importance of engaging students and “provoking impassioned responses.” Learning your students’ names is one way to create that kind of learning environment.