UW Bothell Learning Technologies Blog

Digital media have become an integral form of scholarly production for UW Bothell students over the last six months.

Prof. Jill Freidberg’s “Working with Audio” class produced a great collection of audio storytelling projects last quarter. “Sound surrounds us. It’s the invisible element that only becomes obvious when it goes away. Sound is information, stories, location, and memories. It tells us where we are and where we’re going. It fills in the blanks. It forces our imaginations to create the pictures that go with the sounds we hear. It reminds us of places we’ve been, things we’ve done, and feelings we’ve had. Sound alerts us to danger, sets us at ease, wakes us up and puts us to sleep. Sound is everywhere.” – From the BIS 234 Course Description

http://bis234.weebly.com/our-work.html

Prof. Jane VanGalen’s education students put together an excellent RSA video called “The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qLKQlY8bAI

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As we approach the end of the academic year, students across programs are gathering and reflecting on their curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular work; they are thinking about their futures and possible paths to take to achieve their goals; and they are writing essays that provide coherent narratives of their personal, academic, and professional trajectories. In other words, students are working on electronic portfolios (eportfolios).

All first-year students in CUSP complete an eportfolio as a culminating project for their first year experiences. Tasked with reflecting on at least three artifacts of their own learning, like papers, projects, presentations, and artworks, CUSP students write an evidence-based narrative essay to show where they have been, where they are now, and where they are going, in terms of their academic and professional goals.

Students in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (SIAS) produce degree portfolios in which they demonstrate their achievement of the SIAS learning goals. Started in the first major-level course, BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry, and completed in BIS 499, the Capstone Portfolio course, the eportfolio works as a tool for student learning as well as an instrument for programmatic assessment.

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In three short presentations at the May 9 event Conversations about Hybrid Learning, Tony Smith, Ph.D. (Education), Martha Groom, Ph.D. (SIAS), and Jamie Shirley, Ph.D. (Nursing and Health Studies) described the opportunities and challenges they encountered while teaching hybrid courses in their respective disciplines. Their thoughtful and nuanced remarks on teaching hybrid classes framed a discussion among those faculty, teaching staff, and librarians in attendance.

Ranging from 30 to 40 percent hybrid — meaning 30 to 40 percent of the in-class time was replaced with online or out of class work — the courses taught by Drs. Smith, Groom, and Shirley leveraged technologies and hybrid course design to enhance student engagement, to provide flexibility in the course schedule, and to give students opportunities to learn in their own style and at their own pace.

Not surprisingly, they encountered challenges as well. Dr. Smith found that his students disliked the multiple platforms the course used simultaneously (wiki software, Ning.com, and Blackboard LMS), and Dr. Groom found that the reduced time in the classroom may have exacerbated the issues of already-struggling students.

For Dr. Shirley, the move to the hybrid modality was a response to an exigency: due to holidays and the potential for inclement weather during Winter quarter, she knew that she would lose at least two of ten class meetings and perhaps more with a snow storm. Therefore, she created online modules for her ethics class, which included videos and worksheets that her students completed and then submitted online.

Check out the recordings of their remarks to learn more about their work:

http://www.uwb.edu/learningtech/elearning/hybrid-learning/faculty-hybrid/example-uwb-hybrid