01 Bezos Ate My Essay: Stop Worrying About Student Data and Love the Cloud

Birds-of-a-Feather
Nicole Bungert (Libraries)
Kristopher Purzycki (English)

With the shift to online teaching, instructors and support professionals scrambled to implement technologies that would most accommodate students. Despite the ongoing COVID crisis, our 16:9 landscapes almost seem…hospitable! Still, our instruction and student support have undeniably become steeped in a bittersweet brew of network, proctoring, and communications technologies. We are also experimenting with novel ways to connect with and motivate our students, using alternatives such as Slack, Zoom, and Discord. On the other side of the e-Lectern, students are using whichever platform feels most familiar to communicate with one another. While it’s commendable that our UWM communities have maintained these channels, many of them stoke our concerns about privacy, access, and integrity.

Some of these concerns are new while others, overlooked and neglected, have been exacerbated by the whiplash embrace of edTech. The primary concern we will discuss in this open forum is the security and integrity of students’ personal data. As we will describe, many of the platforms and services taken up in the recent scramble threaten the personal data of students. First, we will share troublesome facts about the commodification of online behavior and attempt as a group to balance them with considerations of connection, belonging, and engagement. This will be followed by an open conversation during which we’ll explore a series of ethical questions to spur reflection on our own practices.

Join us to dissect the privacy protections and data ownership embedded in the platforms we use to teach and support students. First framed as practical 21st-century considerations, we will also discuss these as matters of ethical trust-building. As we weigh the best ways to connect with students virtually, the tools we select and the way we talk about them with students have the potential to harm or help students—as they learn now, and in the future as their digital double is developed and created.

02 Collaborative Comments: Textual & Visual Annotation in Canvas

Interactive Presentation
Lisa Hager (they, them, theirs) (CGS, English & Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies)

This session will focus on the pedagogical potential of digital text annotation in the online and face-to-face classrooms via Hypothesis, an annotation tool that CETL is currently piloting in Canvas. In thinking about visual and textual annotation as a pedagogical practice, the session positions annotation as key starting point for active reading, collaborative responses, and brainstorming for academic writing. The presenter will share assignments from literature and gender studies classes as examples, and discuss student performance and evaluations of this part of their respective classes. As part of this discussion. the workshop will go over the basics of how to use Hypothesis and give participants a chance to use the tool themselves.

Click here for a short introductory video about Hypothesis.

03 Preparing International Students for College Success in the US

Interactive Presentation
Rebecca Willems-Solc (Educational Psychology)
Susie Lamborn (Educational Psychology)

This presentation considers a cultural pedagogical divide that is often experienced by international students when they are educated in their home country and then attempt to attend college in the US. A diversity training approach recognizes the role that instructors contribute through limitations in their cultural perspective as they work with students from another country. international students face several challenges when pursuing studies in a different country. While the most noticeable one concerns language, other challenges emerge from different understandings of academic integrity and teaching philosophy that can impede both progress in education and relationships between international students and teachers. Understanding where international students come from pedagogically and the culture of their academic background is essential in being able to meet them in their learning. Developing awareness as a teacher is a strategy in fostering stronger student engagement in this multicultural population. One step is identifying the struggles common to international students through looking at their classroom behavior and performance. A second step is understanding their classroom behavior through the lens of cultural differences rather than as a personal attribute of the student. Identification of students’ cultural frameworks gives educators an opportunity to reevaluate the classroom struggles and formulate an approach that supports the students’ progress rather than viewing them as problems. This will aid in developing classrooms that are more inclusive of diverse populations. One strategy to address these types of issues involves enrolling international students in high school boarding schools in the country in which they hope to attend college. Examples will be provided of a local boarding school that focuses on the needs of Chinese students and their families.

04 Group Projects: From Face-to-Face to Online

Interactive Presentation
Stepanka Korytova (SCE)

This group project was successfully tried at semester at sea. The project culminated with the students creating a video addressing global citizenship issues. The focus of the presentation will be on the ways in which a project like this one might be used in an online mode.

05 Embracing Adversity: Mistakes as Iterative Course Design Opportunity

Interactive Presentation
Ali Gattoni (Communication)
Stacey Mirviss-Jossart (Communication)
Ann Raddant (Biological Sciences)
Sarah Riforgiate (Communication)
Lane Sunwall (CETL)
Chris Willey (Art and Design)

Perhaps you have heard the expression “If you are not failing you are not trying hard enough” (Jillian Michaels). Dweck (2008) discusses growth mindset as necessary to help students learn, Brookfield (2017) encourages educators to be human and acknowledge mistakes to connect with students, and Duckworth (2016) explains how success is connected to grit which individuals experience from learning to fail and be resilient. Yet, in college, students are indoctrinated with the idea that making mistakes is negative, where perfection is rewarded and failure means not mastering the necessary learning. Most classes are structured to applaud students for achievement and perfectionism with students working towards the “A” as a marker of learning. Further, to build credibility, instructors also downplay their own failures and emphasize personal expertise in teaching, but at what cost?

This panel is designed to explain how “failing forward” and embracing adversity is a useful pedagogical practice for educators AND students to three ends: 1) serving as a model to navigate tensions, 2) demonstrating self and other compassion and empathy, and 3) fostering a growth mindset for educational practices and student learning. We will provide stories of failing forward and the lessons related to these three focuses to illustrate how faculty can fail, adapt, persist and connect to each other and our students more fully. This topic is particularly pertinent as educators are experimenting with online and blended teaching pedagogy as our world of teaching continues to adjust.

Bring popcorn and come learn from our mistakes.

06 Ungrading at UWM: A Conversation

Birds-of-a-Feather
Shannon Denney (English)
Danielle Harms (English)
Maureen McKnight (English)
Amanda Seligman (History)

Ungrading. Contract-grading. Labor-based grading. Whatever you call it, these alternative assessment methods address the dreaded task of grading by inviting students into the process and offering them control over their work and learning. Session participants will gain an understanding of the perspective that informs alternative grading. We will discuss how these approaches strive to improve equitability in assessment and intersect with the work of Critical Pedagogy, Disability Pedagogy, anti-racist practices, and Universal Design. Rather than a source of frustration, we will examine how assessment can become a tool to give students agency and engage them in their learning.

Questions include: How have we ungraded? What does student feedback look like when there are no grades attached to assignments? How do students respond? What does the research about ungrading suggest about how ungrading can benefit learning? What kinds of pushback have we encountered? How can you hack Canvas to account for labor-based grading? What impact does alternative grading have on the quality of student work? Should we be concerned about grade inflation? How can we create assessment practices that lessen the explicit or implicit expectations for students to disclose personal information, challenges, or trauma in exchange for accommodations?

Each presenter will speak briefly about ungrading in our UWM courses. After these brief comments, we will invite the audience into a conversation for a deeper dive into our assumptions and methods.

Even if ungrading seems like a bridge too far, articulating your assessment philosophy and considering how your current assessment method could work with alternative grading schemes is a valuable process. If you are already ungrading, please come to this conversation to share your expertise. Our goal is to build a community of like-minded pedagogues to support each other in further exploration of this approach to assessment.

07 Active Learning Strategies Used in Medication Administration Activity

Interactive Presentation
Melissa Melcher (Nursing)
Kylateia Farrar-Stern (Nursing)

In this presentation, we will discuss a new activity that was formally used this semester to engage undergraduate, first semester nursing major students in their medication administration psychomotor skill. Students are expected to demonstrate safe medication administration as one prerequisite to successfully pass the skills portion of their NURS 353 clinical course. This activity was implemented as a way for students to physically practice giving a simulated patient more than one medication via different routes of administration. The objectives of this activity were to improve student medication knowledge, organization, and confidence while administering medications. Previously, this activity was created for students to practice giving multiple medications in person during their second semester of the nursing major. During Fall 2020 the activity was adapted to a virtual format for first semester students due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We used the following active learning strategies to engage our students in this activity:

1. Role Play – students act as nurse and patient during activity
2. Peer Teaching – student nurse teaching about medications; peer provides feedback to student nurse
3. Guided Practice – Instructor able to guide them in best practice and give feedback in the moment
4. Kinesthetic Approach – students have electronic health record, medications with labels, able to open the medications
5. Pre- and Post-Reflective Surveys – reflection on growth and applicability to their practice

In this presentation, we will discuss the medication administration activity and explain how the 5 active learning strategies listed above were incorporated. We will also leave 10-15 minutes at the end of the session for participants to reflect on ways to incorporate these active learning strategies into their courses.

08 Strategies for Designing Online Courses during COVID-19

Interactive Presentation
Kristin Gaura (Education)
Simone Conceicao (Administrative Leadership)

This session will provide a set of strategies for re-thinking the design of a face-to-face course to the online environment with the learner perspective in mind. Using Design Thinking, the session will guide participants through the re-thinking process: learner empathy, design challenges, brainstorming, prototyping, and creating and testing the course.

Many adult educators who did not teach online before COVID-19 were required to convert their face-to-face courses to the online environment. Without any previous experience designing online courses, this task created challenges and anxiety. As COVID-19 continues to limit the ability to teach face-to-face, adult educators need to prepare for the next set of courses to teach online. Having a plan and a framework can make the process easily accomplished. In this presentation, we will provide a set of strategies for re-thinking the design of a course with the learner perspective in mind. Using Design Thinking as a tool and a process, the session will guide adult educators to:

• Seek Learner Feedback: Review previous courses and gather enough information in order to truly empathize with learner’s experience.
• Define Course Design Challenges: Analyze the observations made from student feedback and construct a list that defines the core problems.
• Brainstorm Ideas: Generate multiple ideas to solve the design challenges.
• Prototype Ideas: Create one or two prototypes of the best ideas using storyboards, mockups, sketches, or visual narratives to show how learners may interact with those ideas.
• Creation and Test: Create the course learner interface, content interactions, learner activities, social interactions, and assessments.

09 Using Hypothesis for Social Annotations in Online and Hybrid Courses

Birds-of-a-Feather
Hilary Snow (Honors)
Ryan Holifield (Geography)
Karolina May-Chu (FLL)
Aaron Schutz (Educational Policy and Community Studies)

Social annotation provides an opportunity for students to collaboratively annotate a text, working together to build knowledge. During fall semester 2020, UWM participated in a pilot program using the social annotation software Hypothesis integrated into Canvas. In this panel, four participants in the pilot program will share their experiences with Hypothesis in their online and hybrid courses so other UWM instructors can evaluate the software for use in their own teaching.

The courses taught in fall 2020 by the panelists represent a wide range of topics including geography, education, German, and art history. Students enrolled in the courses ranged from first-year students to graduate students (both master’s and doctoral). In some courses, Hypothesis was part of weekly assignments, while in other courses Hypothesis annotations were periodic assignments. Hypothesis annotations were used to inspire discussion topics for synchronous sessions and also as the format for asynchronous discussions. In all cases, Hypothesis helped bring students into a close study of the texts.

The four panelists will present how they used Hypothesis to generate engagement in their courses, including examples of successful and unsuccessful strategies. We will discuss our pedagogical intent behind the Hypothesis assignments, how assignments were structured, the instructor’s role participating in Hypothesis assignments, and grading strategies. We will also invite our colleagues in the audience to share their own experiences or join a conversation about how Hypothesis could be applied to other courses.

10 Timely Connections: An Ethics of Care Perspective

Interactive Presentation
Kristin Sziarto (Geography)
Laura Stark (Advising)

This session aims to provide tools and ideas for how faculty advisors, professional advisors, and instructors can coordinate in how we plan our semesters to serve students better. Instructors may spend a great deal of time constructing the calendar of due dates, etc. in syllabi, but are not always aware of other dates in the semester that are important from the students’ perspectives. Faculty advisors also need such information, and professional advisors are likely to have it. This session — especially for faculty advisors, as well as interested instructors – presents two annual, cyclical calendars – one created by a professional advisor, the other by a faculty advisor – to help us become more aware of students’ critical times during the semester. These times include deadlines in relation to enrollment, financial aid, etc. with implications for students’ success.
We also suggest ways for professional advisors, faculty advisors, and instructors to work together in relation to these times. Working together across our different university roles entails mutual respect for our interdependence, and is grounded in the ethics of care: “Care ethics suggests that we build spatially extensive connections of interdependence and mutuality, that we attend to the ways in which historical and institutional relationships produce the need for care …. and that we take up social responsibility in our professional practices” (Lawson 2007).

In this time of pandemic and other crises, it is crucial for us to examine our professional relationships, re-consider how unequal power relationships dampen communication, and find ways to allocate our time and labor to foster equity in relationships so as to benefit students. Awareness of the cyclical nature of administrative dates affecting students can also help us develop work plans that stress regular rather than just-in-time communication, enabling us to share information that can inform ethical decision-making in many spheres of the university.

11 Prior Learning Assessment: An Innovative Practice for Student Success

Interactive Presentation
Laura Pedrick (Academic Affairs)
Phyllis King (Academic Affairs)
Nancy Nelson (SCE)
Chris Head (Office of the Registrar)

This presentation will focus on how Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) can increase student success at UWM. This interactive session will cover PLA policies and best practices, as well as how PLA can be used on campus to help students make progress toward degree and serve as a recruitment tool. Two UWM initiatives to be covered include:

TechEd Frontiers

TechEd Frontiers is UWM’s talent development platform that provides innovative online upskilling pathways to advance learners into high-demand jobs. Pathways are noncredit and competency-based, consisting of a series of self-paced learning modules. Two pathways are intended to be offered in early 2021: Cybersecurity Analyst I and Foundations of Data Science and Analytics.

As an on-ramp to higher education credentials, a process for awarding credit through PLA for completion of the pathways is being designed. Currently, each pathway has an academic sponsor who is a UWM faculty or staff member with expertise in the discipline of the TechEd Frontiers pathway. The academic sponsor serves as a representative of their respective pathway to campus governance in the bridging of the pathway to credit process and leads the adoption and stacking of the pathway to recognized UWM credentials and degrees.

All Learning Counts Grant Project

This Lumina Foundation-funded initiative, involving UW System, UWM, and four other UWS institutions, aims to increase the number and range of degree completion opportunities by recognizing and validating the value of learning that returning adult students bring to the university. The grant project team has developed a methodology to map noncredit to credit curricula between UWM’s School of Continuing Education (SCE) and for-credit programs at UWM.

This presentation will equip attendees with the resources needed to explore PLA in their programs. Attendees will learn about a new national research study that demonstrates the positive impact of PLA on increasing access to higher education.

12 The Demands of Teaching Online: A TA’s Guide for Balance

Interactive Presentation
Natalie Schneider (Lubar School of Business)

This interactive presentation will introduce fellow teaching assistants to the several methods I used to connect to my students in an online environment while I was a Teaching Assistant for BUS ADM 330 Organizations during both Spring 2020 and Summer 2020 semesters, and after transitioning from teaching the same course in-person during the Fall 2019 semester. Being a teaching assistant for an online course requires more effort to create helpful interactions with students that would have formed organically in-person. Additionally, teaching assistant responsibilities are among many other obligations of being a graduate student. Thus, not only will this presentation cover tips for connecting with students, it will also provide a discussion on how to be there for your students while being there for yourself. In other words, this presentation will discuss balancing the added demands of online interactions and teaching methods with a TA’s other responsibilities. The session will discuss three primary methods for supporting online students as a teaching assistant, with time maintenance elements in parentheses:

1. Creating videos for personal introductions and content lessons (and making them usable for multiple semesters).
2. Forming “TA Takeovers” through social hours, lectures, project tips, and discussion boards (and using sign-ups or replying to a certain count of students in discussions).
3. Providing feedback to students using the RISE model of feedback in discussions and leaving constructive feedback via the Canvas Speed Grader (and creating feedback easily adjustable for many).

In this presentation, I will discuss how to adapt and connect to students in an online environment while maintaining a teaching assistant’s workload. I will present content for approximately half of the session, and then facilitate a brainstorming exercise via breakout rooms to encourage discussion of further ideas.

13 Alternative Assessment

Interactive Presentation
Kelly Kohlmetz (Mathematical Sciences)

There is a lot of discussion about how to adapt assessment to the online environment. While no method will completely prevent cheating, online tests have been shown to be particularly vulnerable. As a result, many of us persist in looking for different ways to assess – not only because we have grades to assign, but also so we can truly evaluate the teaching and learning in our courses. This session will consider other forms of online formal (summative) assessment without using a traditional online test. (Another separate session could be done on informal assessing!) Several different assessments will be discussed (all used in the virtual environment), which provide a way to connect with our students through assessing them in a different way: posters, professional letters, presentations, papers, interviews, group testing, etc. While all of these were done in the context of math courses (yes… you read that correctly!), the ideas could apply to any subject. The session will focus on sharing alternative assessment ideas that have been used in a course. In addition, potential challenges related to the creation and implementation of each assessment will be discussed: how many students were in the class, what preparation was needed to “train” students for how to complete the assessment, how was grading done and how much time did it take, how much time did students spend creating the assessment, was proctoring used, etc. Finally, the presenter will share general lessons learned as well as ideas to help attendees create an action plan for implementing an alternative assessment.

14 Connecting with First Year Students and Avoiding Misunderstandings

Birds-of-a-Feather
Jill Rinzel (Social Science and Business in CGS)

First year college students often come into higher education with ideas about what the college classroom will be like. If what they experience doesn’t match their preconceived ideas, they may become disengaged or overwhelmed. This session will focus on teaching methods and strategies to engage with first year students in a way that will help them to buy into the learning environment you are providing and help them succeed in your course. We will start with some basic background and ideas based off of research that has been done in this area. Then we will break into small groups to share ideas of what has worked in the past and brainstorm ideas of what we can do in the future. The goal is that you will leave the session with some ideas about how you can help to connect with first year students and help them to succeed both in your class and in their other academic endeavors.

15 How to Adapt a Group Project Online: Synchronous or Asynchronous

Birds-of-a-Feather
Kim Omachinski (Communication)

In this presentation, I will discuss strategies to adapt a group project to an online platform (either synchronous or asynchronous). This includes how to change or modify existing learning objectives or goals for the group project, including a peer evaluation as part of the project, how to hold group members accountable for their own work, how to deal with “ghost” students, and creating a “space” for groups to work together online. As we navigate the online learning environment with students who do not always enjoy it (or do not prefer it), it is important to be creative to connect students together moving into yet another pandemic semester. Many work environments have collaboration in teams that are virtual, and emulating this through a group project is imperative for their future careers. It also allows students to get to know one another outside of discussion posts or other weekly activities.

Additionally, I will examine strategies I have used that have worked (or not) and allow time for group discussion on how attendees have adapted their group projects online. Sharing success stories with one another may foster new ideas entering a new semester that can be employed in your spring course’s group project!

16 Using Interactive Tools

Interactive Presentation
Brenda Moench (Nursing)

This interactive presentation will demonstrate how Canvas and H5P interactive tools help students advance from remembering to applying course content. With the use of interactive fill in the blank and drag and drop activities, there is an opportunity for students to use repetition as a way of remembering content. Additionally, students don’t have to wait for instructors to provide feedback because, with H5P interactive tools, feedback is immediate. Interactive application activities, such as unfolding case studies using Canvas tools, are one way to assess the students’ ability to apply that knowledge as the scenario unfolds in stages.

17 Centering a Feminist Ethics of Care in the Classroom

Birds-of-a-Feather
Katie Klein (Women’s & Gender Studies)
Katie Merkle (Women’s & Gender Studies)
Zoe Colip (Women’s & Gender Studies)
Kayla Daspit (Women’s & Gender Studies)
Bridget Gibley (Women’s & Gender Studies)
Natalie Hilmer (Women’s & Gender Studies)

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all faced with increased responsibilities and decreased capacities. Many of us are teaching online for the first time while balancing our own studies and research. Additionally, we are balancing personal and professional obligations with unclear boundaries in chaotic times. As the Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and Instructors for the Women’s & Gender Studies Department, we have experienced the stress, exhaustion, and frustration that has at times reached overwhelming levels during the pandemic. Our weekly group meetings inspired us to present on this topic. In these meetings, we begin by sharing something that has brought us joy that week, or a way that we have prioritized self-care. This simple practice, along with the collaborative and problem-solving approach to teaching that we take as a cohort of GTAs and with the guidance of our mentor, has kept us grounded in caring for ourselves and each other. This allows us to center care in our classrooms, as acknowledging our own experiences living and learning in 2020 has led us to teach with empathy for the challenging situations in which our students find themselves. This empathetic approach furthermore centers the feminist pedagogical practice of flattening hierarchies. In this session, we encourage educators to consider that centering our well-being as instructors and the well-being of our students is vital to improving our teaching and supporting their learning. We seek to discuss how we can center a feminist ethics of care in the classroom, which in turn leads to an environment more conducive to learning. What does it mean to focus on care first? What are specific strategies in syllabus development, content delivery, assessment, and communication that allow us to care for ourselves and our students? How can you build a support network for your own teaching? How can feminist pedagogy guide us in this endeavor? We will discuss these questions together in small groups.

18 Canvas Tools to Support Inclusive Learning

Interactive Presentation
Shannon Aylesworth (ARC)
David Delgado (CETL)
Ed Price (CETL)

Colleagues from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the Accessibility Resource Center will demonstrate and explain how tools in Canvas support an inclusive course design that will benefit all students. As members of the UWM community, we have access to another great tool that functions outside of Canvas that can also support inclusive learning. Join us for an interactive session to learn about these tools, Immersive Reader and UDOIT, which are easy to use and offer powerful results. Participants will also learn about Read&Write, another excellent tool, that instructors and students may use to create a supportive and inclusive learning experience.

19 Aiding International Teaching Assistants’ Adaption to Instructional Technology

Interactive Presentation
Iruoma Ezumba (Communication)

Online teaching requires the use of instructional technology one of which is Uwm’s Learning Management Solutions (LMS), Canvas. This mandatory need for instructional technology has created a new set of challenges for International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) because they did not receive instructional learning from their home countries with the type of technology used in United States colleges. They are therefore unable to use of canvas and the tools therein for effective instructional communication as they lack the foundational technology knowledge and training for their instructional responsibilities.

With the continuous increase in the population of international graduate students, some of which are being offered teaching assistantships, and coupled with the fact that learning in colleges may remain online for protracted period, it has become important to address this issue of concern that affects this population. Some ITAs were unable to use the school’s LMS properly for weeks. Many did not know how to check students’ assignments or grade them. The ITA training that was given during orientation was short and the trainings on canvas were fragmented and brief trainings which seemed not to be effective as the ITAs still found it challenging to use the technology. The orientation trainings focused more on the needs of the students and less emphasis on the needs of the ITAs especially in the area of instructional technology. This made them ill prepared to handle the undergraduate classes online. Using the situated learning theoretical framework, I will delieneate how the knowlege of instructional technology is vital to the ITA’s success and promotes effective learning. This paper will highlight some of the challenges of ITAs face with instructional technology and how they can be addressed by considering possible revisions to the university’s ITA orientation program.

20 Working Through the (Dis)Connect: How to Write Productive Feedback

Interactive Presentation
Jennifer Dworschack-Kinter (English)
Liana Ordcic (English)

A perennial challenge for those who teach writing-intensive courses at the college level is figuring out how to provide feedback that students will actually use. Providing feedback on student writing is a time-intensive process for instructors, and yet it often seems as though our feedback goes unheard, or at least unheeded. How to make sense of this apparent disconnect? Our presentation will address these challenges by considering the following questions: What kind of feedback do students tend to find most helpful, and when? How much feedback is too little—or too much? How do students understand the purpose of feedback, and how do we, as instructors, view the role of feedback in our classrooms? How is our understanding of feedback tied to our understanding of how writing “works” as a process over time? And finally, what are some creative ways we as instructors might provide feedback more efficiently yet effectively?

21 Primary Source Literacy in the Online Classroom

Interactive Presentation
Abigail Nye (Archives)
Shiraz Bhathena (Archives)
Derek Webb (Archives)

The session will explore how archivists at the UWM Archives incorporated the themes of adaptation, persistence, and connection into their 2020 archival instruction. The participants will present three case studies that explore how archivists worked with instructors to incorporate primary source literacy instruction into different learning modalities. The case studies will address how archivists employed Canvas learning objects, synchronous engagement, and other strategies to guide students toward key Primary Source Literacy learning outcomes.

In the first case, an archivist worked with an instructor to design a semester-long Personal Archive assignment that included a video discussion, weekly prompts, and readings as a complete package to be inserted into a wide variety of Canvas courses. The assignment is currently incorporated into five undergraduate classes in three departments.

In another, an archivist adapted a 90-minute in-person session on the history of the Civil Rights movement in Milwaukee and its documentation through archival materials into a complete Blackboard Collaborate Ultra synchronous session with breakout rooms for small group primary source analysis exercises.

And in a third case, an archivist sat for an interview with an instructor for an archives management course, created and digitized records for an exercise in assessing the value of incoming records, and participated on Canvas discussion forums with the students for a week.

Session participants will engage the material presented through polls, chat, and Q&A.

22 Converting Community-Based to Digital-Based Learning Experiences

Interactive Presentation
Carlynn Alt (Health Sciences)

In this session I will describe how we converted a context-based learning experience with community participants to a digital- based platform after ‘Safer-at-Home’ orders were instituted in March 2020. This context-based experience connects student physical therapists (SPT) face-to face with community living cancer survivors in a supported and progressive physical activity and health education practicum. Students had completed baseline assessments and began exercise programming for 3/15 scheduled sessions, before the need to pivot to a different platform. The students and instructors transitioned to either a digital based visual platform, Skype, or Telephony to continue the program. Students learned the keys to successful telerehabilitation principles and discovered the value of a preparatory email before their session, interactive strategies to maximize sessions and best practices to follow to enhance continued exercise programming. Follow up tests of baseline measures on participant aerobic capacity and strength were difficult due to face-to-face baseline testing not being compatible with digital platform testing. However, psychosocial measures of Health Related Quality of Life and Exercise Barriers improved in 6/7 participants and Self-Efficacy for Exercise improved in all participants. A qualtrics survey was administered to students at the conclusion of the course to assess if learning objectives were met despite conversion to a digital-based learning platform. Approximately 80 percent of the student responses agreed that the digital approach was effective, enhanced patient outcomes and allowed individualized and responsive interventions for the community participants. A majority of students reported the digital approach will be helpful for other clients in the future. In this presentation I will discuss lessons learned during the conversion, student learning outcomes, and silver linings discovered that prepared our students for contemporary clinical practice.

23 Supporting Student Emotional Well-being in Digital Spaces

Interactive Presentation
Lori Bokowy (Norris Health Center)
Melissa Will (UWEC Counseling Services)

Supporting student emotional well-being is more essential than ever right now. Yet, doing so within digital spaces is not easy and can even feel quite overwhelming. This interactive session will provide simple strategies to proactively promote student emotional well-being and an overview of available digital emotional well-being resources, including YOU@UWM and SilverCloud. Time dedicated to the exploration of resource platforms, group discussion, and forward planning activities will provide the opportunity for participants to identify reasonable ways to integrate these strategies and resources within their instructional environment.

24 Pedagogy, Parenting, and a Pandemic

Birds-of-a-Feather
Elizabeth Silverstein (Philosophy)

This session is for all caregivers who are balancing their commitments to the health, well-being, education, and the growth of both their students and their loved ones during the current global pandemic. Best practices and strategies for dealing with these unprecedented demands will be discussed and shared. We will focus on the difficult task of trying to balance teaching with compassion and care, showing up for our families, fulfilling our professional commitments, pursuing our own projects, and maintaining our own health and well-being. The session will focus on sharing flexible course designs, parenting resources, and ideas for how to do our best without doing it all. A supportive environment will be fostered and a network of similarly situated collogues developed.

25 Teaching Graduate Students How to Teach Online during a Pandemic

Interactive Presentation
Beth Vigoren (English)
Joni Hayward Marcum (Media, Cinema, & Digital Studies)
Casey James Brajevich (Media, Cinema, & Digital Studies)

In this presentation, I will discuss simple and effective strategies we used to onboard new Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAS), from the summer orientation session, weekly meetings with mentors, and a one-credit weekly graduate course through the first semester in an unexpectedly fully-online environment to prepare them to teach and engage their students in the first-year courses at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). The orientation process, typically in-person for two weeks, has the challenging job of acclimating new Graduate students from around the country and world and preparing them to teach English 101. This year it was further challenged by the need to move online as being cut to only one week. GTAs have a range of teaching experiences from nothing at all to decades. Community building is vital so that every year the disparate peoples who form the incoming cohort together create a bond with Milwaukee and UWM at the heart of it. The pandemic increased the need for success and the challenge of getting it done.

Engaging graduate students with a lot of teaching experience to buy into a more set curriculum is often met with resistance for one reason or another. We had to be mindful that a virtual orientation wouldn’t be a series of to-do items to be accomplished and that it would allow for the GTA’s to appreciate the course goals and planning that went into the curriculum so that they are all able to infuse their teaching personas into the course materials. We also provided instructor content and demonstrated student-facing lesson plans to prepare them for teaching materials synchronously and asynchronously.

Every year our goals are to create a GTA cohort that supports each other long after their first year as GTAs at UWM and to provide a course model that GTAs use to teach their courses.

26 Supporting Comprehension in Introductory STEM Classes

Interactive Presentation
Leah Johnson (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Barbara Lucius (Teaching and Learning)

It is an ongoing goal of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department to support student learning in Introductory Chemistry (Chemistry 100), as students often feel overwhelmed transitioning into large-enrollment college STEM courses. Much of this support has focused on student-centered teaching strategies and supplemental instruction, as well as, in recent years, on scaffolded reading material to accommodate students with lower reading abilities. Such support might be useful in the short term, but it does not help students develop the skills they need to successfully complete college-level science courses.

Research has shown a clear connection between students’ reading comprehension abilities and their success in introductory science classes. Unfortunately, about one-third of students entering introductory chemistry at UWM are underprepared to comprehend the required reading. Therefore, in the summer of 2020, UWM chemistry education researchers approached reading experts in UWM’s School of Education to discuss how to more effectively support students who struggle with reading comprehension.

This presentation focuses on the results of their collaborative effort. The team developed and piloted a 1-credit online course for Chem 100 students aimed to develop skills in chemistry-specific reading comprehension and subsequently improve outcomes in introductory chemistry. The course was designed in parallel with the curriculum of first-semester chemistry, and co-taught by experts in both disciplines.

This interactive presentation describes specific design elements, activities, and teaching practices of the course, which have the potential to be adapted to foster comprehension and critical thinking in a variety of disciplines. The team will also share what they have learned from students in the course about their experiences, as well as reflect on their own successes and difficulties in co- teaching their interdisciplinary course.

27 Teaching with Sustainability in Mind

Birds-of-a-Feather
Dylan Barth (CETL)

In this Birds-of-a-Feather discussion, we will consider why we should be mindful about the environmental impact of our teaching practices and how we can make changes that promote sustainability, minimize our impact on the natural world, and model sustainability for our students. The session will begin with a short overview of the three spheres of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic) and then move to a discussion focused on some or all of the following questions:

1. Why is sustainability important to you?
2. How do you practice sustainability in your personal life, and how might you transfer these practices to your teaching?
3. How would you describe the environmental impact of your teaching practices?
4. What technologies, tools, or resources could you incorporate into your courses to teach more sustainably?
5. What have you learned from working and teaching remotely during COVID-19 that could help you teach more sustainably in the future?
6. How can you communicate to students why sustainability is important in your teaching and how you plan to address it?
7. How can you help your students cultivate mindfulness through self-reflection or other means?
8. What service-oriented projects could you recommend or require students to complete to actively address sustainability in their communities?

The presenter will share specific resources and approaches for sustainable teaching used in his own courses.

28 Bridging the Gap: Expectation and Reality of Online Instruction

Interactive Presentation
Sooyeon Lee (FLL)

Online learning has become a necessary element in educational institutions around the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. While online learning has the obvious advantages of spatial and temporal freedom, students can also control the pace of their learning, as well as the order in which they complete assigned tasks. Nonetheless, as personal interaction is one of the most effective components in learning a foreign language, traditional in-class learning remains a critical instructional setting.

This presentation will illustrate how face-to-face instructional design can be transformed into an online format based on the presenter’s experience and examples. In Fall 2020, the first semester Korean class was taught online using a hybrid model, in which students accessed online lecture videos to study before meeting face-to-face. This increased their opportunities to interact during class time. The presentation will share how desired course outcomes matched student learning expectations as expressed in a post-course evaluation. The information that students provide through this mechanism will help instructors improve the course and future curriculum design and enable them to reflect on the online teaching experience.

The presenter will also share successes and challenges in teaching elementary Korean, an exceptionally difficult language for native English speakers to learn. Participants will gain insight and practical ideas for teaching beginner level language learners and will better understand what learners can expect from online instruction. In exploring the divide between teaching and learning experiences, instructors can work to reduce the gap and provide a more satisfying learning experience for students.

29 Co-Curricular Connections

Interactive Presentation
Anna Grau Schmidt
Molly Mathias (Libraries)

Campus closures and Covid-19 mandates have had a profound effect on the “college experience.” Conversations around the loss of this experience for students have focused on classroom dynamics and social life. However, an important part of the campus experience and student satisfaction is the selection of co-curricular opportunities that extend learning, provide opportunities for authentic application, and create communities.

During the pandemic, units like the library–where staff organize events, learning spaces, and exhibits to support and engage students–have lost the route to students provided by physical presence. Before this shift, library outreach and programming focused on creating inviting and engaging physical spaces for learning. But student experience in 2020 is, more than ever, structured by curricular content in the form of Canvas sites, rather than the physical spaces that bring together the curricular and co-curricular. The loss of these spaces has necessitated experimentation with virtual spaces and programs, with varying degrees of success. We are looking to old and new ways to support students’ engagement when they are in the library or on social media platforms: library interns have led virtual books clubs, and the Music Librarian has used a social media listening challenge to explain research tools and techniques and promote diverse collections. These activities encourage students to apply their learning and engage in conversations beyond the classroom and have potential to help students transition from students to lifelong learners.

In this interactive presentation, we will present examples of library co-curricular programs and activities, and their potential for extending curricular learning. We will bring together instructors and co-curricular staff and facilitate discussion and structured reflection on opportunities to encourage student participation in co-curricular activities to extend and apply curricular learning objectives.

30 I Hope You Zoom: PhD Students Adapt, Persist, and Connect Virtually

Interactive Presentation
Christopher Peters (Nursing)
Julia Snethen (Nursing)
Rebecca Parizek (Nursing)
Mary McMahon Bullis (Nursing)

The COVID-19 pandemic required PhD students in the College of Nursing to adapt, persist and connect virtually. Initially designed by the PhD program director as a means of virtual socialization, students adapted as they organically assumed responsibility for program direction. Student-led activities grew beyond socialization to persistence in their scholarly work despite the pandemic through creative activities such as “Spam email poetry”, “Extraterrestrials ate my dissertation”, and “The dissertation circus.” PhD students reported these weekly sessions led to increased proficiency in public speaking, enhanced role socialization, expression of creativity and humor, and improved psychosocial well-being as a result.

31 Preparing Undergraduate Students for Success in Pediatric Psychology

Interactive Presentation
Julia Tager (Psychology)
Ansley Kenney (Psychology)

In our pediatric psychology lab, we noticed that new undergraduate research assistants had limited practical knowledge about conducting psychological research beyond what was covered in coursework, and yet they were being asked to involve themselves in advanced-level tasks as research assistants (RAs) in preparation for graduate school or related careers. Through the development of a one-semester biweekly Special Interest Group (SIG), we provided individualized mentoring, didactic opportunities, and career preparation for new RAs in our lab. Topics covered quantitative and qualitative methodology, using citation managers, reading scientific articles, and professional goal setting. Students conducted independent literature reviews aligning with their own interests within pediatric psychology and presented summaries of their findings in order to practice scientific communication skills. They also heard from advanced undergraduate “guest speakers,” who discussed the benefits of their involvement with the lab and their own senior theses and conference presentations. During Spring 2020, the SIG was transferred to an innovative virtual format due to the pandemic, and the Fall 2020 SIG was conducted entirely virtually, indicating that this model can be effectively used to enable remote learning. Preliminary feedback indicates that the SIG was enjoyable, engaging, and effectively prepared students for further independent lab involvement. The presentation will outline the SIG curriculum, the process of transferring it to a virtual environment, and its possible implications for other labs wishing to better engage undergraduate research assistants in scientific processes.

32 Active Learning and Community Building In The Asynchronous Classroom

Interactive Presentation
Jonathan Wipplinger (German)
Jason Williamson (German)
Justin Court (German)

This session presents strategies for adapting in-person active learning and community building practices to the asynchronous online format. It emerges from the UWM German Program’s ongoing development of asynchronous elementary German-language courses and is guided by the question of how to translate successful pedagogical practices from in-person instruction to an asynchronous, online delivery mode.

We begin with a brief introduction and contextualization of the German Program’s decision to offer asynchronous instruction at the elementary level. We introduce a set of established pedagogical principles and practices in foreign language instruction, specifically the “Five Cs” of the world-readiness standards for learning languages of the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, and elaborate how these standards shaped our approach to the transition to the asynchronous format.

The main portion of our presentation focuses on the unique opportunities and challenges an asynchronous delivery method presents. We detail our successes in fostering student proficiency in cultural awareness, critical self-reflection, and making connections beyond the German-language classroom. At the same time we consider two areas of asynchronous instruction where foreign-language instructors are especially challenged: the development of interpersonal communication skills and the creation of an active community of engaged learners. We share in this section model exercises, Canvas-specific assignment types, and external web-based applications that we have deployed to meet these challenges and that will be beneficial for instructors of all disciplines.

Our presentation concludes with a discussion of some ongoing questions and obstacles we face and how we have sought to overcome these through further refinements. In concluding with these open-ended matters, we emphasize the importance of long- term planning, reflection and revision.