Embedded Files
Classroom Teaching Tools
Classroom Teaching Tools
As an instructor of Technical Writing, I have consistently revised my curriculum to include the latest innovative technologies to prepare my students for the kinds of communication challenges they will encounter in their workplaces. I have also learned how to use these technologies in order to adapt my teaching to ever-changing learning environments, including distance education through in-person, remote, and hyperflex contexts. While keeping writing at the center of instruction, my courses have incorporate various technology tools—Canvas®, Google Classroom®, Zoom®, Vimeo®, AEFIS®, Blackboard™, Second Life,™ Calibrated Peer Review™, Turnitin.com®, PeerCeptiv® (to name a few)— in order to facilitate critical thinking, peer reviewing, accountability, as well as additional writing competencies.
Creating E-folios for TAMU Program Assessments and Professional Development
Creating E-folios for TAMU Program Assessments and Professional Development
During the summer of 2011, I joined the Center for Teaching Excellence at TAMU in their effort to assist the curriculum redesign of the TAMU Ecosystem Science and Management department. One of the goals included creating and using an online student portfolio as an assessment tool for the newly identified program level outcomes. My work on this "project" involved identifying a portfolio tool that (1) is both faculty and student friendly (2) allows for a broad range of applications such as a career portfolio for the students but with components that permit assessment of the department PLOs (3) could be used to track data as well as assessment of content. Working with ESSM faculty to identify how program-level outcomes could be tracked throughout a student's curriculum and assessed in a capstone course, we identified key deliverables and reflective prompts that would elicit the most important learning experiences of a student in that curriculum. We concluded that these experiences could be presented in an electronic portfolio. Thus, I created a template that ESSM students could use to track their learning through all of their academic and extracurricular experiences. The template I created is currently being used by ESSM students and has been modified to be used by two other TAMU programs to achieve similar goals. These additional programs and templates include the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Masters of Land and Property Development in the Department of Architecture. See Integrative Learning E-folios for more information about how e-folios can be used to instruct and assess program-level and course outcomes.
My work with e-folios has expanded to include portfolio builders for faculty. Below is a list of the builders I have recently created as a part-time instructional consultant for the TAMU Center for Teaching Excellence. Each portfolio contains numerous resources (some have been adapted from CTE materials). These include the following:
TAMU Portfolio Builder (includes resources for getting started with developing any kind of professional online portfolio)
TAMU Teaching Portfolio Builder (includes guidelines and resources for creating and supporting teaching statement and philosophy)
TAMU Course Portfolio Builder (includes guidelines for creating a portfolio for a course, including design rationale and all supporting documentation)
In addition, I am continuing to revise the CTE Portal Resources for Reflection and High-Impact Practices, moving the resources to a new platform and developing a resource for using the e-folio as a High Impact Practice. I have also redesigned my course website, moving all of my materials into a new platform (CHEN 301 website), creating new resources and assignments and integrating software applications for teaching and learning. See, for example, Tech Tools, which organizes all of our course technologies into a software "Periodic Table."
In 2013 I accepted an invitation to present at Brigham Young University to share my work on e-folios and to help faculty learn how to implement this high-impact practice into their own curricula. For a reflection on my visit, please see blog post "From Boston to BYU."
Emerging Technologies
Emerging Technologies
As my research interests have included incorporating new technology, I have become more proficient using Blackboard/Vista™ (elearning) for creating discussion posts, blogs, and different kinds of assignments. I have also learned how to produce and post podcasts (using Garage Band®, an Apple® iLife® application) and have learned how to use video capture software (Jing™ and Camtasia™ for Mac) from my desktop computer so that the content and the technology in the course I teach reach students’ varied learning styles. My most recent research interest include learning and evaluating how Second Life can be used to hone inquiry-skills and provide interesting, relevant writing contexts. For more information on how I use Second Life in my writing courses, please see Writing, Editing, and Research.
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