Teaching to Engage

Posted on by Shaina Dymond in Blog, Online Learning, Pedagogy

On January, 30th, 2023, an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students from GSAS began the A&S Office of Educational Technology’s Teaching to Engage seminar. Some student student concurrently hold teaching positions or hold Teaching Assistant (TA) roles. As one of our office’s faculty development offerings, the Teaching to Engage course provides the opportunity to experience the online asynchronous learning process. Participants explore several educational technologies, utilizing the tools both as a student through collaborative learning and as an instructor by designing assignments that fit their discipline. Instructors assess tools and strategies with fellow instructor peers and evaluate the research that informs the pedagogical design choices they make for their in-person and online classes. The course provides an invaluable opportunity for faculty to reflect on past teaching experiences while identifying tools and strategies that can support their process of improving course design and facilitation.

In Teaching to Engage, this work culminates in a final project where instructors create a Brightspace course and several assignments that incorporate such tools as Annoto, Perusall, Google Forms, and rubrics. Faculty provide welcome videos and explicit assignment instructions, all of which are design approaches that create an effective online learning environment.

The latest cohort produced exemplary work, demonstrating their mastery of the pedagogical and technological design approaches they learned. 

Image is a screenshot from Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar's course welcome video, depicting the available captions.
Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar, a Ph.D. student in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, created a video for his welcome announcement with NYU Stream and included captions to ensure accessibility. 

Image is a screenshot of Florencia Rabuco's instructions for the Perusall activity in Brightspace. The text reads: Ejercicio de Discusión 1: "Soluciones de vivienda" (Perusall) In this group annotation exercise, you will use Perusall to work on writing and reading comprehension using what you learned in Spanish during the previous semester. You will have the opportunity to read about a cultural topic, state your opinion about it and ask questions related to the topic or to the grammar or vocabulary used in the text. In addition, you will be able to interact with your classmates by continuing the conversation about their opinions, or answering their questions. Instructions 1. In the course content tool, go to the "Ejercicio de discusión 1: Soluciones de vivienda" lesson and click on the Perusall link. 2. Read the article "Soluciones de vivienda" that talks about housing solutions and types of housing in different parts of the world. Then, write at least four comments making two types of annotations: A) Two of the comments must be opinions about some information that you find interesting or novel and a brief explanation of why you find it interesting. B) Two comments must be questions that you ask yourself from the reading (they can be questions related to the topic, or questions related to Spanish grammar or vocabulary);

Florencia Rabuco, graduate student from the MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish program, provided detailed instructions within the Brightspace content tool for students when designing her Perusall learning activity. 

Image is a screenshot of a portion of Florencia Rabuco's Perusall Assignment rubric. The rubric includes a 4 point scale for criteria such as "Completness and punctuality" and "Annotation completness"

In addition to the instructions, Florencia Rabuco utilized Brightspace Rubrics for the Perusall assignment. These design choices make expectations clear and are a great way to empower students to achieve learning outcomes. 

Perusall exercise with the article, "Transcranial magnetic stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex affects emotional processing: accounting for individual differences in antisocial behavior" with the instructions, "Skim the study, and highlight on and comment on 2 statements and make a critique on the study, whether it be the methodology or interpretation of the results. Additionally, ask 1 question about something you are confused about and respond to at least 1 of your peers' comments and build upon the observation they have made, or provide what you think may be the answer to their question.

Graduate and pre-med student with the Psychology department, Samer Muhareb, crafted this well thought out social annotation exercise using Perusall. The exercise encourages students to critique a quantitative study and engage with one another on potential points of confusion in the article.

Annoto exercise with instructor-written prompts on the video, "Stella Young: I'm not your inspiration, thank you." Prompts include, "What's your first thought on hearing Young say disability isn't bad?" and "Have you ever heard of inspiration porn before? Where?"
Allison Wallis, a graduate student with the American Journalism Online (AJO) program designed this video annotation exercise using Annoto. Created for the class, The Disability Beat, this exercise encourages students to critically reflect on the representation of disabilities in the media.

Knowledge check on accent marks created in Google Forms. Depicted questions include, "Words known as "Agudas" in Spanish have an accent mark when:" and "Words known as "Graves" in Spanish are the ones where the accentuated syllable is"

A graduate student seeking an MFA in Creative Writing, Sara Abadia, created a knowledge check using Google Forms.  The exercise checks for student understanding as well as provides an opportunity to students to review important concepts in Spanish language learning. 

The Teaching to Engage seminar is beneficial for instructors at any stage of their career and the skills and knowledge gained through this three week course can reinvigorate your teaching, giving you new ideas for facilitating learning in in-person, online, or blended environments. In fact, learning objects developed in this course can be used to enhance one’s teaching portfolio,  be shared with instructional peers, and provide substance to potential Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) endeavors. 

Participants in the Teaching to Engage course used various resources created and provided by the A&S Office of Ed Tech. If you’re interested in replicating these types of learning exercises, here are those same resources: 

To learn more or reserve a spot in our next cohort, email us at fas-edtech-group@nyu.edu.