Due to continuing interest and demand, the A&S Office of Educational Technology offered a second iteration of its Teaching to Engage seminar during the latter half of the Spring 2023 semester. As with the previous iteration, this cohort was composed of interdisciplinary graduate students from GSAS. Some students 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. In doing so, 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 learning environment for both in-person and online courses.
As has been the case with the previous cohorts, the latest cohort produced exemplary work, demonstrating their mastery of the pedagogical and technological design approaches they learned. We’re thrilled to highlight some of the research-driven, student-focused learning exercises these students created.
Paloma Contreras, a Ph.D. student in the History department with A&S, created reflective learning exercise that makes use of the ability to transform the Discussions tool to a private journal for students to write in.
Xiaoai Lyu, a Ph.D. student in Biology, made use of the Brightspace Quizzes tool to create a knowledge check on mitosis. Students were asked to complete this knowledge check immediately following a brief instructional video on the cell process.
Amanda Gille, an MFA student in Creative Writing, provided clear, guided instructions for students to engage with a presentation on The Gift of Magi with the use of Annoto, a video annotation tool that can be applied to videos added to Brightspace.
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. Many of these students followed up with the A&S Office of EdTech to effectively document their teaching in an effort to capture and share some of the skills they acquired from this course.
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:
- Creating and Adding an Express Capture Video in Brightspace
- Ordering Captions for NYU Stream Content
- Adding a Video with Annoto in Brightspace
- Brightspace Quizzes Tool
- Using Discussions as Private Learning Journals
To learn more or reserve a spot in our next cohort, email us at fas-edtech-group@nyu.edu.