Table of Contents

• COLA: Colleges Online Learning Academy
• Project K-20
• Drawing as Educational Exercise Publication
• American Evaluation Association Conference Proposal
• A Draft Manual for Understanding and Using End-of-semester Course Evaluations
• Multimodal Classroom Project

COLA: Colleges Online Learning Academy

During June we launched the Colleges’ Online Learning Academy (COLA). The program is a summer fellowship that allows 28 graduate students to more deeply engage with digital teaching and learning in their work. We provide them with opportunities for professional development, networking, and mentorship, with deep dives into aspects of teaching, and opportunities for peer review and to reflect on teaching practice.

This month we kicked off the program with 5 EDLI produced workshops and several webinar opportunities from MSU  IT for the students to participate in. The students also began to work in smaller cohorts of 5 – 6 that meet regularly to discuss and collaborate on various aspects of the program.  (Contacts: Jun Fu and Caitlin Kirby)

Project K-20

Since August 2020 EDLI team members have been working with area k-12 school districts to support teachers as they converted their classrooms to fully online or hybrid environments. The goals of the project are to:

• Bridge the gap between K12 and Higher Education 
• Inform Higher Ed practice through work with K12
• Inform K12 through research and methods of Higher Ed practice
• Help students develop in order to bridge the gap into college learning

EDLI has worked most closely with the Okemos Public Schools, providing the district a series of Professional Development webinars, and collaborating with district administration on survey development, distribution, and analysis. EDLI will present to the Okemos School Board board on June 28, 2021 the results of a teaching experience survey, which provides perspectives on teachers’ mindsets following a year of online teaching. 

Continued engagement with Okemos schools and other districts in the year ahead will enable EDLI to draw from the experiences of a diverse array of teachers, thereby informing EDLI’s on-campus faculty development and embedding both EDLI and MSU as key players in the digital education of students at all levels across the state. (Contacts: Jeremy Van Hof and Scott Schopieray)

Drawing as Educational Exercise Publication

EDLI has been working with faculty partner Dr. Julie Libarkin to help identify the role of technologies in promoting drawing as an instruction modality and developing curriculum around drawing as a learning process. Caitlin Kirby, Stephen Thomas, and EDLI Faculty collaborator Julie Libarkin were co-authors on a June publication in the Journal of Geoscience Education on drawings as assessment tools. 

This publication will serve as pilot data for a grant proposal to the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program with Caitlin as a Co-PI. An additional summary of this project is available on the EDLI website. (Contacts: Caitlin Kirby and Stephen Thomas)

American Evaluation Association Conference Proposal

Program evaluation is an essential process for the EDLI team to systematically collect information about program activities and objectives, monitor progress, and to report and communicate results to stakeholders across the MSU community (faculty, students, administration, central IT). Most recently, in addition to developing and conducting our program evaluation procedures and activities, we’ve summarized our efforts and insights, and submitted a proposal to this year’s annual conference of the American Evaluation Association, to connect our work to a national audience. (Contact: Jun Fu)

A Draft Manual for Understanding and Using End-of-semester Course Evaluations

Assessments are anxiety-provoking, especially when the relationship to your work is not clear. Among faculty, student evaluations of their instructors and their courses are a source of pride and satisfaction – but oftentimes frustration and anxiety. EDLI team members have looked into the research literature of the end-of-semester course evaluations and developed a draft manual for the Broad College of Business to address the key concerns of these evaluations. The objectives are:

• Understand why student evaluations of their instructors and courses are indeed valid and reliable evaluations rather than potentially biased opinions.
• Develop strategies to better use and interpret student evaluation data to improve teaching effectiveness.

Contacts: Jeremy Van Hof, Jun Fu, and Sarah Wellman

Multimodal Classroom Project

As the University has evolved since the pandemic from in-person instruction to remote teaching; from remote teaching to online learning; and now from online learning to hybrid offerings, EDLI has been working with IT services and faculty to envision how we can prepare faculty for the future while capturing the lessons and skills we have learned over the last year and a half. Because of these experiences, EDLI is promoting a multimodal approach where faculty are able to remix digital and physical experiences to maximize learning, and students are able to navigate digital and physical learning options to fit their needs. 

Implementing a multimodal approach and iterating towards improved learning requires new hardware and software in the classroom, faculty trained and interested in exploring new approaches, and feedback from students to determine impacts and direction for iteration. To this end, EDLI has worked with IT Services to identify six rooms to be upgraded to be hyflex-enabled. These six classrooms represent a range of classroom types from traditional stadium seating to classrooms arranged for small groups, and all six classrooms are used by a range of disciplines from across the university. From this variation, we help to capture the affordances and barriers of these technology-enhanced rooms on various pedagogies. 

EDLI has been working on professional development for faculty and a range of evaluation instruments to help gauge the success of these rooms. An overview of multimodal teaching can be found on the EDLI website. (Contacts: Caitlin Kirby and Scott Schopieray)