While we typically hold a Faculty Forum on the third Friday of every month during the school year, this month the final exam schedule and a competing event have changed our plans. We recommend that you join us in attending a meeting of the UCOP Innovations in Online and Digital Education Speaker Series featuring one of our favorite local innovators, Dr. Debbie Fetter, Assistant Professor of Teaching Nutrition in the UC Davis Department of Nutrition.

Dr. Fetter’s talk is titled “UCD Nutrition 010V: The Student Experience Sandwich.” As you may know, Nutrition 10 is one of our most popular classes offered at UC Davis, and the lauded Dr. Fetter has now had years of experience teaching Nut10 virtually and remotely. Please register here to attend this event that will take place this Friday, March 19th at noon.

Please also reserve April 2nd for our next DOLCE. We will meet at noon that day to discuss strategies for enhancing engagement in our remote classes. At the April 16th Faculty Forum, Professor Milmon Harrison will take part in an informal conversation about those remote-teaching tools and practices that we will continue to deploy when we are back to teaching in-person classes.

Enjoy your spring break!

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

UC Davis

“UCD Nutrition 010V: The Student Experience Sandwich”

Dr Debbie Fetter, UC Davis Department of Nutrition

Friday, March 19th at noon

Register to join the conversation

• Creating text-based assignments in PlayPosit (no video required!)
• Scaffolding your bulbs for writing instruction
• Gamifying your bulbs to create an escape room experience
• Exploring branched pathways

If you are considering implementing any of these options (or these examples) in your courses, please join us at our PlayPosit Use Case Workshop on Thursday, March 18th, at 2pm.

If you are new to PlayPosit, please explore the introductory resources shared in this Wheel post before attending.

Reach out to instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu with questions, and plan to join us on Thursday, March 18th, at 2pm!

Dr. Margaret Merrill

Senior Instructional Design Consultant

Academic Technology Services

Emily Bleibel

PlayPosit Account Manager

First, Dr. Haas introduced attendees to his field research work in archaeology. Needing a way to represent his findings to a wider public, Haas reached out to ATS and started working with ATS Senior Artist Matthew Verdolivo. Verdolivo told us how his background in cinematography helped him conceptualize the Haas discoveries of 10,000 year-old Peruvian female hunters as one would a scene in a film.

Finally, Keith-David Watenpaugh shared his plans to teach “Public Speaking for Human Rights Advocacy” as an in-person class in the Spring Quarter. Noting the importance of the face-to-face component, he said the class is about “humans talking to humans about human (rights) issues.” Dr. Watenpaugh collaborated with campus units on the logistics of teaching a class on the UC Davis Quad, making sure that he and his students will be free from the typical quad interruptions of activated sprinklers or lawn mowing.

I myself commented on the high demand for my spring first-year seminar, “Journaling our Long Walk.” I have had to open up a second session of the class! I look forward to looking into the eyes, if not seeing the faces, of UC Davis undergraduates again this spring as we meet outside every Friday starting in April.

Academic Technology Services offers DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education), on the first Friday of every month, and Faculty Forums on the third Friday of the month during the school year. Please join us at our next Faculty Forum event on March 19th through this link. Our theme this month: “After a year of remote teaching, what have we learned?”

If you have questions about Instructional Design at UC Davis, please contact our ATS senior instructional designers at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.

Best,

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis

University of California, Davis

On behalf of Academic Technology Services (ATS), I am writing to invite you to our March DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education) meeting that will take place this Friday, March 5th at noon PST via Zoom.

We will hear first from Dr. Randy Haas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology. He will discuss “How Archaeology + an ATS Visual Altered Public Understanding of Human History” and share his experience collaborating with ATS visual artists to illustrate his research findings and share with the public. ATS Senior Artist Matthew Verdolivo will also share his perspectives on this project. The collaborative work has been recognised and featured in many national and international publications and both scholarly and popular media outlets.

After hearing from Randy and Matt, we will pivot to a discussion of our plans for teaching in-person classes this fall. A select few faculty, such as Keith David Watenpaugh and myself, will be teaching small in-person outdoor classes this spring. Watenpaugh, Professor and Director of Human Rights Studies, will share his planned teaching strategies for his in-person, socially distanced “Public Speaking for Human Rights Advocacy” class. After each presentation, we will have time for questions, answers, and discussion. This event will be recorded, but we still hope you can join us synchronously.

Please register now, mark your calendar for noon on March 5th, 2021, and share this event with your faculty colleagues.

In the future, please plan to join us first and third Fridays of each month during the school year for our ongoing presentations and discussions on remote and mediated teaching at UC Davis. I look forward to seeing you at DOLCE this coming Friday, March 5th, 2021 at noon!

Best regards,

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis

University of California, Davis

Friday, March 5, 2021 at noon PST

Register now to join us via Zoom

Thank you so much  to all of you who joined us for our February Faculty Forum, where we were invited to listen in on three different approaches to innovative and effective teaching. Katia Vega, Assistant Professor of Design, Laci Gerhart-Barley, Assistant Professor of Teaching at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, and Communication Professor Narine Yegiyan shared ways they successfully incorporate their research interests into their classroom. The recording of the event is available.

First, Dr. Vega shared her research interests with faculty, presenting examples of projects on beauty technology such as eyelashes that can launch drones (!), hair extensions that enable users to send messages, fingernails that have been embedded with microchips, and other such remarkable technologies. In addition to sampling the future as science fiction authors or pioneering inventors do, in her classes Vega uses storytelling and collaborative projects to enhance engagement with technology and design topics.

Noting how Dr. Vega’s research speaks to the unifying nature of technology, Dr. Yegiyan shared that technology more typically serves to distract. An expert on attention and emotion, Yegiyan uses multiple teaching modalities, such as lectures, visuals, chat rooms, and invited speaker lectures, to observe and measure cognitive and emotional changes in the student participants in her Zoom classrooms. “Teaching has become a lab for me,” acknowledges Dr. Yegiyan. As we learned at SITT 2020, her efforts have resulted in motivated participation from her students.

A frequent participant in ATS faculty forums, Dr. Gerhart-Barley reminded us how she teaches her lucky students with enthusiasm and expertise. Mindful of the complexity of our student’s learning conditions, Gerhart-Barley records her lectures, thus reducing student stress about missing class/information. A former keynote speaker at the Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology, Gerhart-Barley also shared how she leads students in successful explorations of participatory/community science.

Academic Technology Services offers DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education), on the first Friday of every month, and Faculty Forums on the third Friday of the month during the school year. Featuring Anthropology professor Randy Haas and others, our next DOLCE will take place on March 5, 2021 at noon. Please join us at this event by registering via this link.

If you have questions about Instructional Design at UC Davis, please contact our ATS senior instructional designers at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.

Best,

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis

University of California, Davis

If you are currently using PlayPosit and are ready to explore more advanced platform functionalities, please join the PlayPosit instructional design team on Friday, February 26 at 10:30 am PT to learn more about

• The capabilities of PlayPosit’s rich text editor
• Advanced interaction settings
• Branched learning with jumps & hot spots
• And more!

Also, see a number of use cases that highlight advanced functionalities, and learn how to implement those techniques in your own course!

Register here to attend “PlayPosit 201: Advanced Features” at 10:30am on Fri, Feb 26.

If you are new to PlayPosit, we suggest that you watch the recording of our “Introduction to PlayPosit” webinar and explore the resources below before attending the upcoming webinar on more advanced features. A brief introductory video is available for viewing, and the PlayPosit knowledge base contains a wealth of information for all things PlayPosit, including the following resources concerning Canvas, bulbs (i.e., the interactive videos created in PlayPosit), and privacy:

• Accessing PlayPosit in Canvas
• Building a Bulb
• Monitoring Bulbs
• Privacy Settings

In addition to the information provided above by PlayPosit, UC Davis also provides the following knowledge base articles that may be of interest to new campus PlayPosit users:

• Getting Started with PlayPosit
• Authenticating and accessing your PlayPosit account
• Using PlayPosit with Canvas for student learning
• PlayPosit: Student perspective

Please feel free to reach out to instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu with questions, and plan to join us on Friday, February 26th!

We are seeking opportunities to Zoom into department meetings or other faculty gatherings to share strategies and resources for integrating technologies into courses, as well as learn from faculty how we can better support their efforts. In an interactive presentation, we would like to discuss how ATS supports faculty who are…

• Imagining and building engaging uses of Canvas
• Creating media and other resources to increase access to learning materials
• Adopting teaching technologies to enhance student engagement (e.g., iClicker, PlayPosit)
• Innovating to overcome common teaching and learning challenges of remote teaching

We look forward to sharing ATS’ services and resources with you and your faculty so we can better support your courses, teaching initiatives, and student success goals.

If this opportunity appeals to you, please email us at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu to share a date, time, and your preferred length of presentation, anything from two minutes to 20 minutes or more. We will follow up with a survey in which faculty can indicate their areas of interest and greatest need. We could also just take a couple minutes to let your faculty know about our online resources and planned workshops, and then answer questions.

We look forward to hearing from you. Download this ATS flyer pictured above to review some of our services.

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

UC Davis

You are cordially invited to a special Faculty Forum for February on “Bringing Your Research into your Remotely Taught Classes.” We meet this Friday, February 19th at noon.

Our UC Davis students’ advantages include not only our effective pandemic-era teaching, but also our world-class research. Whether this means making discoveries in our labs, conducting historical research, crunching huge data sets, or completing and publishing creative projects in multiple media, UC Davis faculty are always stretching or deepening the world’s understanding of our individual fields and disciplines. When it comes to teaching, this research informs our classroom lessons, anecdotes, and activities in a variety of ways that benefit our students.

For this month’s Faculty Forum, we will have some “ringers” in the Zoom room, colleagues such as Katia Vega, Assistant Professor of Design who is also a world expert on beauty technology, Laci Gerhart-Barley, who leads students to making their own fieldwork discoveries as citizen scientists, and Narine Yegiyan, a Communications Professor with an expertise on cognitive and emotional overload. We hope that you and your colleagues will also join us to participate in this month’s conversational Faculty Forum, even if you have never attended one of our previous events. We meet this coming Friday, February 19, 2021 at noon via Zoom. Please plan to join us.

Best regards,

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis

University of California, Davis

P.S. If you or members of your department would benefit from a tailored workshop or question-and-answer session with our instructional designers, please email us at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu to set that up. With a long presentation or a quick Q+A during an already scheduled meeting, we will gladly adapt our remarks to meet your faculty team’s needs. We would love to share with you and members of your program or department how ATS services and other technology tools could benefit you and your students.

Faculty Forum:  “Bringing Your Research into your Remotely Taught Classes.”

Friday, February 19th, 2021

12 Noon

Zoom registration

Thanks to all of you who joined us for our DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education) on February 5, 2021. At this event, we heard from two faculty speakers, Sunaina Maira, Professor of Asian American Studies, and Hooman Rashtian, Assistant Professor of Teaching in Electrical and Computer Engineering, about their pedagogical practices related to fostering student engagement. Then Dr. Margaret Merrill, Senior Instructional Design Consultant, shared the ATS Roadshow initiative, an opportunity for faculty in individual programs and departments to benefit from targeted instructional design presentations and consultations. The video recording of the event is available now.

In her presentation about fostering engagement in remote classes, Professor Maira  shared how in her large introductory courses and smaller upper-division courses she uses micro-communities to foster effective learning while being mindful of Zoom fatigue and of other possible related drawbacks of online teaching and learning, such as possible delays to student academic progress, social isolation, and student dis-engagement. During the presentation, faculty participants shared their own concerns about keeping students motivated.

Dr. Maira addresses such challenges with a number of strategies, including introducing herself and TAs to the students, checking in with the students on a regular basis, and inviting biweekly feedback from students through Canvas. She also keeps students engaged through peer support and reading group activities. Group presentations also provide a space and opportunity for students to collaborate productively and to present their findings to the class.

After Dr. Maira’s presentation, Dr. Hooman Rashtian discussed the advantages and challenges of adopting a project-based learning approach in his remotely-taught classes. Dr. Rashtian’s Project Based Learning approach requires his Engineering students to work with project kits to apply their knowledge to the creation of robots that “hear” and “dance” to music. Although the remotely-taught lab sessions provided all involved extra challenges, the results proved the success of the approach. Dr. Rashtian deployed Teaching Assistants and undergraduate Student Assistants (SA) during classes to support students, especially in breakout room activities, ensuring that peers learn both from teaching their peers and from welcoming lessons and advice from those peers.

Finally, Margaret Merrill, PhD, a Senior Instructional Design Consultant with Academic Technology Services, shared how departments and faculty can benefit from presentations and consultations offered by instructional designers during their regular faculty meetings.

As you may know by now, at ATS we also organize and host DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education, on the first Friday of every month) and Faculty Forums (on the third Friday of the month). Our next Faculty Forum, on bringing our research into the classroom, will take place on February 19, 2021. Please join us at this event by registering via this link.

If you have questions about Instructional Design at UC Davis, please contact our ATS senior instructional designers at instructionaldesign@ucdavis.edu.

Best regards,

Dr. Andy Jones

Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services

Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis

University of California, Davis

The flurry of well-deserved international recognition received by the artwork of our ATS colleague Matt Verdolivo highlights the power of combining artistic expertise with scientific discoveries. Following the discovery of hunting artifacts with a young female skeleton in an archeological dig, Dr. Haas reached out to ATS to have an artist create depictions of this young hunter. Dr. Haas’ discovery upends the long-held belief that men were the primary hunters in primitive societies. Matt dug into the research about the artifacts and the hunters’ prey, allowing him to create a depiction of this young hunter based on the currently-available knowledge about her, her tools, and her environment.

A Google search of these topics will reveal that Dr. Haas’ ground-breaking research, accompanied by Matt’s wonderful art, has been featured in many national and international publications, both scholarly and popular. Another ATS team member, senior producer / director Jeremy Poulos, worked with Dr. Haas and Matt to create a video about this important work. This project exemplifies how well-done art can illustrate advancements in science, and how ATS experts stand ready to support the work of faculty in their research as well as their teaching. Please feel free to contact ats@ucdavis.edu for your own consultation with one of our artists, videographers, or instructional designers.

Congratulations to Dr. Haas for this exciting discovery, to Matt for making it come to life, and to Jeremy for telling the story!

Dr. Margaret Merrill
Senior Instructional Design Consultant
Academic Technology Services

P.S. To learn more, visit the Aggie Video link on this story: https://video.ucdavis.edu/media/The+Art+of+ScienceA+Female+Hunters+of+the+Early+Americas/1_t36rcpfp