Welcome to the "Distance Learning Workshop for STEM Faculty" video presentation. Current students are not at ease with classical teaching techniques; they are more at ease with online knowledge. They also prefer to absorb material at their own pace from multiple sources. On the other hand, STEM faculty in public schools, especially those that cater to nontraditional and underrepresented students are typically overwhelmed by the daily teaching demands to explore alternative teaching techniques. 

The goal of this workshop is to bridge this gap by introducing participating faculty to distance learning techniques. More than fifty faculty from public universities and community colleges. The workshop combined experiences of faculty who implemented distance learning techniques in their curricula, testimonials from students about their distance learning experience, along with multiple hands-on experiences. Pre, post, and 6-month surveys indicated that the perception of distance learning has improved significantly. Multiple faculty has since started switching to distance learning or hybrid formats. 

If you have any questions or comments please use the discussion board here.

Thanks for this presentation, the topic is certainly of current relevance to a lot of schools who are struggling with the problems you identify, in a time of declining enrollments.

    Although you speak of "distance learning" techniques, I infer from the video that you are actually implementing these innovations with resident/communiting students – so this sounds like what some people call "flipping" the classroom.  Am I hearing that right?  Or maybe you're doing both — reaching out to students at a distance, as well as flipping "regular" classes?

Does sound like Flipped classroom approach.  Have you seen the site at UW?

https://www.washington.edu/teaching/teaching-re...

Great tips!

Also there's a wealth of literature on active learning and flipping?  What strategies are you using in class?

Do you use quizzes or embedded questions in the videos?

How do you ensure that students use the materials?

 Dear Patricia,

As I mentioned to Brian above, we presented both techniques in the workshop through combination of testimonials and hands-on exercises.

Thanks for the link. This looks useful. In our case, we collaborated with UNLV Office of Online Education which has its own resources and staff to help our faculty. They were an essential part of this Workshop by guiding many of the exercises. Their web site is:

https://www.unlv.edu/provost/online-education

Thank you for your presentation.  Do you follow-up with the workshop participants to see if they have implemented the techniques learned in the workshop? And do you have a sense of how implementation has affected their course engagement and student performance?

Dear Terri

Yes we asked them. Several embarked on incorporating some components of hybrid format in their courses. Few switched to a completely online format.

Many indicated that they would like to but have limited institutional support.

We feel that another in-depth workshop will help these faculty expand into the distance learning area.

Very interesting approach to broadly disseminating learning about on-line courses. I would like to know more about the details of how the workshop was run. Was it on-line or face-to-face? Either way, what logistical or technical challenges did you have to overcome? I am also interested whether you are tracking outcomes in the actual classes being transformed by your workshop. The one example in the video mentioned increased number of questions in the face-to-face class. How about changes in mastering of concepts and learning outcomes? Have those been measured and compared?

Interesting approach to learning.  Since STEM is such a hands-on approach to learning, how have you integrated hands-on to on-line learning?

Hi Deanna

Do you mean lab components of the courses?

Great approach to incorporating and improving online learning.  This is often an overlooked population in academic and professional settings.  Along the lines of the assessment, when you have data for both online and in-person programs, I'd be interested to know student perceptions of the learning supports that are offered for the online courses.  It seems that the physical disconnect in online learning would be compensated for through extra support, but this is not always the case.

Also, with the emphasis on teaching offsite individuals, how did your instructors maneuver complications in team project-based learning?

I'm also really interested in engaging groups in this arena.  One of the future trends is for more team based science and team based approaches to many jobs.  Can you tell us how workshop participants can be engaged in team work.

Hi Stephen

Great questions. Here are some thoughts:

1. Perception of the students in distance learning settings is very important. I experienced this last semester when I changed my course to a hybrid format. While grades of the students and their self-assessment of their learning went up, they were unhappy about the format. However, in focus groups, they could not exactly express the reason of their discomfort. I am working on making the course more structured when I teach it next semester to help alleviate some of these issues.
2. We had experts from ASU discuss ways to help off-campus students working in groups by using various communication and project management software. They sated that the inter-group tension is about the same as those experienced in classical settings.