{"id":94733,"date":"2020-09-14T08:32:49","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T12:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=94733"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:47:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:47:58","slug":"ddn-wright-state-faculty-work-to-strengthen-online-courses-for-fall-semester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2020\/09\/14\/ddn-wright-state-faculty-work-to-strengthen-online-courses-for-fall-semester\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Daily News: Wright State faculty work to strengthen online courses for fall semester"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Center for Teaching and Learning helps Wright State faculty members prepare to teach remotely by offering many kinds of training sessions.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Better online courses and more online offerings will greet Wright State University students this fall semester thanks to the faculty\u2019s strong response to training and their creative approaches to remote teaching.<\/p>\n

In an effort to protect the safety and well-being of everyone on Wright State\u2019s Dayton and Lake campuses, many students are expected to take many remote courses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe online courses are going to be even better this fall semester because faculty are more prepared to teach online classes, there will be greater use of online interactive technologies, and faculty are coming up with innovative ways to engage students while also making student connections in this online space,\u201d said Lisa Kenyon, faculty director for the university\u2019s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).<\/p>\n

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Because remote instruction has dramatically evolved and benefited from technology improvements, many classes, though remote in their delivery, will offer students a real-time, traditional classroom learning experience.<\/p>\n

Wright State is planning for a fall semester that includes a combination of remote, flexible delivery, and safe, socially distant, in-person classes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When Wright State moved to remote learning in March to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, CTL became a nerve center of instruction for remote teaching. During spring semester, CTL provided training and distance learning programs that enabled faculty to quickly transform their in-person courses to an emergency remote teaching mode.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Many faculty members continued to attend CTL sessions over the summer to prepare and further improve online teaching. Kenyon said the sessions were successful and well attended.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe faculty are working hard to make this an exceptional experience for students,\u201d said Kenyon, who is also professor of biological sciences. \u201cIt\u2019s great to see the faculty excited about making online offerings better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CTL workshops included general sessions on designing and developing quality online courses; a session on active learning using video tools that allow greater interaction among students to questions posed by faculty; a session on a social annotation tool that creates a chatroom among smaller groups of students to discuss assigned readings; and a session on alternative ways to assess the progress of student performance other than typical exam formats<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are ways of trying to step outside of the box and make the experience meaningful to students,\u201d said Kenyon.<\/p>\n

Megan R\u00faa, assistant professor of biological sciences, is taking her ecology and evolution of disease course online.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much of the content in this course is super relevant in today\u2019s COVID world so students really want to engage from the get-go,\u201d said R\u00faa. \u201cThis is an upper-level course that attracts students from across the College of Science and Mathematics so one of the best things about it is how we can all come together with our different backgrounds to better understand disease dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course, which addresses how pathogens spread through populations, students conduct simulations on population sizes, vaccination rates and the recovery and mortality rate of the hosts, and then discuss the outcomes.<\/p>\n

To teach the course remotely, R\u00faa will use technology like Flipgrid that will enable students to record short videos of themselves discussing the results of their simulations and then respond to videos from other students in the class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also integrating podcasts and short videos from the actual scientists performing the experiments the students are learning about so they can better place the research with the researcher,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The students will also use real outbreak data collected in July to predict the spread of COVID-19 given current regulations and then match that to what actually happens in October so students will get real-world experience understanding disease dynamics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf our predictions don\u2019t match, then we have the opportunity to talk about why,\u201d said R\u00faa. \u201cMaybe there will be a new social distancing order put in place between now and then or maybe the mandatory mask order will be lifted again and cause an outbreak? Either way, the students will get a sense for what real disease data looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erik Potts, instructor of mathematics, statistics and mathematics education, plans to teach all his fall courses online.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very important for me to give my students their money\u2019s worth,\u201d he said. \u201cSo after many discussions and much debate, I decided that I could better engage students online. I felt the restrictions in place for on-campus learning would not safely allow the level of group work that I need in my classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potts will use online technology tools that will enable his students to work together in groups via \u201cbreakout rooms\u201d as well as participate in lectures and whole class discussions with polls, chatting, voice, video and other platforms.<\/p>\n

Potts is considering breaking his classes into thirds and having a small group meet with him live online every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis way, I can be more attentive to their needs and get more interaction with each student,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the other days of each week, the students will work on their own, watching recorded lectures, completing assignments and interacting with each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they\u2019ll still be interacting with each other even though they are not together in the same room or online at the same time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Creative projects of students in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures will focus on skills in content creation for social media, independent producing and creative work, said Joe Deer, the department\u2019s chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we are definitely going to be adding and creating assignments that give them a lot of contemporary self-promotion skills that will hold them in very good stead as they go into their professional careers,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir entrepreneurial and independent creative skills are going to be amplified many, many fold in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deer also said course content from dance and singing to scenery construction and lighting will be sequenced during fall semester in a way that will enable students to develop important skills that might have normally been picked up in subsequent semesters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are definitely doing deep research on how to hold in-person performance classes safely and working as well on creating hybrid modes to allow that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In October, the department will partner with WYSO Public Radio to present a localized version of Orson Welles\u2019 \u201cThe War of the Worlds,\u201d the 1938 radio drama that caused panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was fiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll utilize all the old practices from classic radio, including live sound effects, actors playing multiple roles, live music \u2014 all created in WYSO\u2019s studios,\u201d said Deer.<\/p>\n

View the whole story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Better online courses and more online offerings will greet Wright State University students this fall semester thanks to the faculty\u2019s strong response to training and their creative approaches to remote teaching… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":92926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94733"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145324,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94733\/revisions\/145324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}