Articles

Starting an OER Journey with the Syllabus

What a week! I’m tired. A lot happened and several items on my checklist were accomplished, though a couple continue to be pushed back! I did finish the QM Teaching Online Certificate, and we were able to get the epMotion 5075 BitBot liquid handler to run a DNA prep with food coloring and water. Tonight […]
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The Wikipedia Assignment

The Wiki Education group has been fantastic. We worked with them last year to help a group of undergraduate students learn how to edit Wikipedia pages on Delftia acidovorans. Helaine Blumenthal is the Senior Program Manager at Wiki Education and has helped me set up courses and work with new editors. I was happy to […]
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Distractions from Elon T&L Conference

After finishing the Lilly Online Conference recorded sessions from May 2021, I went back to the Elon Teaching and Learning Conference. The plenary of the conference was Dr. James Lang who I admire and follow. I missed the keynote and several other sessions of the Elon conference so I wanted to watch as many as […]
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Self-determination and Activity Choices

Vanessa Hull from the University of Florida presented at the 2021 Lilly Conference online on “Choose Your Own Adventure: A Choice-Making Model for Student Learning.” After describing their experience witnessing the recovery of a Chinese community after an earthquake in 2008, Hull revisited how they teach. Hull mentioned the “Centering a Pedagogy of Care” and […]
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Selection of Multicultural Texts

Ann Martinelli and Roxanna Senyshyn from The Pennsylvania State University presented on “Learning to Support and Sustain Cultural (and linguistic) Diversity: Perspectives of Preservice Teachers.” They teach at the Abington College, a component of Penn State University and they are a “minority majority student community” located outside of Philadelphia. The elementary education program includes the […]
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Public Science Writing

Tonight I watched a Lilly Conference online session from this past May entitled: “Who needs writing?”: Engaging STEM Majors in Public Science Writing” by Jennifer Osterhage and Katherine Rogers-Carpenter from the University of Kentucky. They described the writing course they developed and the biology program at the University of Kentucky, reaching 1,400 people. Their “Writing […]
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Learning about Digital Literacy and Wikipedia

I am moving on to Day 2 of OERxDomains2 sessions. Jane Secker and colleagues Hasan Munir, Ahmed El-Shareif, and Kanan Barot from City University presented about “The Impact of Teaching Digital Literacies and Open Practices” through accredited modules. Secker mentioned that they have run the module three times as well as a similar module taught […]
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Two Articles from the Pros to Prepare for the Spring Semester

Tomorrow we start our spring 2021 semester. I am fortunate to be able to teach an online version of the BIT 480/580 Yeast Metabolic Engineering course with my significant other, Claire Gordy. We have planned the course to be asynchronous to provide flexibility and options to students who could benefit from this alternative. Several undergraduates […]
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Text Sets for Courses… and Graduate Projects?

Drs. Greta Freeman and Brooke Hardin from USC Upstate presented at the 2020 Lilly Conference on Text Sets. Freeman and Hardin are both faculty in the School of Education with extensive experience as teachers and in literacy. I didn’t know about text sets, and as the name suggests, these are collections of texts on a […]
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