ASSETT is hiring students for three undergraduate positions: (3) Pedagogical Partner Consultants, a Student Videographer & Editor, and (3) Student Technology Consultants! Read the job descriptions and apply below!

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Campus was quiet, but the ASSETT team was hard at work! We offered a series of special summer events, prepared new offerings for the coming academic year, and polished up our ongoing programs and services.

Here are some virtual postcards from our staff about we did this summer:

Amanda McAndrew, Faculty Services Portfolio Manager

What, summer’s over? Say it ain’t so, Joe! But, it was a productive one. I pondered questions like how are we connecting students to one another, to authentic audiences for the work they produce, and to experts in the field? How are we encouraging students to be critical consumers and producers of knowledge in the internet information age? For answers, I read, attended conferences, and interviewed teaching and learning center professionals at other institutions. So, I’m teaming up with Caroline Sinkinson in University Libraries for a pilot project, Domain of One’s Own (DoOO), that will investigate how we can help our students develop digital identities and digital literacy. Also, newly on board in ASSETT is our Teaching, Learning, and Technology Initiatives Graduate Assistant, Blair Young. Blair is a grad student in ATLAS’s Information Communication Technology for Development program. She will be assisting us with the DoOO pilot and our Faculty Fellows program. Welcome, Blair! And if you’re interested to learn more about DoOO, check out our upcoming workshops for an information session in November.

Jacie Moriyama, Student Services Portfolio Manager

Summer was busy with planning, delivering, and attending professional development workshops and conferences. The summer has also been bittersweet. We bid farewell to our colleague Clara Smith, who has been instrumental in mentoring and managing our undergraduate student employees.  While we are sad to see her leave, we are pleased to welcome Sam Kindick as our new Lead Student Fellow. Sam is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Classics Department. If you’re around the TLC building, please give Sam a warm welcome. To get ready for fall, I asked the Student Fellows how they’d like to expand their service offering in the area of teaching and learning. Their answer: Helping faculty and graduate students conduct mid-semester evaluations. To learn more or to request working with a Student Fellow, please email us at assett@colorado.edu!   

Joy Adams, Teaching & Learning Consultant

I taught my summer course, “Introduction to Human Geography,” for The University of Maryland. It was my third time to teach it fully online, so I had a chance to try a few new things. I incorporated weekly metacognitive activities based on what I learned during the ASSETT Summer Book Club. To save students some money, I ditched my print textbook and utilized open educational resources (OER) instead. And, of course, I made time for my passionate, ongoing love affair with grading rubrics. I learned a LOT from these experiments and look forward to sharing tips and tricks with the A&S faculty at our upcoming workshops this fall!

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In summer 2018, over 20 CU faculty and staff collaboratively read and discussed Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation by Saundra Yancy McGuire. As a Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success, Retired Assistant Vice Chancellor, and Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University, McGuire has viewed student success from a variety of perspectives and roles. In this easy-to-read guide, she introduces tools and methods for incorporating metacognition (thinking about thinking) into undergraduate courses to improve student outcomes, self-confidence, and lifelong learning skills. Based on 15 years' experience with these techniques, McGuire argues, "If you teach students how to learn, and give them simple, straightforward strategies to use, they can significantly increase their learning and performance."

"This summer, I incorporated metacognition exercises into my online course," noted ASSETT Teaching & Learning Consultant Joy Adams. "It took very little time to implement as I simply created Canvas quizzes for the prompts. Students wrote a few sentences about their learning process so that I gained insight into how they were approaching the material, which can be very hard to do outside of a face-to-face setting. From there, I was able to provide customized feedback and coaching to individual students as well as offering general guidance to the entire class. My favorite activity was 'crowd-sourced study strategies' -- I compiled all of the students' ideas about the best ways to learn the material, posted them in Canvas, and then had the students choose one or two new techniques to try out. They then reflected on their experience in the following week's assignment. I don't have my teaching evaluations yet, but it seemed like the students were more self-motivated, confident, and accountable for their role as learners than in past summers, and the final class average was the highest I've ever had."

The 2018 Summer Book Club was co-sponsored by ASSETT (Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) and ODECE (Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement). Got an idea for next summer's book? Email us at assett@colorado.edu.

To learn more about metacognition, including simple ways to integrate this powerful pedagogical approach into your classes, , from 3:00-4:00 pm in TLC 215. Or, watch for further details about a metacognition special group (SIG), which we hope to launch in spring 2019.

In the meantime, here are a few resources to help you get started:

•  (Stylus Publishing)
• (Tanner 2012 in CBE Life Sciences Education)
• Videos featuring Saundra McGuire
  •  (LSU Center for Academic Success via You Tube, 04:37)
  • (LSU Center for Academic Success via YouTube, 04:20)
  •  (LSU Center for Academic Success via You Tube, 06:33)
  • (University of Georgia, 01:22:44)
  • (SERC, 16:58)

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With the close of the spring semester, ASSETT kicked off its summer programming with a week-long Tech Camp. This year's event, centered on the theme of "Students as Producers," spotlighted technologies that support the creative activities of students, including Canvas-based tools, interactive collaboration apps such as FlipGrid and Padlet, data visualization programs, and multimedia production tools. The sessions also emphasized pedagogical strategies and perspectives that encourage and facilitate student-produced content, including open pedagogy, digital humanities, visual design principles, implementations of Universal Design for Learning, and accessibility considerations. Each day's 90-minute session included a combination of presentations, tech demos, hands-on activities, and/or small-group discussions.

Tech Camp is an annual event, offered each spring, and is open to all members of the CU Boulder community. This year's sessions drew a diverse group of faculty, academic support staff, administrators, and students representing a broad range of departments and programs. We hope you'll join us in 2019!

Postcards from Tech Camp 2018

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Faculty and staff representing a wide range of academic programs and campus offices examined the intersections of technology, design thinking, and pedagogy design at ASSETT’s 2018 Teaching with Technology Symposium on April 9.

The event featured an “Ask Me Anything” session and presentation by Punya Mishra, Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation and Professor of Educational Leadership & Innovation at Arizona State University. His keynote address, “Educational Technology, Creativity and Design: Examining the Convergence,” drew upon his experiences consulting with school districts, non-profit organizations, and businesses. Dr. Mishra shared insights into creativity and deep play as valuable educational pursuits, emphasizing the potential benefits that could gained by infusing the arts into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction (i.e., reconceptualizing “STEM” as “STEAM”). Reflecting on his diverse personal and professional background, he also acknowledged the importance of failure and learning from mistakes as essential elements of the creative process. He expounded on his seminal work on the Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) model, which has greatly influenced our unit’s work.

Staff from ASSETT, the Academic Technology Design Team, and the Office of Information Technology were on hand to introduce attendees to a number of services and programs available to faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, including the Student Fellows and Faculty Fellows, consultations on Universal Design for Learning, the Visualizing Instructional Practices Service, support for users of the Canvas learning management system, and data collected from our Large Lecture Discovery Project.

Janet Casagrand, Senior Instructor in the Department of Integrated Physiology, was presented with ASSETT’s annual Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award, which recognizes a CU faculty member’s commitment and leadership in furthering ASSETT's mission of advancing teaching and learning through technology. She was nominated by a peer who cited her ongoing efforts to “improve and advance student learning not only in her courses, but across our curriculum and beyond.” Dr. Casagrand’s accomplishments and contributions will be featured on the ASSETT website and in an upcoming newsletter.

In reflecting upon their experience, a number of participants cited “inspiration” as their key takeaway from the event. “I always find it invigorating to hear the solutions other instructors are employing in their classrooms to improve their teaching,” explained Beth Osnes, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Theatre. “I find I can get settled and self-congratulatory for what I am already doing, which can keep me from continuing to move forward. This inspires me to keep learning and trying new things.” Mona Attwa, Instructor in the Arabic Language and Literature Program observed, “The symposium was focused and allowed time to understand the scope of the technologies exhibited. I now understand what is actually meant by ‘design’ after attending the symposium, and I will see how I can remodel my teaching by thinking about this approach.”

For some inspiration of your own, contact our team to schedule an individual consultation or small-group training. Additional information about our services and programs is available on the ASSETT website.

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