My name is Kayla Gaudette and I teach Tackling a Wicked Problem (TWP): Pandemics at Plymouth State University (PSU). This is a project based first year seminar that incorporates the experiential learning of a wicked problem topic with our General Education Habits of Mind: Problem Solving, Purposeful Communication, Self-Regulated Learning and Integrated Perspective. I am excited to share with you a video tour of the systems that support my hy-flex Fall 2020 semester!
Over the summer, I attended the 4-week ACE Framework workshop offered through the CoLab at PSU to improve upon my lackluster Spring 2020 online teaching attempt. In Spring 2020, COVID-19 rattled my teaching strategies but this shake up wasn’t all bad! The shift to online learning forced me to look at the accessibility of my content from the seat of a learner.
The facilitators of the framework prompted me to engage in the ‘rule of two’ where we choose a few overarching goals and not try to do it all at once! My Fall semester my main goals were:
- Implement opportunities for student choice (agency) throughout the course
- Provide a space where community can take place in a virtual setting, specifically at the student to student level
In the video tour you will preview the systems such as Moodle, Sharepoint, and Teams site that support my hy-flex course design. Moodle’s role is to provide a launch to Sharepoint, student grades, and personalized feedback. Sharepoint is the main dish where the Home page transforms a syllabus course outline into engaging opportunities to dive deeper into class sessions and assignments. Week 1 through finals week are hyperlinked into date specific class sessions that follow a flow of ‘Engage, Review, and Reflect & Discuss’.
Engagement in the course can be synchronous ‘mask to mask’ or on Zoom or Asynchronous via course recap recordings and a session specific feedback form. Each 100 minute class session is planned utilizing a hy-flex template that I co created with Hannah Andtritsakis from Dartmouth College. We combined the hy-flex modality acknowledgements with Learning Objectives and Key Concepts to keep the course grounded in intentionality. Each class session has a flow of; introduction, overview from last class ticket to leave, warm up activity, main activity/activities, debrief, recap, ticket to leave.
The main scaffold to this course leads to a culminating large group project. Colleague Maria Sanders mentored me on how to work up to a final product through a series of connected activities. Students begin with research on a chosen idea, class conducts mind map, students present research, they team up to complete an infographic, students present the infographic and then group up to complete a project proposal. From the project proposal they prototype, observe, interview, and then implement the project.
Take a video tour of my course here:
