Design Forward Portfolio Postings
Browse the work of Design Forward participants, including the participants of Season One of our Davis Grant.
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Designing Forward: A PSU Faculty Development Opportunity
We are delighted to announce a three-year Davis Foundation grant for PSU faculty to develop capacity around the intersection of pedagogy and instructional design.
Season One Has Started!
The first year of the Davis Grant is underway, and we have thirty fabulous PSU community members participating.
The AI Challenge
A flexible, self-paced module on artificial intelligence. Learn about the fundamentals of generative AI as well as how to teach with, against, and about GENAI.
About Design Forward
Learn more about Design Forward, a faculty development curriculum designed and developed by the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University.
Recently Annotated
Across Design Forward, we use Hypothesis to annotate online readings; Take a look at the most recently annotated pieces, and what our participants are saying.
Recently Commented Upon
Anyone can participate in the conversation by joining in module discussions or commenting on the porfolio postings of our participants. Take a look at what’s prompting conversation right now.
All Highlights
Funny how “skills transferring” feels a bit triggering for me because I’ve come to think about teaching as something so much more. Martha captured this in her comment. It’s funny how I’m really feeling weird/uneasy/awkward about how I prove I’m providing skills yet doing something more when I talk to administration/outsiders/prospective students & families. Hmmmmmm.
I’m highlighting this because of Robin’s final comment:
“But it seems like online connections have different parameters, affordances, and requirements which we really haven’t sussed out enough…”
It’s a good reminder for me of a place where I can work into. My goals for the Davis-funded work was to engage with the “beast” of online teaching & learning and this conversation seems like an important place to start and to revisit periodically.
I’m highlighting this for myself so I can find it again and remind myself that as early as the start of my Year 2 at PSU, I was already thinking in the directions I have ended up taking in the ever-evolving refinement/ revision/ development of my pedagogy.
I don’t have a problem with Bloom’s Taxonomy, though I know it’s heavily questioned within the DF platform. I like Bloom’s because it’s a bank of words that help us measure what is in essence an immeasurable thing: learning. How do we measure what someone has learned? No metric will ever be perfect, but Bloom’s at least gives us some places to start that are useful, with demonstrable skills or qualities that help us see the impact we’re having.
The terms I use to describe my pedagogy have shifted slightly, from “critical compassion” to “empathic engaged pedagogy.” At the core, it’s a pedagogy rooting in caring for the student as a whole being, showing up with authenticity myself as a whole human, examining the underlying assumptions of the ideas we engage with, and hopefully fostering in the students a sense of themselves and a capacity to think, synthesize, and evaluate the information around them. These are crucial professional skills for a Social Worker.
So that’s why I am highlighting this post from Sept 2022.
I found this Design Bite to be so useful in the classroom and out! Have already used it at home 🙂
Because it’s a new approach to group-making in that it removes it from the instructor and it allows for more choice by the students. It also opens the door for students to engage with one another so that they can be grouped with more like-minded students and not simply those they sit near or already friends with.
I love Kim’s reflection on ego in this piece and the role it plays in our work as teachers.
I want to capture this Design Bite so I can find it again easily bc it’s an idea I can easily adapt to my own courses, and I think it’s a brilliant means of engaging students in a different way.
I’m highlighting Briana’s comment to my reflection because of the importance of this sentence in her response:
But, if we’re “in charge” of “producing/molding” intelligent, work-force ready, career-driven, successful super-humans, what needs to sidle along side with this, is the “human-ness”. Imperfection, staying open, vulnerability, CARE, compassion, EMPATHY, integrity, resilience, inclusiveness…these all need to be practiced and accepted in our classrooms and offices with the hope that they are mirrored and reciprocated by our “humans” here and beyond.
No matter what subjects we teach or what our roles are on campus, we are shaping the lives of humans. The institution can easily dehumanize us. It’s what institutions do. EMPATHY is key to reminding us of our shared, collective humanity. So I wanted to capture the comment as a reminder.