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In a conscious attempt during the last two or three years to include high impact teaching practices as part of the courses I teach here at MSU, I have my students write reflections on their individual assignments each week, team reflections for their three collaborative projects, and an individual semester reflection during Week 15. Here are the guidelines I provide each week to help individual students (or student learning teams) craft their reflections:

Guidelines for Writing an Effective Reflection and Self-Critique
For your team-based project reflection that is part of this assignment – or individually written semester reflection -- develop and refine two FULL pages in which you discuss the following:
• For you introduction, describe the project in general and your respective activities associated with it.
• Briefly describe the projects, process and skills you will talk about.
• Explain three aspects of the project that your team members found most enjoyable and why.
• Explain three processes used for the project described above. Describe how the processes were challenging and rewarding for your team members.
• What are one or possibly two things you might change about your contribution to the project in question. Why?
• Explain three skills your various team members gained or improved upon during the semester. These do not have to relate to what you have discussed already, but they can.
• Describe why you find these new or improved skills interesting, useful, enjoyable, and/or challenging.
• If there was a problem of some kind, how might you handle it more proactively next time around?
• In your conclusion, do not simply summarize what you have already said. Answer the implied “So, what?” question.
• Leave yourself (and your reader) with something to think about.
• Remember, this is not a forum to complain about other members of your team, assignments, the course, the instructor, or previous grades. Your team should reflect on its work habits, processes, and related choices made.


In addition to the guidelines above, I have also embedded a brief video from Essay Pro into each weekly course module, which includes additional explanation and examples of what reflective essays are and how to write them. Here is the link for those who might be interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH5W0iaayRo

Recently, I have been working on how we might provide instruction in DEI principles to the students in our courses. Here is what I have come up with:

"Timely Team Tips: Stealthy DEI Instruction through Brief Animated Explainer Videos

Fostering Inclusive Practices within the Student Learning Teams Organized for My IAH Courses"

Timely Team Tips #1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa18WLyz3tQ
Timely Team Tips #2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzV0yFgX6E
Timely Team Tips #3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOGTEdf54CI
Timely Team Tips #4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7wemM9h2zk
Timely Team Tips #5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITKHb5TtdV4
Timely Team Tips #6 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GHwB3Dw8vc&t=7s
Timely Team Tips #7 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjwCSyHhTKs&t=5s
Timely Team Tips #8 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG53U-5QYe4
Timely Team Tips #9 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxngV78pgsU
Timely Team Tips #10 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwuikDDsRSI

The recently created explainer videos above are now embedded into my online course modules for Week 3-Week 12 and are presented to students in the context of fostering student learning team “cohesion” (I have made to conscious decision to avoid the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion in most instances) during weekly collaborative assignments and three larger digital projects students are asked to complete as part of my currently asynchronous online courses.

Part of my thinking behind this project has been to help prepare students for professional life after graduation – think 21st century employability skills -- given the attention paid to DEI principles and practices within the business and corporate world. The information presented in these animated explainer videos is a synthesis of other information from many different academic and corporate sources online by the way. I take no credit for it other than in the way I present it to my students, using the Doodly app. The project is developing, so I anticipate adjustments as I continue the work.

When I move to a hybrid modality as we transition back to the physical classroom next fall (???), I plan to keep and retain all of the online materials developed during the last two years of the pandemic to better support, motivate, and engage the students in my (gen. ed.) courses, another ongoing project of long standing.

If ever you would like to talk in more detail about my ongoing work with this, just drop me a line. As difficult as the last couple of years have been for everyone, I have really enjoyed the turbo charged push forward it has provided when t comes to how I think about my courses, teaching, and related points here at MSU.

My background in Scandinavian languages and literature keeps rearing its head in various ways after many years. Specifically,when it comes to folklore, magical tales, and perilous journeys toward maturation. In a way, I have become a pedagogical Ashland, of sorts, since coming to MSU in 2015. My journey, an ongoing quest if you will, has been in trying to find that one magical key, which will unlock the enchanted door to greater student interest and involvement in their general education course requirements.

Those of us who teach these courses know that, too often, many students view gen. ed. requirements as hoops to jump through. Something they must satisfy to graduate. Subjects that, they feel, have little to do with the real world, their intended majors, or envisioned careers. Scheduling and convenience more than genuine interest seem to be the determining factor for many students when they choose to enroll in such courses. Put the head down, muddle through, and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But there might be another way.

In my own ongoing quest to motivate and engage the students in my various IAH courses more effectively, I have come back to Bloom's Taxonomy again and again since first learning about it in the 2016-2017 Walter and Pauline Adams Academy cohort. More specifically, it is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, revised by various scholars for use with 21st century students who exist in an increasingly digital world, that has been especially useful when it comes to designing assessments for my students.

For those who are interested, there are all kinds of sources online -- journal article pdfs, infographics, Youtube explainer videos, etc. -- that will be informative and helpful for anyone who might be interested in learning more. Just search for 'Bloom's Digital Taxonomy' on Google. It's that easy.

For my specific IAH courses, I organize my students into permanent student learning teams early each semester and ask them to create three collaborative projects (including a team reflection). These are due at the end of Week Five, Week 10, and Week 14. Right now, the projects include:

1) A TV Newscast/Talkshow Article Review Video in which teams are ask to locate, report on, review, and evaluate two recent journal articles pertinent to material read or viewed during the first few weeks of the course.

2) A Readers' Guide Digital Flipbook (using Flipsnack) that reviews and evaluates the usefulness of two books, two more recent journal articles, and two blogs or websites on gender and sexuality OR race and ethnicity within the context of specific course materials read or viewed during roughly the middle third of the course.

3) An Academic Poster (due at the end of Week 14) in which student teams revisit course materials and themes related to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and identity. In addition, students are asked to examine issues of power, marginalization, disparity, equity, etc. in those same sources and look at how these same issues affect our own societies/cultures of origin in the real world. Finally, student teams (in course as diverse as Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s, Horror Cinema, and the upcoming Contemporary Scandinavian and Nordic Authors) are asked to propose realistic, concrete solutions to the social problems facing us.


Anecdotally, student feedback has been largely very favorable so far. Based on remarks in their team reflections this semester (Fall 2021), students report that they enjoy these collaborative, creative projects and feel like they have considerable leeway to shape what their teams develop. Moreover, they also feel that they are learning quite a bit about the material presented as well as valuable 21st century employability skills in the process. Where their all important assignment grades are concerned, student learning teams in my courses are meeting or exceeding expectations with the work they have produced for the first two of three team projects this semester according to the grading rubrics currently in use.

Beginning in Spring 2022, I plan to give my student teams even more agency in choosing how they are assessed and will provide two possible options for each of the three collaborative projects. Right not, these will probably include:

Project #1 (Recent Journal Article Review and Evaluation)-- Powtoon Animated TV Newscast OR Infographic

Project #2 -- (Review and Evaluation of Digital Sources on Gender and Sexuality OR Race and Ethnicty in our specific course materials) Flipbook OR Podcast

Project #3 -- (Power, Marginality, Disparity, Equity in Course Materials and Real World of 21st Century Problem-Solving) Electronic Poster OR Digital Scrapbook.

Through collaborative projects like these, I am attempting to motivate and engage the students in my IAH courses more effectively, help them to think more actively and critically about the material presented as well as the various social issues that continue to plague our world, and provide them with ample opportunity to cultivate essential skills that will enable their full participation in the globalized world and economy of the 21st century. Bloom's (Revised) Digital Taxonomy, among other resources, continues to facilitate my evolving thought about how best to reach late Gen Y and Gen Z students within a general education context.

If anyone would like to talk more about all of this, offer constructive feedback, or anything else, just drop me a line. I am always looking for those magic beans that will increase student motivation and engagement, and eager to learn more along the way. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy has certainly been one of my three magical helpers in the quest to to do that.