October 2024 | Issue 3 | Volume 2 | Previous Issues
Humanizing Teaching & Learning
Last week, we were appreciative of the chance to attend Eric Love’s session for faculty and staff on DEISJ Essentials & Dialogue. Throughout the two hours, Eric encouraged us to engage with foundational concepts of DEISJ, including Multicultural Competencies. He reminded us that the first step is awareness – knowing more about ourselves, our identities, our values, our ways of seeing others including seeing differences through a lens of appreciation. At the same time, we can develop skills and knowledge to create more inclusive, just, and equitable environments for our students, colleagues, and community. Eric also shared a video that viscerally demonstrated the positive impact when a community works toward inclusion – it lifts up the entire community, not just those who have previously been excluded. This inclusion often occurs by recognizing the humanity of the individuals in a community. Eric also suggested the importance of authentic Micro-Affirmations (the opposite of Micro-Aggressions) to increase belonging and acknowledge the humanity of individuals.
At VTSU, we are fortunate to have relatively small classes, which allows us to get to know and build authentic relationships with our individual students. And, our students have opportunities to know us as humans, not just instructors or professors, but as real people with stories, interests, and dreams.
I (Jen) am teaching this semester and as I get to know my students, I learn about their backgrounds, their developing intellectual curiosities, and their passions. As I build awareness of each student, I can then take simple actions to increase their sense of belonging and affirm that they do indeed belong in college and in the class. Sometimes this looks like sending an email celebrating a milestone or success (for example, one of my students bought their first house last month; I asked about the closing date when they shared at the beginning of the semester this is something they were excited about, and I sent an email on the day with words of congratulations). Sometimes this looks like sharing relevant information and opportunities with individuals (for example, one of my students expressed interest in a topic that came up tangentially, and I sent a video explaining it in greater depth and recommending a colleague’s class they could take to learn more). Sometimes this looks like acknowledging hard work or a stretch a student made (for example, a student shared in a reflection that they have been embarrassed by the particular style of their writing and therefore they are reluctant to post in the class discussion for fear of being judged; I was able to point out legitimate strengths of a piece of writing and encouraged the value of their voice in our class; when they posted in the discussion I sent a note appreciating the courage it took to do something hard).
Thank you for all that you do to build meaningful connections with the students in your classes.
Jen and Jeff
Jen Garrett-Ostermiller, Director
Jeff Tunney, Associate Director
Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation @ VTSU
Get to know us!
Faculty Spotlight: Cassie Papandrea
In this issue of the Vermont State Educator, we are highlighting the background, experiences, and perspectives of Castleton-based professor and alumna, Cassie Papandrea, who recently completed a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) curriculum development initiative endorsed by the VTSU Faculty Assembly Gen Ed committee. We are pleased to share her thoughts on DEI, student support, and generative AI.
Please tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to VTSU?
My time at VTSU started as a student at the Castleton campus. During my time there, I followed my passions, studying literature, writing, education, and music. This allowed me to have many incredible opportunities, from playing in a jazz combo in Chicago to publishing a poem in a literary magazine. What I discovered was that the educators at Castleton would help me shape and create opportunities as well. If there was something I wanted to do or learn, they would work with me to make it happen. This resulted in me being able to gain more teaching experience as a teaching assistant in two courses in the English department.
The support I received at Castleton inspired my own teaching career. I made it a focus to not only teach high school students critical thinking and writing skills, but to also help provide additional learning opportunities, such as Poetry Out Loud and creating independent studies for students to continue following their passions and interests. After getting my master’s degree from the Bread Loaf School of English, I was asked to teach a course at VTSU. When this chance came, about four years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that I would take it. I was excited to become part of this community once more and have tried my best to give back in any way that I can.
How do you encourage students to access available support departments, such as academic support and the wellness center?
I try my best to encourage students to access the available support departments at Castleton. One of the things that I do is have my students meet someone in each support department. This could be in the form of them presenting to my students or stopping by and saying hello. I find that when students know someone in each of these departments, they not only become more informed about the services that are offered, but they also make a connection with someone who is already there. As a result, it’s less intimidating to access one of these departments, and they are more likely to go. I have also gone with individual students to one of these departments as a support system to make sure that they felt more comfortable going and help them get the support that they need.
What are your favorite things about your field or discipline?
I have always been fascinated by stories: the way they are told; the way a person’s experiences are shared; and most importantly, how I could learn from them. I have learned so much about myself through reading and my own creative writing. I also been able to learn more about different cultures, current and past events, and more, which has made me a more empathetic and curious person.
One of my favorite things about teaching is to be able to share what I’ve learned with students and to learn from them. I love to watch students explore ideas, debating the various perspectives of topics we are discussing and how they connect to their own lives. I enjoy hearing how their opinions grow and change, as my own do as a result of considering these topics with them.
The role of generative AI in the classroom is a concern shared by many educators. Based on your own experiences, do you have any advice that could be helpful to your peers?
When I first began learning about generative artificial intelligence, I was firmly against using it in the classroom. I believed that it was only a way for students to cheat and avoid developing important skills.
However, I soon realized, after discussing AI with my students and researching on my own, that this was one perspective out of many. This would be my advice to my peers. Learn more about AI and try using it for various tasks. What are the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence? How can AI be used as a tool to support learning? How does artificial intelligence shape our perspectives of the world around us? Answering questions such as these allows educators to understand how it functions more clearly, and, as a result, how best to use it.
I would also encourage my peers to discuss AI with their classes. I have had many insightful conversations with my students about AI, uncertainty, bias, policies that have been put in place around the world regarding AI use, and more. Adding in opportunities to your class for them to explore artificial intelligence allows them to make more informed decisions about how it should be ethically utilized.
As stated on the VTSU website, “we are committed to nurturing a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive learning and working environment where all members of the community are valued and respected.” As a faculty member who recently completed an institution provided DEI professional development program, what suggestions would you make to peers who are striving to meet this institutional commitment?
The suggestion I would make to peers would be to discuss DEI with other educators. I found it incredibly helpful to talk about DEI with the group I was with. In our meetings, we would share resources and readings (and still are) to use with our classes as well as activities that we planned on using to help students explore DEI. We also created unit plans over the summer to use in our courses this semester. Getting feedback from other educators on how to improve them was incredibly helpful, and it made me more confident about creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive classroom.
Teaching Tip: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation
One value at VTSU is to be data- and evidence-driven. This makes a great deal of sense – we should make decisions based on real information, not assumptions. The Office of Institutional Research, under the leadership of AVP Irene Irudayam, has done an amazing job of democratizing data by creating an initial set of data dashboards (currently in beta form) that can be accessed by faculty and staff, with more dashboards to come.
And, how we interpret the data is also important. For example, VTSU’s retention data shows that we retain Hispanic/Latinx, Black, Native American, and International students at lower rates than White and Asian students. Our first-generation students on several campuses are retained at lower rates than our continuing-generation students. These are not acceptable outcomes. A deficit perspective would look at this data and say that something is wrong with students who are not being retained. I hope we would all agree that this is a problematic approach. Rather, we must interrogate our spaces, systems, and structures to make them more inclusive and equitable. One aspect to improve outcomes is to utilize Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in our classrooms.
Dr. Django Paris developed Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy from Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy work.
As described in the linked article, this is not work that is prescriptive, but rather involves ongoing growth, learning, and self-reflection. We’ve listed some guiding questions, by category, to help you find inroads to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Choose one that sparks ideas and follow that path – little changes add up. We are happy to consult about your ideas for implementation and questions. Please share other suggestions with us, too!
Course Design
- Do you utilize Open Educational Resources (OER) and Faux-ER (e.g., library resources) that reduce cost barriers?
- What books, articles, videos, podcasts, and other materials have been selected in your course? Do students with diverse identities (race, socio-economic standing, gender, sexuality, disability, immigration status, English language learner, first-generation status) see themselves represented in your course materials through authors, videos, and case studies?
- Are your course expectations and policies inclusive to students who have diverse experiences, identities, and responsibilities?
Community Building
- How do you introduce yourself to your students? What do you share about your own identities, experiences, and values? How do you humanize yourself to them? What do you consider in identifying what and how much you share about yourself?
- How do you facilitate setting class norms and agreements for interactions, discussions, and learning? Do students have the opportunity for input or co-creation of these agreements?
Presentation of Content
- How many sensory modalities are students offered to take in information? Could you add one or more to various lectures or activities?
- Do students have opportunities to reflect on how their histories, experiences, cultures, languages, values, and identities connect with the course content? Are students asked to bring their ways of knowing into the classroom to make meaning of the content?
In-Class Interactions
- How are students encouraged to learn about and honor each other’s stories, experiences, ways of knowing, and perspectives?
- Do you provide students opportunities to think and reflect quietly before participating? Do you provide students with multiple ways to participate (not just verbal)?
Assessment
- Do you collect formative feedback from your students about how the course is going for them, being responsive to their ideas?
- Are mistakes expected, respected, and used to elevate students’ understanding of the subject? Do you offer opportunities for retaking missed or late work? What opportunities do students have to catch up if they are behind due to technological barriers or other personal deterrents?(Ahadi & Guerrero, 2020)
References & Resources
Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Teaching Framework
Decolonizing Your Syllabus, an Anti-Racist Guide for Your College
Farewell to Monoligualism, Hello to Translingual Orientation
Improving Racial Diversity in STEM with Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
Campus Partner Update – Multilingual Student Services
Acknowledging and honoring students’ linguistic and cultural identities is one aspect of culturally-sustaining teaching.
Dr. Mary Dinh, Assistant Director of Multilingual Student Services at VTSU has developed a useful booklet on the services she offers to students and faculty. Please spend some time becoming familiar with this resource, and more importantly, partner and consult with Mary who is an incredibly dedicated educator and colleague with deep expertise in this area.
Teaching in an Election Year
Jeff Tunney
Associate Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation
We are quickly approaching the 2024 election and the CTLI would like to share some tips for facilitating conversations with our students. As the mission of Vermont State University is to prepare “all students for meaningful work and responsible citizenship by fostering their intellectual, personal, and creative growth in an accessible, caring, and inclusive community”, the election provides a unique opportunity for them to engage in objective conversations about civic responsibility and respectful discourse.
Below are some informative resources as well as assignment ideas that could be useful as we draw closer to November 5th.
VCSC Libraries Website
The library system has created a 2024 Election page on their site. It includes important dates, information on how to register vote, and informative news and resource links. Sharing the page and discussing it with your students is one way to increase their knowledge of the election process, both nationally and at the state-level.
Mental Health Resources
Election season can be a stressful period of time for students. Consider sharing tips on managing election stress, such as those shared in this Psychology Today article.
Assignment Ideas
- Have students complete a reflection on who they are and what they believe. This exercise could help them think critically about which candidates’ philosophies and policy positions best align with their values and priorities.
- A reflection assignment could also involve them complete a political typology quiz, such as the one shared online by the Pew Research Center.
- Facilitate a non-partisan classroom discussion or debate. Given the potential challenges involved in this process, we recommend reviewing some of the planning steps outlined in the University of Michigan’s Structuring Classroom Discussions about Elections webpage.
- As part of a media literacy exercise, have students view and provide feedback on messaging that occurred in the past. This website, the Living Room Candidate, shares Presidential campaign commercials going back to 1952 as well as a list of potential lessons. Although geared toward a high school level audience, these lessons could be modified and offered at the university level.
Register Now for Two Exciting Events
On Friday, November 1 from 12:15-2:15pm, Eric Love will be facilitating an event for faculty, staff, and students on Zoom, focused on Moving DEISJ Forward at VTSU. Eric Love is a dynamic speaker, as many in our community can attest to. He spent time with us on October 3 and 4 at the Randolph and Johnson campuses, exploring foundational DEISJ knowledge, from which we’ll build on November 1. If you weren’t able to attend the session for faculty and staff on October 3, you can access the slides, handouts, resources to review.
Eric also recorded a 1-minute video of greeting – get to know a little about his philosophy. All are welcome on November 1, whether or not you attended an October session. Please Register Now to attend the session on November 1, and encourage your colleagues and students to do the same!
On October 25 from 10:30am-4:30pm, at the Randolph campus, a Gathering for the Future of Rural Vermont (“Building Stronger Communities Together”) is being planned and sponsored by the new VTSU ROAD to Success grant. This day will be an opportunity for community members, business leaders, and educators to learn, dialogue, and brainstorm together about how to support rural Vermont and Vermonters to thrive. VTSU faculty and staff are encouraged to attend and contribute to what promises to be an energizing day. Register now!
Lyndon Faculty: Grant Opportunity – Respond by October 15
Industry-Recognized Credential (IRC) Course Integration Grant 2024-2025
Interest Expression Deadline: Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Email shannon.oneill@vermontstate.edu to indicate your interest
The Center for Workforce and Professional Education at VTSU, with support from the President’s Executive Committee, invites full-time faculty to work with VTSU’s Center for Workforce and Professional Education (CWPE) on the integration of Industry Recognized Credential (IRC) preparation and exams within an existing course. The IRC Course Integration Grant aims to support faculty in designing opportunities for students to earn an IRC while earning their degrees. This area of innovation within higher education, and is an objective in the VTSU strategic plan under objective two.
This opportunity provides funding support, instructional design assistance, and IRC identification support to faculty. Funding amounts vary depending on the number of students and the certification exam. The grant pays for both practice exams and certification exams for students and provides a $700 stipend for faculty as an incentive to integrate an IRC into their course.
There is a limited pool of funds for this pilot initiative, so please contact Dr. Shannon O’Neill, Ph.D. – Executive Director of the Center for Workforce and Professional Education at VTSU – shannon.oneill@vermontstate.edu to express your interest.
The grant opportunity will require:
- Taking steps to determine which IRCs are most in demand in the marketplace in your field
- Identifying appropriate certification preparation, perhaps using LinkedIn Learning (Anyone with a VSC credential will have access to LinkedIn Learning: https://lnkd.in/egiGJyzj) or uCertify tools. CWPE staff are available to help determine credentials and resources.
- Outlining a plan to provide opportunities for students to take practice exams before the certification exam.
- Requiring practice exams and sitting for the certification as part of the course requirements.
For reference, consult the following:
Example of a successful successful VTSU degree and IRC integration
Animation and Illustration requires students to sit for Adobe certification their senior year. Courses require taking practice exams twice before sitting for the actual credentialing exam.
Eligible Faculty
- Any full-time faculty member at VTSU Lyndon
- A faculty member who applies is expected to serve as the instructor of record the first time the IRC embedded course is offered after receiving funding (Spring 2025 or Fall 2025).
Teaching with AI
Are you interested in learning more about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools?
The Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation has partnered with the Auburn University Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning to provide VTSU faculty members with an opportunity to participate in the award-winning Teaching with AI, a fully-online, self-paced, asynchronous course especially designed for higher education faculty.
The course, which includes content focused on the technical, pedagogical, theoretical, and ethical implications of AI, should be beneficial to beginners as well as more advanced users of this emerging technology.
What are the goals of the course?
- Learn about AI and its implications for teaching and learning in higher education – especially those relating to academic integrity;
- Consider examples (good and bad) of how to redesign courses for AI;
- Experiment with AI tools, redesign assignments, and get feedback;
- Engage in conversations about your thinking on topics related to AI in the college classroom;
- Access a (growing and evolving) repository of research on teaching with AI;
- Engage your department colleagues in the conversation by modeling best practices and sharing your learning to ensure students in your program have a consistent, comparable learning experience no matter who is leading the class.
What is the time commitment and what do I earn by completing the course?
- The total time for an engaged learner to complete all eight modules is between 10 to 15 hours.
- The VTSU licenses expire on April 1, 2025.
- If you complete one assignment at the end of each module, you will earn an AI Explorer digital badge to add to your CV.
How do I sign-up?
The CTLI has purchased licenses for 100 VTSU faculty members, available first-come, first-served. Please submit the form below to express interest. As long as licenses are available, your login credentials will be created and your enrollment into the course will be initiated. Further instructions and correspondence will be emailed to your Vermont State email address.
LinkedIn Learning Available for Faculty, Staff, & Students
LinkedIn Learning is now available to everyone on campus, including students, at no cost!
What is LinkedIn Learning?
LinkedIn Learning provides 24-hour access to high-quality, on-demand, online video courses and collections for professional development and training in specific skills, taught by industry experts. LinkedIn Learning has over 300,000 tutorials and 16,000+ professionally produced videos on a wide range of topics, including:
- Software: tutorials on all Microsoft Office, Stata, SPSS, MATLB, Generative AI tools, Photoshop, and more
- Academic: Study and writing guides, online learning tips, research paper citations and formatting, mindfulness, work/life balance, overcoming procrastination, and time management
- Life Skills: parenting tips, helping children learn online, cooking skills, budgeting, and more
- Leadership: models, styles, skill sets, management, group dynamics, service, impact and influence in leadership, leadership mindsets, goal setting, and others
- Career: job search skills, resume writing, interviewing, management, and job-specific Learning Paths to explore hundreds of professions
- Teaching and Learning: how to engage students in the classroom, communicating with students, student motivation, crafting effective feedback, crafting online courses, Canvas tutorials, and more
- Wellness: health and wellness, managing stress for positive change, ergonomics for online learning, breathwork for stress reduction, and others
- Research: data visualization, writing a research paper, research foundations, qualitative and quantitative research, EndNote, SPSS, and more
Bookmark LinkedIn Learning in your favorite browser and use your VTSU credentials to sign in.
The VTSU license for LinkedIn Learning is available through a recent federal grant for the next two years.