Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Location: Weiser Hall – 500 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Zoom links for available hybrid sessions are listed in the schedule.
All times listed are in ET.
Welcome Breakfast & Opening Remarks
8:30 – 10:00 AM, Weiser Hall – 10th Floor Event Space, In-Person Only
8:30 – 9:10 am
Check-In & Welcome Breakfast
Pick up your name tag and other conference materials. Grab some breakfast and get ready for the day!
9:10 – 9:40 am
Opening Remarks
Presenter: The Collaboration Council (CoCo) – Lalo Gonzalez, Emily Bonem, Madeleine Gonin, Sabrina Solanki, Sarah Castle, Ashley Atkinson
Description: Kickstart the conference with the CoCo as they share some opening remarks and introduce the 2023-2024 cohort!
9:40 – 10:00 am
Break with Optional Meditation Video
Take a breather and join us for a short meditation video!
Parallel Session 1: Please choose one of the 3 following rooms
10:00 AM – 12:40 PM
Weiser Hall 5th Floor – Room 555
Zoom: Click here (passcode: 623568) | Moderator: Dr. Natasha Turman
10:00 – 11:30 am
WORKSHOP: Integrating Critical Perspectives into STEM Education
Presenter: Dr. Natasha Turman, nturman@umich.edu
Description: Cultivating a critical perspective as a STEM educator, whether faculty, researcher, or staff is foundational to engaging in work that is dynamic, inclusive, and rooted in justice. How you do your work and what is present in the content of your work suggests what is important. Fostering a critical perspective is the key to advancing STEM education that is mindful of the ways in which power, privilege, context, and identities shape STEM experiences. This session will provide a foundational exploration of critical social theories and the utility of cultivating critical perspectives to examine STEM education and practice. Participants will learn the art of Deconstruction and Reconstruction and apply those tools to various STEM educational contexts and scenarios, to challenge dominant norms and discover how to engage in STEM education grounded in equity, justice, and inclusion. This workshop will include interactive media, individual reflection, small group discussions, interactive activities, and action plan creation to engage in topical content.
11:30 – 11:50 am
Snack Break
11:50 – 12:10 pm
RESEARCH TALK: Leveraging cluster analysis to more deeply examine student success across SEISMIC campuses
Presenters: Dr. Kameryn Denaro (kdenaro@uci.edu) and Dr. Brian Sato (bsato@uci.edu)
Description: This presentation will provide an update regarding the study led by Dr. Denaro to identify bright spots (courses with minimal opportunity grade gaps which we define as the differences in course grade awarded to minoritized and non-minoritized students) across multiple STEM disciplines and SEISMIC institutions. In particular, we will describe a novel component of the project, a cluster analysis aimed at identifying programs that support more equitable student success across a variety of demographics. We aim to facilitate a discussion amongst attendees to consider how both faculty and administrators can leverage these findings to create more equitable STEM outcomes.
12:10 – 12:30 pm
RESEARCH TALK: From courses to curricula: Integrating data science skills into life science education
Presenter: Dr. Nate Emery, nemery@ucsb.edu
Description: The Biological and Environmental Data Education (BEDE) Network’s (NSF-RCN) main objective is to support instructors as they integrate data science skills across undergraduate biology and environmental science curricula, through instructor training, curricular maps, and a network of supportive colleagues. BEDE will cultivate a diverse active community of educators that lasts beyond training workshops. Continued engagement will prolong interactions and facilitate greater self-efficacy, potentially changing attitudes about teaching data science in biology and environmental sciences courses more broadly. We will be sharing the results of our recent publication in Bioscience on instructor needs and barriers to data science instruction. Our results indicate that instructors use, teach, and view data management, analysis, and visualization as important data science skills. Coding, modeling, and reproducibility were less valued by the instructors, although this differed according to institution type and career stage. The greatest barriers were instructor and student background and space in the curriculum. Additionally, we will be sharing the themes that emerged from conversations at our first annual meeting focused on the intersection of inclusive teaching practices and data science education.
12:30 – 12:40 pm
Break
Weiser Hall 4th Floor – Room 455
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Dr. Denise Galarza Sepúlveda
10:00 – 11:30 am
WORKSHOP: The Ecosystem of Large Foundational Courses: Lessons from UM’s Foundational Course Initiative
Presenters: Dr. Matthew Kaplan (mlkaplan@umich.edu) & Dr. Denise Galarza Sepúlveda (galarzad@umich.edu)
Description: Over the past 5 years, UM’s Foundational Course Initiative, housed in University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), has engaged in a multi-year course redesign process with 25+ courses enrolling over 25,000 students. An important lesson we have learned is that the complexity of working with these large foundational courses presents unique challenges different from typical redesign efforts. While pedagogical elements like alignment, syllabus design, and evaluation play a key role in FCI’s work, we have also seen the critical importance of navigating the complex web of relationships, motivations, and constraints at the individual instructor, departmental, and school/college level. These factors (e.g., departmental staffing models, instructor rank and position in the department, concerns about enrollment, beliefs about individual faculty vs. departmental ownership of courses) act more like components of an ecosystem, and understanding their role is essential for creating long-lasting change. In this workshop, we will present a model for making visible these often unseen but critical aspects of large course redesign along with a brief overview of FCI’s approach to attending to these factors. We will then open a discussion among participants to answer questions about the model and get ideas for refining it. Finally, participants will work in small groups to discuss how they can apply the model to foundational course redesign projects on their own campuses.
11:30 – 11:50 am
Snack Break
11:50 am – 12:30 pm
Open: Workspace
Weiser Hall 3rd Floor – Room 355
In-Person Only
10:00 – 11:30 am
Interviews
11:30 – 11:50 am
Snack Break
11:50 am – 12:30 pm
Interviews
12:40 – 1:00 pm
Grab your lunch and find a seat!
1:00 – 2:10 pm
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Examining instructors’ beliefs to advance equity and justice in STEM learning environments
Presenter: Dr. Tati Russo-Tait, tati@uga.edu
Biography: Dr. Russo-Tait is an Assistant Professor in the Cellular Biology department at the University of Georgia, where she leads the ACCESS Lab (Advancing Critical Consciousness, Equity, and Social Justice in STEM). Her research currently involves three strands: STEM faculty beliefs and practices; the experiences of students from minoritized backgrounds in STEM learning environments; and science and social justice curriculum and instruction.
Dr. Russo-Tait earned a BA and MS in Cell Biology and a PhD in STEM Education. Her lived experiences as a biology student, and her subsequent work with underrepresented and minoritized students in STEM motivated her to pursue scholarship in the field so that she could contribute to the larger body of knowledge and national conversation on using asset-based and justice-oriented approaches to best support STEM students and prepare STEM educators.
Description:This talk will explore how hegemonic ideologies can inform STEM instructors’ equity beliefs and practices in ways that constrain their ability to disrupt deficit narratives, support students from racially minoritized backgrounds, and recognize their responsibility in ameliorating racial injustice in their spheres of influence. Critical consciousness development is key for instructors to individually and collectively advance racial justice in STEM learning environments.
2:10 – 2:30 pm
Break
Parallel Session 2: Please choose one of the 3 following rooms
2:30 – 5:00 PM
Weiser Hall 5th Floor – Room 555
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Nita Tarchinski
2:30 – 3:30 pm
PANEL: STEM Equity Learning Communities at SEISMIC
Presenter: Nita Tarchinski, nitaked@umich.edu
Panelists: Nate Emery, Nikeetha Farfan D’Souza, Madeleine Gonin, Dan Guberman, Ellie Louson
Description: Facilitators of SELC teams come together to share plans for the project.
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Break
4:00 – 5:00 pm
PANEL: Enhancing STEM teaching through student partnership
Presenter: Emily Bonem, ebonem@purdue.edu
Description:
In this panel discussion, we will share initial experiences with Purdue’s Student Pedagogy Advocates (SPA) program, which is designed to provide real-time student feedback to instructors through pairing instructors with student consultants. These students are not enrolled in the course, nor have they completed the course previously. They instead serve as catalysts in helping faculty think through various aspects of a course through collecting student feedback and conducting classroom observations. Some examples of the types of assistance provided by SPAs can include:
- Detailed maps of participation patterns and how instructor actions influence student participation.
- Strategically developing activities to support feelings of belonging in a full class or group setting, including in response to specific events or challenges.
- Sharing input on the experience in different locations in a classroom including ability to hear, see, and engage fully.
- Mid-semester feedback through surveys, focus groups, and/or interviews help make and communicate class adjustments and/or add transparency to class practices.
Our panel will provide a variety of perspectives on the SPA program including a faculty member, a student pedagogy advocate, the SPA program facilitator, a researcher and a moderator. We will focus on a variety of aspects of the SPA program including:
- How the SPA program is structured;
- Faculty perspectives of the value of having an SPA;
- Student perspectives of working as an SPA; and
- Our IUSE grant-funded project examining the effectiveness of the SPA program.
Additionally, we will share plans for program expansion and invite those from other SEISMIC partners to consider opportunities for future collaboration in larger cross-institutional experiments and studies.
Weiser Hall 4th Floor – Room 455
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Ashley Atkinson
2:30 – 3:30 pm
PANEL: Perspectives on Barriers to Office Hours Engagement
Presenters: Lalo Gonzalez (laloglz@ucsb.edu), Jeremy Hsu, Vanessa Woods, Rachael Barry, Jesse Lewis, Lekeah Durden
Description: Office hours are a common instructional practice across higher education, including STEM courses, intended for student-instructor interaction outside the required class time. Despite research that suggests multiple benefits associated with attending office hours, most students do not take advantage of these opportunities. Furthermore, our preliminary data suggests that there are disparities in office hours usage among students from diverse, historically marginalized backgrounds in STEM. The low attendance at office hours and the discrepancies in usage among students suggest a complex interplay of barriers that prevent students from making full use of this resource. Therefore, understanding students and instructors’ perceptions of barriers to student engagement in office hours provides an opportunity to gain insight that can be used to reformat the structure and praxis of office hours in ways to increase equity.
In this session we will share our mixed methods data regarding two parallel efforts to understand students and instructors’ perceptions of these barriers to office hours engagement. We will share survey data from the first study that speaks to both instructors’ and students’ motivations for, and barriers to, office hours attendance in STEM courses at a primarily undergraduate comprehensive university. We will also present both survey data and qualitative analysis of our second study, aimed at identifying themes in students reported barriers for office hours attendance in biology courses from a large research intensive university. We will highlight the similarities we saw across our data sets with respect to barriers. In addition, we will discuss the implications of this for office hours structure and praxis with the goal of increasing student engagement and creating equitable STEM spaces. Based on these observations, we will share strategies regarding the marketing, design, structure and implementation of office hours to combat the hidden curriculum and increase student engagement.
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Break
4:00 – 5:00 pm
SELC Working Session
Weiser Hall 3rd Floor – Room 355
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Dr. Kyle Small
2:30 – 3:30 pm
WORKSHOP: ECoach Part 1: How to Personalize Support in Large Foundational Courses
Presenters: Kyle Small (ksmall@umich.edu), Ben Hayward (haywardb@umich.edu), Holly Derry (hderry@umich.edu)
Description: ECoach Overview: We will provide an overview and demo of the ECoach platform and share updates on features, research, and the future of ECoach.
Learn how the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan is building technology (ECoach) to support students in their largest and most difficult courses, while providing a research and data analytics framework for experimenting with, evaluating, and iterating courses.
- ECoach is a personalized web-based coaching tool that supports students in large foundational courses, where one-on-one communications between instructors and students is otherwise impossible.
- ECoach gives students course tips about how to best approach the course, personalized feedback on how they’re performing, and tools to help them succeed, like to-do lists, exam playbooks, and a grade calculator.
- The platform is integrated with campus data ecosystems and deploys tailored surveys, emails, text messages, and in-platform messages to deliver individualized, timeline advice.
- New features
- New student interface
- New features and insights for instructors
- Improvements to content management
- Even more sophisticated grade calculator
This session is open to all SEISMIC participants and potential ECoach partners.
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Break
4:00 – 5:00 pm
Interviews
Tai Chi with Madeleine
5:00 – 5:30 PM, Weiser Hall – 10th Floor Event Space
Dance Class with Kameryn
5:30 – 6:00 PM, Weiser Hall – 10th Floor Event Space