All posts by CJ Laudenbach

DEI Learning

How Instructors Can Make the Switch from Traditional to Inclusive Materials

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Students are struggling to afford the rising cost of attending college, while also not being represented by the materials they are introduced within their courses. Tuition is an expected expense, with the largest cause of these expenses being textbooks and other required materials. These textbooks and required materials have a lot of flaws outside of their incredibly inflated cost, such as becoming outdated quickly, low student demographic representation, and becoming useless after a course has ended. These flaws can be avoided by finding, creating, and curating more inclusive and cost-effective materials.

The Cost of Using Traditional Materials: A Student’s Perspective

Though they are not the only material used by instructors, textbooks are the most common type, and the most expensive. According to a report by Jaggers & Rivera (2019) from the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, textbook prices have increased by almost 190% since 2006 (p.3). Textbooks are expensive for everyone, but it affects minority groups more noticeably, with textbooks accounting for around 80% of their total college expenditures (Jaggers & Rivera, 2019, pg. 2). Consider a student who is seeking an education while also undergoing any sort of sustained medical treatment (gender-affirming care, or even cancer treatment), when the medical bills can be devastatingly expensive. Likewise, any student who comes from a low-income family or who is made to pay for their education, rent, groceries, and other necessities will seek a cheaper option to acquire required texts. That may be through 3rd party rentals, library loans, or even pirating if they are desperate enough.

Another drawback with the use of traditional materials is that they can quickly become outdated. In some fields, such as computer science, medicine, and data analytics, it is possible for the content to already be out of date by the time it is published in the textbook and the required software of learning activities has been developed. This poses a problem not only with the content, but with the practicality of the learning materials used after the course has ended. The same could be said for science related lab kits used by non-science lab majors. Unused items or equipment becomes obsolete once the course has ended since not all science courses use the same materials.

The drawback of focus for this article is the lack of representation within traditional course materials. BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, and/or international students see themselves represented significantly less in these publications, multimedia, and images. For example, a study conducted by Brandle (2020) analyzed American Government textbooks and found that the mention or discussion of historically marginalized groups was infrequent – approximately 0.84% of the total word count (p.738). This gives the impression that communities like the LGBTQ+ community are not widely present within a given field of study. LGBTQ+ students may not see the contributions made by fellow community members, which indirectly discourages them from sharing their perspectives in class.

Making Inclusive Materials: Locate, Create, Curate
Locating Inclusive Materials

There is no need to make all the materials for a course. Instead, to save time, take advantage of Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials created and licensed to be free to access, share, and modify. They can be useful supplements that expand a discussion by providing new perspectives. OER that instructors can use include academic blogs, journal articles, videos, podcasts, PowerPoint slides, learning activities, handouts, and even textbooks. They may even find useful perspectives in non-academic (but still relevant) blogs, books, videos, and podcasts. Using a mix of both will provide students with the academically focused material they are used to, as well as a more casual “real life” perspective that is grounded in a practical setting outside of the classroom. Merlot is a good starting resource to locate various types of OER.

Creating Inclusive Materials

If an instructor cannot find materials that suit their course’s needs, they can create materials that will benefit their course. This has the added benefit of allowing them total control in customizing it to fit exactly what they want their students to focus on. Instructors can use the H5P software to create textbooks and other learning resources for a course. By creating course materials, instructors can provide images, and language that support a wide variety of students.

Curating Inclusive Materials

An instructor should ask what they want students to take away from their course overall and choose what textbook and learning materials are best suited for achieving that. Another element to curating material is updating the course so that it uses the current language and offers recent examples where applicable. Once faculty have created their own learning materials, they are free to make changes more quickly than a publisher would.

Inclusive materials can benefit every student in several different ways. More specifically, they especially benefit BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, and international students who may struggle to afford the increasingly expensive materials that neither represent them nor remain relevant after the semester ends. Instructor created inclusive learning materials allow for full control over its focus, cost, and content.

The cost of college and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has been a hot-button topic for years.  There are ways that faculty can play a small role in the improvement of both for their students. If you are interested in not only creating but providing free and more inclusive learning materials in your courses, please reach out to us via email or through Bookings. We can provide the proper guides, websites, and other resources to assist with these tasks.

Additional Reading:

For more information on any of the following topics, please check out our previous blog articles.

References:

Brandle, S. (2020). It’s (not) in the reading: American government textbooks’ limited representation of historically marginalized groups. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/its-not-in-the-reading-american-government-textbooks-limited-representation-of-historically-marginalized-groups/61860A5FBECD138C110E277079687E61

GLSEN. (2019). Developing LGBTQ-inclusive classroom resources. GLSEN.org. https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/GLSEN_LGBTQ_Inclusive_Curriculum_Resource_2019_0.pdf

Jaggers, S. & Rivera, M. (2019). College textbook affordability: Landscape, evidence, and policy directions. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. https://www.mhec.org/sites/default/files/resources/mhec_affordability_series10.pdf

Krukau, Y. (2021). Professor with his students [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/professor-with-his-students-8197544/

Rouder, C. (2021). Seven ways you can foster a more inclusive LGBTQIA+ learning environment. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/equality-inclusion-and-diversity/seven-ways-you-can-foster-a-more-inclusive-lgbtqia-learning-environment/

 

CJ Laudenbach is a student of the Strategic Media Communications program at St. Cloud State University. They are a published journalist and creative for various central Minnesota publications. In their free time, they enjoy scriptwriting and media analysis.

Learning Strategies, Learning Technology Integrations

Digital Storytelling: A New Way to Engage

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Within a school setting, students are considered the learners, and instructors are the teachers, but that dynamic can limit the potential for students to take on a teaching role and for instructors to take on a learning role. Of course, the student may not be able to teach the foundational knowledge of the course to the instructor, but they can provide a unique perspective on it by applying it to their personal experience. This is the basis for Digital Storytelling, a concept that utilizes modern technology to tell stories, and it can be a significant aid in engaging students in course content.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Using multimedia tools, students can tell a story related to the topic given by the instructor. Students can use a subject they are experts on – themselves – to explore new topics outside of a purely lecture- or text-based perspective. It encourages multiple areas of learning by having students self-reflect and apply foundational knowledge while simultaneously refining media-making skills through the creation of videos, audios, animation, and graphics that tell their story.

Why Should Digital Storytelling be Used in the Classroom?

Not only does Digital Storytelling teach information and digital literacy, but it also teaches media-making skills like succinct scriptwriting and professional development (Smeda et al., 2014). It is also an inclusive, multimodal, non-text-based structure that works for online, hybrid, and hyflex courses (Chaidez & Carmona, 2023). Students experience an overwhelming amount of lecture-driven content with the expectation of reciting the information back through homework or quizzes. Digital storytelling allows them to have a hands-on experience that does not require sitting quietly in a classroom for an hour. Rather, that time can be spent sharing their perspective and engaging with other students’ work, which can be far more memorable.  In this way, it ties into Universal Design for Learning by engaging students to become self-motivated and self-reflective, represent themselves through their unique symbols and language, and express themselves with a mix of media tools.

Some examples of assignments that make use of Digital Storytelling include video essays, “pocket documentaries” with the audio/video recorded on a cell phone, podcasts, video resumes, StoryMaps (stories/videos that begin with an individual and moves to include a broader region), and PhotoVoice (participants take a picture of their community and then have a conversation with the class about it) (Chaidez & Carmona, 2023).  Students can also be tasked to create instructional material to demonstrate their understanding of the foundational content as well as their ability to organize and deliver that knowledge to an audience.

Tools at SCSU That Can Help with Digital Storytelling
Microsoft 365 & Sway

Students should be aware that their student email is a Microsoft Outlook account, but what they may not realize is that Microsoft 365 offers a suite of applications that they can utilize to tell their story. They may be familiar with Word and PowerPoint and their capabilities, but an application they may not have heard of is Sway. Sway is an application that is perfect for most story-telling needs. It provides a handful of templates ranging from blogs, photo collages, portfolios, resumes, and reports, but students can build a project from scratch that caters to their unique vision. Students can combine text, visuals (photos, videos, or graphics), audio, and their presentation skills in one place.  Projects are able to be shared out to classmates, and the instructor for easy access. As a bonus, expertise with Microsoft 365 products can be put on a student’s resume.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Once students have created their raw video or audio, they may want to edit their material. Perhaps they want to create illustrations or graphics to express their perspective instead. Maybe their creative vision requires more in-depth work that free software cannot handle. Adobe Creative Cloud is an all-in-one platform that students can utilize.  SCSU has the software available for students to use on campus lab computers. Students have access to the following Adobe applications: Express, Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and over twenty others.  The full list of available applications can be found on the official Adobe website. Much like Microsoft 365, expertise with Adobe products is a helpful resume-builder, so encouraging students to utilize this resource while they have free access may also help them once they begin looking into jobs in their career field.

D2L Media Library Tool and Kaltura MediaSpace

As of 2023, a new tool called Media Library was made available in D2L, which allows for short-form media (less than 30 minutes) to easily be created within the platform.  Instructors and students can use this tool to create and store videos and audio for various learning activities and materials.  For assignments that only require the student to briefly record themselves speaking, instructors can direct students to either use the ‘Record Video’ or ‘Record Audio’ buttons.  Instructors can also encourage students to upload any of the videos (SWF, MPG, MPEG, RM, MP3, MP4, M4V, M4A, AVI, WAV, RAM, ASF, MOV, RA formats only) they create to the Media Library. This will allow students to keep an archive of their work, they can go back once the assignment closes and the semester ends.

For long-form media (over 30 minutes) and screen recording, students can use their Kaltura MediaSpace account.  There are two types of recording options that students can choose from for recordings, based on their needs.  Students can either use Express Capture for facial or voice-only recordings, or they can use Kaltura Capture to record their screen.  These videos are saved and stored on MediaSpace, so that students can edit, and  caption, then embed them in D2L.

Equipment Checkout at the Miller Learning Resource Center

If students are required to use a video camera to record, or to take photographs, they can directed to the campus library to check out such equipment. View the list of what they have available. This way, students are allowed to experience new technology, without the commitment of buying their own for a possible one time usage.

Implementing digital storytelling exercises within a course is a rewarding experience. By giving students the opportunity to tell their story, not only will instructors give them a chance to explore their unique perspectives of the same topic, but it gives instructors the opportunity to learn from their students’ experiences. These opportunities are all too rare in a college setting where instructors rely on lectures and text-based lessons that are often quickly forgotten after the semester ends. Stories are not only memorable, but they demonstrate how applicable the lessons learned in the classroom can be in a real-world scenario. Students will look back on those lessons long after they have finished the course, not because they were lectured to about it or had to read a chapter in a textbook, but because they had a chance to apply it to their lived experience.

If you are interested in learning more about helping students tell their stories through multimedia or if you want to know more about the digital tools available at SCSU, please let us know.   The SCSU Online and Distance Learning team is available via email or through the Bookings.   We can demo any of the tools and provide further uses in the course.

Additional Reading:

For more information on any of the following topics, please check out our previous blog articles.

References:

Chaidez, S. & Carmona, S. (2023, August 24). Tell me your story: Building engagement and inclusion in online and hybrid courses with digital storytelling methods. Online Learning Consortium. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/webinar/tell-me-your-story-building-engagement-and-inclusion-in-online-and-hybrid-courses-with-digital-storytelling-methods/

Robin, B. R. (2016). The power of digital storytelling to support teaching and learning. Digital Education Review, 30, 17-29. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1125504

Smeda, N., Dakich, E., & Sharda, N. (2014, December 3). The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: A comprehensive study – smart learning environments. SpringerOpen. https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-014-0006-3

Souza, R. (2019). Photo of a man sitting in front of a camera [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-man-sitting-in-front-of-a-camera-2531552/  

 

 

CJ Laudenbach is a student of the Mass Communication – Strategic Media Communications program at SCSU. She has past experience as a writer and editor for the University Chronicle.

Learning Design Basics

Fink’s Taxonomy: The “Human” Learning Model

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When thinking of student learning outcomes, Bloom’s Taxonomy is the widely used framework, that faculty use to help write them.  While it is the standard, there is another type of taxonomy that faculty could also use to further customize the student learning experience.  This model is called Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning.

Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning is a course design model developed in 2003 by Dr. L. Dee Fink. It seeks to design courses around gaining foundational knowledge and achieving specific learning goals that students will remember beyond the end of the semester. By implementing it, instructors can better guide students to retain the core elements of their course after they complete it.

What Does Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning Look Like?

When describing significant learning, Fink states it is “learning that actually changed how a student lived his or her personal, social, civic, or professional life” (Intentional College Teaching (ICT), 2023, para. 1). Fink developed this design model to encourage students to take what they learn in their college courses and be able to meaningfully apply it to their everyday lives.

By using this design model, faculty can utilize the following areas to ensure students are achieving the goals set for them:

  • Foundational knowledge: Understanding and remembering information
  • Application: Skills, critical, creative, and practical thinking
  • Integration: Connecting ideas, people, and aspects of life
  • Human Dimension: Learning about others and oneself
  • Caring: Developing new feelings, interests, and values
  • Learning how to learn: becoming a better student, inquiring about a subject, self-directing learners

When all the above categories synergize, students will have a significant learning experience. To achieve this, consider the following questions: What does “significant learning” look like for your course? What is your dream goal for students taking this course? After answering these questions, write learning objectives around these goals and develop course assessments that evaluate said goals.

“Educators who seek to adopt a comprehensive approach to their courses are encouraged to engage with Fink’s dimensions of significant learning. By aligning course objectives, activities, and assessments with the dimensions of Fink’s taxonomy, educators can provide a rich and engaging learning experience for students” (Dabney & Eid, 2023, p. 6).

What Makes Fink’s Taxonomy Different From Bloom’s Taxonomy

Where Bloom’s Taxonomy covers Foundational Knowledge and Application, a common critique is that it does not cover the “human” element. This is where Fink’s taxonomy expands upon it. For students to have a significant learning experience, they not only need a solid base of understanding, but a real-life application and a chance to internalize what they have learned. Bloom’s also does not assist students in “learning how to learn” in the way Fink’s taxonomy does. On Bloom’s taxonomy, Fink says, “I found that many of the kinds of learning that students identified as being significant did not fit easily into Bloom’s Taxonomy, even if one refers to all three of his domains of learning” (ICT, 2023, para. 1).

Implementing Fink’s Taxonomy Into a Course

According to Carolyn Fallahi (2023), an Associate Professor of Psychology, when developing (or redeveloping) a course around FSL, there are four goals to consider:

  • Less focus on Foundational Knowledge: “Instead of trying to cover every possible topic, I started incorporating basic concepts that I felt every student should understand. I stopped worrying about covering all possible topics” (para. 5). By choosing to focus on the “big picture” concepts, instructors avoid becoming too broad. Though this may be acceptable in entry-level courses, higher-level courses can suffer from becoming a mile wide and only an inch deep. Choose around three overall concepts and explore those thoroughly.
  • More focus on Active Learning: Active learning can take many forms, but lectures and textbook readings are rarely active for the student. Find opportunities to step away from traditional lectures and toward activities that involve and energize students. The type of activities may vary depending on the content of the course, but by incorporating active learning exercises into a course, students are more likely to retain the lesson.
  • Apply what you learn to real-world issues: The goal of college courses is to prepare students for a career in their chosen field. If a student does not understand how the content they’re learning in class applies to the “real” world, they may not feel motivated to engage or retain the information they learn. Fallahi avoids this by finding case studies that illustrate the concepts she is exploring in-class (para. 7). Besides case studies, discussing recent news related to the topic can highlight how applicable the content of a class is to a student’s life.
  • Make course lessons into life lessons: To build on the previous point, not only is it helpful to show students how lessons apply to their future careers, but how they apply to their lives right now. Think of questions for students to reflect on across the course that relate to the overall core ideas and their application. Invite students to discuss their answers, in small groups if the class is too large to allow everyone to speak. Giving the students a relevant lesson they can immediately apply to their personal lives makes that lesson more significant to them.

By streamlining the amount of base knowledge, instructors can focus on teaching their students how to apply what they know to their careers or personal lives. By engaging the students through active learning assignments, they will have more hands-on experience with the subject matter than they would get through a traditional lecture-based assignment. By applying it to real-world issues and life lessons, students will have a more personal example to take with them, which will help them internalize the lesson. The more an instructor focuses on ensuring the learning experience is significant, the more their students will benefit from the course overall.

Whether you are suing Bloom’s taxonomy or Fink’s Taxonomy to write your student learning outcomes, the SCSU Online and Distance Learning  team can help.  We can provide explanations, more literature, and answer your questions.  We can be reached via email or through Bookings.

Further Reading:

For more information on any of the following topics, please check out our previous blog articles.

References:

Dabney, B. W. &E id, F. (2023). Beyond Bloom’s: Fink’s taxonomy as a catalyst for meaningful learning in nursing education. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 000, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2023.09.007

Fallahi, C. (2011, August 19). Using Fink’s taxonomy in course design. Association for Psychological Science. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/using-finks-taxonomy-in-course-design

Intentional College Teaching (ICT). (2023, February 5). Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning. https://intentionalcollegeteaching.org/finks-taxonomy-of-significant-learning/

Krukau, Y. (2021). A class having a recitation. [Photograph] Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-class-having-a-recitation-8199166/

 

 

CJ Laudenbach is a student in the Mass Communications – Strategic Media Communications program at SCSU. She has past experience as a writer and editor for the University Chronicle.