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Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 7, Issue 2, Fall 2023

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full-length Fall 2023 issue (Volume 7, Issue 2) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here.

The Fall 2023 issue presents research and guidance on topics related to educational adaptation. The first article by C. Farrell describes an adaptation of the interteaching method to the hybrid delivery method. The second article by C. C. Loose and R. Jagielo-Manion describes a study of modules on personalized learning to preservice teachers and its impact on their comfort level and preparation to implement personalized learning in their classrooms. The third article by B. …

A Research Project To Investigate The Instructional Preferences Of Alternatively Certified Career And Technical Education Teachers, Jessica Deceuster

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Industry career workers that have transitioned to teaching within the education sector have the knowledge base to develop “what” needs to be taught in Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum; however, they do not have adequate knowledge about instructional strategies or “how” the curriculum content should be taught. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to document the instructional strategies, techniques, and coursework that were taught through the Utah State University Career and Technical Education Academy, to Career and Technical Education teachers that have transitioned from industry to education, and to assess how well the instructional strategies, techniques, and coursework …

Chapter 6- Resilient And Flexible Teaching (Raft): Integrating A Whole-Person Experience Into Online Teaching, Christina Fabrey, Heather Keith

Resilient Pedagogy

When venturing into wild or unknown territory such as a swiftly moving and ever-changing mountain river, a raft may be a necessary tool for basic survival. But what if during the careful navigation of rapid currents around rocks and other obstacles, you discover that your buoyant and flexible tool helps you to float through the fast and turbulent waters in a way that is meaningful, awe-inspiring, and exciting? As COVID-19 first hit our campuses, many of us switched to emergency remote education as a survival raft, just trying to stay afloat long enough to get to the other side of …

Introduction, Travis N. Thurston

Resilient Pedagogy

Introduction for Resilient Pedagogy.

Resilient Pedagogy: A Foreword, Jesse Stommel

Resilient Pedagogy

Foreword for Resilient Pedagogy.

Land Acknowledgment, Utah State University

Resilient Pedagogy

We acknowledge that Utah State University and all in-state USU institutions reside on the original territories of the eight federally recognized tribes of Utah, that have been living, working, and residing on this land from time immemorial. These tribes are the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Indians, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Northwest Band of Shoshone, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, San Juan Southern Paiute, Skull Valley Band of Goshute, and the White Mesa Band of the Ute Mountain Ute. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this land. In offering this land acknowledgment, we affirm …

Praise For Resilient Pedagogy, Rajiv Jhangiani, Tazin Daniels, Jessamyn Neuhaus, Josh Eyler

Resilient Pedagogy

What professionals who reviewed the book have to say about Resilient Pedagogy.

Chapter 3- How Adult Education Can Inform Optimal Online Learning, David S. Noffs, Kristina Wilson

Resilient Pedagogy

David's Story

I first met Krissy Wilson in 2015 when I was asked to design a new graduate course at Northwestern University on learning environment design. Krissy was part of the talented Distance Learning team in the School of Professional Studies. I was a teacher, instructional specialist, and reluctant learning management system administrator at an arts-based city college where I had worked for almost 15 years.

Krissy's Story

I got to know David Noffs first as a faculty member in the Master in Information Design and Strategy program in the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern University. Before he joined …

Chapter 1- Resilient Pedagogy And Self-Determination: Unlocking Student Engagement In Uncertain Times, Lindsay C. Masland

Resilient Pedagogy

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring of 2020, like many educators, I experienced a definite disruption in the structure and plans I had designed for my courses. I was teaching a mix of graduate and undergraduate classes—some with as few as seven students, others with as many as 98, some upper-level skills-based courses, others in the broad general education arena, but all of them designed exclusively for face-to-face delivery. In fact, due to some long-standing institutional prejudices against online instruction, the opportunity to teach in a mode other than face-to-face had never materialized over the 10 years I had …

Chapter 2- Productive Disruptions: Resilient Pedagogies That Advocate For Equity, Beth Buyserie, Rachel Welton Bryson, Rachel Quistberg

Resilient Pedagogy

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered universities in March 2020, many students and faculty were thrown into shifting uncertainties regarding course delivery and pedagogy. As the pandemic persisted, faculty and students experienced new stressors caused by social isolation, unequal access to technology and resources, economic distress, and many other factors. In addition, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others in the Black community sparked widespread social unrest that added to and compounded the emotional and material weight of the pandemic. Amid this tumult, higher-education faculty began asking questions about how to move forward with pedagogies resistant to unpredictable and …

Chapter 4- Advancing An Approach Of Resilient Design For Learning By Designing For Extensibility, Flexibility, And Redundancy, Rebecca M. Quintana, Jacob Fortman, James Devaney

Resilient Pedagogy

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on educational systems requires actors across those systems to develop adaptive capacity and embed resilient thinking into approaches and frameworks for decision-making and design (DeVaney & Quintana, 2020). Events surrounding the COVID-19 crisis have set off a period of rapid adaptation across the higher-education ecosystem and have necessitated that educators consider new pedagogical approaches and frameworks that are responsive to the changes we are witnessing in our contexts of teaching and learning (Chraa et al., 2020; Donovan, 2020; Moorhouse, 2020; Quintana & Quintana, 2020; Zhu & Liu, 2020).

Chapter 5- Lessons From Anticipatory Intelligence: Resilient Pedagogy In The Face Of Future Disruptions, Briana D. Bowen

Resilient Pedagogy

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted universities across the globe in unprecedented ways, requiring many teaching faculty to reexamine and transform approaches to pedagogy. As higher-education institutions have grappled with various methods of hybrid and remote delivery in an effort to best preserve student instruction through the pandemic, most have fervently looked ahead for a more satisfying “new normal.” Yet this moment of unease and transformation is one of critical opportunity for universities and their teaching faculty. Educators are seeing in vivid form how an unexpected “threat”—in this case, a global health challenge—can profoundly disrupt pedagogy, and the immense adaptive innovation …

Chapter 7- Innovative Pedagogies For Promoting University Global Engagement In Times Of Crisis, Steven R. Hawks

Resilient Pedagogy

Even as universities, institutes, and professional associations are renewing their commitment to global engagement and the internationalization of higher-education campuses, there are significant geopolitical and social challenges that are pushing back (van der Wende, 2017). The immediate crisis posed by the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has further hampered progress by bringing a number of critical global engagement activities to a sudden halt (Brimmer, 2020). In the midst of these challenges there is an opportunity to consider theory-driven pedagogical innovations that can move the global engagement agenda forward even in times of complexity and crisis.

Chapter 9- A New Normal In Inclusive, Usable Online Learning Experiences, Christopher Phillips, Jared S. Colton

Resilient Pedagogy

The most obvious consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic in higher education has been more students accessing their classes remotely without having the technology and other resources readily available on their local campuses. Students from underrepresented groups have been disproportionately affected as a result of COVID-19, particularly students of color (Alvarez, 2020) and students with disabilities (Hill, 2020; National Center, 2020). This neglect of underrepresented groups in higher education is not unique to the pandemic, of course, and sadly is nothing new to higher education, but COVID-19 has made this problem more apparent.

Chapter 8- Creating Adaptable Courses: A Course Design Approach That Accommodates Flexible Delivery, Kosta Popovic, Eric M. Reyes, Jennifer B. O'Connor, Kay C. Dee, Ella Ingram

Resilient Pedagogy

In early 2020, educators and students around the world endured lapses in quality of educational experiences due to the disruption caused by COVID-19. In return for these lapses, students continued their programs of study within previously established timelines, and educators balanced helping students achieve learning objectives while keeping a manageable workload. Moving forward, students will expect educators and their institutions to deliver high-quality education when disruptions occur, like natural disasters, facilities emergencies, or supply chain disturbances. This expectation will extend to all modes of delivery. We assert that training educators to build adaptable courses that provide them and their students …

Chapter 10- Building Online Toolkits To Support The Development Of Academic Skills And Digital Literacies, Jenae Cohn

Resilient Pedagogy

Personal, environmental, and academic factors contribute to student persistence and retention in college environments in varying and, importantly, intersecting ways. As educators determine what supporting student success in a post-COVID-19 world looks like, it is important to consider how these factors become all the more complicated by the new challenges raised with ubiquitous remote or hybridized learning. The global shift to online learning has opened tremendous gaps in experiences that students might have in learning, working, living, and socializing online. Some students may lack access to laptop computers for learning, while others may not have sufficient broadband access to connect …

Chapter 11- Team-Based Learning Brings Academic Rigor, Collaboration, And Community To Online Learning, Elizabeth Winter, Michele C. Clark, Christopher Burns

Resilient Pedagogy

In early 2020, instructors were faced with a critical and immediate need to move education online in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to discontinue face-to-face classes as a protection from the COVID-19 virus presented several questions and challenges, including the need to quickly develop online classes without adequate time to consider the effectiveness of different strategies. While online learning provides accessible and safe educational opportunities for students sheltering in place as a protection against the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty may question if online education provides the academic rigor, needed competencies, and student learning outcomes they hoped for in …

Chapter 12- Conducting Guided, Virtual Homework Sessions To Support Student Success During Covid Campus Closures, Rebecca Campbell, Kevin Kelly

Resilient Pedagogy

College students have long used community-based practices such as study halls, review sessions, study groups, homework buddies, and the like as academic strategies to support their learning (Hogan, 1999; Madland & Richards, 2019; Thalluri et al., 2014). With increased access to online conferencing capabilities, working in community has been adapted by faculty who have used the technology to participate in virtual write-on-sites, writing retreats and writing sprints. Thus, it is no surprise that both faculty and learning centers saw the potential for creating virtual spaces for students to work together.

Chapter 13- Asynchronous Discussions For First-Year Writers And Beyond: Thinking Outside The Ppr (Prompt, Post, Reply) Box, Miriam Moore

Resilient Pedagogy

Asynchronous discussions can challenge even experienced online learners and teachers: forums can become perfunctory hoops for students to jump through, particularly in the common PPR (prompt, post, reply) format, in which students answer a prompt and then reply to one or more other students. As a peer reviewer for online courses, I have seen rich and insightful discussions that engage students and promote learning, as well as forums that scarcely resemble discussions at all. Research on cultivating dialogue in online discussions has targeted primarily upper-division or graduate courses (see Andreson, 2009; Delahunty, 2018; Delahunty et al., 2014; Garrison et al., …

Chapter 14- Designing Curriculum Collaboratively: A Practice For Learning Alongside Undergraduate Teaching Assistants During Uncertain Times, Jessica Rivera-Mueller, Kresten Erickson

Resilient Pedagogy

The transition to remote learning during the Spring 2020 semester was abrupt for faculty and students, and it did not allow much time for reflection or purposeful planning, especially as individuals were faced with managing multiple aspects of their lives. Educators had to consider quickly what learning experiences and teaching practices could be preserved or revised, as well as what learning activities could or should be removed. These choices were not easy to make. During this challenging moment, however, we discovered how collaborative partnerships between faculty and undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) can contribute to the development of a flexible and …

Resilient Pedagogy: Practical Teaching Strategies To Overcome Distance, Disruption, And Distraction, Travis N. Thurston, Kacy Lundstrom, Christopher González, Jesse Stommel, Lindsay C. Masland, Beth Buyserie, Rachel Welton Bryson, Rachel Quistberg, David S. Noffs, Kristina Wilson, Rebecca M. Quintana, Jacob Fortman, James Devaney, Briana D. Bowen, Christina Fabrey, Heather Keith, Steven R. Hawks, Kosta Popovic, Eric M. Reyes, Jennifer B. O'Connor, Kay C. Dee, Ella L. Ingram, Christopher Phillips, Jared S. Colton, Jenae Cohn, Elizabeth Winter, Michele C. Clark, Christopher Burns, Rebecca Campbell, Kevin Kelly, Miriam Moore, Jessica Rivera-Mueller, Kresten Erickson, Maggie Debelius, Susannah Mcgowan, Aiyanna Maciel, Clare Reid, Alexa Eason

Resilient Pedagogy

Resilient Pedagogy offers a comprehensive collection on the topics and issues surrounding resilient pedagogy framed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movements that have swept the globe. As a collection, Resilient Pedagogy is a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective response to actions taken in different classrooms, across different institution types, and from individuals in different institutional roles with the purpose of allowing readers to explore the topics to improve their own teaching practice and support their own students through distance, disruption, and distraction.

Chapter 15- "Things Are Different Now" A Student, Staff, And Faculty Course Design Institute Collaboration, Maggie Debelius, Susannah Mcgowan, Aiyanna Maciel, Clare Reid, Alexa Eason

Resilient Pedagogy

Like other institutions across the world, Georgetown University in Washington, DC switched to remote learning in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. Our Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), which serves as both a center for teaching and learning as well as a center for technology innovation, responded quickly with a series of offerings to prepare and support faculty to teach remotely. Options included a virtual conference on digital pedagogy, a series of cohort-based Course Design Institutes (CDI) throughout the summer where faculty engaged with intertwined principles and best practices from inclusive pedagogy …

Fa 2020 About This Issue: The Power In Slowing Down

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Whether it be videotaping, guided classroom conversations, lecture-based, or written, feedback is the backbone of educational excellence. We use it to mentor beginning undergraduates, writers, readers, explorers, and experimenters. And, if we are thoughtful, feedback becomes a loop by which we slow down learning, we engage reading, writing and exploring, and we collaborate our way to becoming better.

“Does Increased Online Interaction Between Instructors And Students Positively Affect A Student’S Perception Of Quality For An Online Course?”, Jennifer Hunter Dr, Brayden Ross

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Online education is increasing as a solution to manage increasing enrollment numbers at higher education institutions. Intentionally and thoughtfully constructed courses allow students to improve performance through practice and self-assessment and instructors benefit from improving consistency in providing content and assessing process, performance, and progress.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of student to instructor interaction on the student’s perception of quality for an online course. “Does increased online interaction between instructors and students positively affect a student’s perception of quality for an online course?”

The study included over 1200 courses over a three year time …

Apathy And Concern Over The Future Habitability Of Earth: An Introductory College Assignment Of Forecasting Co2 In The Earth’S Atmosphere, Benjamin J. Burger

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Non-science, first year regional undergraduate students from rural Utah communities participated in an online introductory geology course and were asked to forecast the rise of CO₂ in the Earth’s atmosphere. The majority of students predicted catastrophic rise to 5,000-ppm sometime over the next 3,100 years, resulting in an atmosphere nearly uninhabitable to human life. However, the level of concern the students exhibited in their answers was not directly proportional with their timing in their forecasted rise of CO₂. This study showcases the importance of presenting students with actual data and using data to develop student forecasted models. …

Teaching Accessibility And Design-For-All In The Information And Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies Of Universities In The United States, England, And Austria, Paul Ryan Bohman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Digital technologies allow people with disabilities to participate independently in society in ways they never could before. The full realization of these new opportunities remains elusive, though, because working professionals in the information and communication technology (ICT) field rarely receive adequate training in how to make digital ICT accessible to people with disabilities. Adding accessibility to the university ICT curriculum can help create a critical mass of ICT professionals with accessibility awareness and expertise to finally realize the full accessibility potential of digital technologies. This dissertation provides a rich informational context from which ICT curriculum leaders can decide how to …

Research On Distance Programs For Teachers & Administrators, Laura Slack Foley

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Distance access to quality preparation in university teacher certification programs is crucial to solving teacher shortages. This paper aggregates the data from several gathering sources which were designed to evaluate distance program features for quality, access, and delivery through the perceptions of participating preservice teachers at Utah State University.

Facilitator Assessment Following A Stepfamily Education Course, Heather Sparks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of the facilitators of a stepfamily education course, based upon facilitator self-report as well as participant report. Agencies in northern Utah that provide services to low-income minority families were used to recruit a sample of 152 facilitators and 1,134 participants of which 519 of the participants were male and 613 of the participants were females. Additionally, 21 of the facilitators were male and 131 of the facilitators were female. Requirements for participants included having been previously married with no children or having children from a previous relationship that formed a current …