ABSTRACTS - Room 215

All sessions take place in Butler-Carlton Hall on the Missouri S&T campus

1-215 // Making Fun a Priority at Work

HANDS-ON WORKSHOP (1 hour 45 minutes)

Presenters: 
     Dr. Jana Gerard - Coordinator of the EDvolution Center; Southeast Missouri State University
     Kris Baranovic - Instructional Design Manager; Missouri Online

Audience: 

Time and Location: 12:15 - 2:00 p.m.; Room 215

MODE: Face-to-face (Face-to-Face Presenter + Face-to-Face Attendees)

Working in higher ed right now is tough. There’s also the old saw that work isn’t supposed to be fun; if it was fun then we’d call it "going to fun" and not "going to work." With burnout prevalent and work requirements more challenging than ever, it’s a good time to reexamine the role of fun in the work process. This session would examine the role of fun in work and productivity and offer suggestions and strategies on making fun a larger part of work.

3-215 // Apocalyptic pedagogy: How to teach like the world is ending

STANDARD SESSION (45 minutes)

Presenter: Dr. Ryan Cheek - Assistant Professor of English and Technical Communication; Missouri S&T

Audience: Higher Education; K-12 Education

Time and Location: 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.; Room 215

MODE: Blended (face-to-face and online)

Climate chaos, disease outbreaks, and thermonuclear weaponry are only a few of the omnipresent threats faced by humanity in the modern world. Developing an apocalyptic pedagogy is a method for teaching disciplinary content by leveraging the human motivation to abate risk and by instilling an awareness in students of the ever present potential for planet wide cataclysm. Attendees will learn how to help students connect course concepts in meaningful and generative ways to their lived realities by responsibly elevating the exigence of course material to an existential level.

4-215 // Detecting Conceptual Learning in the Online Learning Environment

STANDARD SESSION (45 minutes)

Presenters:
     Qiang Dotzel - Teaching Professor of Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, and Statistics; University of Missouri-St. Louis
     Cheryl Eichenseer - Professor of Mathematics; St. Charles Community College
     Carol DeFreese - Instructor of Mathematics and Statistics; University of Missouri-St. Louis

Audience: Higher Education; K-12 Education

Time and Location: 3:15 - 4:00 p.m.; Room 215

MODE: Blended (face-to-face and online)

Teaming up with St Charles Community College, this collaboration offers diverse perspectives on instructions and brings in the needs from a diverse student population. When teaching in person, it’s easier to gauge students’ level of understanding through students’ facial expressions and classroom responses. But for the “invisible” online learners, one way for us to realize that the conceptual learning was not achieved was from critical errors made by these learners. Fostering conceptual learning in a challenging math course, such as Calculus II, and helping students to see the benefits through their own positive experience will lead to appreciation of conceptual learning in students’ future courses. Implementing higher engaging activities and alternative assessments, we stimulate students' learning experience so that it will help to guide successful performance in the summative assessment, as well as long term knowledge retention. This approach has lessened achievement gap between the in-person and online learners and enhance equity. One of the side benefits from stressing conceptual learning has been addressing online "cheating" issues. As our students become "more resourceful", it is easier to search for answers for a procedural question. When a student searches for a conceptual point, we see it as heading on the correct learning path. If a student has learned the "why", then the "how" will be addressed with very sound reasons!