2022 Program

Our Adventures with HyFlex Teaching and Mentoring Across Two Semesters: The Good, The Bad, and The Super Ugly at Bronx Community College

• • Monique Guishard, Associate Professor, Social Sciences, Bronx Community College
  • Emakoji Ayikoye Lecturer, Business & Information Systems, Bronx Community College
  • Learning Modalities

• Virtual Room A

In this session we reflect on our engagement, as HyFlex faculty and liaisons, during the coronavirus pandemic and within a historical context of heightened austerity. Our adventures with HyFlex began in Summer of 2021 within the CUNY HyFlex Pilot. We received robust training from HyFlex’s pioneer Dr. Brian Beatty and faculty mentors at CUNY SPS. We taught HyFlex courses in Fall 2021. We’ve scaled up our engagement and were invited to serve as liaisons to the second cohort of BCC faculty slated to teach classes in Spring 2022. We will share our attempts to sustain high levels of student engagement, manage increased teaching loads, negotiate for institutional support, troubleshoot tech issues, and to implement innovative teaching methods, in psychology and business courses, in the form of counter‐storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Our counternarratives provide insight into burgeoning efforts to assess HyFlex teaching and on the viability of HyFlex instruction at BCC.  

---

 

Balancing Online and In‐Person Teaching Modalities in the Anatomy and Physiology Lab.

• • Vyacheslav Dushenkov, Professor, Natural Sciences Department, Hostos Community College
  • Zvi Ostrin, Associate Professor, Natural Sciences Department, Hostos Community College
  • Learning Modalities

• Virtual Room B

  The COVID‐19 pandemic has forced academics to make sweeping adjustments in a short period. Adaptations made during the pandemic will likely alter the culture of teaching anatomy and physiology (A&P). After two years of online teaching, faculty now face the challenge of optimizing a combination of online and in‐person teaching modalities, especially in the A&P labs where hands‐on activities remain the essential part of the training. Finding the right balance between online teaching, with its inherent flexibility, and in‐person teaching, with its direct human communication and hands‐on activities, remains one of the biggest challenges of post‐pandemic undergraduate education. Although interactive A&P e‐learning modules were successfully introduced during the pandemic, there still remains the task of integrating the sensory visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities within the A&P labs.  

---

 

Social Belonging and Student Success: Balancing Equity with Mandating the Use of Cameras and Other Engagement Tools in Online Courses

• • Kevin Kolack, Doctoral Lecturer with CCE, Chemistry, Queensborough Community College
  • Student Engagement & Active Learning

• Virtual Room C

Research shows a direct correlation between social belonging and student success in the classroom, demonstrating the pedagogical need for mandating the use of cameras and other engagement tools in the online classroom. At the same time, equity issues arise regarding access to technology and to a suitable learning environment. More than 2 years into the forced acceleration of expanded online learning at CUNY, individual faculty remain charged with finding a middle ground. Since starting teaching online in 2015, I have continually added engagement tools to my online courses but have only recently effectively mandated their use by giving participation credit. In this presentation, the relevant research is described, along with a variety of tools employed, including PlayPosIt, WindowsInk, EpicPen, Blackboard polling, Mentimeter, PollEverywhere, and Miro.  

---

 

Out in the Open: Adapting an OER‐Based Blackboard Course for Open Use on the CUNY Academic Commons

• • Kelly Hammond, OER Assistant, Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology, CUNY School of Professional Studies
  • Tara Pauliny, Associate Professor, Department of English, John Jay College, CUNY
  • Sarah Kresh, Faculty Development and Instructional Design Manager, OFDIT, CUNY School of Professional Studies
  • Angela Francis, Assistant Dean, General Education and First Year Experience, CUNY School of Professional Studies
  • Open Access, OER

• Virtual Room D

Since Spring 2017, the School of Professional Studies’ OER and ZTC course conversion initiatives have saved our students more than $1.6 million. Because SPS offers fully online asynchronous programs, most of our courses are built and shared in Blackboard. The LMS provides important functionality for this modality, but it silos our otherwise open work, limiting the remixing and resharing possibilities that are hallmarks of open education. To overcome this limitation, we have adapted the SPS ZTC College Writing 1 Pathways course for the CUNY Academic Commons, simplifying adoption and adaptation across CUNY. In this session, we’ll share our rationale, process (including the roles of the course developers and the instructional technology team), successes, and hurdles. Expect a lively audience chat and panel discussion on the opportunities and challenges of sharing OER within CUNY.