Fierce Education is recognizing those administrators, faculty, instructors, professors, and other higher education influencers who are boldly embracing innovative ways of teaching, technologies and methods to engage and reach students during these challenging times. They are the “Fierce Educators” who are rethinking higher education in this new blended learning world and we will be highlighting their successes and accomplishments.
Fierce Educator:
Dr. Palma Catravas
Affiliation:
Professor, Electrical Engineering, Montgomery College, Rockville, MD
Being Fierce:
Dr. Palma Catravas has been unrelenting in her efforts to provide her students with the optimal learning experience during this pandemic. At the forefront of all her efforts is the question, “Is this material providing my students what they need so that when they complete my course, they have the requisite knowledge as though they were taught in class face to face.”
Unlike other professors that may record their live lectures over Zoom and then make them available, Dr. Catravas will pre-record an edited lecture before each class covering the topic. The edited lectures take up a great deal of time, but she believes that it is necessary for student learning. This is just one example of her dedication. Students appreciate the truncated lectures because they can listen before class (and after) and be better prepared for the video lesson. These lectures will then be reused when the same class is offered again either online or in person.
Dr. Catravas has been recreating the curriculum for her courses single handedly with the exception of one, Physics, where several faculty members are teaching the same introductory course. The cooperative environment for the physics course is a success regardless of the pandemic. The faculty meet via Zoom once a week, collaborate on materials and assessments for the class and then share the responsibilities for creation. Clearly this has the benefit of bringing great ideas together and sharing the load. This level of collaboration amongst colleagues would probably not have happened before the pandemic. The rest of her courses she manages single handedly.
Assessments have been the greatest struggle for every instructor during this pandemic. Sometimes students will try to do their best even if it means using unethical methods. However, Dr. Catravas understands that pre-pandemic methods of assessing students’ knowledge no longer serve the same purpose. As a result, Dr. Catravas came up with a solution: for a major assessment she devised a difficult problem and assigned each student a different portion of the problem to solve. Only when all the parts are put together will the problem be solved, and each portion of the problem has its own specific solution. This type of problem fosters cooperation amongst students and makes copying a moot point. Each student is required to share and justify their part of the solution with the class and instructor; everyone is free to ask questions. This method allows the instructor another opportunity for informal assessment.
Another success on assessments that Dr. Catravas implemented is to award points for smaller amounts of work completed successfully. In addition to making it accessible for every student to succeed in earning points, it seems to have had a positive psychological impact on the class. Students feel more in control of their success and are not 100% dependent on that final project or exam with all the stress it brings. Put together enough of these points and you have the equivalent of one full assessment, yet it grades students as they go.
Montgomery uses Blackboard and Zoom primarily. Course materials had to be uploaded to Blackboard by Dr. Catravas. Uploading videos, assessments, lessons are difficult and everyone underestimated the amount of time this would take on the part of the instructor. Discord has been a bright spot on the technology front. Primarily designed for gamers, Dr. Catravas uses this app to create different channels that her students can use to collaborate and communicate with each other any time they choose. Dr. Catravas describes one incident where students were presenting one at a time, when someone started using the applause feature and before they knew it everyone was applauding each other after each presentation. This was spontaneous, fun, and uplifting for the entire class.
For more Fierce Educators, see:
Fierce Educator: Dr. Joanna Bauer, Claremont Lincoln University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Scott McNabb, Emory University