Clemson Online and Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation Faculty Highlights

April 3, 2020

Despite transitioning to an online format, we would like to take the time to appreciate the extraordinary efforts by some of our faculty members to adopt innovative techniques for remote learning.

• Dr. Craig Wallace, Chair, Management Department. Craig is using a combination of live sessions via Zoom, as well as creating engaging recordings using Powerpoint and a tablet. The tablet allows him to diagram solutions during explanations. Craig is also developing a course dedicated to Leadership during COVID-19.
• Carol Collins, Senior Lecturer, Theatre. Carol is meeting with her class synchronously via Zoom. As one of their class meeting activities, the class practices live improv as a group, and as small groups with the breakout room feature. She also likes to get the students out of the chair by doing warm-up character activities.
• Dr. Robert “Bob” Polomski, Adjust Assistant Professor, Plant and Environmental Sciences, had a landscape architect guest speaker join his Urban Tree Care class and present via Zoom. He is enjoying using Zoom and compares it to his former work in radio. “The Zoom delivery approach is reminiscent of my enjoyable +15 years in radio (and Facebook Live), but holding the students accountable and engaged requires a bit more effort on my part. Nevertheless, I’m up for the challenge.” 
• Jill Wren, leisure skills, Whitewater Kayaking instructor (PRTM), is having students watch “specialty” kayaking videos and kayaking leadership videos. Students are then reporting on a river they want to kayak using an online source, “American Whitewater.” 
• Michele Cauley, Professor of Practice, Marketing. Michele has been using Zoom to maintain her guest speaker series (one a week for the semester). All guest speakers have agreed to the new format, and she has had almost 100% student attendance. Her students are also using Zoom to stay in touch with their clients as they execute on promised marketing deliverables for 16 local nonprofit organizations and will present their final deliverables and results during exam week. A CoB student and faculty member will also be utilizing Zoom to take over the College of Business Instagram account showing a day-in-the-life of a student and faculty is like in this new online learning environment.
• Lisa Wagner, Lecturer, Biological Sciences.  Lisa has created exams with original question banks consisting of 80 questions. Students are allowed to take the exam up to three times by answering 60 questions. If students take the exam multiple times, they will receive a variety of questions, as there will be some overlap in questions but new questions will be included each time.  If students need to spend 4 hours on one attempt because they are researching and learning…that is a good thing. If they take all three attempts, Lisa knows that she can feel good about that fact that she has provided a meaningful learning experience for them and lowered their stress/anxiety level about all of the technical problems that they could encounter because they have several days to work things out and complete the exam. Lisa uses Canvas, Ensemble, Zoom, and Camtasia for her exams, recordings, and class meetings.
• Stephanie Garst, Executive Director of US Play Coalition. The 2020 ONLINE Play Conference will have dozens of recorded educational and research symposium sessions as well as twice-weekly “Play Hour Live” sessions on Zoom throughout the month of April. All “live” Zoom presentations will be recorded and included in our official online conference supported by Canvas. This onsite conference, originally planned to be held at the Madren Conference Center, was completely moved to the online environment.
• Dr. Matthew Madison (COE) has found ways to keep his students on track with all assignments.
• Dr. Christy Brown (COE, Advanced Research Methods) created multiple instructional videos to explain complex concepts and statistical procedures clearly, and she’s done a fantastic job of keeping the lines of communication open through Canvas discussions
• Dr. Karen High, ESED in CECAS, who leads a Faculty Learning Community (FLC), and met all fourteen participants last week for a “How’s It Going” session. People were sharing things that went well, problem issues, and just supporting and encouraging everyone.  
• Dr. Rachel Savitz (Education and Human Development), leads an FLC on Digital Tools.  All her participants (Kylie Newsom (Nursing), Abigail Allen (COE), Kristen Duncan (COE), Tracy Fasolino (Nursing), Scott Brame (Environmental Engineering Earth Science), Megan Lee Pietruszewski (English) are using digital apps like Spark, Pear Deck, and FlipGrid for engagement and have shared resources freely these past few weeks with other Clemson faculty.  They are also continuing to meet as a group to support each other.
• Dr. Cindy Pury (Psychology) has sent students academic and mental health resources and messages for support.  We have shared her resources with faculty through the Canvas Academic Continuity site and through the teaching news email. 
• Dr. Pam Mack, Associate Professor, History and Geography, sent her students surveys about their technology and needs, how they are, are they safe, and their capacity.