Invitation to April 2, 2021 DOLCE
Dear Faculty Colleagues.
I’m writing to invite you to our April DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education) meeting that will take place this Friday, April 2nd at noon PST via Zoom. We have three speakers presenting. I am especially excited to hear from the first one.
We will hear first from Dr. Emily Merchant, Assistant Professor Science and Technology Studies, who will speak on “Teaching about Health Care Equity at Aggie Square.” As English Department Professor and Aggie Square Faculty Liaison John Marx has written, “Aggie Square . . . provides the chance to invent new approaches to undergraduate teaching, while offering undergraduates new immersive experiences.” With regard to her own related teaching projects, Professor Merchant will discuss the proposal and planning process, curriculum development, utilizing instructional technology to make the program work remotely, and lessons learned. John Marx also be on hand to offer his thoughts on Aggie Square.
Secondly, I will talk about a new collaborative curriculum project that I am launching in my advanced journalism class this quarter. Rather than my choosing all the assigned readings, my students will make a record of relevant readings they have discovered, sharing their findings with their classmates via always-growing interlinked Google Docs. I’m substituting this approach for a traditional textbook this quarter, with the hope of using this shared research and analysis project to encourage in my students a regular habit of reading ambitious contemporaneous articles about the important issues of the day, as well to find another way to support the social and intellectual community created by our remote class.
Thirdly, ATS Instructional Technologist Fernando Socorro will give a presentation that I have cheekily titled “I Came, I Saw, I Clicker.” As our resident personal response system expert, Dr. Socorro will comment on some of the ways faculty have taught innovatively with iClicker and other tools during the remote teaching era. Fernando will review how we can get one-on-one support from Instructional technologists, remind us of the Knowledge Base pages that can help to answer our instructional technology questions, and then tell us about past and present webinars offered by Academic Technology Services.
Please register now, mark your calendar for noon on April 2, and share this event with your faculty colleagues.
Please also plan to join us first and third Fridays of each month during the school year for our ongoing presentations and discussions on remote and mediated teaching at UC Davis. I look forward to seeing you at DOLCE this coming Friday, April 2nd at noon!
Best regards,
Dr. Andy Jones
Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services
Editor in Chief of The Wheel: The Instructional Technology Blog of UC Davis
University of California, Davis