GNE 330/530: Industrial Business Practices
Fall 2021
This was the seventh semester that I taught GNE 330/530 and the first that moved into a hybrid format to incorporate in-person class and online class modalities for COVID-19 guidelines. The previous two semesters (Fall 2020 Communication and Spring 2021 Teamwork) were completely online due to COVID-19 restrictions. For this semester, the first class session was held on Blackboard Collaborate (a web conferencing tool in the Blackboard Learning Management System [LMS]) to introduce students to the course and get acquainted with the online tools. The remaining class sessions occurred in person with the option to attend the session virtually through the Zoom Classroom tool available on the Blackboard Learning Management System. Recordings of the class sessions - whether they were presentations or discussions - were made available to students who could not attend the meeting in person as well.
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This semester of GNE 330/530 was the first semester in which I utilized Instructional Design tools from my Master of Science in Teaching and Curriculum and Future Professoriate Program training to plan the course. Instructional Design typically follows five common steps: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. I approach Instructional Design from a Backwards Design perspective in which I start with the end goals of the instruction, then use the goals to inform my assessments of learning, and finally allow my assessments to guide the selection of media and delivery of content for the course.
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In the first stage of this process, I performed an Instructional Analysis on the target audience of the instruction, the learning and working environment, and the performance problem. The target audience of the instruction were undergraduate students in the Chemical Engineering department, typically sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The learning and working environment described what spaces and tools (such as Learning Management Systems and classroom technology) were available to the students on and off campus, and what might be needed for the designed instruction. The performance problem was identified as the gap between what students were able to do at the beginning of the course (their prior knowledge and skills or Entry Skills) and the desired end performance (the knowledge and skills students were able to display after participation in the course).
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The desired end performance was determined based upon feedback from undergraduate students in the Chemical Engineering Department and industrial representatives employed in the engineering fields that students would enter upon graduation. GNE 330/530 was a six semester long rotational course in which students participated in the course for six successive semesters, with each semester covering one of six topics for 0.5 credits per semester. As such, the students enrolled in one semester of GNE 330/530 would more likely than not attend successive semesters of the course. With this in mind, anonymous End of Semester Surveys were utilized to gather information about students' prior knowledge and constructive criticism to guide the design of the GNE 330/530 course and implement improvements to the class in the following semester. The surveys asked students to describe what they knew about Business as well as what they wanted to learn about various Business Topics and Concepts. This feedback was incorporated into the selection of course topics and other modifications to ensure the class best served the students.
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Feedback from industrial representatives from the Syracuse Pulp and Paper Foundation (SPPF) was also gathered and incorporated into the design of the course. Interviews were performed with various members of SPPF who were currently working in industrial fields related to those that students would enter upon graduation. The representatives were approached about each of the six general GNE 330/530 topics (Lifelong Learning, Professional Development/Ethics/Contemporary Issues, Communication, Teamwork, Concepts of Business, and Management (and Leadership)). They were asked to identify subtopics within these subjects that were either important for students to know for the modern industry or that students were severely missing when they graduated but needed to be successful in the field. This feedback was then reviewed with thematic analysis and coding to identify different themes and key words. Ultimately, new topics for the GNE 330/530 cycle were selected based upon this input to ensure the course more adequately prepared students for their careers after graduating from the program.
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This translated into a shift from Concepts of Business - as it was in the previous semester I had covered the topic (Fall 2018) - to Industrial Business Practices. Instead of shallowly covering a variety of general business topics extracted from an Introduction to Business textbook, the design of this course focused on five main subjects to a more relevant degree. Given that this was a 0.5 credit course, it was difficult to dig too deeply into a single topic. However, the organization of the course for this semester allowed students to engage with more direct examples of these concepts and ideas.
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After the information gathering stages of the Instructional Analysis occurred, I performed an Information Process, Task, and Content Analysis. This was used to determine the Instructional Goals and Learning Goals of the course, as seen in the Syllabus below. The Instructional Goals and Learning Goals were also cross-referenced with the SUNY-ESF General Education Learning Outcomes and the ABET Accreditation Outcomes (general outcomes 1-7), which each undergraduate student in the Chemical Engineering Department must complete to be considered for graduation. The purpose of cross-referencing the course goals was to identify any Instructional or Learning Goals that could contribute to the completion of the ABET and College Learning Outcomes. Such relationships are also outlined in the Course Syllabus.
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A set of Learning Goals were established to define the desired performance of students upon completion of the course. Terminal Learning Objectives and Enabling Learning Objectives were established through the Task Analysis and related to the Learning Goals. The Learning Objectives were observable, measurable tasks that students perform to show their achievement and completion of the Learning Goals. Terminal Learning Objectives typically related directly to the Learning Goals, while Enabling Objectives linked the Entry Skills of the students and the Terminal Learning Objectives; they were stepping stones to help measure the students' ability to close the performance gap.
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Once Learning Objectives were created from the Task Analysis, Instructional Analysis and Design tools were utilized to create assessments of learning, particularly the Item Specification Process. This process details the sample assessment items for each learning objective, including a description of the test form (type of question), characteristics of the question, and sample expected responses for the question. Each Learning Objective was linked to Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning to understand the level of knowledge and skills students were asked to express for that particular learning task. This was utilized to identify an appropriate type of assessment for each Learning Objective. In this course, most of the Enabling Objectives were lower-levels of learning on Bloom's Taxonomy (such as Remembering/Recall and Understanding). This was assessed with questions such as multiple choice, multiple answer, and true/false. Higher Enabling Objectives and Terminal Objectives were related to higher-levels of learning on Bloom's Taxonomy (such as Analyzing and Synthesis or Creating). Analyzing learning tasks, for example, were assessed with questions in which students were required to compare scenarios or select proper justifications from a list (such as in multiple answer questions), whereas Synthesis learning tasks required written responses or proposals to showcase the student's ability to prepare or suggest approaches to solving a problem based upon what they learned in the course. An example assessment item (question) was created for each of the Terminal and Enabling Learning Objectives.
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Assessment Blueprints were then written utilizing the assessment items. Assessment Blueprints indicated which objectives were targeted in a given Assessment Instrument (such as an examination, a paper, or a project). It also showed what proportion of objectives appeared in the Assessment Instrument. In some cases - depending upon the Assessment Instrument - it was not necessary to include as many assessment items based upon lower-level learning objectives as the showcasing of these objectives could be measured by the higher-level learning objectives. For example, when students placed budget items into the correct categories, it indicated that they understood the definition of a budget item and a budget category.
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Once Assessment Blueprints were complete, the Development and Implementation of the materials for the course occurred. Materials from the previous Concepts of Business GNE 330/530 course were incorporated into the Business and Business Concepts unit, while new material and activities for the Budget Planning and Capital Justification, Diversity and Inclusion, and Ethics Units were created for the course. The goal was to align the materials and activities that students engaged with to the learning tasks students were expected to perform. Lecture slide decks and other materials were utilized to supplement information not covered in course activities. Course activities involved the incorporation of industrial representatives from various companies and a speaker from MACNY - the Manufacturer's Association of Central New York.
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This was the first time in which I relied upon companies and guest speakers to help provide content for the GNE 330/530 course. In previous semesters, this class hosted a variety of speakers (usually paper companies) that visited the students, provided food, and spoke about their company. However, this was often a presentation that discussed what company operations and history, and what positions they were hiring for during interviews that would occur the following day. While this was beneficial to many students, it was not worthwhile to all students - especially those in programs that were not Paper Engineering. Often, these speakers would not incorporate material related to the topics students were learning in the course, and in the Fall semester, they would take a large portion of all scheduled class meetings. After several semesters of negative feedback about companies from the students, I made an executive decision to not require company presentations in the GNE 330/530 course anymore. This, unfortunately, created attendance issues at visiting company presentations and reduced the ability of students to network with industrial representatives.
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As I became more involved with the GNE 330/530 course and recognized my own content expertise limitations and after interviewing various SPPF members to gather information to improve the relevance of the GNE 330/530 course, I realized a new relationship with visiting companies could benefit both the students and the industrial representatives: students would have the opportunity to learn about the material as it directly appeared in real-life industrial applications, and industrial representatives would once again get to showcase their company and interact with students that they wished to interview and employ.
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The Fall 2021 semester of GNE 330/530 was the first semester in which I incorporated company presenters as sources of content for the GNE 330/530 course. To do so, I created a list of questions and subjects related to the course material and unit that the students were working on at the time for the industrial representatives to discuss in their presentations. An additional speaker - Dave Freund from MACNY - assisted in the delivery of content to the students. Dave Freund was a speaker trained in a variety of professional and life-based topics who previously collaborated with SPPF for management and leadership events. We decided to collaborate for the GNE 330/530 course on various topics for both the Fall 2021 semester and other semesters that followed.
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Content guides and handouts were created as well for the Development portion of the Instructional Design process. They accompanied different lessons and help students organize the information they received (applying the idea of Advanced Organizers from Cognitivism, a common Learning theory). They were not mandatory and were not collected for a grade - a change (and improvement) I made from previous semesters of facilitating GNE 330/530. Most of the assessments in this particular iteration of GNE 330/530 were quizzes and tests instead of smaller assignments and projects as I usually prefer in my courses. This was due to the nature of the learning objectives (covering a large amount of lower-level learning tasks) as well as my first application of Instructional Design tools. However, I have incorporated Instructional Design concepts and tools in each semester of GNE 330/530 that I have facilitated ever since the Fall 2021 semester in which other types of assessments - such as papers, presentations, journal reflections, and model making - were utilized as measures of student performance.
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The Implementation and Evaluation portions of the Instructional Design process were performed on a less-detailed scale compared to the Analysis, Design, and Development. Short-hand lesson plans were created more so to facilitate the various guest speakers and activities performed in the course. Evaluation occurred during and after the course in the form of self-reflections and student feedback. Anonymous surveys were provided to students at the beginning, middle, and end of the course. The surveys at the beginning and end of the course were geared towards student self-reflection and evaluation of their learning from their own perspective. The Mid-Course and End-of-Course surveys provided open-ended questions for students to provide feedback about what they liked about the course, what they disliked/wanted to see removed, and what they would keep the same. This feedback was discussed with the students during the Fall 2021 semester and in the following Spring 2022 semester, and adjustments to the course were made (if reasonable/possible). Additional evaluation in the review of the congruence (alignment) of course materials, assessments, and learning objectives, as well as the overall implementation of the course, was also performed at the end of the semester to determine what I could improve in the next iteration of the course.
Ned Dwyer - an industrial representative from CS Solutions - speaks to students in the class in person and online in a hybrid format about Leadership and other Business Concepts.
Slide in Introductory Lesson for GNE 330/530 Fall 2021. The slide brings the Course Learning Goals from the Syllabus to the attention of the students early in the course.
Examples of the Information Process Analysis (top) and Content Analysis/Content Hierarchy (bottom) performed during the Instructional Design process to determine Terminal Learning Objectives, Enabling Learning Objectives, and Course Content.
Bloom's Taxonomy Wheel Utilized during Creation of Assessments.
Concepts of Business Revisited:
Industrial Business Practices Based upon Student and Industrial Representative Feedback
Condensed
Business Concepts and Business Functions
General Business Concepts and Business Functions were topics that students expressed interest in learning about from pre-course survey feedback. Many of these concepts and functions were covered in a previous iteration of the course (Concepts of Business in Fall 2018). Specific concepts and functions were taken from the previous materials and incorporated in a condensed version for the Industrial Business Practices version of GNE 330/530.
These were split into three general categories: Business Functions (such as accounting and environmental health and safety), Business Classifications and How they Form (such as limited liability corporations (LLC) and horizontal mergers), and "other" topics (such as factors of production, logistics, and strategic planning).
Each topic was briefly explained and examples were provided to help students relate the terms to everyday businesses (such as Target). Additionally, a paper company (Sylvamo) incorporated Business Concepts and Business Functions in their presentation to students to explain different aspects of their business (such as how their business was classified and what various business functions looked like at their mill).
Budget Planning
and
Capital Justification
Budget Planning and Capital Justification was a business-related topic deemed important by industrial representatives for students to have at least a surface-level understanding about upon graduation and entry into the workforce. For this topic, students learned how to sort items in a budget into appropriate categories, compare budgets between two types of projects, and select and provide a justification for various capital expenses or projects, such as cost reduction or worker safety.
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For this unit, students were provided with background material about budgets, budget categories, and capital justification. Then, two industrial representatives - Peter Tantalo from WestRock (a paper company) and Dave Freund from MACNY - spoke to the class about budget planning and capital justification. Instead of a typical lecture format, this occurred as an interview in which Dave asked Peter various questions about budget planning and capital justification (some of which were pre-written to address learning outcomes while others were from the natural flow of conversation and content knowledge of each speaker). Both Peter and Dave shared their experiences in their respective industries and various positions in management. Students were also invited to ask questions, and were prompted to discuss their internship experiences in the industry to see how their projects or positions fit into the nature of budget planning and capital justification in the field.
Diversity and Inclusion
and
Ethical Considerations
Diversity and Inclusion and Ethical Considerations were covered over the span of two separate units, though their learning tasks were similar in nature. This was another pair of topics that was considered to be important for students to understand by the time they entered the workforce. In these units, students learned the difference between terms such as diversity, inclusion, and equity. They also learned how to identify various factors that influence a situation in which a diversity, inclusion, and/or ethical-related issue was present. These factors included human-related facets - such as one's identity factors (age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, etc.), one's perspective on the situation, stakeholders impacted by the issue, and the power dynamics between the people in the scenario - and non-human related factors - such as finances, environmental resources, materials, location, and equipment.
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The initial unit (Diversity and Inclusion) was introduced with an in-class activity in which students were given the following prompt: "What do you think of when you hear the words diversity and identity?". Students provided verbal responses and their answers were written on the board. Then, several of their answers were circled and placed as categories on the other board. Students were then split into groups to discuss one of the terms and to come up with examples of the term (such as straight, gay, and bisexual as examples of sexual orientation). One student from the group wrote their group's responses on the board. Then, the class was brought together to discuss the answers, determine if they were in the right categories, and to see if any identity factors were missing (such as missing asexual in the provided examples above for sexual orientation). This allowed the conversation of identity factors - which can be a sensitive topic for students - to be student-generative with a focus on peer-to-peer discussions.
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In class activities that followed involved presentations from Dave Freund of MACNY about Ethics and Value, and the "Crucial Conversation", a tool utilized to handle interpersonal conflict. Case studies were also developed and utilized in group discussions about ethical and diversity and inclusion issues that could occur in the workplace. Samples from university and industrial settings were utilized where possible. Students practiced identifying various human and non-human related factors in their case studies, and utilized tools discussed by Dave Freund about how to approach these issues to reach a better understanding between all involved.
Reflections on the Semester:
Things I Learned in My Instructional Design
of GNE 330/530
A Lesson About Instructional Design, Feedback and Preparation
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This semester was fruitful for my development as an educator because it gave me the platform to practice and implement the Instructional Design process (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) for actual course development. I enjoyed the Analysis and Design portions of the process. The Learner Analysis and Performance Gap Analysis was similar to my preparation for courses in the past in which I gathered information about my students and identified learning goals and outcomes that I wanted students to achieve by the end of the semester. I also incorporated student feedback in the past when determining these learning goals. However, this was the first time that I utilized direct feedback from industrial representatives to help shape the learning outcomes (and therefore content) of the course. However, I do not regret this decision. Students enjoyed that the visiting companies provided information related to the course material that was directly applicable to the context of their field and future careers, and industrial representatives enjoyed speaking to students about more than just the generic information about the company. Students expressed that they felt more prepared in these topics prior to entering the workforce, which is one of my major goals in my collegiate teaching: providing relevant content and examples for students to relate to.
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The Task Analysis and Information Process Analysis was also important to me, especially when I begin my journey in collegiate science, engineering, and mathematics course development. This process forced me to think about each learning goal and the steps that students would need to take to achieve that goal. From there, I was able to develop learning tasks and measurable learning objectives to gauge a student's progress towards the learning goal. While this is a bit more basic in the Professional Engineering Skills applications in which I applied them for GNE 330/530, getting practice with this process will be greatly beneficial in my future work. For example: if I were to teach a lesson about balancing chemical reactions, the process for completing that task would be the following:
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1) Identify the chemical compounds in the reaction (with the subtask of knowing what chemical compounds are)
2) Identify the reactants and products in the reaction (with the subtask of knowing what the definition of reactants and products are)
3) Create a list of the chemical compounds on each side of the reaction arrow for the reactants and products
4) Count the number of chemical compounds on each side of the reaction arrow and write them down
5) Determine which multipliers are needed on each side of the reaction arrow to balance the number of chemical compounds in the reactants and products side
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From this, I could then create learning tasks for each step of this process and assess the ability of the students to perform each learning task. If I were working with students who are new to chemistry, I would aim for making an assessment item for each step. However, if I am working with students familiar with chemistry, I may create assessment items for just steps 3, 4, and 5 as the responses for those learning task prompts would indicate their understanding of tasks 1 and 2. I feel this will make it easier for me to identify student misconceptions and provide guidance to help them adjust their understanding of the knowledge and task at hand.
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I also enjoyed writing learning objectives, creating assessment items, and determining the course content and activities that would help students achieve these learning objectives. I utilize Bloom's Taxonomy every semester that I teach GNE 330/530 to make measurable learning objectives based upon the learning task the student needs to complete. Creating assessment items that suit the learning objective and evaluating the assessment item to ensure it aligns with the learning objective and can be reasonably completed by the student also helped me work towards a balanced workload for the course. This was still something I struggled with this semester (as the student feedback points out), but fewer students had issues with the workload, which was a trend in the right direction. Creating the assessment items with sample questions and the assessment blueprints that detailed the assessments students were to take made it a lot easier for me to make assessments on Blackboard for the students. I could simply make questions based upon the framework I set in the assessment item and then click the number of items from the pool needed for a particular assessment instrument. This was a great tool and I could see this being useful for courses I teach in the future where the topic is less variable than the nature of GNE 330/530.
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However...
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I spent probably too much time on the Analysis and Design portions of the process. I still addressed the Development phase, but I did not adequately prepare for the Implementation and Evaluation phases of the Instructional Design Process. While I had mental notes on the Implementation and Evaluation of the students, the instruction, and other important facets, I lacked the formal structure to fall back on that I had created for the first three phases of the process. I noticed that I fell into a bad habit of not creating lesson plans, story boards, or other tools to guide implementation of the course material and lessons when I was the one to facilitate it.
This would have been helpful when working with visiting companies and their contributions to the course content. Had I created a more concrete plan to implement the tie-in between companies and unit objectives, I feel I could have avoided some of my dissatisfaction with the performance of different companies in the classroom. Some companies worked well with the prompts provided to them for each unit. However, other companies did not perform well and ended up barely touching the subject matter related to the course, leading to student dissatisfaction with the presentation. This was something that I discovered during my casual evaluation of the course and the new system of incorporating industrial representatives in course content. In the semester that followed, I utilized a similar relationship to companies, but provided a more structured question sheet for companies to work off of when creating their presentations. This went much more smoothly than my first attempt during the Fall 2021 semester.
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What I learned the most from this semester of GNE 330/530 is that Instructional Design is a very useful tool to create a baseline for a course. However, it takes a lot of time, and I did not allot appropriate time to complete the entire Instructional Design process. In the future, I would like to have a more complete design document by the beginning of the semester that I can fall back on when preparing assessments, implementing lessons, evaluating the course, and adjusting my instruction over time.
I also feel that having a complete instructional design before the start of the semester would help me address one of my shortcomings of the semester: assignment due dates. While having assessment items and assessment blueprints made it easier for me to create assessments, it still took a substantial amount of time for me to generate each assessment item needed for the assessment instrument. Had I prepared for the course with proper foresight and a complete design document, I would have had a complete pool of assessment items well before the assessment went live for students to take. Since I did not have this prepared in advance, I found myself moving due dates for the students to give them proper time to complete the work. While students were appreciative of the flexible due dates, they were frustrated with the constant changing of the assignments. I could see this being less of an issue for me in the future for courses with repeating topics, such as the Fall 2022 Lifelong Learning course in which I carried over assessment items and adjusted the content, media provided, and number of assessment items students were required to complete. With this preparation, I was able to schedule nearly all assessments to release on the designated due date without causing as much confusion and student dissatisfaction.
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Overall, I am happy that I learned and practiced instructional design for a collegiate course. I plan on utilizing these tools in the future regardless of the course size or complexity. I may need to start small on a lesson scale and work my way up to a course scale over time, but with enough preparation, I believe this would be beneficial to my ability to perform as a collegiate instructor and continuously improve upon my teaching practices.
Review of Course Materials and Course Design
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This section provides sample materials used in the GNE 330 course for Fall 2021. This section also includes comments from my review and reflection on the course materials and the course overall.
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The Syllabus
In this stage of my instructional career, my Syllabus more or less had the same format as prior semesters. The original design of the Syllabus was influenced by a sample Syllabus from my Advisor and Mentor. However, over time I added different components to the Syllabus to make it my own. A sample of the Syllabus can be found above. Upon reflecting on this Syllabus, there are only a few minor adjustments I would recommend. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by this Syllabus. My initial observations of this Syllabus are that I like the format of the document. I can tell I started to work on making my documents more accessible by the incoporation of headings in this version of the Syllabus. I would make minor adjustments to the tables to have space between the top and bottom lines of text and the top and bottom borders in the cells to make it easier to read the contents of the table. While not every student reads the entire Syllabus, I feel it is important to include information about how the course was designed as well as the learning goals. This helps students better understand the purpose of the course, what is expected of them, and how it aligns with the rest of their program outcomes. One of the tough aspects of this course when involving company speakers - especially in the fall semester - is the uncertainty of if and when speakers will be available to attend class. While students should have this time period blocked off for class regardless of the schedule, this course often meets every few weeks for the half credit courseload. It can be difficult to plan activities and speakers prior to the start of the semester as companies will sometimes show delayed interest in attending the course after the semester has begun. External pressure makes it difficult to refuse company attendance, and hence the schedule changes and the courseload becomes slightly skewed. I think trying to get a more concrete schedule or specifically blocking off certain weeks for company speakers to fill in slots would benefit the schedule and the students. I do like that I have both the assignment due date and the location of the course activity to help direct students and keep them on schedule. Whenever the Syllabus is updated, I post the new version on Blackboard, label the version, and indicate what changes were made to the Syllabus. The students are then contacted via email as to the changes. Perhaps it would be beneficial to have a version where the changes are highlighted in a different color so students can more easily find the modifications. This is something I could try in other courses in the future.
Sample Learning Guide
The Learning Guide was an idea I implemented after learning about Cognitivism and Advanced Organizers as tools to help students better organize information. I also started utilizing them as a means of show students potential practice assessment items that they may encounter on their quizzes and exams. Learning Guides were not mandatory for students to compelte, and not every student did. However, some students utilized these guides to help them engage with the content and prepare for assessments. This Learning Guide was created for Unit #2 on Budget Planning and Capital Justification. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by this Guide Reflecting back on this tool, I think it would have been helpful to have a few copies of this guide in person for students during the class period. This was left on Blackboard as the student's responsibility to print or download if they were to utilize it. Perhaps more students would have been encouraged to use the Learning Guide if it was more readily available in their hands. However, I don't want it to deter from the established note taking and note making methods that students utilize for their own learning benefit. This was a concept I clashed with in the past, as I did not want students to feel like they could only take notes with the worksheet present or within the worksheet. I suppose emphasizing to students that this is merely a tool to support their learning, not mandatory, and not required to turn in would give students the authority to decide whether to utilize the guide in class or not. Either way, I think having the guide available in person would still be beneficial. I also think having a version of the Learning Guide that was easier to fill out online would be an improvement for the students. The guides were typically uploaded in a Word Doc format, and with the use of various tables in my guide, it could be difficult for students to fill in if they were working on the computer instead of in print to fill out the form. I would need training in how to make fillable PDFs or other documents, but I think it would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future.
Sample Content Handout and Class Presentation
The Sample Content Handout and Class Presentation are examples of media that was created to provide information for student learning. The Class Presentation is in the format of PDF slides with a written script below the slide and was utilized for Unit #1 on Business Functions. The Content Handout was created for Unit #2 on Budget Planning and Capital Justification. The presentation and handout utilize a mixture of created and found content. The presentation was geared for student review on Blackboard while the handout was provided to students in class. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by these media. Overall, I think the presentation slides would be more impactful if they were provided in both the PDF form with the script as well as a video or audio format to accompany it. Many students in the engineering discpline do not have read/write information preferences. Sharing this course content through only a script - while the visuals on the slides can help - is not the best practice for supporting student interaction with the media. The way this presentation is designed leads me to believe that my intent was to either record a video of this presentation or to give this presentation live (either in-person or online), however it is possible I ran out of time to prepare this presentation due to the poor time management issues previously discussed regarding my work with instructional design. In future semesters, I do supply both a video and PDF with script version of presentations, which students have responded positively to. I do like that I do not overload each slide and page with too much information. Splitting up longer narrative paragraphs into shorter sentences might make it easier for students to read however, which is something to consider in the future. This presentation is actually part one of a three part series on Business Functions and Business Concepts, hence why so much time was allotted for students to review the material. Splitting the presentations into separate PDF files has pros and cons. In this style in which students were to complete prompts after interacting with the PDFs to show they engaged in the material, havign separate PDFs makes it easier for students to follow along with the different prompts within the entirety of the unit. However, it can be disadvantageous when students are looking for information when studying. If they cannot remember which PDF has the term, concept, or example that they need, they will have to scroll through several files to find the information they are looking for. Perhaps having a version where all slides are combined into a master presentation alongside the individual presentations would be beneficial in the future. The content handout for Unit #2 on Budget Planning and Capital Justification was provided to students to accompany the in-class acitivity and discussion on budgets and capital. This was available in a hard copy form and an online form for students viewing the course over the web conferencing platform (Zoom). I relied heavily on found media and other references to make this handout, which is not a bad thing. It took a while for me to realize that it is acceptable to utilize tools, documents, and other information that was already created by others to assist in instruction; I do not need to create everyting on my own. As such, I referenced a sample budget image in this handout to give students an ideas of what a budget for a project may look like. I also like that I included various definitions for the students, which were also cross-listed on a Glossary on the Blackboard Learning Management System. I do think that increasing the size of the image to make the font size consistent would be helpful for students with viusal impairments, as well as descriptions of the image and tables in the document. That is something I could work to improve upon in the future. Overall, I like the layout of this handout and its organization. It also provides a written (read/write) form of information for students to engage with alongside the aural information they received during the class acitivity (seen in the "Guest Speaker Session" file).
Sample Guest Speaker Session and Case Study
The Sample Speaker Session and Case Study were included to showcase alternative methods utilized to deliver course content to students and engage them in class acitivties. The Sample Speaker Session was an interview-style conversation between two industrial representatives about their experience with Budget Planning and Capital Justification. The Case Study provides a scenario for Unit #3 on Diversity and Inclusion in which an issue between several students and members of a laboratory group arises and prompts students to work together to determine an approach for addressing this situation. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by these activities. I enjoyed the idea of the interview between the industrial representatives (Peter Tantalo from WestRock and Dave Freund from MACNY) as a means of delivering content to students. They were able to provide real-life examples of how these concepts within budget planning and capital justification applied to their roles in the industry. I was also able to provide guiding questions to the guests to ensure that information pertaining to learning objectives was addressed without inhibiting the flow of the conversation. The open format also allowed students to ask questions throughout the conversation. However, I do think trying to find a way to make this slightly more engaging for students would be beneficial. Perhaps some breaks in between or writing down key concepts on the board as they arose in conversation would have helped. One immediate improvement I would make to this activity is including closed captioning for the online viewers and those referencing the activity after the class was over (as the video recording was provided on Blackboard). The video as it stands has only the audio and visual components of the event. However, providing subtitles and captions would greatly assist students who have hearing and comprehension difficulties. This is something I have since implemented in videos that I have constructed for the course, such as the Lifelong Learning Content Videos for the Fall 2022 semester. Ensuring I have live transcript/captioning capabilities on Zoom events in the future is something I would want to explore as well. The Case Study was adopted from a seminar that I attended about Diversity and Inclusion at Syracuse University. I particularly like this scenario as it references a familiar setting for the undergraduate engineering students (a laboratory/research group). This was paired with an additional case study that occurred in an industrial setting based upon my own experiences in the field. For me, these are authentic situations that the students may encounter in their future careers. My goal was to ensure students were familiar with the possibility of these issues occurring and to equip students with tools to handle these situations. However, my own handling of this activity was not ideal. Throughout the activity, students were put into groups to review their scenarios and address the provided prompts. When the classroom discussion began, it grew apparent that at least one student did not necessarily agree with the approach of acceptance and support of students with minority identity factors. They grew quiet during the class session, and when I spoke with them after class, they proclaimed that they were simply not going to talk about these things at work to avoid a conflict of opinions. While I understand that this is something the student needs to examine regarding their own biases, I was not comfortable with creating a class environment in which a student did not feel safe or able to participate in the conversation. It did not cause a class disruption, but it did stick with me as a missed opportunity to better manage the class activity. Perhaps modification to the ground rules that were established at the beginning of the class would help with this and emphasizing the understanding of others' perspectives in an open, empathetic fashion. It is a difficult situation, however, when identity factors and beliefs about identity factors clash as a statement in support of or against can be taken as a personal attack. This is something I still need to work on navigating, and I have since participated in some seminars at Syracuse University that have equipped me with better tools for handling hot moments in the classroom.
Sample Assessment and Grading Rubric
The Sample Assessment in this portfolio is an examination utilized to measure student performance of Terminal Objectives from each unit in the course. It consisted of short essay questions as well as matching and multiple answer questions. The associated Grading Rubric was created for grading the question about Diversity and Inclusion in which students had to identify various factors within a given scenario and discuss how they would approach handling the situation. The Student Work samples are also from this question. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by these assessment items I typically stray away from quizzes and examinations being the only forms of assessment in my courses. However, with my desire to practice Instructional Design skills for the first time and the nature of the content for the Industrial Business Practices course consisting of a high degree of lower-level learning tasks (based on Bloom's Taxonomy), it was easier to utilize quizzes and exams as assessment instruments. I selected the Final Course Assessment as it contained more variety in the test forms (short answer, multiple answer, matching) between the assessment items, and measured student knowlege on higher-level learning scales. Overall, students performed well on this assessment. The clarity of the associated rubric made it easy to assess whether students included all information that was asked of them, such as referencing the Crucial Conversation material learned during Unit #3 with Dave Freund from MACNY. However, I think this rubric could be improved by detailing where points are distributed for addressing each requirement of the prompt. How many points would be awarded for a reasonable and relevant approach compared to the inclusion of course materials and concepts in the approach? What depth of explanation do students need to include when referencing the course materials? What is the depth at which students need to describe the scenario and factors involved? Inclusion of these details would strengthen the rubric and how it measures student knowledge and skills. For example: the student could include identity factors present in the scenario but not explain the importance of power hierarchies and still receive full credit for their work.
Sample of Student Work
The Sample Student Work provided for this portfolio is directly related to the Sample Assessment and Grading Rubric. A collection of responses from students on Question #4 about Diversity and Inclusion were captured from Blackboard to share in the portfolio. These responses exhibit various perspectives on describing the details and factors in the provided mini-case study on an issue in Diversity and Inclusion as well as a variety of approaches to resolve the issue while incorporating course content in their plan. Click "Read More" for more information about my review and reflection informed by these student work samples Overall, each of these responses received a high mark for competent performance based upon the provided Grading Rubric. It was interesting to see the range of perspectives on the description of the human-related factors and diversity issue in this scenario. Most students acknowledge Brenda's race and gender as key identity factors, but other students highlight the home situation Brenda has, her educational background, and her efforts to make up lost work time while supporting her family. This showed the difference in the life experience of each student in the class and what issues in Diversity and Inclusion may stand out more to some than others. There is also a variety of references to the Crucial Conversation and other course materials that show the weakness of the rubric as written. One student mentions one aspect of the Crucial Conversation (introspection) as something Brenda probably does not need to do without fully exploring the other components of the Crucial Conversation or other course materials that might apply to handling this situation. Other students directly incorporate the principles and explain exactly how they would utilize them in this scenario. While I would say students who do not explore other options from the course material to address the situation exhibit "less" learning of the course content than students who did include these details, this was not explicitly stated in the question prompt and rubric. If I were to rewrite this assessment item, I would change the phrasing to "How would you approach addressing this Diversity and Inclusion issue? Include elements from the approaches we have discussed in the course, such as the Crucial Conversation or the Ethics and Value presentation, that would be beneficial to addressing this situation. Explain why they would be helpful tools to utilize." This would require students to fully understand the Crucial Conversation and Ethics and Values presentation, compare the approaches to the scenario placed before them, and identify elements of these approaches that would be useful for addressing the situation instead of simply finding one element that is not applicable and moving on with a different approach.
Student Feedback and Reviews
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Students enjoyed the new approach to content delivery presented in this iteration of GNE 330/530 in which industrial representatives and guest speakers shared their knowledge on course-related content and how it applied in their respective fields. Some students expressed the desire to see a greater variety of companies present to the class as the Fall 2021 semester hosted mostly paper companies and companies in related pulp and paper fields. This feedback was useful to me as it was one of the reasons I had originally deterred company involvement in the course. During the Spring 2022 semester, I actively sought companies in the Bioprocess Engineering field instead of the Paper Engineering field to provide a wider scope of industrial experiences for the students.
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Common complaints, however, involved the changing due dates of assignments, the course workload, the time of the class meeting, and the desire to hold more online class sessions instead of in-person sessions.
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The fluctuating due dates on assignments was my fault entirely. This was due to poor preparation on my part, and spending too much time on the front end of the Instructional Design process and not enough time on the backend. I have since worked on better preparing content, assessment items, and assessment instruments for the GNE 330/530 course to minimize due date fluctuations.
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A difficulty of this course, as mentioned prior, is the scheduling of company speakers to attend class sessions. It is difficult to know how many industrial representatives are interested in speaking to the class at the beginning of the semester, with many companies making their intentions known well after the start of the semester. With external pressure to incorporate the industrial representatives in the course despite the time of scheduling, it became difficult to adjust the course load accordingly. One student noted in the mid-semester feedback:
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"I don't think there is an[y]thing that needs to be removed entirely. However, with the amount of class sessions we had had this semester and how long the work outside of class takes, it does seem to be more time consuming than I would expect a 0.5 credit class to be."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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Another student had similar sentiments in the End of Course Survey:
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"I know you do not have a lot of control over how the course operates and what has to be included. I want to strongly suggest, however, that the course is pared back. For a class that is only a half-credit, it requires too much.
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I know this is constantly suggested, but I will keep adding it to the evaluation forms.
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Thank you for the effort that you put into this course, you are a fantastic teacher."
~Additional Feedback Provided by Student Respondent in End of Course Survey. Response was Unprompted.~
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Luckily, this feedback has been showing up less frequently in student surveys, which is encouraging to see as that indicates my efforts towards finding an appropriate workload balance is trending in a positive direction. However, this student and another student signifying the same feelings are correct. The originally planned schedule for the course did not include more than four class meetings with the rest of the work being online. However, with the last minute pressure and addition of other speakers, the time spent on the course became more than what the course load should have been. Despite this, I was not able to find areas to trim down on the course content that followed as most of the remaining sessions were directly related to the course learning goals. Making sessions such as the Career Night and Joachim Forum extra credit could help lighten this workload. Easing on the expensive detail of Unit #1 as well as the number of assessment items in each assessment instrument would have also reduced the course load without posing too much risk to student learning.
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Another common desire for the course was to incorporate more online class sessions instead of in-person class sessions. This was partly due to the need to travel at night for the course. However, most of this was driven by the belief that different class sessions (such as the Unit #3 session on Diversity and Inclusion) would have been successfully implemented online. It is not often that I disagree with student feedback, but I did not agree with this particular perspective. The content that was delivered from the lecture, perhaps, could have been online, but I feel the group work performed in the analysis of the case study would not have been as successful online as it was in-person. It is also more difficult to moderate and monitor student conversations when they are in breakout rooms without additional instructional support, and when the class activity involves a sensitive topic such as identity factors, it is important to ensure the learning environment is safe for all student participants. Granted, I reflected earlier on how I could have improved this particular aspect of the Diversity and Inclusion activity regardless of the in-person classroom setting. However, I still feel this would have been more difficult to manage in an online classroom environment.
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A final point of feedback from the students regarded the class time being at night. This is a piece of feedback I receive every semester, and every semester, I tell my students that I cannot change the course timeslot. I did try one semester by working with the Registrar and students' schedules, However, there was not an earlier timeslot during the week that every student in the course could attend. That is, unfortunately, one part of GNE 330/530 I was not able to change.
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Overall, the feedback that I received from students was constructive and positive, reaffirming that my continual efforts to grow and improve in my teaching and instructional practices was making me a better, more balanced educator. This was observable to me in the Mid-Semester feedback from students, as well as unprompted feedback in the End of Course Surveys:
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"I personally like your teaching methods and how the class is set up..."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"I think the difficulty level of the participation prompts and assessments is fair and doable. They make sure you really look at the content and make you consider how they will be presented in your field of interest. I also like that most of the material is offered in the powerpoints."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"I like the classes where companies come to present and do interviews afterwards. I feel like this class i[t]s one of my only connections to outside companies and opportunities."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"I very much enjoyed the companies coming in and sharing more about how the course applies to the workplace, that was very nice to hear and informative. I would keep going with the company interaction with the course as stated above, it created a lot of good interactions that helped everyone stay focused and get a better understanding from a more practical standpoint."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"Thank you Autumn, I enjoyed the way you had the business people incorporate more of what they do into the class btw"
~Additional Feedback Provided by Student Respondent in End of Course Survey. Response was Unprompted and Listed as #3 in a Two Question Response.~
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"The availability of reference materials and class recordings on Blackboard has been very helpful, and I think should be continued in future semesters. The strong involvement of outside companies has also been an enlightening experience. To the extent that it can be continued in the future, I absolutely think that it should."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"There really is nothing that could have been improved this semester. I have asked for many accom[m]odations from being able to participate online to handing in some assignments late and they have all been given. Class lectures have also been available for reference on Blackboard when I needed them, so there is truly nothing more I could have asked for."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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"Overall, it is evident that you put a lot of work into the course and you care that we actually learn the material! Also thank you for being so flexible on the due dates of the assignments."
~Feedback from Student in Mid-Semester Survey.~
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This feedback also showcases the incorporation of my beliefs about teaching from my Teaching Philosophy Statement into my active instructional practices, as seen from the perspective of the student. While I have a lot to continue improving upon, it is rewarding to see that my efforts to create a better learning experience for the students are paying off and supporting students in their educational journeys.