Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning

Abstract
How likely is it that the women enrolled in your classes see themselves reflected in the course materials you assign? We discovered that, when it comes to journalism education in the U.S., the vast majority of instructional materials assigned during the 2018-2019 academic year were created by men. The underrepresentation of female authors may make it difficult for female students to imagine themselves pursuing journalism careers, contributing to the profession’s persistent lack of diversity. Our research presentation will include a brief overview of our study followed by a robust discussion with participants about techniques to make all of our syllabi more diverse.

Presenter
Meg Heckman
Assistant Professor
Journalism
College of Arts, Media and Design

Abstract
This research presentation describes the implementation and evaluation of specifications grading in ARTD 2380 Video Basics. The course engages students in an introductory exploration of the moving image as an art form. This grading scheme’s most unique characteristic is using one-level grading rubrics: assessing all work as either incomplete or complete. Providing flexibility while maintaining a focus on learning outcomes is achieved with a mechanism that allows students to request extensions or rework an assignment that is considered insufficient. A significant effect of specifications grading is a more authentic assessment of work, and students, faculty, and administrators can better assess if students are achieving learning outcomes. The study compares student end-of-semester reflections from the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 classes to evaluate the effectiveness of specifications grading from the students’ perspective.

Presenter
David Tamés
Associate Teaching Professor
Department of Art + Design, Communications Studies
College of Arts, Media and Design

Abstract
In CATLR’s Teaching and Learning Scholars (formerly Faculty Scholars) Program, educators carry out a systematic investigation of their students’ learning. At the end of the program, they co-author a booklet of essays about their experiences. In this session, we feature John Sangster (2020 cohort) and Anne van De Ven-Moloney (2020 cohort). To read their essays and learn more about the Scholars Program, visit (https://learning.northeastern.edu/engage/programs/scholars-program/).

Presenters
“Catching Students Before Freefall: Mitigating the Transition To Higher Education in Precedented and Unprecedented Times”
John Sangster
Assistant Teaching Professor
First Year Engineering Program
College of Engineering

“Online Laboratory Courses: Can We Do It? Yes, We Can!”
Anne van De Ven-Moloney
Assistant Teaching Professor
Physics
College of Science

Abstract
In CATLR’s Teaching and Learning Scholars (formerly Faculty Scholars) Program, educators carry out a systematic investigation of their students’ learning. At the end of the program, they co-author a booklet of essays about their experiences. In this session, we feature Katy Shorey (2019 cohort) and Mary Lynn Fahey (2019 cohort). To read their essays and learn more about the Scholars Program, visit (https://learning.northeastern.edu/engage/programs/scholars-program/).

Presenters
“Redesigning Class Debate”
Katy Shorey
Assistant Teaching Professor
Department of Philosophy and Religion
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

“Clinical Decision-Making Among Nurse Practitioner Students”
Mary Lynn Fahey
Assistant Clinical Professor
School of Nursing
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

[CANCELED]

Abstract
This interactive workshop will showcase a co-curricular initiative by the Center for Intercultural Engagement of Cultural Life, presented in collaboration with the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service, to support learners in developing global leadership skills. As Northeastern becomes increasingly global, students require spaces to process their global experiences and continue to learn from those experiences over time. We will be sharing several frameworks, including concepts of decolonizing education and the intercultural praxis model, to understand how to utilize reflections and connections from global experiences to enhance various learning environments. In this workshop, we will reflect on the following questions: What does it mean for students on global co-op or study abroad to interact with people who are of other faiths and cultural backgrounds? How do students participate in intercultural dialogue on the Boston campus and think critically about those encounters? What types of questions are students encountering about their own identities as they navigate Northeastern (in Boston, nationally, or internationally)?

Presenters
Naomi Boase
Assistant Director
Center for Intercultural Engagement and Social Justice Resources

Sagar Rajpal
Senior Assistant Director
Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service

Abstract
Global experiential education often situates students in contexts that differ from their own lived experiences. While providing significant opportunities for intellectual, professional, and personal growth, community-engaged teaching, learning, and research (CETLR) can unintentionally position students to cause unintended harm by providing a simplistic and patronizing perspective on the communities with which they engage, reinforcing misperceptions and biases, and perpetuating power differentials between community members and academic institutions. Facilitators will identify a framework they have developed to raise students’ and faculty members’ awareness of the practical and ethical risks inherent in community-based academic pursuits and prepare them to mitigate these risks while optimizing the benefits of rigorous learning in and with a community. Participants will identify opportunities to mitigate potential risks to students and communities in their own CETLR, provide feedback on how to improve the framework, and develop a strategy for introducing it more widely throughout the university network.

Presenters
Rebecca Riccio
Khaled and Olfat Juffali Director of the Social Impact Lab and Lecturer of Human Services
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Becca Berkey
Director, Community-Engaged Teaching and Research
Office of City and Community Engagement

Giordana Mecagni
Head of Special Collections and University Archivist
Northeastern Library

Abstract
By stepping through a SAIL mapping process evolving into a college-wide cultural learning process, participants will gain insights into the inquiry, discovery, discourse, and growth of a learning environment. The goal of this workshop is to examine educational transparency through an institutional strategic goal of advancing SAIL engagement and identifying practical tools which can be used by others. Through the College of Professional Studies sample storyboard journey, college challenges will be revealed as they were faced by people, processes, and tools in the effort to engage faculty and staff in the cultural shift toward a new way of defining learning (terminology, context, and concrete mapping). During this workshop, participants will have supported opportunities to storyboard their context, explore deeper SAIL engagement, and generate tools to promote advancement of a cultural learning process within their learning environments.

Presenters

Patricia Goodman
Associate Teaching Professor
Corporate and Organizational Studies
College of Professional Studies

Mamta Saxena
Director of Assessment
College of Professional Studies

Karen Reiss Medwed
Associate Teaching Professor and Assistant Dean
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Joan Giblin
Assistant Teaching Professor
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Melissa Parenti
Assistant Teaching Professor
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Amy Lantinga
Teaching Professor
Foundation Year
College of Professional Studies

Abstract
In the past decade, there has been a substantial body of research on team formation and the characteristics that make teams successful in education. In this poster, I will review that research and present gruepr, an open-source software tool I wrote based upon its findings. gruepr allows an instructor to place students onto optimal project teams using a very flexible set of data surveyed from the students with a Google Form. For example, teams can be based on: commonality of weekly schedules; prevention of isolating underrepresented students; heterogeneity or homogeneity of various instructor-created metrics; and more. I will also present validation of the use of gruepr in the form of results from a survey of faculty to assess how they used gruepr and what their perceptions were. gruepr is useful for anyone seeking a more intentional educational outcome than is derived from randomizing teams or letting students self-select teammates.

Presenter
Joshua Hertz
Associate Teaching Professor
First Year Engineering Program
College of Engineering

Abstract
Second degree nursing students on Northeastern’s Charlotte campus complete a BSN and prepare to enter a new career in just four semesters. Many of them do not recognize, and therefore cannot articulate to potential employers, the value of their knowledge, transferable skills, and academic and professional accomplishments. Through small-group, behavioral-based interviewing workshops, we decode commonly asked job interview questions, discuss strategies for answering, and in the process, help students discover and communicate their strengths.

Presenter
Tia Keck
Academic Advisor
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Abstract
CS 1200, a first-year seminar in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, “seeks to support students in their transition to Northeastern and in their holistic development” and in order to facilitate this, one of the learning outcomes for the course is for students “to develop positive relationships with peers, faculty, and staff.” We believe that the foundation for these positive relationships is a sense of community, inclusion and equity within the seminar class itself. To foster this inclusive community, we redesigned CS 1200 based on a semester-long Design Thinking project that encouraged empathy and collaboration amongst our students, as well as enabled us to introduce elements of Kishimoto’s (2016) antiracist pedagogy principles into the course structure. This poster and supplemental material will set an example for how others can structure their own first-year seminars (whether it’s online, hybrid, or in person) around a Design Thinking project and incorporate antiracist pedagogy principles to create community in an authentic, meaningful way.

Presenters
Jill Forgash
Academic Advisor
Khoury College of Computer Sciences

Claire Wassinger
Academic Advisor
Khoury College of Computer Sciences

Abstract
Somewhere inside everyone is a nagging memory or repeating guilt for not quite finishing a useful project, never upgrading a necessary skill, or never even beginning a cherished dream. The Gap work deliberately focuses on the unfinished business of life that we can self-identity, plan and tackle with support, and consequently activate those parts of ourselves we often say we are just too busy to fix. Engaging the Gap is encountering procrastination, confronting abandoned dreams and making them visible to ourselves. When we bring to the surface the parts of ourselves born from our own experience and imagination but left incomplete, we can make better choices about making ourselves whole. When we attend to the Gap, filtered through the strong framework of SAIL, we become consciously aware of taking care of ourselves at the deepest level.

Presenter
Ellen Jackson
Assistant Teaching Professor
Writing Program
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract
This poster will showcase a self-guided faculty onboarding module developed by the Community-Engaged Teaching and Research team that has allowed our staff to deepen collaborations with new and existing faculty members. The module enables our staff to have upfront and purposeful conversations, and creates consistency in faculty members’ understanding of the context of community-engaged teaching, what it means to partner with us, and the resources offered to support them. Our poster shares our team’s design process from ideation to implementation and hopes to inspire others as they seek to create new and innovative ways to train and educate outside of the curriculum.

Presenters
Chelsea Lauder
Program Associate
Community-Engaged Teaching and Research
Office of City and Community Engagement

Lisa Roe
Director of Team Strategy and Special Projects
Office of City and Community Engagement

Abstract
As students search for a co-op, does their perceived confidence have any impact on their success? The poster will show the results of a survey that was taken by international graduate engineering students in a career preparatory class as well as to advisees of the authors across several semesters. The survey asked about students’ perceived confidence in job search skills including resume writing, networking, and interviewing. Questions pertaining to the co-op search are reviewed such as: Does a student’s confidence increase over the course of the semester? Does a student’s confidence affect his/her job search activities such as applying for jobs or meeting with his/her advisor? Does high confidence strongly correlate to the success of securing a co-op?

Presenters
John Bleakney
Assistant Co-op Coordinator and Part-Time Lecturer
Cooperative Education
College of Engineering

Rachel Walsh-Peterson
Associate Coop Coordinator
Cooperative Education
College of Engineering

Abstract
The subject of equity in education predates the pandemic. However, COVID-19 has brought these issues to the forefront due to its impact on learner and instructor engagement. Assessment is about measuring learning for accountability and continuous improvement. However, it can also be a tool for promoting equity to improve learning for all students, including the underrepresented populations. Our assessment unit ventured to rethink the assessment cycle with the goal to address the equity challenge. The reflection leads to the discovery of what was missing, from outcomes to data analysis, and some effective strategies. Our next challenge is the implementation of these strategies which will require transformative orientation and paradigm adjustments on part of all of the stakeholders: faculty, administration, and students. This poster explores how to best move the practice forward at the institution, program, and course level and how to leverage the momentum of urgency that we have today.

Presenters
Mamta Saxena
Director of Assessment
College of Professional Studies

Darin Detwiler
Associate Teaching Professor and Assistant Dean
Food Policy
College of Professional Studies

Abstract
This action research imposed asynchronous video in the discussion board of a hybrid undergraduate English composition course for international second-language students to examine its effect. Students’ video posts when peer reviewing were transcribed and compared to a similar course where students used only text. Compared to text on relevant dimensions, videotaped posts were (1) longer in word count; (2) had warmer levels of greetings and salutations; (3) contained more compliments and critiques; (4) showed more connection to the drafts being reviewed; (5) demonstrated greater and more personalized peer interaction; and (6) displayed more expressions of self-reflection. These results indicate increased level of student interaction and reflection that constructivist learning theory and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) online learning framework tell us leads to higher learning outcomes. Outside of English composition courses and second-language students, asynchronous video discussion board posts likely will have these same benefits for most student populations. 

Presenter
Grazia R. Svokos
Lecturer
Department of English Composition
College of Professional Studies

Abstract
Science courses have been an organized part of curriculum since the turn of the 20th century. Since then, theorists such as Dewey, Montessori, and Tyler have written about how science should be taught in the classroom to promote student engagement and stay competitive in the global science and technology industries. Currently, there is a call to increase science literacy skills among students so that they can understand information presented in the news and use it to make informed decisions when interacting in their communities. This research examines how science textbooks support interdisciplinary lessons, connect concepts to the real world, and encourage students to reflect on their position in society. A textbook evaluation tool is presented that scores books in categories including diversity, career-focused, and experiential learning. This tool is designed to help classroom teachers choose resources that are culturally responsive and reflective of social justice issues.

Presenter
Nicole Prince
Doctoral Student
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Abstract
The 1.1 million international students studying in the U.S. constitute a vast talent pool, yet they face language and cultural challenges when seeking employment opportunities. This poster details the Professional Communication course created by College of Engineering Co-op Faculty to help international students fulfill the minimum language requirement for the co-op program. The course also increases international students’ cultural and professional competencies and thereby job search success. Learning about our course design will help other educators to: create resources to support international students in preparation for their co-op and internship experience; adapt curriculum design methods to support international students in their teaching and advising practice; and apply pedagogies and advising tools designed to increase English proficiency while simultaneously developing cultural and professional competencies.

Presenters
Siying (Lucy) Lu
Faculty Co-op Coordinator
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
College of Engineering

Heather Carpenter-Oliveira
Associate Co-op Coordinator and Assistant Director
College of Engineering

Abstract
The course syllabus is the written communication between instructor and students in higher education to articulate the knowledge and skills that will be learned in the class (Nilson, 2010). Yet, the language of the academy itself can be marginalizing for those from Indigenous and First Nations populations who often have “reluctant” (Belanger, 2014) connections with academia. This poster demonstrates our attempt to lean toward a “learning spirit” that resists the present Eurocentric frameworks that often guide course content (Battiste, 2013). Through our guiding question ”How can our syllabus more authentically include the knowledge and voices of Indigenous students?” and in the use of Dimitrov and Haque’s (2016) framework, we illustrate our ongoing process of awakening to the ways that our identities as settler-colonists are reflected in the language, content, and instructional strategies in our courses. As Canadians, we also shine a light on racism outside of the U.S. context.

Presenters
Wendy A. Crocker
Associate Teaching Professor
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Danielle Pusateri
Doctoral Student
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Abstract
This poster describes the transition of a traditional, in-person, lab-based class to an hybrid learning experience, with the goal of promoting flexibility and inclusion of students distributed in different time zones and with different backgrounds. The class design strives to combine active learning elements with the need for flexible, synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences. In particular, the poster will highlight that personalized feedback, either through the class online platform, or during live coding classes, is appreciated by the students, as it represents a way to bridge the remote learning divide. Similarly, the combination of different class formats and teaching materials was perceived as an enabler of a flexible learning experience. The findings reported in the poster can be applied to hybrid and remote courses spanning a wide variety of disciplines in engineering and computer science, especially if featuring a programming component.

Presenter
Michele Polese
Part-Time Lecturer
Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Principal Research Scientist
Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things

Abstract
The Global Experience Office designed infrastructure to support inclusive, equitable learning across a variety of program types. Our goal was to assist faculty from all disciplines in developing and facilitating inclusive Dialogue of Civilizations programs with a strong emphasis on global and intercultural learning. The resource includes asynchronous modules in Canvas informed by developmental models from Harvey (2020), Hammer (2011), and Vande Berg (2012), and the praxis frameworks and intercultural pedagogy of Sorrells (2016), Dimitrov and Haque (2016), and Lee (2017), followed by a live workshop. Modules introduce foundational knowledge on global and intercultural learning and guide faculty through personal reflection, facilitation, and backward design. Topics include holistic program design, fostering belonging within a cohort, ethical community-based learning, and designing for diversity, equity and inclusion. This might inspire those who work in community-based learning, international education, and could be implemented to foster inclusion in other diverse workspaces and communities.

Presenters
Molly Giblin
Associate Director of Academic Integration and Global Learning
Global Experience Office

Lane Marder
Associate Director of Program Development
Global Experience Office

Meisha Swaby
Associate Director of Program Development
Global Experience Office

Abstract
This narrative study investigated the unique academic and occupational experiences of neurodivergent learners (including young adults with Dyslexia, ADHD, and Autism) who attended a small liberal arts college intentionally designed to promote equity and inclusion for this population before entering the workforce and/or completing their postsecondary education in mainstream academic environments. Through their stories about their learning journeys, participants revealed a number of social and contextual experiences that contributed to their identity development and ability to navigate the educational and work context. Recognizing that all educators engage with neurodivergent learners, this poster will provide the opportunity for faculty, administrators, co-op coordinators, career development professionals, and employers to reflect upon how they might adopt an asset-based approach when engaging with neurodivergent learners in educational and work contexts. In addition, the stories of participants will further enhance their understanding of the identity development process and how they might support neurodivergent learners in their respective roles.

Presenters
Lucy Stamp
Associate Professor
School of Education
Landmark College
Alumni, ‘20
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies

Tova Sanders
Associate Teaching Professor
Graduate School of Education
College of Professional Studies