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Teaching and Learning

TODAY at 10 a.m.: Recording Tips and Instructor-Generated Video

submitted by maherk@augsburg.edu

Studies have shown that audio and video recordings are an excellent way to promote your “virtual presence” in an online class. The first 15-minutes will provide tips on optimizing your recording “studio” (work area). The rest of the hour will discuss strategies and tools for creating effective video lessons including how to curate your content and add captions.

Tech Tune-ups & Tips every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 am.

Come Zoom with the E-learning Team as they offer two 60-minute sessions each week on how to maximize your use of Moodle and learning technologies as you get ready for classes this Fall. Each session will open with 15-minutes of “pertinent tips & best practices” about important Moodle features/resources. The final 45 minutes will provide training on a specific learning experience or tool. *These sessions will be recorded.

Tech Tune-ups & Tips (can only be viewed with an Augsburg email address)

TOMORROW at 10 a.m.: Understanding Student Cognitive Load in the Remote Teaching Environment

submitted by maherk@augsburg.edu

Learning is hard work, and students this fall will have even more distractions. This session will review the role intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load play in student learning and offer suggestions for reducing extraneous cognitive load in the remote teaching environment.

Wednesdays, July 8 – August 19 from 10 am – 11 am: CTL’s Practical Pedagogy Series

Please join CTL Director Jennifer Bankers-Fulbright and guests for the Practical Pedagogy Series every Wednesday from 10-11am. Designed to complement the Tech Tune-Ups and Tips series and Fellowship Fridays, the Practical Pedagogy series will focus on helping you maintain and/or improve your current pedagogical practices using your preferred Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI, aka Augsburg’s “Hybrid”) option: LIve Remote, Blended, or Parallel. All sessions will be recorded and posted on the Augsburg CTL website, and weekly topics will be posted in A-mail. We look forward to seeing you!

Practical Pedagogy (can only be viewed with an Augsburg email address)

Next Week is Feedback Week

submitted by maherk@augsburg.edu

Next Tuesday – Thursday, Tech Tuneups & Tips and Practical Pedagogy will be devoted to Feedback. These are all offered at 10 am, and you can find more information and links via the CTL page below.

Tech Tuneups & Tips, Tuesday, July 28: Feedback Part 1: Monitoring Student Progress: If you are used to seeing your students regularly in the f2f classroom, the transition to an online modality can be unsettling. This session focuses on ways the data available to you in Moodle can help ensure that you keep track of your students’ progress. The first 15 minutes will focus on Activity Completion, a user-friendly report that can give you an “at-a-glance” view of students’ engagement. The rest of the hour will focus on other Moodle activities and tools (logs, the attendance activity, the gradebook) that will provide you with feedback on how your students’ are navigating the semester.

Practical Pedagogy, Wednesday, July 29: ‘Wise Feedback’ in the Remote Teaching Environment: In this session we’ll talk about the “Wise feedback” strategy of responding to student work in a way that makes it more likely students — especially at-risk students — will engage with your feedback and be motivated to and confident that they can meet high expectations.

Tech Tuneups & Tips, Thursday, July 30: Feedback Part 2: Keeping Students Apprised of their Progress: Timely feedback is essential in motivating students to continue to engage in an online class. Previous sessions have introduced asynchronous active learning technologies that can provide immediate feedback (e.g., the Moodle lesson, H5P Interactive video, VoiceThread LTI, Moodle quizzes). This session will give you a “student’s perspective” on Moodle grading as well as important strategies for ensuring students’ have an accurate sense of their grades throughout the semester.

Find out more about these and other events.

Professor Vivian Feng Receives Grant to Continue Analytical Chemistry Research

submitted by mayper@augsburg.edu

Dr. Vivian Feng, Professor of Chemistry, has received a new research grant that will allow her to conduct another five years of research in analytical chemistry. She will assess the molecular-level interactions between bacterial species, such as Shewanella oneidensis and Bacillus subtilis, and engineered nanoparticles.

Dr. Feng will lead undergraduate researchers to collect and analyze the resulting measurements. This work is a key component of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN), which recently received a five-year renewal to continue its research, education, and public engagement activities, at a sum of $4M per year. Among the ten other collaborating universities within the center, Augsburg is the only primarily undergraduate institution. Dr. Feng’s grant award totals $400,000.

Read more about the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology here: https://susnano.wisc.edu/ (This is supported by the National Science Foundation under award number CHE-2001611.)

Grants and Sponsored Programs

Professor David Crowe Awarded Funding to Continue Mental Health Research

submitted by mayper@augsburg.edu

Dr. David Crowe, Professor of Biology, has received a new subaward from the University of Minnesota, allowing him to continue his research about cortical system dysfunction in psychiatric disease. Dr. Crowe will be responsible for the processing and analysis of data associated with the NeuroPlasticity Research in Support of Mental Health (NeuroPRSMH) center at the University of Minnesota Medical School. NeuroPRSMH received a Silvio O. Conte Center grant valued at $15M from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which will fund Dr. Crowe’s work, totaling $95,000, until spring 2025. The title of the impactful new research study is “Dysfunctional State Representations in Psychosis: From Neurophysiology to Neuroplasticity-based Treatment.”

More about the overall project can be found here: https://med.umn.edu/news-events/u-researchers-receive-15m-nimh-grant-study-psychosis (This is supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number P50MH119569.)

Grants and Sponsored Programs

General Announcements

How to Prepare for Virtual Job and Internship Fair

submitted by grayk2@augsburg.edu

Ever wondered how to go about preparing for your first virtual job and internship fair? Schedule an appointment with a career coach in Handshake to learn more about what to expect, dress code, how to introduce yourself, and tips on how to research prior to the event.

Additional resources available on our Strommen Career & Internship Center Community Moodle Site

Event Announcements

Augsburg TRIO McNair Scholars to Present their Research

submitted by crombie@augsburg.edu

This Thursday, July 23, from 9:00am to 1:00pm, Augsburg McNair Scholars will present their summer research projects. All are welcome to attend!

This is a virtual event, use the following link to join:
https://augsburg.zoom.us/j/5948623288

9:00 – 10:10 Introductions (NSMSCS):
Falak Tawakalna: Incorporating R-language and data science in the Chemistry curriculum (Dr. Vivian Feng)
Nichelle Camden: Designing Fluorescently-Labeled Myosin Constructs (Dr. Ben Binder)
Anahi Cantoran: Active learning vs. Traditional lecturing: Assessing student learning gains in small introductory biology classes at Augsburg University (Dr. Jennifer Bankers-Fulbright)
Q & A / Evaluations

10:10 – 10:20 BREAK

10:20 – 11:30 Introductions (SSHA):
Joseph Gaskill: Decolonizing Our Syllabi: An Analysis of Contemporary & Introductory Anthropology Texts From a Decolonial Perspective (Dr. Matt Sumera)
Nou-Chee Chang: Analyzing Graphic Novels to Teach the Deconstruction of Gender in the Classroom: Anya’s Ghost, The Witch Boy, and Nimona (Dr. Adriane Brown)
Melisa Robles Olivar: Gordita, Brown and Latinx: Instagram Latinx users decolonizing the body with a Decolonized Embodied Pedagogy (Dr. Adriane Brown)
Q & A / Evaluations

11:30 – 11:40 BREAK

11:40 – 12:50 Introductions (SSHA):
Jennifer Medina: A Comparative Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Homelessness During the 2020 Pandemic: A Global Perspective (Dr. Diane Pike)
Salma Ahmed: Addiction and Substance Abuse in Muslim American Communities: barriers of shame and mental health stigma in seeking treatment (Dr. Ankita Deka)
Quin Nelson: Understanding Modern Perspectives on Bipolar Disorder Stigma in Minnesota (Dr. Melissa Hensley)
Q & A / Evaluations

We encourage audience participants to stay the full 1 hour and 10 minutes to hear the introduction & complete evaluations.

Each presentation will be 10-15 minutes so we do not want people to pop into a session as time between speakers may vary slightly.

McNair Scholars Program Website

Keeping Track of Auggies

The Impact of Off-Campus Research for URGO Alum

submitted by tengwalm@augsburg.edu

One of URGO’s primary roles on campus is to offer academic year and summer research opportunities to students across campus. Additionally, URGO helps students find off-campus research opportunities that diversify their portfolio and build their research skills. One alum who chose to look off-campus was Laura Fricke ’19. Read about her story and how a research experience at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City shaped her future forever.

Read about her story

Exciting Research News for URGO Alum

submitted by tengwalm@augsburg.edu

URGO alum Mathia (Tia) Colwell ’15 was recently awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) through the University of Minnesota. According to UMN, “The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) gives the University’s most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year.” If this award is not enough to convince you of Colwell’s academic prowess, she was also awarded the F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award through the National Institute of Health (NIH), which provides two years of funding for her research.

These incredibly impressive accomplishments come after years of study and research that began during Colwell’s time at Augsburg. A graduate from Augsburg’s biology department, her research experience in 2015 under Dr. Ralph Butkowski was a catalyst for her career as a research scientist. “Participating in URGO established a basic foundation of what I could expect in graduate school with developing the logic behind research design,” she said. “I enjoyed the URGO experience so much, that I was thrilled to learn I could pursue a career in research by attending graduate school.” Colwell is currently in the third year of her Molecular Genetics Ph.D. program, designing and working on a project that investigates the multigenerational effects of arsenic exposure during pregnancy on the epigenome.

Congratulations Tia for your impressive work as a scientist!

Classifieds

Somali Translator Needed for Food Distribution Site

submitted by crombie@augsburg.edu

The People’s Library Mutual Aid food and supply distribution site is looking for a Somali translator to assist with visitors on-site. Duties would include providing assistance with taking food/supply orders, explaining the items available, answering questions, and minor conflict resolution.

Currently the distribution site is located on the Minneapolis College of Art and Design campus in Minneapolis and distribution days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, the location will be changing the beginning of August (but will remain in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis).

While there is the possibility of a small stipend for their work, most of it would be on a volunteer basis (and as much time as the person is able to commit).

If you are interested in this volunteer position, please contact Lara Crombie at crombie@augsburg.edu

Mutual Aid Website