Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Debate on High Capacity Wells

Portrait image of a person, Rebecca Abler

Rebecca Abler, Manitowoc Campus, Natural and Applied Sciences Department

About the Professor

Rebecca Abler is a Wisconsin native with a degree in Biology from UW-Oshkosh. She graduated with a PhD in 2004 and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UW- Madison. She became a faculty member in 2005 in Manitowoc and is now a member of the Natural and Applied Sciences Department.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Utilizing Canvas discussion boards as interactive debate platforms for real world, immediate problems. This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the Canvas Gallery.

UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

Debate on High-Capacity Wells

Description

This assignment is a Canvas Discussion Board where students either take sides in a debate on a real-world topic or vote as an audience member. Students rotate the role they take in each different discussion. They get to apply knowledge from their course to a real-world situation.

Modality and context

Face-to-face or online. Developed for an introductory Environmental Science course.

Purpose

This activity was originally created for face-to-face classes. Students seemed to be more engaged during field trips to streams and natural areas and issues connected to the real world. The instructor wanted to use that “reality” to engage even online students, and so the panel discussions were born, focused on real-world activities.

Assignment Details

In the first example of the debate, students are provided with the topic of High-Capacity Wells. They are given their roles, which could be part of the Farm Bureau, the Central Sands Lake Association or the Legislature who will vote on the proposal. The two sides are given a date to propose opening arguments, the audience is then given a date to pose questions, the two groups are given more time to answer the questions, and then the legislature votes. All students are given source material to prepare for their task in the role-playing. The tasks are laid out in a way that makes sense for this real-world activity and gives the students an opportunity to delve into the issues that are impacting their world.

Applying This Idea to Your Classroom

Canvas discussion boards are a tool that everyone has access to. Turning an idea of interest that is applicable to your area into a debate on a discussion board is generally possible in most subject areas. Give it a try with your students and see how it goes!

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – PostSecret Writing Project

Photo of a person, Jonas Gardsby, standing in front of trees.
Jonas Gardsby, Green Bay Campus, English Department and Writing & Applied Arts

About the Professor

Jonas Gardsby is in his third year as an Assistant Professor at UWGB. Previously, he completed an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English at the University of Colorado. He earned his PhD in early modern literature at the University of Minnesota.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Using the PostSecret Project as a way for his creative writing students to add psychological depth and an element of the unexpected to their fiction.

This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

PostSecret Creating Writing Exercise & Discussion

Description

This is both a creative writing assignment and a Canvas discussion board. It draws on PostSecret, a social and art experiment where people anonymously create postcards that share something they have never told anyone. Students choose one of these secrets and apply them to characters they have already created.

Modality and Context

Face-to-face or online. This assignment is the last of six exercises completed by creative writing students who are drafting a full story. Each exercise teaches some element of craft as well as changing the story they are working on in a way that gives it a renewed energy. The PostSecret activity is the last assignment before piecing the whole story together.

Purpose

This activity helps the writer to more fully realize a character by uncovering a previously unexplored dimension that affects the character’s motivations and actions.

Assignment Details

Having already worked on elements of fiction like plot, setting, scene, and character development, the student is asked to browse a Canvas page featuring postcards that display art and written secrets, arranged into different categories like addiction, lying, and regret. The student chooses a secret, gives it to a character they have been developing, and writes a monologue for the character about the secret. After completing this activity, they share the monologue on a discussion board. Peers reply with insights into how this secret is being used to advance the narrative of the original story.

Applying This Strategy to Your Courses

This may seem like an assignment that could only work in creative writing classes, but the idea of adding something surprising to what you already know can be employed in many areas of writing, from policy debates to nursing case studies. Add an unexpected element for students to work within, through which they can generate surprising solutions in their writing. As was done with the PostSecret project, you can give students a list of choices or ask them to come up with an unexpected element and see how they handle it and how that shapes their thinking.

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Escape Rooms Help Students See That Chemistry Doesn’t Have to Be Scary! 

a smiling woman with blonde hair wearing a black shirt
Breeyawn Lybbert, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Background

Professor Breeyawn Lybbert has been teaching at UWGB for the last 5 years. Professor Lybbert started at the UW Colleges in Manitowoc in 2014, after having worked previously at the University of Minnesota Morris. She went to the University of Minnesota for her bachelor’s degree and earned her PhD from UCLA. She has a special love of Organic Chemistry, which is also the focus of her dissertation.

Strategy

an office door covered in strips of caution tapeWhen Professor Lybbert began thinking about escape rooms, they were all the rage. She discovered an article in the Journal of Chemistry Education, which described, in detail, a Lab-Based Chemical Escape Room. The article describes a scenario in which four bombs are set to explode unless the chemists in the room are able to neutralize them. The scenario presented used the kinds of puzzles those familiar with escape rooms might be used to, but in order to solve these puzzles, chemistry knowledge would also come into play. This is what Professor Lybbert used as a guide to create her own physical escape room inside her classroom. More than just creating a fun activity, she created an environment designed to immerse her students in the escape room, complete with yellow caution tape, scary music, and a countdown timer. Her students get a full hour to work as a team to solve this puzzle.

a chemistry classroom with a counting down timer on a projector screen

Why Is It Important?

Professor Lybbert uses this activity in her Chem 109 class, a class that is not geared toward chemistry majors. The students who take this class are often anxious about the content of the class and their ability to master it. This activity comes at the end of the class and manages to demonstrate to students how much they’ve learned about chemistry, even with all of their apprehension. While the professor says students are often confused at the beginning of the exercise, they become invested and work together to solve the puzzles and escape. At the end of the escape room, they complete a survey of their thoughts on the experience, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. They feel that it’s a nice way to round out a hard class.

How Does It Benefit Students?

manila envelopes and notebooks on a black tableStudents have the opportunity to use the knowledge they’ve gained throughout the course of the semester in a low-stakes (but heightened-intensity) lab activity that gives them the chance to reflect on their learning once the adrenaline has passed. Although not perfectly a real-world scenario, students do realize that they can use their knowledge when the time counts!

What Inspires Your Work?

Professor Lybbert says that her students’ reactions inspire her work. Students realize that they have mastered and applied knowledge and skills that likely seemed very daunting when they started her class. They realize through this activity that chemistry really isn’t so scary and that makes it worth it.

Want to Try It?

The resources below include the article that inspired Bree Lybbert, along with some other articles that link to puzzles and more tips for creating your own escape room.

Share with Your Colleagues

Do you have a strategy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send a quick email to catl@uwgb.edu and we will follow up with you to create your teaching strategy spotlight! We would love to hear from you!

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Comics in the Classroom

Zack Kruse Teaching Spotlight

Zack Kruse, Lecturer for Applied Writing and English

Background

POW speech bubble

Professor Kruse earned his undergraduate degree in 2004 and then worked in the comics industry for a decade. He went on to earn his PhD from Michigan State in English, focusing in visual media and American Cultural Studies. His dissertation was published by University Press in Mississippi. That book, Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity was nominated for an Eisner award. Professor Kruse is also writing for a comic series called Static, one of Steve Ditko’s creations, and he wrote a comic strip called Mystery Solved! which appeared in Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. He is in the process of creating a documentary based on the books of Steve Ditko.

Strategy

Comic books are an enduring form of storytelling that several instructors on our campus are using. Professor Kruse’s classroom strategy is using comic books both as literature in English classes and to teach visual literacy in writing foundations courses. Zack also teaches a first-year seminar focused on comic books and American culture. The comics are used to convey ideas about society using characters and ideas that students are more familiar with. It meets the students “where they are” and gives a diverse student population the opportunity to see others like themselves within the pages of these books and also as creators.

Why Is It Important?

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Professor Kruse makes it clear that he is passionate both about comics and the students within his classroom. He is aware of the broad cultural impact of comic books and that these texts invite a sense of discovery by looking at characters that are likely familiar in a new way.  He believes that comics help students who are trying to find their place in the world see others like themselves doing the same thing. It also can help students who are hesitant to read to ultimately engage with ideas in a more accessible way and become part of the cultural conversation. The history of comics is a history of many of the divisive issues in our current time. Comics have existed as long as many of these issues and they have something to say to our students. His hope is that young people will engage with these texts and then act where they feel passionate.

Want to Try It?

Boom speech bubbleProfessor Kruse has used the following comic books in his classroom. Some of those comic studies have included author visits. Professor Kruse uses a multitude of others not listed here and would be happy to offer recommendations if you’d like to integrate some of these works into your own classroom.

Want to Know More? Explore Additional Resources!

*Speech Bubbles covered by a Creative Commons license and provided courtesy of Rojal on PNG All

Share with Your Colleagues

Do you have a strategy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send a quick email to catl@uwgb.edu and we will follow up with you to create your teaching strategy spotlight! We would love to hear from you!