Tag Archives: pedogogy

Creating Community Through Collaborative Projects | Pedagogy

The readings related to pedagogy allowed me to reflect and think about the work I do with students at LaGuardia Community College.

Context

First-Year Seminar and Student Success Mentors

At LaGuardia Community College, I oversee the Student Success Mentor (SSM) Program. We hire 15 -20 students each semester. The SSMs in the program facilitate the studio hour lab session that is part of a discipline-specific First Year Seminar Course taught by faculty in the discipline and mentored by one of our SSMs. For example, if a first-year student is majoring in business, they will take the Business and Technology First Year Seminar Course. Currently, we have 16 discipline-specific courses. Our program serves approximately 2000 students who are enrolled in the First Year Seminar.

Learning Digital Communication Ability

Before students graduate and or transfer from our institution, they should learn Digital communication, Written Communication, and Oral communication as part of the Core Compemntices and Abilities. Students begin their development in Digital Communication Ability by creating their first Core ePortfolio on Digication. This ePortfolio goes on a journey with the student from the first semester at LaGuardia until their capstone course.

The Student Success Mentors play an instrumental role in helping students develop their first ePortfolio. Therefore, new SSMs undergo 30 hours of training (5 weeks) before facilitating their First Studio Hour. We touch on several topics ranging from the following:

  • Mentorship
  • DEI
  • Digital Tools
  • Class management
  • Empathy
  • Facilitation
  • Digital Communication
  • College Resouce and etc.

New and Returning SSMs also participate in Professional Development every semester to go over any updates related to technology or topics that need to be addressed.

Community Building Through Collaborative Digital Blog Projects

For the last eight years, the Student Success Mentor Community is very strong. They support each other. Therefore, it’s important for us to create opportunities for SSMs to work together on different projects beginning with the Blog they create with New SSMs and Returning SSMs.

At the culmination of their New SSM Training, the program takes the New SSMs and returning SSMs on a trip to a cultural site. The aim of this trip is to help the New SSMs and Returning SSMs to connect with each other, but also connect the training topics to the artifacts they observe and analyzed at a cultural site. We have visited the MET, Ellis Island, Museum of the City of New York. We provide SSMs with prompts to help them think about what they learned during training and how it’s connected to the artifact. As a team, they come together to answer these questions. They are instructed to take videos, and pictures and take notes. One example is, at the MET, we asked teams to select one artifact they saw at an assigned exhibition and explain how this artifact represents one of the SSM Core Values and how it relates back to the work they will be doing with students once the semester begins.

What to do with media? Computer Literacy Skills

As a former student of graphic design and new media arts I know firsthand how important it is to organize, name, categorize, and backup media. One of the techniques I emphasize before we begin our exploration at the exhibit is to make sure that we have the media in one platform such as google drive to upload and share the media with team members along with any notes they are making as they are documenting their experience.

Putting it together!

In the following session, after they have gone to the cultural site, they meet in the lab. During this session, SSMs begin their work by creating a blog on ePortfolio with the information, videos, and photos they have gathered. As they are creating this blog in the lab, they are running from one computer to another. They are talking, laughing, and overall, helping each other build one blog. Once they have created their blog, they present the section of their blog. During the presentation, you can see the work that went behind creating this blog and how they all supported the work. They practice the digital communication skills they learned during training and also the different topics while creating a lasting community of mentors.

Connected Pedogoy Assignment: The Reverse Peephole

I made several annotations on the reading, as listed below. However, I would like to focus on three quotes. For each quote, I have provided a reason for annotation this quote. I aim to help students relate concepts or themes to their lives. Generally, when students relate the content to their experiences, I think they can better grasp and understand the concept.

  • Quote: ” Queen Victoria transformed into King Edward, ‘the fourth dimension’ became an everyday concept.”
  • Annotation: I am not familiar with this concept of ‘the fourth dimension that occurred a century ago. I need to research since I don’t know what transformation happened during this time.
  •  Quote: “The modem’s faithful churn made it seem as if it were tunneling through to somewhere else, opening up a space for us to inhabit.”
  • Annotation: What does “tunneling through to somewhere else” look like in the digital world? Does that tunnel still exist?
  • Quote:  “With the prospect of this fourth digital dimension, a moment can feel strangely flat if it exists solely in itself.”
  • Annotation: If you post an accomplishment on social media, does it feel “more real” than if you didn’t post it? Why?

1) Quote: “but our physical homes have also been digitized. We can identify a common fitting on a 4D house by traveling back in time to the unlikely world of Seinfeld‘s last season”

Annotation: Video Reference Youtube: https://youtu.be/jzAvEkbn3lA

Annotation Reason:

I am not sure what is the age group for this class, however, I am assuming that some might not understand the reference to Seinfeld. Therefore, I provided a short video that I found on YouTube related to this specific scene.

2)Quote: “physical homes have also been digitized.”

Annotation: During the pandemic, when work and school took place online, we were forced to digitally invite our colleagues, boss, classmates, interviews, and people we usually don’t invite to our homes. How did this make you feel? What did you learn more about this experience?

Annotation Reason:

This book was written in 2016, however, four years later, the whole world was forced to changes due to the pandemic. Therefore, these students can understand the impact it had on their lives. This question aims to help them reflect on their own experience, give them a moment to think about their feelings and give them the power to create their narrative, as this was a traumatic experience for many.

3) Quote: “What happens to the nervous system when it is exposed.to the delights and pressures and weird sorrows of networked life? “

Annotation: What happens to the development of children who are born into using mobile devices?

Annotation Reason:

This is a rhetorical question. I don’t have the answers. However, I’d like students to consider the digital world’s implications on children.