Let's Talk UNLV

0:00:00
So welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNV on KUNV. You are co-hosts Keith and Renee. Renee, how was your weekend?

0:00:14
Pretty chill. I just did some walking, go to the gym, you know, go get some groceries, you know, stock up that fridge and watch some TV. So I'm watching ruthless right now off of Prime what that prime video, you know, I don't have all that fancy. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Well, yeah, so I got kids and stuff

0:00:35
Okay

0:00:37
Clothes to buy and oh wishes to pay. Okay, my bad my bad. But yeah, that was my weekend. What about yours?

0:00:43
Similar, you know, I just stayed in you know that you know, we just did, you know, we do some binge watching So we actually were watching a new show it's the one of the Avengers spin-offs okay it was let me see superhero show yes you know my kids they love the action stuff so we get to get loud and so we were watching up the Falcon and I can't remember the guy's name anymore now winter soldier thank you thank you so we binge watched that whole season so it was okay it was great so we was a low-key, low-chill weekend. But, hey, I'm looking forward to this segment of the show. We have Dr. Nicole Hudson, who is the Associate Director for Campus Relations with the Office of Online Education. Dr. Hudson, thank you for joining us.

0:01:28
Thank you for the invitation.

0:01:30
Could you share a little bit about that role?

0:01:32
Yes. I've been with UNLV. It will be two years next month. It's a newly created role. I manage a team of embedded instructional technologists. And their job is to support faculty with professional development opportunities related to online education. So they provide technical support and then we provide a host of trainings

0:01:54
to help faculty take their courses to the next level. So I just wanna jump into this right now. I can imagine either COVID tested your ability, capacity to convince faculty to do that, or you were already prepared and it was just, you know, the next chapter, but faculty were poised to do that. So where would you assess UNLV's faculty in the midst of COVID and the role that you play? Yeah, so if I can give you some context, like I said, I've been here two years. So I started last May, we went remote in March. So as part of my onboarding, it was to hire a team, which started in February. So we went remote in March. So talk about some just in time hiring. I manage a team that supports collagen. So I have six individuals. We had prior year about 160 individuals attend our training. That was up from the previous year. So I felt like we were making some good progress. COVID allowed us to really get the word out on what was already some great content of training, but folks needed it by then. It was nice to do when you wanted to do it, but when you needed it, we had, you know, over, I want to say 700 faculty attend some form of training through the summer months and other cohort experiences that we had. And we were able to expand our training to grad assistants, grad teaching assistants. So our reach was incredible. I think it was a matter of having the right foundation, hiring the right team that was able to execute.

0:03:42
And so when you got your team in just in time in February, we abruptly transitioned to remote, virtual in March. What were like some of the unanticipated lessons learned that you discovered in sort of scaling

0:03:57
up for that need across the campus? I actually before joining UNLV I came from environments that handled scale. So I worked for institutions such as University of Phoenix and DeVry, all these online programs that really scaled out training. So fortunately my background lended itself well to it. I think it was hiring right, I don't say it goes back to staffing. My other background is in HR management and in talent acquisition. So hiring the right team, providing more of an in-depth training for them so they were ready to hit the ground running after two weeks of being kind of in the boot camp of training, but they were skilled. They were skilled to be able to meet faculty where they were and that was the key component of our training is, you know, we had webinars. We also had, before we closed, some face-to-face opportunities in faculty centers so faculty could come in. But we really got good at meeting faculty for where they are, taking their existing content pedagogy approach, and then giving them the nuances of best practices. So everything we trained on was rooted in best practices. If we can help our faculty get incrementally better, we knew we were making a difference. So it wasn't a big leap, it wasn't about tools, it was about taking what you have and where you are, and then moving it to the next level.

0:05:21
So I think we have some great things in place. So now that we're preparing for more in-person classes for fall, and I'm an instructor, and I teach about maybe 10 students for a leadership seminar. And so would you recommend the, is it the HyFlex model, where you have some students in the classroom and then some students that are logging in through WebEx or Google Meets or Zoom? Is that right, Dr. Hudson?

0:05:51
Yeah, that is a model. We are working on a RebelFlex format, so something unique to UNLV

0:05:59
that is very similar to that. Rebel Flex format.

0:06:03
Rebel Flex.

0:06:04
Sounds powerful just in the wording, right?

0:06:07
But it is a model and it's a pilot program where faculty may choose to do that. You know, we already know that faculty are selecting how they want to teach in fall and many are eager to come back in person. So that's a great thing. But we also know there's some best practices of online learning that we encourage them to still integrate into their teaching, even if they're in a face-to-face environment. There's best practices around engagement. There is ability to make material available real time to students so they can prepare around their busy schedules. Those aren't changing. Busy schedules are not going to change now that the pandemic's over, or moving along. Not over. We still have a ways to go. But we want to make sure faculty can take the best practices. They've always had Canvas as a platform, even for face-to-face. We want them to use it. We want them to find ways that they can continue to give students options. Because if anything, this is what it's taught. If students want more choice, they want more options, and they have choices. There's a lot of schools that are doing it right. UNLV is a preferred institution in Southern Nevada, we know that. We just

0:07:17
want to make sure students have more options, more flexibility, and the best

0:07:21
practices of teaching. And Nicole, could you speak a little bit more about some

0:07:25
of the best practices around engagement? Yeah, you know, it's being able to provide resources, first of all, to students. Students want to be seen, they want to be heard, and they also need to be able to be welcomed. And so we talk a lot about an inclusive pedagogy that allows for accessibility of content, but also allowing for students to have some engagement, not just with their instructor, but also fellow students. So the use of WebEx breakout rooms, the ability to not only have your syllabus companion guides, those types of tools and resources are things that we found is the best practice and students believe is important to them as well. Being able to have, you know, a variety of learning strategies. So, you know, you might do a reading, you also might watch a video. We talk about videos being engaging but also short. Our attention span is continuing to decrease. So they have to be content driven, but not just video for video's sake, purposeful and meaningful. So some of the best practices include, we have a system that also is coming out soon and we're going to talk and train to over the summer, but it allows faculty to time stamp knowledge check videos. They can create them, you can create them on your phone. And then you can create this like knowledge check to make sure that students are watching them. And it again reinforces the learning, but also increases student engagement in the content. And that's what we strive for. So let's take this notion of students want to feel seen and heard and we know that right now there is, the world is embracing itself regarding the Derek Chauvin trial. You know, the police shootings and the senseless killings that are happening and black bodies are dying in the streets. And we know that UNLV is a minority-serving institution, and so our students are impacted by that. Faculty and staff of color are also impacted by what's happening. And so maybe just give us an example of this was your classroom. How do you make students feel seen and heard given the dynamics that I just talked about, but then also sticking to the curriculum and sticking to, you know, the lesson plan of the day. I mean how do you invite students to be seen and heard in that kind of setting? There might be faculty that are listening and just grappling with what to do. What would be your advice to them? So as simple as a discussion forum, a discussion space, is one way that faculty can engage students. It's by acknowledging that this is happening in our world. And it can be incorporated in the content, but even without being incorporated into your course content, you have to address what's impacting student learning and our world does. Now I can just speak from my personal experience as an African American woman, in June I felt the weight of our world and honestly outreached across campus to say, how can we support this conversation? I was feeling it in my day-to-day work and I wanted to make sure I found meaning that we were doing work that was meeting the needs of today. And so part of that is by, again, acknowledging, having a conversation, and you can, faculty can do that with a discussion post. First of all, you know, sharing their care and concern, but also providing students the right resources. We hear this time and time again. There was actually an article in UNLV today, today, where a student was talking about the need for resources. You know, UNLV has accumulated quite a few, obviously, through through your leadership, Dr. Watson and others, but there are resources. But faculty need to be able to share that and be equipped with it. And that's what this article talked about. The students shared their experience of just knowing that their faculty cared and then pointed them in the direction of resources. So what I would recommend is faculty get create space but also educate themselves on those resources. Students are not looking for faculty to be experts but they do want to know they care. They want them to humanize their classroom experience and then give them the resources and grace that they need. Those are just some of the things that pop of mind, come to mind of how we can better address these community issues and how they show up

0:12:10
for students in the classroom.

0:12:13
I'm so glad that you shared that because those are practices that I have endorsed and done with my students. And although I'm not full-time faculty, I just teach one course, I would always, regardless of the subject matter, I would begin to test the students' knowledge of the resources on campus. So if we're talking about a leadership seminar course and they're talking about mental health, I would always end about what is your awareness of the UNLV resources? Let's start in your own backyard before we go out into the greater Las Vegas community because you're already paying for these resources, whether you use them or not. What is your knowledge and awareness of these resources? Or if there were resources that were at my fingertip that aligned with that subject matter, I would say, although we did not have a chance to talk about this today, here's some additional resources that might be available to you. And I was shocked overwhelmingly at the response. I thought this was kind of a good shot. I was I was pleasingly shocked because, you know, I didn't know how they would receive them. They were just like, thank you so much. Thank you for caring. I didn't know about this resource. And so, you know, Nicole, you're absolutely right. This is this is so important. And you just never know, you know, which type of student you'll touch because there's so many different students have experiences and they don't know who to go to. They may or may not have a mentor, they may not have an advisor, they may be embarrassed about the situation that they're in. Just providing different options and ways to convey those resources is so wonderful. Now, before Keith gets to this question, because he's just like, well, let me get in there, Renee. How would you advise helping a student who may be nontraditional, maybe they've been out of the class, let's say, 10 years and their writing is kind of, you know, kind of needs some massaging. I just don't want to go right and say, girl, you need to go to the writing center. I don't want to do that, but I don't want to keep grading mediocrity. So they don't help me out. How do I finesse in an online way? I've never met this student in person to say, you know, the Writing Center is there. And remember, my class is at 515, so I don't think the Writing Center staff is vying to come and share all their resources. So help me out. Can you advise me? Help me out. I think that's a great question and concern. You know, it's one thing to talk about social unrest and social justice. It's another thing to talk about writing skills. And either way, you need to be, faculty need to be equipped to have these crucial conversations. And so we are working on a module that hopefully will launch in fall to equip faculty with some experience in that and some confidence in it. But offhand, you know, it is tough in an online environment where they can't see you, they can't, you know, they don't know if you come from a point of concern. And so, you know, most faculty have office hours, just scheduling that time. It is a 10 to 15 minute conversation of resources, but to let them know that, you know, you're giving feedback, but also some grace. This is a chance to rewrite this paper. I want you to utilize these resources. Put some accountability in there. I want to know you tried. I want to know you went and used these resources so that there's at least you know that they're making that attempt and getting the resources that they need.

0:16:15
Nicole, if you were in the studio, you would see Renee beaming from ear to ear.

0:16:20
Put some accountability in there. It is an opportunity, Dr. Watson. You said you know the Writing Center is closed. Our opportunities is to be more accessible and available for students. It's fair. We have to now think about where how to meet students where they are. And that adult learner isn't a learner that gets lost sometimes in our system. And so if we can find ways to expand our hours, make some Saturdays optional, just provide more flexibility. We have shown and proved that we have been able and can do that remotely. And so I'm sure maybe there's some staff that would want to participate on those Saturday hours to again have some flexibility in their schedule, but also be able to meet a greater amount of student needs. Now

0:17:04
Nicole, you should be expecting to be mentioned in Renee's nomination speech when, or her acceptance speech, when she's selected as part-time instructor of the year.

0:17:16
Yes, online educator of the year.

0:17:19
Online educator of the year.

0:17:20
There you go.

0:17:21
Online. That's what we want.

0:17:23
That is great.

0:17:25
So it's great to hear, you know, Renee and Ikea, but it's great to hear like Renee asking those questions to be a better instructor for her learners, but how do you deal with faculty and instructors who are less motivated to change their teaching styles to this online setting or to address the unique or prevailing needs that students might have that are affecting them outside of the classroom? Like, how do you get them to take advantage of these different resources that you're making available?

0:17:56
That is a great question, and to be honest with you, that's why I have a job. It is my work to find out how you get folks to come to your trainings. You know, oftentimes we say this, we see the usual suspects. The folks that are eager, that are looking to continue to develop will come. But we understand faculty have a lot of competing goals, I guess, around research as well. So what we try to do as well is practice what we preach. We meet them where they are. So if there's a chance to do research on online learning, I think we want to bring those opportunities to faculty. Help them see how they can do better in the classroom and still impact their research goals and how that all fits. So that's kind of our next phase of work. We incentivize faculty over the summer to attend training. That's why we got the numbers. And we're not, you know, we know what brought them there. But that's not what's gonna keep them there. So we work to have some very engaging training. We're also working with our faculty center. And so that teaching and learning best practices are elevated on campus. Faculty will want to earn the badges and things that we're putting out. We wanna make sure there's more carrots for them aside from money. Then also just to remind them of why they do this. I mean, Dr. Watson mentioned that she teaches 10 students, which sounds, she said, not a large group, but it's 10 students that she's making a difference for. If we can just encourage and remind faculty why they joined and why they came here in the first place, I think that's the opportunity that we have. We tell the stories, we share simple tweaks and best practices, and actionable items. You know, we're not asking you to make a major overhaul, but if you can do one thing better, you know, it behooves you to do that. And here's the steps, and here's how we can support you.

0:19:52
That's my job. So I know you talked about faculty resources. Maybe let's kind of switch gears to say how can you help student affairs, student life folks in their delivery of content. We have some service learning courses, we have some first year seminar pieces where we work with those first year leads. Supplemental services instruction.

0:20:18
Absolutely.

0:20:19
So maybe kind of switch gears and say how can student life be more tapped into these resources that have been traditionally reserved for faculty? Absolutely. Well, one of the things we are working towards is just putting in Canvas more student resources at the fingertip of students. We have great websites, we have these wonderful resources, but if students are already engaged in their classroom, we feel that if they had a button that said student resources and a button that said faculty resources, it's a good thing. The more information we can provide at fingertips, the better. And so we are working on a proposal to make those changes. But I've been fortunate to be able to work with several of those departments. Service learning is one. I was looking to, I was selected to do an alternate breaks program before we went to, before COVID hit. And so during this time, I know those departments have been feverishly just trying to maintain connection to students, you know, looking at how they can offer their content in different ways. I think our opportunity is to re-engage so they too don't lose the momentum of the online best practices in space. You know, most of these departments I've heard had great turnout in their webinars, more so than they would being face-to-face, so they're appealing to different students with different needs. My job and my hope is that we can find some additional partnership opportunities come fall that leverage those best practices of engaging students online and how we can still Canvas and other resources, webinars, to support students who want those choices and alternatives.

0:22:06
So it's a continued conversation, I believe.

0:22:10
And then I guess my question is going back to what you shared about sort of incremental improvements and sort of leveraging these best practices or embedding these best practices into the curriculum and instruction. I guess my question would be how do you measure or how do you define success in terms of, you know, when someone comes to your training and sort of how do you determine or how do you measure whether they've sort of taken the next step in improving their delivery of services?

0:22:43
Yeah.

0:22:44
You know, we had a summer of, like I said, over 500 faculty attended trainings and it just actually came up today as we continue to look at how do we measure and track that success. One is attendance and then again we get feedback in the training. We often do a poll at the beginning and end anecdotally to confirm if it was helpful. Did you learn more about this topic than you did when you came in? So we do have ways to do some baseline tracking. There's also several proposals that are out there now. Now that folks have had a term to make these improvements in their courses and then implement it over this past year, we are working with decision support to do some more tracking of student outcomes of those improvements. Again, as subtle as they are. So what we're measuring is, did the faculty identify an area of training? Did they attend a training? Did they make the improvement? So all of those things had to be done in order to get the stipend that they received. Now we're taking it to that next level and looking at the outcomes of the student learning. So we can do a pre and post test of students before these improvements, and then the grades and outcomes after. So a couple things are underway to measure that and get in partnership with other departments are some of the ways we can track success. And when it's all said and done, it does come down to student achievement.

0:24:13
And so that's where we're really putting our focus this upcoming year on is things that we can measure in terms of student outcomes.

0:24:21
And then, Nicole, we'll just open up the floor to you to share any information that you would like to share or additional responses that we may not have asked you through our questions.

0:24:34
No worries.

0:24:36
Now, our office is located across the street from campus, so we're off of Rochelle in Maryland. Many people didn't know who we were and what we did. Our initial focus was creating master course content. So a department would come to us and say, we want to make this course, this MAP 120 course, a master course, so anyone who taught it taught the same curriculum. That's one function of our department. But we also have a way to help faculty really do it themselves. And we have resources to make those improvements by request, some artwork, some additional technology, tools that we can incorporate, but also just idea generation. So if I can leave our faculty with anything, it's to know that we're really a great resource and underutilized resource on campus. And then also for faculty to just encourage them to make sure that they're utilizing our best practices and expertise because it is about student achievement and students meeting outcomes.

0:25:40
And we, too, can be a resource to help with that.

0:25:43
And I'll give you just a personal plug through my office. I know we use your services quite a bit with our staff because, you know, once – and we work with middle and high school students as well as UNLV students. And one of the things that we did through your course training is reimagined through Canvas how we can rebuild our entire structure and how we approach delivering services virtually to students and making like a virtual library, converting all of our in-person workshops to online. So I want to personally thank you and your team for all the help you provided to my team at CAO.

0:26:18
That is great.

0:26:19
Good to hear.

0:26:20
My son was a dual enrolled high school student this year, so he took advantage of those resources

0:26:27
and efforts, so thank you. Renee, what are some of your takeaways from today? Well,

0:26:33
I'm excited about the student resources that may be added to Canvas. I think it's a way to ensure that student life is in the classroom, you know, with faculty, helping them troubleshoot some of those questions that they may not be able to answer, especially when students might be experiencing an emergency, a financial hardship, they're contemplating whether they should drop a class or they're contemplating, you know, whether they're going to be able to make it through. And for the faculty to be able to say, oh, you know what, I know about that resource, here's the link, go and check, or to be able to weave those resources into a quiz or into, you know, a discussion. And so I'm really looking forward to that. And I'm also looking forward to make sure that these resources are matched in a timely fashion so that we know that when we're experiencing something like this, as we're all embracing for the outcome of this trial, we can say, you know, here's the check-in that you can do, faculty. Here's the self-care, you know, toolkit that you can have students have, and it's right there. And it takes away the guesswork that faculty may have because they're not deeply entrenched into all the student life resources. What about you, Keith?

0:27:50
You know, it was very informative. Some of the key takeaways, in addition to what you shared, is just sort of the importance of engagement. And, you know, engagement, you sort of think that when you go online, it is this sort of asynchronous modality, but really you can really make it engaging. And I like the example that Nicole shared around, you know, students desiring to be seen and heard and how you can sort of address those things in this online environment and how you can make students feel welcomed and really look at how you build out the accessibility and the variety of your learning strategies and how you present and how you use videos and different discussions and how you can do the timestamp to check for knowledge throughout the different delivery modalities. So I think it was great. So Dr. Hudson, thank you again for joining us today.

0:28:43
Awesome, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12 on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More. That's a wrap.

Transcribed with Cockatoo