The Re-entry Experience: Transitioning Effectively into Fall 2021

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Re-entry is a process requiring intentional equipping and planning for the well-being of all involved. Using empirically supported re-entry transition models, in this session we will look back at where we as a community have been and assess the terrain ahead. Together we will take an inventory of the skills and strategies we have gathered over the past year; this self-inventory will help us to cultivate the necessary resources for traversing the road ahead with our colleagues and students. We will leave the session with tools to both use and share with colleagues and students as we navigate our re-entry in an informed way that enhances academic success and well-being for all.

Prepare for the Session

Presented By:

• Dr. Martha Strickland – Associate Professor of Education, Harrisburg
• Dr. Stephanie Winklejon-Black – Assistant Professor of Psychology, Harrisburg

Facilitator: Amanda Price

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Adobe Spark for Creative and Engaging Assignments

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Join us to discuss using Adobe Spark Pages to replace a more traditional research paper including the parameters and guidelines provided to the students in order to support the learning objectives. Also addressed will be using Adobe Spark Posts to support a student-created brand with logos, flyers, and social media posts.

Presented By:

• Janelle Gruber – Lecturer and Program Coordinator, Corporate Communication, Schuylkill
• Michael Lavetsky – Lecturer and Program Chair, Rehabilitation and Human Services, Abington

Facilitator: Matthew Bodek

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Quality within Constraints: Course Design in a Hurry!

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

Join us to discuss how a rapid prototyping model was used to design a quality online course in a hurry. We will also share how we prioritize enhancements and use an iterative design strategy to achieve continuous improvement over time.

Presented By:

• Dr. William Rudge – Adjunct Professor Philosophy, Shenango

Facilitator: Penny Ralston-Berg

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Methods & Modes of Engaging and Enhancing Learning in STEM Courses

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

Faculty will share diverse methods of engaging students in their learning through a variety of teaching methods, strategies and instruction in STEM courses which can be easily adapted to other disciplines.

Presented By:

• Luciana Aronne – Associate Teaching Professor of Chemistry, Behrend
• Dr. Todd Retzlaff – Associate Professor of Mathematics, Lehigh Valley

Facilitator: Shirley Campbell

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Helping Students Succeed with Embedded Tutors and Learning Assistants

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

We have been using an Embedded Tutor/Learning Assistant enabled classroom. These programs have increased student understanding by enabling them to personally engage with the tutors and Learning Assistants. This engagement promotes a higher level of interaction between students and tutors/LAs and increased the use of the tutoring centers.

Presented By:

• Gina Monks – Associate Teaching Professor of Mathematics, Hazleton
• Timothy McNichols – Lecturer, Mathematics, Scranton

Facilitator: Griff Lewis

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Embedding Retention Strategies into Teaching Practices

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Retaining students starts with experiences in the classroom and interactions with faculty. In this session, faculty will share their teaching practices that promote student retention, including setting expectations, writing a clear syllabus and schedule, changes to late policies, and supporting reluctant learners.

Presented By:

• Dr. Christopher Harben – Assistant Teaching Professor of Management, Business & Managment and International Business, Behrend
• Terri Stiles – Lecturer of Communication Arts and Sciences, Abington

Facilitator: Dani McCauley

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Make Discussions Great Again: We Actually Mean It

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

Nurturing professional outcomes in asynchronous online discussions.

Presented By:

• Eric Robbins – Assistant Teaching Professor of Finance, Behrend
• Dr. Jim Fairbank – Associate Professor of Management, Behrend

Facilitator: Jon Gunnell

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Incremental Learning Strategies

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

Teachers and students can benefit from assignments that promote incremental learning. We may all benefit from designing and rewarding step-by-step project development, re-assessment opportunities, and academic integrity.

Presented By:

• Dr. Lacey Wallace – Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Altoona
• Dr. Michael Polgar Professor of Sociology, Social Sciences and Education, Hazleton
• Zack McLaughlin-Alcock – Lecturer of Mathematics, Abington

Facilitator: Shirley Campbell

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Making the Business Classroom More “Profitable”

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

This trio will share a combination of using computer simulations to accommodate specific business course instruction, student application of classroom discussions to real-world scenarios, and the use of SWOT analysis for every case readings that provides students with key takeaway that prepare students for classroom topics as well as everyday life/goals.

Presented By:

• Alan Jeffrey Rock – Lecturer of Business Administration, Mont Alto
• Dr. Satish Mahadevan Srinivasan – Assistant Professor of Information Science and Engineering, Great Valley
• Seth Powless – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Beaver

Facilitator: Grace Chang

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Foe’s Eye View: Engaging Students Through Perspective-Taking Activities

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Students think they know how they feel about something and love to debate their position, but what happens when we put them in their opponents’ shoes? How might students respond when learning new information from their adversaries’ perspectives? Listen as our presenters share their approaches to developing students’ critical thinking, analysis, and ethical decision-making skills through perspective-taking group and individual activities. Professor experiences will focus on healthcare and business courses with broader applications and strategies for other content areas.

Presented By:

• Gina Gray – Assistant Teaching Professor, Kinesiology, Scranton
• James Laurie – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Berks

Facilitator: Lindsay Wood

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Creating Community in Your Courses

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

Getting students to engage in class can be difficult but establishing a positive classroom community can go a long way to help with that. In this session, you’ll hear about a few strategies that have proven to be successful. Through a variety of classroom activities and practices, students have been able to make strong connections to their peers and their instructors.

Presented By:

• Dr. Hannah Mudrick – Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Harrisburg
• Dr. Terrie Wong – Assistant Professor, Communication Arts and Sciences, Brandywine
  

Facilitator: Nathan Hollister

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Allow Students to Author Their Own Learning Path

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

Giving students a voice in how their learning is structured can make their learning journey more relevant, meaningful and enjoyable. During this session, you’ll hear how student-designed lessons and assessments were successfully implemented in two very different disciplines. Through a series of scaffolded assignments, biology lab students designed their own experiments as the culminating activity in the course. Art students worked in groups to design assignments for classmates and grade peers’ final presentation of the resulting work.

Presented By:

• Dr. Bryan Wang – Associate Teaching Professor in Biology, Berks
• Patrick John Daugherty – Instructor of Arts and Humanities, Fayette
  

Facilitator: Mary Ann Mengel

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Facilitating Effective Group Work

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

Group projects are very useful assignments but are hated equally by both students and instructors when things don’t go as expected. This session will provide strategies for effectively setting up and facilitating group work that you can apply to your own courses.

Presented By:

• Dr. Nonna Sorokina – Assistant Professor, Business, Scranton
• Lori Reno – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Hazleton
  

Facilitator: Joe Scott

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Active Learning Through Gameplay

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Capturing and securing student attention can be a struggle for even the most seasoned instructors. As educators strive to create meaningful learning experiences for students, we will share two game-based activities to enhance student engagement. First, ‘Escape rooms’ are game-based learning activities in which students detect clues, solve puzzles, and work collaboratively to “escape” the room. Second, Kahoot, a free online tool, is more engaging and rewarding for students than zoom polls.

Presented By:

• Samantha Beebe – Lecturer of Biobehavioral Health, Lehigh Valley
• Dr. Sukhdeep Gill – Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, York

Facilitator: Eileen Grodziak

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Switching it Up: Using Adobe Spark for Course Assessment

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

Join us to learn creative ways of using Adobe Spark Post and Video for both course content assessment and student reflection. This session may be of interest to faculty who are seeking new ways to:

• engage and assess students,
• ease students’ transition back to the classroom with online activities, and/or
• reduce the time spent reviewing student work

This session complements the “Adobe Spark for Creative and Engaging Assignments” session on 8/11/2021 at 1:00 PM.

Presented By:

• Lori Reno – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Hazleton
• Michael Sturm – Assistant Teaching Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, Brandywine

Facilitator: Liz Huck

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Faculty Reflect on Teaching During COVID—What They’ll Keep For the Fall

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

Faculty share innovative ways they have engaged students, facilitated team-based learning, improved student interaction and other best practices they learned while teaching remotely. They will also discuss how they plan on adopting these best practices for their in-person classes.

Presented By:

• Angela Fantom Kern – Lecturer, Cybersecurity, Business Administration, Harrisburg
• Kelsey Kirk – Lecturer in Information Technology, Harrisburg

Facilitator: Donna Bayer

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Enhancing STEM learning through 3-D Visualization and Digital Collaboration Tools

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

Enhance student learning in the Sciences with free or low-cost tools for interactive and customizable 3-D visualizations then use these tools to create collaborative learning activities for the lab, classroom, and at-home learning using Google Jamboard and Docs. Originally developed for anatomy and physiology courses, these strategies can be adapted for a diverse array of materials.

Presented By:

• Dr. Brenna Hill – Assistant Teaching Professor of Physiology, Harrisburg
• Mary Ann V. Smith – Lecturer of Biology, Schuylkill

Facilitator: Amanda Price

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Introspection Toward Academic Engagement

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Back to basics reflection on our core principles and broader professional goals and the value of these reflective “real life” practices for our students and ourselves. The session examines several insightful and forward-looking exercises that faculty have used with their students and concludes with a discussion and demonstration of mindfulness in the classroom and beyond.

Presented By:

• Carmen Alu – Adjunct Lecturer, Business, Scranton
• Dr. Kelly Munly – Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Altoona
• Stefani Abreu – Instructor, Kinesiology, Abington

Facilitator: Amanda Price

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Happy Little Successes: Activities to Increase Engagement and Build Community in Remote Classes

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

Promoting engagement and a sense of community among students in remote courses continues to be a challenge for instructors. During this session, two unique engagement strategies will be introduced and the increased interaction that resulted, along with a heightened sense of community felt by students as a result of the implementation of the strategies, will be discussed.

Presented By:

• Joan Smeltzer – Assistant Teaching Professor in Mathematics, Science, York
• Maureen Ittig – Assistant Teaching Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Fayette

Facilitator: Daonian Liu

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Creative Course Design: Examples of Transformative and Experiential Learning in the Classroom

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

This session explores three distinct ways faculty infused experiential learning into their classrooms. We will explore topics such as telecollaboration, enthusiastic engagement, getting students to participate beyond their comfort zones, and real-world based projects.

Presented By:

• Alexandria Kile – Assistant Teaching Professor of Communication, Arts and Sciences, Lehigh Valley
• Dr. Massimo Verzella – Assistant Professor of English, Behrend
• Rosemary Martinelli, Lecturer, Communications and Marketing, Greater Allegheny

Facilitator: Kellen Sines

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Teaching Writing with Google Docs in the Post-Pandemic World

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

Google Docs can be a powerful tool to teach writing, both face to face and remotely. Now that so many people are familiar with them, it’s the perfect time to capitalize on Google Docs advantages. In this session, instructors will share successes and tips for teaching writing with Google Docs in any classroom. Come to pick experienced brains!

Presented By:

• Dr. Ashley Yochim – Associate Teaching Professor of English, Behrend
• Dr. Zack De Piero – Assistant Teaching Professor of English Composition, Abington

Facilitator: Rebecca McCormick

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Designing Projects to Enhance Understanding and Engagement

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

Designing student projects to increase student engagement and understanding. We will discuss two types of student projects, 1) utilizing case studies to review theories and incorporating an incremental final project where students prepare their own case studies to demonstrate their research and knowledge; 2) increasing students’ communication skills and digital fluency through a compelling infographic storytelling project where students highlight a local entrepreneur’s journey, from start-up through growth.

Presented By:

• Jodi Gill – Lecturer of Criminal Justice, Beaver
• Theresa Clemente – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Wilkes-Barre
• Amy Kuntz – Instructional Designer, Teaching & Learning with Technology, ID at TLT

Facilitator: Red Yuan

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Open and Affordable Teaching and Collaboration – Two Examples

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room B

This session will present two faculty approaches to working with open and affordable educational materials. Half of the session will focus on potential sources of OER materials for Math and Statistics courses, while the other half will discuss the structure and benefits of forming a community of practice among your peers to support and explore your work with OAER.

Presented By:

• Elizabeth Nelson – Reference and Instruction Librarian, Lehigh Valley
• Larry Musolino – Lecturer, Mathematics, Lehigh Valley

Facilitator: Liz Huck

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Reflective Teaching and Learning Techniques

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room C

Reflective teaching involves using reflection techniques to convey, analyze, and deliver information, in the goal of generating feedback. In this session, you will hear how reflective teaching is used to increase student engagement with each other, with learning content, and with the instructor. Prof. Brennan will share her sample exercises and what she has learned from using reflective teaching techniques.

Drs. Holt and Black-Reed will present a hands-on experience of using Packback, a class-discussion software that each used successfully in introductory and upper-level classes during the pandemic. They will explore with interested faculty how Packback works, how students used (and misused) it, and the grading schemes they eventually developed for Packback participation. They ask that anyone who wishes to participate in the hands-on exercise be signed on with temporary access to Packback using the instructions provided below. They will share other lessons learned in the experience about student participation in discussion, and welcome questions and feedback.

Prepare for the Session

Presented By:

• Erin Brennan – Assistant Teaching Professor of Business, Wilkes-Barre
• Dr. Sharon Ann Holt – Associate Teaching Professor of History, Abington
• Dr. Katrina Black-Reed, Assistant Professor, Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Management, Abington

Facilitator: Grace Chang

Full Session Details & Resources

Transitioning Instruction Online

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room D

This session will share lessons learned when transitioning courses to Online. Each member of the panel will bring a different perspective to changes they made during the transition to online and how it affected the resources, activities, and delivery of lectures. With a focus to ensure teaching and learning took place.

Presented By:

• Dr. Agnes Kim – Associate Professor, Physics, Scranton
• Cathi Gerhard – Adjunct Instructor English, New Kensington
• Dr. Natalya Vodopyanova – Assistant Teaching Professor Corporate Communication, Wilkes-Barre

Facilitator: Julie Meyer

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Inclusive Teaching Practices: Creating a Classroom where Everyone can Thrive

Join on Zoom: Zoom Room A

As classrooms become more diverse, educators are re-evaluating teaching methods. This presentation provides background on the importance of developing cultural competency and creating an inclusive classroom. Inclusive strategies and activities to create a classroom where everyone can thrive are also presented.

Presented By:

• Dr. Denise Ogden – Professor of Marketing, Lehigh Valley
• Sharon Pitterson-Ogaldez – Coordinator, Diversity & International Programs, Berks

Facilitator: Eileen Grodziak

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