Spring 2023 Community of Praxis Projects

List of Past Projects

Equity Coaches: Ashley and Lauren

1.Salem Alagtash - Computer Science and Information Technology

Coding for All is a concept of teaching based on Metacognition, Learner Identities, Equitable Grading, and Backward Design. Instructor plans to apply Cognitive Strategies and Processes (CSP) in his CIS 004 course offering in Fall of 2023, and plans to ask students to build their own CSP and apply them during the semester.

During this process, students will plan how to learn to program in Linux, they will monitor their learning by measuring their comprehension in the various class activities, evaluate the results of their learning process, and adapt their plan as they progress during the semester. During the spring semester, the instructor used project-based learning in the CIS 004 course. 

He plans to modify his syllabus to emphasize the cultural aspects of his students, and will plan class activities that will foster confidence, respect identities, and promote collaborative assignments. He will also incorporate Grading for Growth (GfG) approach which is driven by context standard, continuous feedback, progress indicators and reattempt opportunities.

In the Spring 2023 courses, the instructor allowed students second attempts at some of the quizzes and exams, and also provided students with the opportunities to work on a capstone project instead of taking the final exam. In Fall 2023, he plans to use systematic “Equitable Grading” strategy motivated by GfG where students can make multiple attempts, work on a semester-long capstone project, and provide indicators to measure their progress in learning.   

Instructor plans to use Backward Designs strategies in his Spring 2024 course where he will jointly, with his students, set up clear goals of learning at the beginning of the semester, provide continuous feedback through progression and assessment, and adopt seamless yet empathetic course design instructions.      

2. Amira Ragab - Math

Praxis Project Spring 2023 Equity Pedagogy COP - Amira Ragab.pdf

Instructor’s goals include culturally responsive teaching, the use of metacognition, utilize equitable grading, and evaluate herself. She accomplished that by:  

  • Cultural Responsiveness: using various teaching styles, group work, peer learning, real life situations. 
  • Metacognition Strategies: The use of pre, during, and post surveys. 
  • Equitable Grading: accurate and fair assessment of student’s mastery of material, provide feedback, allow students to do corrections, drop down the lowest score exam, accept late homework, and be transparent about the grading. 
  • Evaluation: self-reflection, collaborative learning, and changes to curriculum.  

3. Michael Cao - Math - Also participated in Spring '21

    • Participant Praxis Project - Michael Cao Spring 23.pdf
    • Beginning and End of the Class Reflection.pdf

Currently utilizes the exam reflection technique, low stake assessment, and self-reflection. With the reflection piece, the students are asked to compare the posted solutions to their own and are asked to jot down what they notice or what they have learned from the discussions. With low stake assessment, the quizzes are only 5% of the class’s grade, they are given between exams and are used as ways to gauge the students’ understanding. 

Future ideas for self-reflection are to administer surveys at beginning of the class and end of the class in which students are asked to rate their understanding and confidence of math concepts, and math in general, by using the Likert scale of 1-10. 

Equity Coaches:  Rick and Joanne

1.Marina Broeder - ESL

Marina Broeder Praxis Project Spring '23

The instructor focused on: Assessment, grading speeches and recorded assignments, as well as reducing stress associated with public speaking, helping students set individual goals, soliciting student feedback in choosing the criteria of assessment such as pass/no pass or point system, developing assessment rubrics collaboratively with students, noticing improvement and providing constructive peer feedback. Using the principles of Human Centered Design and Universal Design as well as the Praxis framework to make the following changes to her class: 

  • Instead of the textbook, use TedEd videos on Effective Practice, Confidence, and Empathy for discussion 
  • Use a lecture on Multilingualism and Language Acquisition for notetaking 
  • Use videos from StoryCorps as models for storytelling 
  • focus on habit building with Positive Affirmations 
  • Have students record 3-4 short presentations 
  • Use discussion boards as prep for in-class discussions and further presentations 
  • Include self-reflection into each milestone assignment rubric 
  • Develop the rubric for speaking assignments collaboratively as a class 
  • Teach students how to provide meaningful, constructive, and generative feedback by modeling and by providing specific instructions 
  • Add an end-of-class survey 

By providing multiple language models and encouraging students to choose their own videos and topics for discussions and presentations, the instructor emphasized that this will provide student with a sense of being co-creators of the class and building knowledge together. The discussion on the power of music, based on Professor Salti's lecture about the Music of the Arab Spring, and the presentations on students' favorite songs, allowed for the learning to be culturally relevant and enriching.

Developing the rubric together and applying the rubric for peer review and feedback, the students gained a deeper understanding of public speaking as a means of communicating ideas, spreading awareness about current issues, and sharing their cultural expertise.

They became less focused on whether they were making mistakes and feeling self-conscious and judged, and more on speaking from the heart and pouring out their souls. Self-reflections gave students the space to evaluate themselves on the goals they set for themselves and to continue apply metacognition to make their studies purposeful and targeted.

2. Pejman Omidi - ENG/REA

The focus for this instructor was on revamping their essay prompts methodology. Instructor provided students with themes over the course of a few weeks and asked students to articulate a thesis in relation to the theme. Instructor would then direct them to readings that related to the themes, and the students chose to read from those resources.

This methodology allowed instructor to develop a working essay prompt that gave students more flexibility and individual pursuit while allowing instructor to guide the quality of the work produced. This method allowed students a little more liberty in choosing the information they will use to construct their essays.

The instructor believes that students benefit greatly from both the idea that their essays and research is of their choosing (to a large extent), while also knowing that they will get constructive guidance and feedback regarding how to go about that pursuit; this helps deter their usage of AI assistance in their writing process.

3. Claudio Sanchez - ESL - Also participated in Fall '22

The focus of this instructor’s project is on backward design. Provided a very high level, general explanation of how BD works, and how this instructor plans to utilize it in their lesson planning in such a way “as to allow maximum expression of student desire, need, and academic requirements.”

Mary Garcia - ENG - Also participated in Fall '22

This instructor’s focus is on Equity and DEI. The instructor infuses her courses with principles informed by Ethnic Studies and Critical Race framework. This perspective allows the instructor and students to look at traditional educational practices and their corresponding equity principles.

Diversifying content is an equity principle that can go beyond using diverse texts, and an instructor can look at their own discipline’s Eurocentricity or color blindness. In discussing genres in an English course for example, the instructor can dig deeper into a text and take into consideration the cultural context of the author’s point of view, and how that has influenced their perspective.

For instance, in studying the genre of autobiography, a selection of texts written by European and non-European authors is used in the classroom to provide a contrast study into the Eurocentric/Western cultural perspective to those from other, non-European traditions. This approach will allow for the interrogation of elements that are often taken for granted in a specific discipline as being “neutral.”