Teaching and Learning Innovations (TLi) is thrilled to welcome Learning Designer, Georgia Van Tyne, to our team.  As TLi’s Learning Design Lead, I am excited to introduce you to Georgia! 

What is a Learning Designer? 

At CSUCI, Learning Designers seek to innovate teaching and learning through partnerships that extend to faculty teaching online. While integrating learning technologies to augment and reimagine the learner experience is one area of expertise, we continue to develop professionally in our knowledge and application of learning science, design theories and facilitation strategies that yield more inclusive classroom climates, online and in-person, and remain active participants in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), both as consumers and contributors. 

Georgia, given her background in biology and chemistry education, contributes a much-needed STEM lens to TLi’s offerings. Already making significant contributions, we invite you to join her this Spring for her debut blog and workshop series featuring applications for PlayPosit –  specifically in STEM courses, combining her academic background in Biological Sciences and passion for education. Details regarding topics and registration are at bottom of this article. But first, read on to learn more about Georgia.

The Root: Georgia’s Background

Georgia comes to TLi from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), an alumna with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences. Post-graduation, Georgia continued at UCSB teaching biology and chemistry Supplemental Instruction (SI) courses for undergraduates enrolled concurrently in larger lecture courses. UCSB faculty spoke with enthusiasm and even reverence for Georgia’s ability to understand complex concepts, to demystify those concepts and processes for students, and to partner with content-area faculty about a collaborative teaching model that combined traditional and supplemental instruction. They could not say enough glowing things about her and did not want to see her go in spite of the fact that they wanted to see her grow in her career.

The STEM: From Biology to STEM Education

Initially, Georgia pursued biology out of her interest in understanding how things work especially within our own body, describing biology as “beautiful” because it helps us understand “what goes on even in your own cells, or the ecosystem you’re a part of. It’s really interesting to learn about, but reflecting that as a student “it can be so hard to learn. It’s so complicated.” Georgia began working in STEM education volunteering as a learning assistant in a general chemistry lab where she anticipated the experience would help develop her skills for a future career as a researcher, but working with students sparked her interest and passion for STEM education. 

Loving the Learning Ecosystem

After graduation, Georgia was hired to teach supplemental instruction courses, working with groups of approximately 30 students who were enrolled in lecture courses that typically included 300-500 students. As Georgia explains it, “So it’s still [ . . . ] teaching the material that the faculty are teaching, but just giving it to students in a different way. You get exposed to a lot of different teaching styles [ . . . ], and you’re also working hands-on with the students directly.“

As educators, we can appreciate the impact of the learning environment or “ecosystem” on students, and this is what attracted Georgia toward education, “I could see the personal impact it had on the students’ lives in addition to their grades, and that was more exciting to me than the actual biology.”

Leafing for CSUCI 

The smaller campus and student population drew Georgia to CSUCI. She considers working as a Learning Designer an opportunity to combine her academic background in biology with her personal interests in alternative ways to engage students in learning, partnering with faculty to identify and eliminate barriers for non-traditional students, or what we often refer to as the “hidden curriculum.” When sharing her experience as a learning assistant Georgia observed that students who struggled the most were typically non-traditional students, mostly transfers and the first in their families to go to college. “They were struggling because they didn’t know [ . . . ] how to succeed in college, [ . . . ] I saw firsthand how you could help these students by just helping them learn how to study.”

Rosebud: Little Known Fact

Inspired by her students, Georgia invested personal time and effort outside of her teaching schedule to research learning strategies and how to develop asynchronous online supplemental instruction modules to support students who were unable to attend in-person sessions. Why go the extra mile? “Seeing students’ confidence grow in themselves as a learner; I think that’s a really awesome part about education.”

Blossoming Spring 2023: What Georgia brings to CSUCI 

Since joining TLi in November 2022, Georgia has taken a deep dive into PlayPosit. At a very basic level, PlayPosit allows instructors and students to add a variety of interactions (i.e., polls, multiple choice questions, asynchronous discussion forums, free response questions, etc.) to video content that they’ve created or is hosted on public platforms (i.e., YouTube). You may have attended a training or recall Leslie Abell’s Love Letter to Playposit, shared in 2021. 

While PlayPosit has been part of our suite of tools for teaching Georgia brings a STEM perspective to applications for asynchronous and synchronous student engagement. 

While you may have used PlayPosit to add interactive elements to your lecture, did you know you can: 

• create interactive worksheets, 
• custom playlists, or 
• have students record and submit a video demonstration for your written or recorded feedback. 

If you’ve answered “no” to any of these, then Georgia’s got you covered! February, March, and April Georgia will blog about a discrete use of PlayPosit tailored to the STEM classroom, with an example for you to try, and resources to support your own integration. Each monthly blog will be followed by a synchronous 60-90 minute workshop/webinar where Georgia will guide you through implementing the PlayPosit use featured in her blog. Look for Georgia’s first blog, “Engaging students in STEM: Interactive Videos with PlayPosit” on Tuesday, February 7, and register for the workshop on Tuesday, February 21.

But there’s more!

• Spring 2023: Be on the lookout for a 5-day online workout featuring ways to use Canvas Quizzes (and really just quizzes) to enhance student practice, self-reflection, and formative assessment. 
• Summer 2023: Georgia’s learning assistant experience will prove invaluable as TLi Learning Design once again partners with Brook Masters, CSUCI’s Learning Resource Center (LRC) Director, to engage with faculty in the Embedded Peer Educator Collaboration (EPEC) Faculty Institute, to explore ways to integrate Brook’s innovative twist on SI, known at CSUCI as Embedded Peer Educators (EPEs). 
• Right Now! Of course, you do not have to wait to partner with Georgia. Schedule a Learning Design Consult, and meet with Georgia in person or via Zoom to discuss and support the ways in which you use learning technologies, like PlayPosit, to reimagine student engagement. 

TLi is excited to learn with and from our new learning design “STEM”! I know our CSUCI community will enjoy getting to know Georgia as much as I have!