Teaching portfolio

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computerA-6. Sample of laboratory assignments or projects (CBA Art.X§D-4)

DAT-102 Culminating project

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settingsA-6. Sample of examinations and/or written assignments (CBA Art.X§D-5)

Low-stakes assessment philosophy

My experience teaching high school courses which revolved around cumulative unit tests revealed the dark side of high-stakes assessment: students who decide not to prepare rigorously for a challenging exam can become greatly discouraged at the prospect of ever gaining the skills which they failed to demonstrate on the exam. As a student myself, I find studying intensely for a weighty exam to be an engaging challenge; I am, therefore, a poor barometer for many students who enter my classes at CCAC having already experienced exam frustrations from previous courses.

The following model graphically depicts the challenges of assessment design in a course whose students span a wide range of skills:

The course framework I implement at CCAC does not rely on exams at all--rather, I've developed a philosophy I title High-value, Low-Stakes assessment which I detail in the following document:

Real-time, remote assessment

The onset of COVID-19 and a full transition of all 6 of my course sections to synchronous/zoom configurations demanded a strategy for continuing the data input stream to me, the instructor, concerning students' real-time learning progress. To gather this data and create inherent interactivity in my synchronous sessions, I've made extensive use of a teacher-paced assessment tool shared with a free version from Socrative.com

The following link points to a recording of a session in which I used Socrative to assess basic variable assignment principles in my CIT-111, Introduction to Programming Java course. The images which follow are still frames from the session recordings whose captions add instructor commentary on the way in which the assessment itself served as a platform for targeted student instruction on the very skill they were practicing in the assessment.

My ability to pause the progress of the assessment to inject review content or illustrate why a given response was or was not correct allows the assessment process to feel to students more like the learning process itself--reducing the point-based failure stress which can be overwhelming for some students. Note that the initial questions are multiple-choice items with more than one possible answer and the later questions are open response. This gradual shift in skill rigor allows students to practice a skill at aptly aligned rigor levels.

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insert_photoA-7. Examples of student work

Peer assessment of DAT-102 final projects

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volume_upA-8. CCAC Survey of Student Opinion-SOSO (CBA Art.X§D-6)

Fall 2020 Student Survey summary pages

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bar_chartA-9: Evidence of Professional Growth since last portfolio (CBA Art.X§D-7)

Extensive video tutorial and course session repository

In service of my guiding principle of Open Course documentation, I have endeavored since February 2020 to edit and post as many tutorial videos on public-facing repositories as time will allow. Currently, I have curated a YouTube channel featuring dozens of recordings and course-specific tutorials.

Fabrication of mobile synchronous course session studio

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Revise and Resubmit on journal article

Since my last portfolio from February 2020, A joint article published with Dennis Jones and Denise Jones of the nonprofit Youth Enrichment Services (YES) was peer reviewed. We were given a revise and resubmit clearance with feedback for corrections. We are in the revision process currently and are prepared to resubmit before the end of Spring 2021.

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border_colorA-10: Written assessment from reviewers (CBA Art.X§D-8)

Reviews requested and shall be posted here shortly.

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mailA-11: Statements of Tenure Support: Department Head and Dean

Support from CIT Dean Brenda Trettel

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leaderboardA-12:Proof of Involvement with Assessment (CBA Art.X§D-9)

I continue to revise the assessment instruments I've built which align to the CCAC general educational goals and course-specific learning outcomes and the subsequent sharing of those results in the official CCAC assessment system. To support other teachers at CCAC using components of my assessment system, I have licensed all my tools under Creative Commons (No Attribution) licenses and posted the files in a public-facing directory on technologyrediscovery.net

Creation of Java fundamentals assessment instrument

In addition to building the foundation of CCAC's new Data Analytics program, I continue to dedicate about half my teaching load to Java programming courses, for which I developed a standardized assessment instrument for learning outcome assessment. The following document contains complete documentation of a free-response, two-item instrument for assessment of Java fundamentals. Customized rubrics are associated with a dozen or more annotated student response with commentary. Several CCAC professors continued to administer and report to me assessment results even when our CCAC-wide assessment philosophy shifted from assessing course learning outcomes only to assessment of course contributions to CACC General Education Goals--evidence of its practical use beyond data assembly.

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group_addA-13: Information related to enhancing equity and diversity (CBA Art.X§D-10)

One of my deepest concerns as a teacher in the data analytics and computer programming fields are the ongoing racial and gender inequities in these fields--in addition to the ways in which systems of negative discrimination continue to permeate our American society at many levels. The open source community of software developers--the one which I align with most closely ideologically, unfortunately, exhibits extreme levels of dominance by coders who identify as White and male.

My contributions in response to these disturbing trends range from inclusion of projects aimed at analyzing the state of affairs in biased social structures (such as the American criminal justice system) to offering additional office hours and 1:1 help to students who come to CCAC from under-resourced backgrounds and require remedial learning to keep pace with the curriculum.

Analyzing racial bias in the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ)

In DAT-129: Python 2, we use a dataset provided to the public by the University of Pittsburgh's Western PA Regional Data Center which enumerates the race, gender, and age of individuals incarcerated in the Allegheny County Jail. We use the SW Community Profiles data set to ascertain the racial composition of the Allegheny County as a whole and compare those ratios to the makeup of individuals confined to jail by the county legal system.

This exercise teaches students the skills required to use open data sets such as the Allegheny County Jail Census to make data-backed claims which can support advocacy and system change efforts by the students in whatever endeavors they choose to pursue.

Inclusion of diversity and equity statistics in DAT-102

The Pittsburgh Gender Equity commission recently published a humbling report detailing the multi-axial characteristics of equity gaps in our very own communities. Their report is exceptionally rich in data and figures, many of which require careful analysis to appropriately discuss and interpret to their fullest extent. I incorporate the figures and methodology of this report in my course DAT-120: Introduction to Data Analytics. We discuss the ways in which the data in the report could underpin policy responses to the state of inequity in greater Pittsburgh.

Targeted student remediation and support in DAT and CIT

In addition to my scheduled office hours, I have and continue to schedule recurring tutoring appointments with my students in both DAT and MMC to offer skills training to complement their project work. When possible, we work together to create programming projects that tie into student interests which, in my experience, vastly improves comprehension of essential programming concepts. Last term, for example, I engaged in partner-based coding with a student who needed high support in Java to create a program to store and manipulate information about professional sports players using object-oriented design principles.

I have also worked with a student from a historically under-represented racial group to undertake complex programming tasks assigned to them by their full-time employer. This student has shared with me multiple experiences in which their employer seems to assign them less complex tasks compared to their White counterparts, possibly driven by a negative bias against folks of color working in technical and data based roles.

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languageA-14: Service to the college (CBA Art.X§D-11)

Overhaul of the Data Analytics course outlines and degree/certificate progressions

Beginning of March 2020, CCAC Professors Coral Sheldon-Hess, Rebecca Elinich DuPontm, and I began meeting weekly to draft revisions to many of our program's first generation course outlines. I personally spearheaded revisions of the following courses to more carefully align learning outcomes to the realities of data analytics work in consultation with our Data Analytics Advisory Committee:

• DAT-129: Python 2
• DAT-203: Visualization
• DAT-281: Capstone Project
• DAT-241: Geospatial Data Analytics

I also liaised with Dr. Diane Jacobs to enter our revised course outlines and degree/certificate sequence into Curriculog. As a planning team, we all attended two rounds of the Curriculum Subcommittee and CCAC College Council meetings to present and discuss our changes. As of December 2020, our proposals were all accepted for implementation in Summer 2021.

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publicA-15: Service to the community

CodeNForce municipal workflow management system

Beginning in 2015, I have registered an LLC and began development of an open source workflow management system for code officers working for small towns in the Mon Valley such as Chalfant and East McKeesport. This project grew out of the realities of the software market which has set the market price of proprietary systems beyond the budgetary reach of many of Allegheny County's smallest municipalities.

In partnership with the Turtle Creek Valley Council of Governments (TCVCOG), Technology Rediscovery LLC has hired a set of motivated CCAC students as subcontractors to contribute to this exciting, grant-funded, completely open source tool. By releasing the code under open source license, we've contributed to the freedom of small towns to use our software perpetually without additional license fees. They can arrange for support from the LLC if they choose, or subcontract with a Java programmer independent of the LLC for continued system maintenance.

Not only has this project allowed almost a dozen CCAC students to gain real-world coding experience for government clients but we've created a tool for better monitoring of landowner behavior in our small towns to ensure that renters are living in habitable dwelling units aligned to existing municipal ordinances.

The following screen capture from the project's github repository shows code contributions from five past or current CCAC students in the form of a request called a Pull Request.

CodeNForce is currently in a live beta test state and manages the day-to-day code enforcement work of a code officer serving two municipal towns. We expect increased town participation in the project to continue for the next few years. The CCAC students who have participated in the CodeNForce project have reported that sharing their contributions to the code base with potential employers has lead to multiple job offers from local and non-local firms. Three of the CCAC students who have worked on CodeNForce have successfully transferred to other schools to pursue graduate studies--armed with the real-world experience of building data-backed systems for actual clients.

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trending_upA-16: Statement of anticipated future professional growth (CBA Art.X§D-12)

I plan continued professional growth in the following areas:

Increasing quality of multi-skill level compatible learning exercises

Coping with the diversity of skill set levels in any given section of a course continues to be my primary pedagogical challenge. One approach I've taken thus far has involved embedding tips and hints into my tutorials to allow students who need extra support to reveal sample code with a simple javascript button on my sites. For example:

My growth area involves creating more level-specific help items that could give multiple levels of support for any given task. This involves more instructional planning than simply disclosing the assignment with a single hint; rather, I'll need to examine learning artifacts from previous terms to identify distinct groups of student proficiency levels and create supports tailored to push the thinking rigor for each sub-grouping.

Fully implement note-card-based confidential student records

Tracking student interactions across terms over the course of the semester allows me to assemble a record of student trajectories over the course of one or more terms. My growth area involves implementing a beta version of my current system which involves the following steps:

1. Allocating a single note card for each student with a header for term and course
2. As students complete a project in the course, I note it on that student's note card with the current date
3. As students ask for additional help, join office hours, or call with questions, I note those actions on their dedicated card with a date stamp
4. Note the letter indicated on the grade proposal cards students submit to me for mid-term grades and final grades. I shall also note my evaluation notes and the letter grade actually submitted.

Building robust and realistic student work feedback system

Computer programming involves a built-in form of student feedback: the compiler and/or run-time system provides compile and runtime errors often with detailed error messages. However, this growth signals my intent to develop a way to provide additional feedback to students in a way that is cumulative and public--multiplying the impact of my time by allowing all students to review the feedback I give to any given student and learn from those suggestions.

This will require a streamlined system be built allowing me to quickly type or record feedback and attach those notes to a given piece of student work.

Increased commitment to shared, asynchronous help and discussion board tools

Communication overload quickly consumes my discretionary planning time as a teacher. Email alone can require 1-2 hours per day during the term if I provide thoughtful replies to all student inquiries. The downside to email communication is my replies to a single student are not easily accessible to other students. Adding students to a BCC list on replies can quickly be confusing to recipients.

This reflection signals my intent to integrate a tool like Slack which is a shared, asynchronous communication tool a lot like a discussion board which allows attachment of images, files, and links to a post.

Our DAT and CIT programs have a dedicated Slack page which I haven't actively engaged with due to communication overload. One strategy for reaching this goal would involve redirecting students to whom I would otherwise write individual email feedback to the Slack page where they can read my reply along with other interested students--without email clutter.

Building career pathway planning tools for data analytics and programming students

The newness of the Data Analytics program means that career pathways are not always clear for students entering the field. Specifically, what kinds of degrees or degree combinations are sufficient for successful application to jobs with requirements X and Y?

My goal is to build a public-facing repository of actual student pathways into and out of our Data Analytics offerings. This will be rooted in information provided to me by students for whom I write letters of recommendation. To this end, I've created a draft set of questions for each student to answer which I can then publish using technologyrediscovery.net

Designing and implementing database back end support for technologyrediscovery.net

Most modern websites allow for users to input data and retrieve account and record-level information. These data is usually stored in a relational database. This growth area signals my intent to build a database back end for technologyrediscovery.net allowing students to submit work logs, assignments, and URLs to my server directly without the need for using a third-party tool such as Google Forms, Google Sheets, and Microsoft OneDrive.

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plagiarismEvaluation materials (Appendix B.,II. A., B., C) (CBA Art.X§D-14)

The following is a link to a PDF version of my classroom observation and JPEG images of said form performed by Dean Brenda Trettel and Dr. R.E. DuPont Fall 2020

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printOptional 1: Sample of Handouts

The following link points to a handout page designed for use by students in creating a model of a map projection using an inflatable globe of the earth and transparency films. The handout page is designed with printability in mind, allowing both columns to be printed on a single landscape page. The buttons at the bottom of the left column allow the user to collapse the page for printing, and format the entire document for easy screen viewing in a single column.

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sendOptional 2: Samples of Unsolicited Students Letters and Comments

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inventory_2Optional 3: Peer/professional observation and evaluation

Class Visit by Carlow University Data Analytics faculty

I had the pleasure of connecting with Dr. Ericka Mochan and Beth Zamboni who visited my DAT-102 class prior to COVID-19 erupting. They were kind enough to submit a letter detailing their experience.

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Page created in 2021 by Eric Darsow and all non-linked content can be freely reproduced without any permission or attribution according to the site's content use agreement. Any links to other content is governed by each page's respective usage rights context.