Stanford Digital Education’s Post

Did you miss our event on The New Global Universities: Reinventing Education in the 21st Century? Authors Bryan Penprase, vice president at Soka University of America, and Noah Pickus, associate provost at Duke University, discussed what intrigues them about startup universities in a May 15 conversation with Minu Ipe, managing director of the University Design Institute at Arizona State University. Penprase and Pickus identified some commonalities among the eight universities they examined in the book: a desire for a core curriculum, a commitment to the liberal arts, and an emphasis on dedicated teaching faculty. They suggested an ideal of “radical incrementalism” — an embrace of ongoing, continuous change. View the recording and transcript of the event: https://lnkd.in/gX4YJFwZ The Academic Innovation #forthePublicGood book series is co-organized by Stanford Digital Education and Trinity College-Hartford. Program partners include the The Badavas Center at Bentley University: Innovation in Teaching & Learning; Brown University School of Professional Studies; Dartmouth College; Mount Holyoke College; Notre Dame Learning; Penn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Innovation; and University of Michigan - Center for Academic Innovation.

Great to see the Stanford Spokes’ hands-on workshops for pre-K through 12th graders described in Stanford Report. Projects include making slime stress balls and “elephant toothpaste,” navigating a physics escape room, and extracting DNA from strawberries. https://lnkd.in/gSjnDdsW You can follow the Spokes on their blog: https://lnkd.in/gv36cynT Cynthia Berhtram, director of project strategy and operations at Stanford Digital Education, is quoted: “We really want this year’s team members to focus on their own well-being – just having that awareness of self to be able to go out and do this really difficult thing. We want to help the Spokes team really level up as leaders to take care of each other and themselves as well as doing this amazing thing for the world.” Our office is happy to support the Spokes along with the Campus Bike Shop, Haas Center For Public Service, Stanford Athletics, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and Stanford University School of Medicine.

How can Stanford University expand access to #STEM education? That’s a question posed by the Stanford Bioengineering Jedi Corner, which launched an interview series through a conversation with Erik Brown, associate creative director at Stanford Digital Education. Erik led an initiative that offered Stanford’s “Introduction to Bioengineering” course, taught by professors Drew Endy and Jennifer Brophy, to students in under-resourced high schools through a partnership with the National Education Equity Lab. Jedi tip #1: Give knowledge away. “If Stanford gives away some of that base knowledge, especially the prerequisite knowledge, then incoming classes are better prepared,” says Erik. “The network we’re fostering has the best and the brightest — not because of discrepancies around access and wealth distribution, but by a general right to knowledge.” Jedi tip #2: Respond to the needs of your students. In response to student feedback, the “Introduction to Bioengineering” teaching team redesigned assignments, hired Spanish-language tutors, and added office hours during the school day (as some students lacked home internet). Jedi tip #3: Engage in collaborative advocacy. “Bring in the community you are trying to serve, rather than making unilateral decisions from the top down, and allow them to inform you,” advises Erik. “One of the best ways to have the greatest impact is by allowing the communities you serve to have a seat at the table, to contribute and design with you along the way.” May the force be with you, STEM educators! Read the interview with Erik: https://lnkd.in/g8iF-3-q Shreya Garg, Marly LeSene

After months of planning, six Stanford University students — the members of the 2024 Stanford Spokes team — left campus Tuesday morning to bike and teach across the country (destination: Washington, DC). Our office is proud to support the Spokes, who will be offering hands-on workshops in topics from physics and chemistry to geology and storytelling at learning festivals along their route. They will be sharing their love of learning, and of biking, as well. Here are some photos from their first day. You can learn about the team, find more photos, and follow along on their blog: https://lnkd.in/gv36cynT 🚲 Hunter Liu, Eva Matentsian, Kawther Said, Ethan David Scott, Jonathan Tubb, and Will Yu 🚲 Bonus: Look closely as they leave campus and you’ll find Vice Provost Matthew Rascoff in the mix on his distinctive bike… 📷 Aaron Kehoe

Attention #communitycollegeinstructors: Would your students like to earn a Google Career Certificate in #DataAnalytics as part of their community college education? Do you want to give them a leg up for when they apply for jobs in the tech sector? Stanford Digital Education, along with the Bay Area Community College Consortium and Grow with Google, published today a playbook that helps instructors to figure out how to integrate the certificate material into a community college curriculum. The goal is to enhance the teaching of data analytics while also boosting students’ career prospects. Read more about why we decided to produce this playbook and check out the hands-on advice it provides. Available online as well as to download at no cost. Visit https://lnkd.in/gxN2MQXH Kudos to Stanford Digital Education's Michael Acedo, who led the project, along with Rob Magliaro of Google, Raymond Kaupp, MBA, Ed.D. of the Bay Area Community College Consortium; and Dan Montoya of 66 Training Services, LLC . The playbook would not have been possible without input from Jeffrey Bergamini at Cabrillo College; Gampi Shankar at Cañada College; Brian Palmer at Hartnell College; Kyla Oh at Laney College; Debbie Fields at Las Positas College; Sandy Jones of Los Medanos College; Sanjay Dorairaj and Kidane Sengal at San Jose City College; Bill Andreopoulos at San Jose State University; Bryan Swartout at Skyline College; and Nicholas Hinojosa, Saeed Molki, and Dr.Ali Esmaeili of South Texas College. Thanks also to the following educators at Stanford who contributed to the effort: Pamela Levine, Callan Monette, Sanne Smith, Zac Painter, Kritika Yegnashankaran, Andy Saltarelli, Valerie Goren, and Elizabeth Wilsey. #DataAnalyticsCertificate, Grow with Google and Grow with Google - Data Analytics,

The next wave of innovation in higher education is building, and the recent Digital Learning Summit offered a glimpse of how educators are creating deeper and more far-reaching digital learning opportunities. At the national conference hosted on the Stanford University campus this March, Matthew Rascoff, vice provost for digital education, welcomed participants from across the country and championed a focus on digital education that will make higher education more equitable and accessible. “We need to recommit digital education to a mission-driven strategy that helps recover the democratic purposes of higher education,” he declared. For two days, we basked in a wealth of information, exchange, and camaraderie! Sean Hobson and Wayne Anderson of EdPlus at Arizona State University discussed employing YouTube to engage new students; Akwelle Quaye of Penn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Innovation talked about using technology to create a greater sense of community in virtual classrooms; and Melissa Kane and Maggie Vecchione of Brown University described how their digital team has doubled over the last few years. Visit our article to learn more about these presentations, to see the full schedule, and to check out a photo gallery of who was there: https://lnkd.in/gh2cycP4 The conference drew teams from online learning units at 20 institutions across the country, including small private colleges, Ivy League universities, and state flagships. It was co-sponsored by Stanford Digital Education and Harvesting Academic Innovation for Learners, or HAIL, a network of innovation leaders in higher education. Many thanks to the planning committee, Priscilla Fiden of Stanford Digital Education; Sonia Howell of Notre Dame Learning; Dr. Patrice Torcivia Prusko of the Teaching and Learning Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Rebecca Quintana, PhD of University of Michigan - Center for Academic Innovation; Rebecca Stein of Penn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Innovation; and Catherine Zabriskie of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University.

There’s nothing like passing a college course to give you the confidence that you can pass a college course. Michael Nietzel, writing in Forbes, sees programs such as our dual credit courses, offered to under-resourced high schools in partnership with the National Education Equity Lab, as a way for colleges to build a talent pipeline of diverse students who might not otherwise have the confidence that they can succeed in college. “Selective universities can use standardized tests if [they] want,” he says, “but if they’re genuinely dedicated to being institutions of opportunity, they need to supplement those tests with other strategies intended to find, recruit and nurture talented students who risk being overlooked, discouraged or disqualified by too much reliance on the SAT/ACT.” Read Nietzel’s commentary in Forbes: https://lnkd.in/g8zPH43G Explore our National Education Equity Lab courses: https://lnkd.in/eCxHYKUy

Paloma Gutierrez, a student fellow with Stanford Digital Education, writes about developing a checklist of project management practices that can enhance equity and inclusion — a project she undertook in collaboration with Cynthia Berhtram, our director of project strategy and operations, and Annie Sadler, our assistant director of project evaluation and research. “We were guided by the concept of ‘positive friction,’” says Paloma. “An analogy is safe street design, which involves using features like crosswalks, trees, and transit islands to slow down traffic and make streets safer for all users. For us, positive friction means intentionally slowing down at key points to consider whose voices are being prioritized in the conversation. Whether in physical or digital spaces, the intention is to create inclusive and comfortable spaces for all.” Read more about the framework: https://lnkd.in/gmdwxQEK View the checklist tool: https://lnkd.in/g-v9mJ4a

Topeka High School students read Plato, Confucius, and Gwendolyn Brooks in Stanford Digital Education’s online dual credit course “Searching Together for the Common Good.” The moral philosophy course is offered nationwide in collaboration with the nonprofit National Education Equity Lab in high schools that serve low-income communities. The course is facilitated at Topeka High School by teacher Sara Schafer. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported on a visit to the high school by Greg Watkins, longtime Stanford University lecturer, who designed the course and trains the Stanford undergraduates who meet with the high schoolers to discuss lessons online via Zoom. Watkins, quoted in the article, explained that he was impressed with the Topeka students because of “their ability to take the material seriously, to share their own views about it, rather than guess at what I might want to hear or what the undergrads might want to hear.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/gSMYwJtV