3.10 Exploring Sense of Belonging in the Classroom(Required to earn certificate)

• 

  Posted by CUNY Mindset Initiative on March 11, 2024 at 10:56 am

  Creating an Intentional Welcome to the Semester

  Part 1: Record the Audio (Required to Earn Certificate)

  • We are asking that you record a 2-to-3-minute introductory audio note for your students. The purpose is for you to explore your own voice and consider its cadence as well as what it may communicate to others. (You will not be asked to share your audio.)
  • This is an opportunity for your students to get to know you before they’ve even met you. It would most likely be included in a welcome message or posted on a course website at the start of the semester. In creating your audio recording, we encourage you to take a moment to consider the following:
    • What would help your students feel like they belong even before they meet you or the rest of the class?
    • What would you want them to know about you and the course before ever meeting you or reading a syllabus?

  Part 2: Reflection on Your Experience (Required to Earn Certificate)

  • Describe the process you went through to create your audio welcome.
    • What did you find difficult and why?
    • What did you find easy to do and why?
  • Take some time away from your audio note. Then, return and listen to it.
    • What do you notice about your voice and its inflection? Did you know that before?
    • Would you want to share this with your students? Why or why not?
  • Please share your experience recording and listening to the audio introduction to the Discussion Forum thread here by replying to this post.

  Part 3: Responding to Peers (Not Required to Earn Certificate)

  • After submitting your reflection take a moment to respond to one of your peers.

  Kindness Reminder: 

  • Let’s remember this module is about a sense of belonging, how can you be kind and welcoming to yourself AND your peers in this experience?

• Miriam Briskman (she/her/hers)

  Member

  January 1, 2025 at 4:39 am

  [Apologies for this quite late post: I planned on writing it before the start of the Fall 2024 semester, but the preparation for that semester turned out to be more time-consuming than expected, and the semester itself was quite a challenge timewise.]
  I am a Computer and Information Science lecturer at Brooklyn College. I recorded a 2-minute audio message back in August for one of the classes I teach, Intro to Computer Applications, and then listened to it. Here is my feedback on the process and on my impression after listening to the recording:

  • The most significant challenge was to decide what content to include in those few minutes of the recorded message: do I want to briefly introduce the topics studied in the class, list the objectives of the course, or talk about the nature of the course in terms of how to prepare for it (e.g., what tools or applications students need to have installed on their devices?) Usually, the first lecture of the course is dedicated to going over the syllabus, so all these points are anyway discussed during that lecture. Eventually, I decided to include the following ingredients in the recording:
    1. A word of welcome (= “Dear everyone, I would like to cordially welcome you to the Intro to Computer Applications course of Brooklyn College: CISC 1050”),
    2. An intro of the instructor of the course (= “My name is Miriam Briskman; I am a Lecturer at the Computer and Information Science department; I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics here at Brooklyn College, and my Master’s in Computer Science at Brooklyn College, too. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Graduate Center.”)
    3. A super-quick description of the course and purpose (= “This course will teach about Microsoft Office apps and provide you with the opportunity to extensively practice using them. These apps, and the manner of using them, will keep serving you long after you complete your college studies, and even if you will use other office utility applications down the road, the general principles you’ll learn in this course will still majorly apply to other office apps, so that’s a win-win!”), and
    4. An outro and information about how to contact me in case of questions (= “During the course, if you have any questions, or if you find a topic we covered challenging and needing further elaboration/explanation, you are always welcome and encouraged to reach out! You can email me at [I mentioned my college email here]: I will reply to your emails within 24-48 hours on weekdays. Alternatively, you can visit our class’s office hours on [I mentioned the days/times of the week when office hours are offered that semester]. I will be more than glad to assist with any course or academic questions you have! Thank you so much for your attention, and looking forward to meeting with you all soon! Stay safe!”)
  • The easiest part was the decision of what recording app to use: I’ve been previously recording video lectures for the async version of the Intro to Computer Applications course and used a particular app for it: ActivePresenter for Windows, which has a free version. This version doesn’t include certain advanced video-editing tools, but for the sake of the recording I make, this version is sufficient. After the video is recorded, one can save it either as a video file or an audio file, so I selected to save it as an audio file.
    • However, although the decision of what app to use was made quite fast, the quality of the recording turned out to be quite bad (despite me confirming that the recording is saved in the highest quality available by the application) either because of some hidden setting in the app that I didn’t notice, or because I kept my computer’s camera unopened (I needed to ‘plug’ the camera out at the top of my desktop computer out of the computer’s screen, and the microphone is installed near the camera. Maybe the quality was bad because the microphone was ‘inside’ the computer’s screen, thus not recording me well.) In any case, doing a ‘pre-recording’ and testing the hardware to check whether the voice and quality are good before actually recording the message are never a bad idea.
  • About my voice during the video: after I relistened to the recording, I noticed some monotonicity and shakiness in my voice, especially in the middle of the recording. This could be due to the fact that I haven’t ‘rehearsed’ the text that I was saying for the recording (and, in fact, didn’t write it anywhere before starting to record the message.) The shakiness is most likely due to the fact that I hadn’t thought before starting the recording of when and how I wanted to change the tone of my voice during the recording. This made this recording seem kind of trite. During in-person and sync lectures, I do my best to speak with as much enthusiasm and energy as I can (since, otherwise, students will fall asleep 🙂 ,) but apparently, I didn’t devote as much energy as usual for the recording.
  • Because of this ‘lack of liveliness’ in my voice, I understood quite fast, even during the first listening of the recording, that this recording isn’t good enough for posting: some additional thought and preparation are needed before recording the audio message again and, maybe, that next recording would then be quality enough to be postable.