Active Techniques Implemented in an Introductory Signal Processing Course to Help Students Achieve Higher Levels of Learning.

Holding students to high standards and assessing, measuring and evaluating their learning with challenging, authentic problems in the midterm and final exams is the goal of the professors who teach core signal processing concepts. However, the heavy reliance of these subjects on mathematics makes it difficult for students to genuinely grasp the concepts and relate to a conceptual framework. Specifically, analyzing the signals and the functionality of systems in Fourier domain; separating the system level analysis from signal level analysis; and understanding how they are related in time domain and frequency domain are among the most challenging concepts. Students’ lower grades observed over past years in the introductory signal processing course exposed a potential disconnect between the actual level of learning and the high expectations set by the professors. In this paper, we present the active learning techniques that we implemented in one of the summer session offerings of this course in our department. The research explored Peer Instruction, pre-class reading quizzes and post-lecture quizzes. In addition to the mid and end of the quarter survey results, the comparison analysis of the grades students achieved in the active learning integrated course in the second summer session and the standard course offered in first summer session is discussed. According to our results, the developed techniques helped students in the active classroom perform significantly better than their peers participating in standard lectures when tested by challenging questions in their exams

Hyflex Course Design: Exploring Student Experiences of an Equity-Centered Technology Enhanced Curriculum: A Qualitative Case Study

Professors in higher education are responsible for teaching diverse student populations complex material. Further, many instructors have yet to have specific pedagogical training on how to build and deliver equity-minded courses using a technology-enhanced curriculum. Consequently, the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused disruptions to educational systems worldwide, and instructors whose courses were built intentionally using established evidence-based design principles could pivot from face-to-face to remote instruction with less disruption to student learning. As universities return to more in-person classes, instructors offer flexibility for students to attend classes via multiple modalities, such as in-person via video conferencing software or fully asynchronous learning management systems. This hybrid-flexible (hyflex; Beatty, 2019) approach to teaching offers great opportunities for students to continue learning during and beyond the pandemic; however, it is a complex operation for the professor and instructional teams supporting the class. Moreover, teaching equitably in this modality increases the complexities. This study introduces hyflex learning as a modality instructors use to offer equitable education to their students, followed by a review of the literature and methods used in this study. Next, Adams et al.’s social justice education faculty development and Beatty’s four pillars of hyflex course design frameworks are leveraged to provide a theoretical framework for this study’s design, delivery, and measurement of equity-centered hyflex courses (Adams et al., 2016, 2022; Beatty, 2019). Finally, the study aimed to qualitatively explore students’ experiences taking a hyflex course with equity-centered design. The potential impact of this study sheds light on what aspects of the hyflex environment helped or hindered students in meeting their learning outcomes, potentially offering key findings for practitioners to design and deliver equitable hyflex courses

Hyflex and hybrid teaching and learning in higher education: evolving discussions in the post-Pandemic era

This collaborative piece provides our collective thoughts and experiences on teaching related to Hyflex and Hybrid environments within higher education (HE) institutions across countries. The piece is the evolution of discussions which started at the ECPR’s TLP Conference in Bratislava (and online) in June 2022 on this topic of hyflex and hybrid learning, and the changing HE environment we are all seeing and experiencing. We offer our thoughts and experiences, but also ask colleagues within our discipline to consider the questions and implications of many of the choices being made for ourselves as teachers, and for our students in the evolving learning environment in this period coming out of the pandemic