Four Ways to Humanize Our Assessments

As educators, assessments are at the heart of our teaching practice. When we create meaningful assessments for students, we not only gauge student learning, but we also create a better understanding of what students still need to learn and what we may need to reteach.  Students care about the assessments in our course. We may

Empowering Marginalized Communities through Technology: Leveraging Assignments

Ahlam Alamamy is a communication intern for the BC Academic Technology blog. She is pursuing her Associates degree in biology at Bakersfield College, and aspires to become a pediatrician. She is a first generation student who strives to get a higher education to reach her goals. During her free time, she loves spending quality time

Student How-To Videos: Announcing a New YouTube Playlist

As we begin to look towards a new semester, we may be considering ways we can integrate technology into our teaching and assessments. However, providing students support on using technology can be challenging and finding videos with accurate captions on YouTube can be a particularly challenging task. For this reason, we have begun curating some

What The Research Tells Us: Evidence-Based Practices to Promote Academic Integrity

As instructors, we know that academic integrity is central to our work in supporting student learning. However, given the changing landscape of teaching and learning it can be challenging to consider how we can promote academic honesty in our courses. Luckily, there is a wide-range of research on the topic that suggests evidence-based practices we

“Let the Times Dictate How We Create”

This piece was written by Dana Heins-Gelder. Dana is a professor of anthropology at Bakersfield College. Last spring, during all the craziness of the beginning of teaching in a COVID-19 world, I attended a school-wide forum where music professor, Kris Tiner, described how he and his student musicians innovated new ways to work together.  I

Designing Effective Online Courses for STEM Students

Ahlam Ali is a communication intern for the BC Academic Technology blog. She is pursuing her Associates degree in biology at Bakersfield college, and aspires to become a pediatrician. She is a first generation student who strives to get a higher education to reach her goals. During her free time, she loves spending quality time

Faculty Insights: Designing Assignments to Prevent Academic Dishonesty

This piece was written by Jeff Eagan, an Associate Professor in the English Department. He loves the outdoors and collaborating across disciplines with fellow faculty. The term “authentic assessment” was unfamiliar to me when I first heard it. Like many academic buzzwords, I’d heard it before, looked it up, and was confident I was doing

Scaffolding Major Course Assignments with Backward Design

This piece was written by Faith Bradham. Faith Bradham is a Reference Librarian at BC. She is passionate about critical library pedagogy and inclusive teaching practices. When she’s not working, she can likely be found on one of California’s beautiful hiking trails. As educators who are passionate about the subjects we teach, it’s easy to

Faculty Tips to Promote Academic Honesty

At our December faculty forum last Tuesday on reenvisioning assessment, I was struck by how many of the strategies we can use to prevent cheating on assessments are also strategies we can use to teach effectively online. By scaffolding assignments, humanizing the learning experience, and designing assessments with questions that encourage critical thinking skills, we