Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

Over one week, I went to two overlapping virtual conferences, ICER and Learning@Scale (L@S). Both usually are in person but were virtual due to Covid-19. Here is my reflection on the experience for the sake of those planning a virtual conference, those attending a virtual conference, and myself. First off, the biggest pro to the virtual conferences is I got to attend! If Covid-19 had not forced the conferences to go online, I would not have attended either. ICER's locations go back and forth between in and not in North America. This year was a non-North America year and would have been in New Zealand. After I had my first child and an overseas trip away from him, I decided that while my kids were small, I wouldn't travel outside North America without them unless I had a solid reason. We also recently added another child to the family. So traveling that far with a 3-year-old and a 4-month-old was daunting and unaffordable. L@S was originally going to be in Atlanta, Georgia, in...

Codio  asked if I'd be interested in sharing my expertise on scalable formative assessments through a webinar  on July 14th, 1PM EDT ( slides ). I liked the idea given our future for the next academic year. Moreover, it was an opportunity for me to consolidate my thoughts on the scalable formative assessment techniques I use and reflect on how I currently do it, as well as how I can be better. To help with my thought process, I wrote this blog post. Then this post could also provide all the relevant resources and references in one place, like a companion piece for the webinar. For context, when I'm referring to things like lecture, I'm talking about in-person live lectures because that's where my experience lies. I do write about ideas for remote teaching since that is the world many are likely facing. For full disclosure, I am getting an honorarium from Codio for doing this webinar. However, I do not use Codio nor have plans to use it in the future. They also included ...

In my post, "How I track my to-do-list" , I linked to my publically accessible Trello project templates . That Trello board has my "Creating an Exam" card list. This list has cards referring to how I test my exam, but I didn't elaborate on that process. So I thought given the season (of exams) I'll write a post about it. First, I want to acknowledge Jan Plane  at the University of MD, College Park, where I want to undergrad. I served as her undergraduate TA and, as her TA, I learned her process of testing exams. The bulk of my system I learned from her with some adaptations to serve my purposes. Two Rounds of Testing I have two rounds of testing that basically look identical. I have two of my TAs, usually from my head staff (head undergrad TAs and grad TAs) that take the exam with a timer. They note: How long each coding problem (or problem set if they are quick questions) takes them to read and answer. Any typos, confusing wording, etc. After e...

I just submitted a grant proposal to NSF CRII . This is a solo grant, which means I wrote the proposal all by myself. I submitted a CRII proposal last year that wasn't accepted. However, I got a lot of good feedback on it. This year's proposal is on a completely different project. However, I was still able to use some of that feedback, which hopefully made this year's proposal stronger. Before too much time has passed, I wanted to reflect on what I did while working on this proposal and how I could do better next time. First, I want to celebrate that I at least got it done and submitted. While it may not feel like a victory, logically, I know that it is a victory. A lot of effort went into writing the proposal, and seeing the effort completed by submitting the proposal is a win in itself. Second, I want to thank everyone that gave me feedback. You are all on a list of names that I plan to notify whether I got the proposal as soon as I find out. In this reflection, I...