This is my final ePortfolio project from the "Successful Teaching Online Mentorship Program" (STOMP) course I took at Harper College in Spring 2016.

1. STOMP
ePortfolio
PRESENTER:
JENNIFER LAU-BOND

2. ePortfolio Contents
This ePortfolio documents the major deliverables I
created for the completion of Successful Teaching
Online Mentoring Program (STOMP) at Harper
College. The contents are as follows:
1. Community-Building Activity
2. Time Management Tip List
3. Final Project: Lesson idea, assessment and
rubric developed using Backwards Design
principles
4. Final Reflections/Lessons Learned

3. Community-Building Activity
Instructions:
Share an asynchonous community-building idea on the Week 2
discussion board (Discussion board link below.) Through reviewing the
resources above, please come up with one community-building activity
that can be implemented in an asynchronous online learning
environment. This activity can be an icebreaker, but it can also be an
activity that makes sense later in the semester when relationships have
already begun to form. When sharing your idea, please include the
following information:
◦ Title
◦ Task
◦ Objective(s)
◦ Instructions
◦ How this idea builds community

4. Community-Building Activity
Title: My Hero
Task: In this course, we are going to look at many examples of fictional
heroes throughout history, but first let’s start out by thinking about our
own heroes. Identify one person whose heroism speaks to you personally.
This could be a fictional character or a real person (or maybe not even a
human!), but they should be heroic to you.
Create a new thread on the Introductions forum explaining who your hero
is and what makes them heroic for you. What traits and behaviors do they
have that you associate with heroism?
Once you’ve posted a thread about your own hero, reply to the 2 threads
right before yours, commenting on the similarities and differences
between your hero and those of your colleagues. If you’re the first or
second poster, comment on any 2 threads of your choice.

5. Community-Building Activity
Objective(s):
To build community, to recognize everyone's experiences/perspectives as
valuable, to introduce the course theme, to start thinking about what a hero is
How this builds community:
The students in this course will have already spent 8 weeks in the previous
section getting to know each other, but now I want to encourage them to go a
little farther. Allowing the students to identify a personal hero lets them share a
piece of their interests or life outside school. It also starts the course out by
relating our topic to their own lives and interests, and it will help them begin to
see that there is no single definition of “hero,” that hero is in the eye of the
beholder, so to speak. It also gets them to learn about their colleagues and think
critically about commonalities between their definitions of "hero." This activity
nicely blends personal sharing with course content in a way I hope is both
engaging and meaningful.

6. Time Management Tip List
•If a student asks a great question via email, and you think other students
may also ask the same question, reply personally to the student by email,
and then post the question and your response on the Q&A forum (don’t
identify the student) OR ask the student to copy/paste the question and
reply into the course Q&A forum for other students to read.
•Analyze the instructor welcome email and the first few news
announcements to make sure the preliminary info provides good support
for students and minimizes "how to begin" questions as the course starts.
•Create a short video giving a tour of the course site and highlighting any
important information the students need to know to begin. Make this
video required viewing at the beginning of the course.
•Establish file naming protocols such as last name first initial. This means
that the student assignment files in the folder will be in the same order as
the gradebook.

7. Time Management Tip List
•If you’ll be doing course work in more than one location (e.g., on campus, at
home, the library, etc), consider in advance what method works best for
storing files. You might use a flash drive, cloud storage, a laptop you carry
with you, etc. Pick one method and use it consistently so you always have
the files you need.
•Avoid checking for postings to the discussions several times a day. This is
not necessary. Set a schedule such as checking for new discussion postings
only once or twice a day.
•Consider setting some of your Blackboard forums to allow participants to
subscribe. You can use it on any forum you want to keep track of promptly,
but it is particularly useful on an instructor Q&A forum because it will send
you an email alert when a new post is made. You can also tell students to
subscribe so that they will see when classmates post questions there.

8. Time Management Tip List
•Provide students with directions on how to forward their school email to
another address. (The Help Desk should address this on their website, so
you can just link to directions.) Many students are not aware of this option,
and it can prevent some communication delays.
•Order the discussion forums so that the current week/module’s forums are
at the top of the page. This saves the time it would take to scroll down and
locate the correct forum, both for you as the instructor and for students.
•Keep comments and announcements from previous semesters in
documents. You can rely on keeping this info in Blackboard, but if your
course gets archived or if you lose access to Blackboard for some reason
you may not have all the info easily accessible.
•Record notes or ideas for next time immediately as they occur to you (keep
a running document). If you teach the course again, you can look back at
your notes and adjust the course accordingly.

9. Final Project Summary
This presentation showcases an assessment, rubric and lesson idea
created for my Humanities Seminar II online course. This culminating
project demonstrates my ability to apply Backwards Design principles to
lesson plan development. We were asked to choose 1-2 learning
objectives that fulfill the student outcome(s) of an existing course and
then create an assessment, rubric and lesson idea that align with those
objectives.

10. Course Name, ID
The Humanities Seminar II (PLS 371) is the second part of the
humanities sequence in the adult fast-track degree program at
Roosevelt University, which applies basic humanities analysis skills
learned in Seminar I to texts on a specific theme. My course theme is
“What is a Hero?”, and it explores the concept of heroism throughout
history in a variety of art forms, including literature, film, visual art, etc.

11. Student Outcomes (course level)
Students will be able to articulate how the
concept of heroism has changed over time.

12. Learning Objectives (lesson level)
1. Students will be able to identify a fictional hero story
beyond examples covered in class.
2. Students will be able to accurately name and explain
the characteristics of the 12 steps in Campbell’s Hero’s
Journey.
3. Students will be able to compare Campbell’s 12 steps
to their chosen hero story and explain how their story
illustrates the steps.

13. Explanation of Alignment
This lesson and assessment align with the stated outcome of articulating how
the concept of heroism has changed over time because Campbell’s model is an
important part of the modern investigation of “heroism” and because
Campbell himself attempted to trace heroism throughout history. Students will
need to first name Campbell’s steps and then apply them to a story they
choose. Letting them choose the story adds an element of personal interest to
the activity and forces them to critically think about what each step means so
they can apply it to something we haven’t already discussed in class. There
would be other effective ways to have students express this information, but
using a Blog post in Blackboard allows them to easily see and reflect on what
their colleagues are thinking. (I will have another assessment activity the
following week that requires them to read and comment on 3 other blog
posts, which will require them to evaluate how well others have learned and
applied the concepts in Campbell’s model.) Having them include an image also
allows them another medium for expressing their choice of hero story.

14. Lesson Plan
Students will watch a video about the Hero’s Journey:
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-makes-a-hero-matthew-
winkler
They will also read an article about effective blog writing:
http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2012/01/23/how-to-
write-an-effective-blog-post/
And then they will be participating in the regular weekly
discussion where we will further dissect Cambell’s model.

15. Formative Assessments
• Every week includes a very brief reading/viewing quiz—
this week’s quiz will test their understanding of
Campbell’s 12 steps in the middle of the week.
• There is also a weekly discussion where we’ll talk more
about the video and analyze some examples of hero
stories I will give them.
Given these formative assessments, I will be able to spot
problems students may be having in understanding
Campbell’s model and address those issues in my comments
or with supplementary material if necessary.

16. Summative Assessment
Write a blog post that identifies each of the 12 steps of Joseph Campbell’s
Hero’s Journey that you learned about in this week’s video and explain how
each of those steps is illustrated in a hero story of your choice.
1. This story you choose can be a film, a piece of literature, an ancient myth,
or any other art form, as long as the story demonstrates the 12 steps
outlined in Campbell’s model.
2. You must also include one image that’s relevant to your chosen hero story.
Examples could include a screenshot from the film, an image of a book
cover, etc. Be creative! Please include a caption explaining what the image is
and how it relates to the chosen story.
3. All blogs must be posted in Blackboard using the Blog function. For more
directions on doing so, see the Blackboard help information
(https://goo.gl/groyDc).

17. Assessment Rubric
Exemplary Good Needs Work Unacceptable
Ideas and
Content (60
points)
Writing clearly identifies all
12 steps in Campbell’s Hero’s
Journey and thoughtfully
explains how each step is
illustrated in chosen hero
story. (60 points)
Writing identifies 10 or more
of the 12 steps in Campbell’s
Hero’s Journey and
thoughtfully explains how
those steps are illustrated in
the chosen hero story. (45
points)
Writing identifies 9 or
fewer of the 12 steps in
Campbell’s Hero’s Journey
and thoughtfully explains
how those steps are
illustrated in the chosen
hero story. (25 points)
Story chosen did not have any
relevance to the Hero’s
Journey; no attempt was
made to identify the steps of
the Hero’s Journey or apply
them to a hero story. (0
points)
Writing Quality
(30 points)
Writing is free of typos and
grammar errors. Writing is
professional and clear. (30
points)
Writing is mostly free of typos
and grammar errors. Writing
is mostly professional and
clear. (20 points)
Writing has many typos
and grammar errors.
Writing is very
unprofessional and
unclear. (5 points)
Writing is riddled with typos
and grammar errors. Writing
is so error-ridden and/or
unclear that it is effectively
unreadable. (0 points)
Technology (5
points)
The blog post was correctly
posted using the Blog
function in Blackboard, so
that all the text was visible to
all students and instructors in
the course. (5 points)
The blog post was not posted
correctly in Blackboard using
the Blog function; the text
was not visible to all students
and instructors in Blackboard.
(0 points)
Image (5 points) The blog post includes one
image relevant to the chosen
hero story, with a caption
explaining what it is and how
it’s related. (5 points)
The blog post includes one
image, but there is no caption
explaining what it is and how
it’s related. (3 points)
The blog post includes
one image, but the image
is not relevant to the
chosen hero story. (1
point)
The blog post includes no
image. (0 points)

18. Lessons Learned
I found this course extremely valuable for both my role as
an adjunct faculty member at another school and as a
librarian at Harper. As an adjunct faculty member, I was
able to work on an actual lesson plan I am using in one of
my courses currently. Some of what I learned here
validated strategies I was already using, and some of it
helped me improve my teaching materials to make them
more pedagogically sound. In particular, I found that
further practice creating learning objectives has been
valuable. I have always struggled with that step, but the
more I practice the better I feel I am getting.

19. Lessons Learned
While I used my own online course as the content for my
lesson plan, I absolutely feel the activities we did will be
useful for my library instruction as well. I learned more about
distance learning in general, which I think will help me
identify the research needs our distance learning students
may have and design appropriate solutions for them. Again,
more practice crafting learning objectives will help in all my
library teaching, both f2f and online, and I think it will also
help me design better online learning objects for the library.
Finally, connecting with other instructors has helped me
understand more about the challenges they face and how
the library might be able to best support their needs as well.