Episode 50 - Leveling Up w/Fabiola Torres

Fabiola "Fabi" Torres is an online Ethnic Studies professor and Certified Faculty Developer at Glendale Community College. During the pandemic, she has led nationwide workshops and courses on applying equity-minded methods such as culturally responsive teaching in the online environment, humanizing online teaching and learning as well as ungrading practices.

With dual M.A. degrees in Chicana/o Studies and Learning Technology, Fabi was featured at InstructureCon 2019 for her work in humanizing online education. In 2020, she received the Online Learning Consortium Advocate Award for Diversity and Inclusion and the Distinguished Faculty Award at Glendale Community College. In the summer of 2023, Fabi was named one of the top 30 education technology influencers for EdTech Magazine.

Fabiola is a fur-mommy of Luke, Leia and Wookie.

Topics include

• What inspired Fabiola to become a community college professor
• How current events influenced Fabi to stop ‘policing’ her students by moving toward ungrading
• How Fabi used the summer of 2020 to develop and design her own approach to ungrading
• How ungrading caused Fabi’s curriculum and assignments to change
• Why Fabi believes grades “detonate” in the souls of our students, and how her form of ungrading eliminates or at least buffers students from this experience
• How Fabi’s students use her REDO process—Reflect, Edit, Discover and Observe—to articulate their own learning patterns and strategies, as well as identify obstacles
• How technology supports—and, in some cases, impedes—teaching and learning
• How AI is currently influencing teaching and learning in Fabi’s classes and where she thinks it’s all headed

Other resources

• Discovering The Spark Of Teaching & Learning Through Equitable Grading (article for California Virtual Campus Online Network of Educators)

• Grades Suck: Fabi’s video representing her core beliefs about learning and the problems with grades. The implementation of UnGrading will be provided in the Orientation Module is Canvas.

• UnGrading In Ethnic Studies 121: Fabi’s webpage for explaining ungrading to her students.