Abstract: Many barriers to higher education, such as admissions and finances, are largely outside the control of individual course instructors. However, within their courses and classrooms, instructors are given agency to control many factors that can affect students' learning. In this talk, I will introduce friction as a metaphor for the barriers that can be decreased or eliminated by instructors to increase learning. I will present friction reducing strategies and methods I have utilized for content delivery, assessment, feedback, course communication, and more. To close, I will share thoughts on potential future work related to friction reduction for robust feedback and autograding systems.

Bio: David Dalpiaz is a Teaching Assistant Professor for the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in data science with a concentration on topics including probability, mathematical statistics, machine learning, and statistical computing. David has contributed to fully online and asynchronous education since the 2016 launch of the University of Illinois Master of Computer Science in Data Science program. His research is currently focused on accessible education and baseball analytics.