FACULTY DEVELOPMENT DAY 2014
Plan to join us on Friday, January 17 for Faculty Development Day at BRCC. We will joined by Dr. Mary Clement who serves as Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Professor of Teacher Education at Berry College. Dr. Clement teaches graduate courses in curriculum theory, instructional management, and supervision and undergraduate courses in foreign language methods. She earned her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as the director of the Beginning Teacher Program at Eastern Illinois University for six years. Dr. Clement is the author of ten books including First Time in the College Classroom: A Guide for Teaching Assistants, Instructors, and New Professors at All Colleges and Universities which covers critically important aspects of organizing and teaching curriculum. She will be presenting on three topics while in Baton Rouge including: how to engage your students on day one; creating learning experiences in four easy steps; and, how to use student feedback to improve your teaching and their learning. This event is being sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.

BERKELEY JOINS TESTING CENTER
We are very excited to announce that Brandi Berkeley is joining the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support. She will join the staff of the Testing Center on December 17 filling the vacancy created when Tressa Thomas Landry moved to Lake Charles. Brandi will serve as a Testing Center Specialist providing support to our student testers on the Mid City and Acadian campuses. She was most recently employed in the same capacity at Delgado Community College. Watch this space for new operating hours for the Testing Center for the spring 2014 semester.

CAREER FUNDING PROPOSED FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Inside Higher Ed posted an interesting story about federal funding that could have a big impact on community colleges across the nation. Opportunity Nation, a nonprofit group that produces a national index on economic opportunity, has joined two U.S. senators in a push to encourage closer ties between employers and colleges, particularly two-year institutions. The group has endorsed a bill from Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, and Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican. That legislation seeks a better return on investment for the $15 billion the federal government spends on 46 different job training programs each year, Portman said recently. “We’d like to consolidate some of those programs,” he said, arguing that there is overlap in almost all federal job training efforts. Those funding streams include several that are important to community colleges, including the Workforce Investment Act and the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act. The proposed legislation probably wouldn’t cut funding for higher education, however. That’s because the two senators give two-year colleges and other career-focused institutions “priority access” to dollars for job training in the legislation, which is dubbed the Careers Through Responsive, Efficient and Effective Retraining (CAREER) Act. “We’d like to include community colleges more,” Portman said.

THE COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS

Building community among our faculty is very important for us to function as a disconnected group of disciplines that must come together cohesively to address systemic problems such as student retention and success. Part of our jobs as faculty has always been to focus on the needs of our students. Whether it is showing your students how to annotate, suggesting better study skills, or advising them about time management, when we take the time to teach students how to navigate college, we are also helping our colleagues. If a student learns a valuable college success skill in one class, we all benefit. So as the landscape continues to shift and the opportunity to attend college is an option for more students, we know that the number of underprepared student will continue to grow. Here are a few suggestions that you can use to create a stronger foundation for students who are faced with multiple impediments. Suggest during your advising sessions that taking the College Success Skills course provides a solid orientation for surviving and prospering in college. When you notice students are struggling, whether by formative or summative assessment or simply through observation in your classes, suggest that they make a trip to the Academic Learning Center. Make sure you send them with a referral sheet. Once they have made their visit, have them return the referral sheet to you so that you can see what intervention was offered and what the ALC professional staff suggests as the next step. The entire process can be viewed on the ALC website. The most important thing in this situation is to talk with your students who are struggling. A high level of engagement, often marked by the student-faculty relationship, is key to improving student success.

THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES

LCTCS President Joe May recently had a guest editorial published by The Advocate. In trumpeting the merits of the community college experience, Dr. May uses one of our own BRCC student’s story to make his point. He says, “Students who often choose to enroll in community colleges value their low cost, easy access, small class size, and high quality instruction that aligns with the needs of the local economy. Many of these students, such as Laketa Smith at Baton Rouge Community College, acknowledge that many of their previous education and career choices were not in their long-term best interest. Laketa, like a great number of students, needed developmental education in reading to help her prepare for college-level courses. As the result of her developmental education courses, she is successfully enrolled in honors courses at BRCC. At the same time, she not only saved herself money she saved the state of Louisiana as well.”

END OF SEMESTER SUGGESTIONS

As you begin to create your final exams, I would encourage you to use the comprehensive approach. What we know about the brain and learning is that it requires prompts and redundancy in order to create deeper learning. Repeating questions from your past quizzes and tests is a good idea, especially if a high number of students did not demonstrate mastery on the previous assessment. You should also be looking to see if the students are using the feedback you have provided them by assessing their ability to integrate changes and new knowledge. Test anxiety is a very real impediment for many of your students. Positive messaging and confidence building are two key components to allowing your students to give you their best effort. Encourage them to build study guides individually and then allow them some class time to share their efforts with other students in the class. The sum is always greater than the parts when it comes to knowledge. Finally, you may want to have each of your students bring in a self-addressed stamped envelope. That way you can send them feedback on their final exam. You could also email this information or create a general feedback document that you could post to your Blackboard site. This allows us to continue to scaffold the knowledge they learned this semester and connect it to new knowledge in the semesters to come.

THE HONOR CIRCLE EXPANDS

Join us in congratulating Dr. Sandra Guzman as the most recent recipient of the Keep Calm and Be Engaged shirt of honor. Watching Dr. Guzman in her classroom is an inspiring experience. Her love of both teaching and her discipline is readily obvious. She is a big proponent of active learning and making sure that her assessment instruments are aligned with her teaching. Dr. Guzman is also a disciple of Bloom’s Taxonomy and champions its worth to her colleagues. As a biologist, she is concerned about the environment and shares her passion with her students in this area as well. Her students tell us she is tough but caring. They also say that she is able to take a difficult topic and relate it to their lives in ways that help them learn and make connections to previous knowledge. So we welcome Dr. Guzman to the Keep Calm and Be Engaged honor circle where she joins previous recipients Paul Guidry, Wes Harris, Dr. Mary Miller, and Amy Pinero.

REMEMBERING OUR PAST IMPROVES OUR FUTURE

Today marks the 50^th anniversary of one of the most terrible days in our history as a nation. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding through the downtown area of Dallas, Texas. Some say it changed America forever. It certainly provides a teachable moment for you in your courses. Kennedy was the youngest person elected to be President of the U.S. His education agenda was part of his New Frontier program. He was also active on the Civil Rights front which had broad impact for education as well. One example includes his intervention when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the President. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation—to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS SHARE BEST PRACTICES

The faculty development workshop, Teaching and Learning Interventions for Student Success, held yesterday is still generating conversation. The comments started during the workshop, increased at the end of the session, and have continued to come via email. As a community of scholars, we are learning to depend on each other to solve our problems and it is encouraging. Facilitated by Dr. Todd Pourciau and Jeanne Stacy, every participant was actively engaged throughout the workshop and idea generation was at an all-time high. Tommy Domangue, psychology, said he will begin to model his thought processes “out loud” to help his students learn about learning. Paul Guidry, criminal justice (and a Keep Calm and Be Engaged professor) plans to use the stuff happens cards to reduce student excuses and the parking lot active learning strategy to prevent his classes from being hijacked. Raven Dora, computer science, plans to use the roundtable review to help her students scaffold information from previous classes, create study guides, and center her students to begin class. April Witting, practical nursing, wants to implement the question and answer match intervention to allow her student to learn from each other and build classroom community. Lee Buckner, economics, plans to use the Stop-Start-Keep Doing intervention to increase his awareness of his students needs and more closely gauge the “temperature” of his courses. All of these intervention and more can be found in the Active Learning Manual, which is currently being updated. Look for an electronic copy in your email in early December.

COURSE REDESIGN OPPORTUNITY

The upcoming holiday break during December and January is a great time to take on a course re-design project. Building meaningful learning experiences that are student-centered can greatly enhance student success. Dr. Gary Smith, University of New Mexico, has a terrific article in the National Teaching and Learning Forum about how he went from a lecture-based presenter to an active learning teacher. His story includes the level of critical self-reflection he was willing to do in order to improve student achievement and his student ratings. In fact, his article was the pre-reading assignment for the most recent faculty development workshop sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center. 

FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGES

While attending the Association for the Study of Higher Education conference last week, I heard so many presentations about the community college experience. What was surprising (and a little alarming) is that none of the expert presenters worked at community colleges themselves.  That tells me that the missing link in the international conversation about community colleges is us. I also learned that recent research shows that students prefer teachers who are organized and clear. That sounds simple yet how often are we challenged by multiple deadlines, responsibilities, and life in general? The Chronicle of Higher Education actually published an article about the conference presentations in today’s online issue.  One of the presentations highlighted by the article is by Dr. Chad Loes, a professor of criminal justice at Mount Mercy University, who studied how students' perceptions of organized teaching correlated with gains in critical-thinking skills measured at the beginning and end of their first year. After controlling for students' background characteristics, Dr. Loes and the other author, Dr. Mark H. Salisbury of Augustana College, in Illinois, found that well-organized teaching had only a small effect on the critical-thinking skills of students in general. But the perception of such teaching had a pronounced effect on students in minority groups, whose gains in critical-thinking skills were nearly five times as large as those of white students.

SAVE NOVEMBER 21 NOW
Teaching and Learning Interventions to Improve Student Success is a faculty development workshop built in response to your requests. Todd Pourciau and Jeanne Stacy are closing the loop on teaching and learning in this interactive workshop set for November 21 at 3:00 PM. Some of the topics to be covered include how to get everyone seated, attentive and ready to start class, how to gauge the temperature of your class and determine your impact on student learning, solving the student excuse dilemma, and calming test anxiety. We will also be sharing the newly revised Active Learning Guide. Participants will have the opportunity to bring their issues before the group and receive immediate feedback. This is a not to be missed opportunity that you have been asking for, so mark your calendar now.

UPCOMING WEBINAR WILL BE LIVE
There are still seats available for the faculty development live webinar, Promoting the Development, Achievement, and Persistence of Students from Diverse Backgrounds, to be held on Thursday, November 14. The participants from BRCC will be able to ask questions and fully participate in the live webinar which begins at 12:00 PM and will be held in the T+LC (311 Magnolia Building). Come and hear from a national expert as well as peers from colleges and universities across the U.S. Topics include how to use culturally appropriate interventions, shifting students to a task-involved approach, and how to use intrusive advising techniques for student success. This webinar series event is being co-sponsored by the Title III Program and the Teaching+Learning Center. Register now.

HYBRID FLC FILLS NEED
The Building a Hybrid Course Faculty Learning Community (FLC) met on Wednesday to explore the best ways to use discussion in a class meeting face-to-face and virtually. The members thought it was most important to insure that student discussion be insightful rather than superficial and that developing a democratic classroom environment where the students feel safe will produce the best class meetings. As the session moved to the use of feedback to assess learning and monitor teaching, the formation of retrieval mechanisms and development of correct mental models took center stage. The FLC agreed, as one of their outcomes, to create a pre-test that students could take to help them make decisions about taking classes delivered in an online environment.

NEWEST MEMBER OF THE CIRCLE

The latest recipient of a Keep Calm and Be Engaged shirt is Assistant Professor Wes Harris, who teaches English and also directs the Honor College at BRCC. Wes has demonstrated his commitment to student success by redesigning his courses to include topics that are student-relevant, using active learning in his classes, and being a leader in the recent Common Reader Faculty Learning Community. Wes said of his experience on the FLC, "Our conversations and study have re-invigorated my pedagogy and reminded me that driving the classroom necessarily involves traffic jams, the occasional fender bender, and sometimes even wrecks, and that each of these moments can be learnable and teachable. What a pleasure it has been to get to know each of you better, hear your experiences, and learn." He is pictured below (in his green shirt) with students from two of his classes. These students have currently earned an A mid-term grade and are well on their way to achieving academic excellence in the classroom. We offer congratulations to them as we celebrate learning and to Wes Harris for his commitment to student success.

John Langston, Jana Roosa, & Deana Hodges

Elizabeth Foster, Adrian Arabie, & Elizabeth Doerfler

HELP IS ON THE WAY

The Title III Program and Teaching+Learning Center are co-sponsoring a faculty development webinar on Thursday, November 14. Promoting the Development, Achievement and Persistence of Students from Diverse Backgrounds webinar will occur from noon until 1:30 PM in the T+LC (311 Magnolia Bldg.).  This intensive workshop will share effective theory-based programmatic and individual interventions that have resulted in campus environments of support that increase persistence for students of color. In addition to being provided with a wide range of information regarding demographic, educational attainments and other issues related to multicultural/students of color, participants will be provided with strategies that will allow them to improve student success. Upon completion, participants will be able to assist students employing the 0-100% Teaching and Advising Method as a means for promoting greater student responsibility for learning. Registration is now open.

RESEARCH WE CAN USE NOW
A new report on first-generation students could provide us with some valuable information as we continue to implement interventions to improve student retention at BRCC. The report notes that about a quarter of high-school graduates who took the ACT in 2013 met all four of its college-readiness benchmarks, in English, reading, mathematics, and science. But students whose parents did not go to college fared quite a bit worse: Only 9 percent of them met all four benchmarks. We know that many of our students are the first in their family to attempt to earn a college degree. One of the highlights from the report says, “Recent research demonstrates that academically prepared students, as measured by the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, have greater chances for success in their future educational endeavors. However, academic readiness is just one of several factors that contribute to educational success. The academic behaviors of students and the interest levels in their specific major or career are other key factors. Together, these elements define a clear picture of student readiness for post-secondary education. To encourage progress, the educational system needs to monitor and sustain all key factors of success.”

TESTING IS A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Dr. Maryellen Weimer offers us an interesting reminder about testing in a post on The Teaching Professor blog. Her thoughts are consistent with what we discussed in our testing workshop on October 17 but bear repeating. She writes, “We give exams to assess mastery of material—are students learning the course content? With so much emphasis on scores and grades, it’s easy to forget that the process of preparing for, taking, and getting feedback about an exam can also be a learning experience. The learning that results from these processes can be tacit, or teachers can design activities associated with exam events that can result in better content learning and heightened student awareness of the learning skills associated with demonstrating knowledge.” Read more…

PAYING ATTENTION TO THE INTROVERTS IN YOUR CLASS

Nicki Monahan, Faculty Facilitator in the Staff and Organizational Development Department at George Brown College, Toronto, Canada, has written an interesting article about introverts in the classroom. She writes, “Who are they and how do we ensure they thrive in active learning classrooms? If you have ever come to the midterm point of the semester and graded a stellar paper of a student whose name you don’t recognize and who has never raised her hand in class, you may have just identified an introvert in your classroom. In many learning situations, introverts may need to stretch beyond their comfort zones, and they should be encouraged to do so, as should extroverts. Our goal is not to turn introverts into extroverts, or vice-versa, but to maximize learning for all students and to help them develop the skills often identified by potential employers — teamwork, problem solving, and interpersonal communication. When designing learning activities for your classroom, consider the key elements of balance and choice in order to create a comfortable learning environment which also encourages all students to stretch and take risks.” Read more…

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITY DECONSTRUCTS ASSESSMENT

The Common Reader Faculty Learning Community recently completed a learning experience about the type of assessment we use to determine if our students are learning. The discussion centered on performance-based versus learning-based approaches. Traditionalists who use performance-based methods tend to base their evaluation and assessment on their student’s ability to comply with the dictates of the course. The requirements may very well be tied to learning considerations but those are often forgotten as the requirements and worry about covering the material begin to take over. Learning-centered approaches tend to emphasize assessment and evaluative tools that focus on helping students understand their progress in learning and help us evaluate our teaching. It assumes that learning is a developmental process that entails helping students to undergo intellectual and personal changes as they develop new understandings and reasoning abilities. Grading is more about communicating with our students rather than a way to rank them. This exercise in critical self-reflection proved to be beneficial to the FLC members but it does not need to be limited to group situations. You can study and reflect on your approaches to determine if you are using the right assessment tools to determine your effectiveness as a teacher. Contact the Teaching+Learning Center if you would like some resources to help you with this self-evaluation.

GETTING YOU READY FOR THE SEMESTER'S END

The Blackboard Series continues with an upcoming professional development session that could help you be more efficient when completing the end-of-semester tasks we are required to handle. Susan Nealy and Lenora White will deliver an interactive workshop on how to use the Blackboard Gradebook feature to help you with end-of-semester reporting responsibilities on Tuesday, November 5. Upon completion of this session, you will be able to: enter all grades into Blackboard including the manual entry of a final grade; organize grades separate from attendance (if taken in Blackboard); “drop" grades while still maintaining the grade in Blackboard (based on faculty syllabus); download the Gradebook into an Excel spreadsheet for submission to your Academic Division. This workshop is part of the Teaching+Learning Center's ongoing faculty professional development programming. The session from 3:00-4:00 PM is for beginner users of Blackboard while the 4:00-5:00 PM session is better suited for advanced users. Registration is now open.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT ON CRITICAL THINKING

The conversation about the idea of teaching students to think critically has gone from a whisper to a roar. Many states have adopted learning outcomes that designate critical thinking as one of the required standards for their institutions of higher education. Many of the questions I am often asked focus on critical thinking. In fact, the Common Reader Faculty Learning Community spent some time discussing the concept as well. In response to the curiosity, The Teaching+Learning Center is offering the webinar Teaching for Critical Thinking on October 31 at 3:00 PM. Dr. Stephen Brookfield, University Distinguished Professor at the University of St. Thomas, will be making the presentation. At the end of this webinar, you will be able to: Design and implement an Assumptions Audit; Implement the Critical Incident Questionnaire-a tool to model critical thinking; Design and conduct a Scenario Analysis exercise; Design and conduct a “Chalk Talk” exercise; and, Incorporate two or more techniques for modeling critical thinking into your practice as a teacher. You can register now for this faculty professional development workshop.

RELEVANCE AND AUTONOMY ARE KEY TO STUDENT SUCCESS

Underachievement in college students is linked to lack of motivation (Balduf, 2009 and references therein). Two major factors that contribute to poor motivation are inability of students to see the relevance of classroom activities to their chosen careers (Glynn et al., 2009) and lack of a sense of autonomy (Reeve and Jang, 2006; Reeve, 2009). Dr. Katherine Robertson has written an article addressing both of these issues. She suggest that experiential learning be used and describes it as "a process through which students develop skills through direct experience. While most people think of experiential learning as something that happens outside the classroom, it is possible to give students real-life experiences in the classroom, too," says Dr. Robertson. She also suggests that to enhance student autonomy, have your students write their own rubrics and guidelines under your guidance. 

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES ROLL ON 

The Common Reader Faculty Learning Community is wrapping up their faculty development project and will have some interesting outcomes based on the lively discussion in and out of the formal sessions. In addition, the Building a Hybrid Course Faculty Learning Community had their initial session yesterday. This FLC is looking to create a best-practices model or template that all faculty can use as they build their hybrid classes. The FLC membership includes: Becky Adcock, Joanie Chavis, Janet Daniel, Raven Dora, Jessie Hornbrook, Mary Miller, Susan Nealy, and Todd Pourciau. They are using the Jay Caulfield book How to Design and Teach a Hybrid Course as the text for the FLC. Look for updates as they move through their sessions.

TESTING WORKSHOP PROVES BENEFICIAL

The faculty professional development session Testing 101: Assessing Student Learning held on October 17 received high marks from the faculty who spent part of their fall break participating. Dr. Amy Atchly, speech communication, was able to learn new ways to help her students overcome test anxiety. Paul Guidry, criminal justice, decided to “stop being concerned with coverage and to be more concerned with actual learning.” Belvin Givens, CSSK, is planning to use the post-test assessment methods explained in the seminar. Leroy Waguespack, STEM, was happy to receive his own Bloom’s Taxonomy flipbook to help him develop higher level-thinking questions for his tests.  Almost all of the participants said that they planned to use a test blueprint to design their assessment instruments. Watch this blog and your email-box for information on a repeat of this session.

LIMITING CHOICES MAY HELP COMPLETION
Have you heard of Kay McClenney? You may know her as part of the team that developed the nine principles of good practice for assessing student learning published by the American Association for Higher Education. She is a well known community college researcher who believes that the work she has done reveals that "options do not work for first-generation students." Dr. McClenney argues that limiting the structured pathways to graduation can produce positive results for students who choose to attend a community college.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT FOR YOU
The popular faculty development Blackboard Series continues this Thursday, October 24 as presenters Susan Nealy and Lenora White focus on rubrics. Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to apply a rubric to a new or existing Grade Center column, generate a Rubric Evaluation Report, grade using a rubric, and efficiently navigate between Grade Details pages. Providing your students with great feedback is all part of helping them to make informed choices about their academic career. You can register now for the beginner (3PM) or advanced class (4PM).

STUDENT SUCCESS ON DISPLAY
Criminal justice instructor Paul Guidry has been recognized previously for his excellent student engagement skills and is a current holder of one of the coveted Keep Calm and Be Engaged green shirts.  He recently took the time to contact us about the success his students are experienced in a number of his classes. As part of our ongoing celebrating learning initiative, we wanted to share his good news. The students pictured with Mr. Guidry all earned an A on their most recent test. If you have a student success story that you would like to share, please contact me. 

Denzel Williams

Crawford Wheeler & Clay George

Melanie Hogan, Hannah Keowen, Joshua Williams, Stuart Wells, & Jonathan Howard

Lisa Marino

CELEBRATING STUDENT SUCCESS

The coveted Keep Calm and Be Engaged green shirt has been awarded once again to a faculty member who is relentless in her pursuit of student success. Dr. Mary Miller, who teaches science classes, was recently surprised with her recognition when we popped in on one of her classes. One of her outstanding students, Robin Chautin, said, "From day one of microbiology, Dr. Miller greeted our class with an enthusiastic, positive attitude. She is very clear when she teaches and breaks down the material in a manner that is easily understood. Her examples in class are of such a wide variety and she will go to great lengths to make sure that everyone is clear on the topic. The thing I like the most about Dr. Miller's class is that our labs are very organized and the objective is always clear. Dr. Miller is extremely knowledgeable in microbiology and her passion for it is contagious! This is by far the most fun learning experience I have ever had!" While we were there, it was also an opportunity to "celebrate learning." She had recently given a test and a number of her students scored a B or better. So we combined the two celebrations and took the picture shown on the left (front row left to right, Crystal Armand, Elizabeth Ford, Erica Zumo, and Amanda Yan; back row, Dr. Miller, Alyssa Perry, Ashley Dyer, Robin Chautin, Brenda Odom, Victoria Danagogo, and Patrick Stewart) to share with you. If you would like to share your student success story, please let me know and we will arrange to visit your class as well.

FALL BREAK OPPORTUNITY

There are still a few spots available for the faculty professional development workshop on Thursday, October 17. Testing 101: Assessing Student Learning will be held in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building/Mid City Campus) at 3:00 PM. Upon completion of the session, participants will be able to evaluate current assessment instruments and determine their effectiveness towards indicating student learning; build a better testing and assessment instrument using a test blueprint; determine if their learning experiences and their testing is aligned; and, identify the advantages of different types of testing. You can register for your spot now.

ZOMBIES INVADE BRCC
Week six of the Common Reader Faculty Learning Community focused on what Ken Bain defines as a natural critical learning environment. It is what emerged in his research study as the perfect setting for student learning to occur. His research results suggest that this learning environment allows students to "confront important problems in ways that force them to rethink assumptions and examine their mental models of reality." The discussion between your colleagues produced an "aha" moment. Bain says, "In order to maximize the engagement factor, you need to focus on what students care about, know, or think they know, the things that excite them." It needs to be combined with your disciplinary knowledge but if we are to capture and keep their attention, it needs to be "important" to them in some way. The aha moment occurred when we began to discuss what is currently important to them and one topic emerged: zombies. As we began to talk about ways to uncover what is important to them, like using personal response systems or using a Doodle poll, we came to the conclusion that popular culture could help. Because advertising firms have endless pots of money to spend on uncovering our likes and tendencies, that is the obvious place to turn for this answer. So returning to the zombies theme we were quickly able to reference that there are a number of TV shows (The Walking Dead) and movies (World War Z and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies) and in fact a couple of commercials running incessantly right now about this topic (Toyota and Sprint). So your challenge is, how do you integrate the topic of zombies into your learning experiences for your classes? The FLC members also encourage us to pay close attention to the media in order to help stay current with what topics are trending with our students.

MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF TEACHING
One of the burning questions for us as teachers will always be "Are my students learning?" One of the ways we determine that is by assessing what we have taught. Good assessment provides the answers to the questions "Am I teaching?" and "Are my students learning?" The faculty development workshop set for October 17 is designed to help you create assessment instruments that can provide the data to answer these questions. Testing 101: Assessing Student Learning, to be held in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building/Mid City Campus) promises to be an active learning experience. We will delve into the rich and interesting topic of testing on many levels. So let's take some of the guess work out of testing and assessment together. If you would like to join your colleagues for this workshop, register now.

DON'T LET TEACHABLE MOMENTS SLIP BY
Have you ever had a bird fly into your classroom while you were teaching? What about planning to show a really compelling video and having the technology malfunction? Do you remember what class you were teaching the morning of September 11, 2001? All of these examples provide a teachable moment. Don't get me wrong. I am not comparing the three incidents in any way. What I am urging you to do is to not let a change in your plans cause you to miss the great opportunity. Nothing resonates with our students like real life. Dr. Judy Willis says, "Rather than viewing a spontaneous teachable moment as a distraction, planning for these moments in advance facilitates making the most of a moment to engage students who are already at a heightened state of attention and awareness." She suggests you have your students write a quickwrite about how the experience made them feel. Quickwrites require students to write for three to five minutes without stopping. If their inspiration stops and they don't know what to write, tell them to write the last word over and over again until inspiration hits them again. After the time limit is complete, have them read what they wrote silently and ask them to underline one or two phrases they consider most important. You can then have them share those highlights with the class. If you determine that this really sparked great interest, you can turn this into a larger assignment and have them write an essay, expanding what they started in class. Teachable moments provide us with a wonderful opportunity to use a sometime emotional moment to build class community and make lasting connections.

CAN YOU BLACKBOARD
The turnout was terrific for the two Blackboard workshop sessions on Thursday. It was extremely nice to see some of our new colleagues from the former CATC on the Mid City Campus. The feedback was great as well. Sandra Guzman, science, wrote, "My lab reports are going paperless!" Barbara Hasek, science, wrote, "The presentation was very helpful and I will start using the due date feature immediately." Jessie Hornbrook, liberal arts, wrote, "I am definitely using this now to grade my 50+ student writing assignments in all of my classes!"  Angela Pursley, business and social sciences, wrote that she likes using the "student view of the grade center." Darnella Jackson, nursing and allied health, wrote that she appreciates "how easy it is to create a course in Blackboard." The next session of the Blackboard Series is just around the corner. Gradebook: It's Not Just for eLearning Classes will occur on Tuesday, October 8 with sessions for the two levels of learners. The 3:00 PM session is for beginners while the 4:00 PM session is for advanced users. You can register for this faculty professional development opportunity now.

ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH GRANDMA ON FACEBOOK
Barbara Fister's recent post on her blog raises some interesting questions about college writing instruction in the age of digital overload. She writes, "How do we prepare students for a world in which so much of their writing will be digital and published in a fluid, communal, multivocal space? How do we talk about the rhetorical issues of purpose, audience, argument, evidence, and tone when we aren’t limiting ourselves to certain academic forms of writing? As the Stanford Study of Writing has shown, students may be better at rhetorical moves than we think precisely because they have practiced them in digital spaces with real purposes and real audiences. But given the complexity of modern forms of public writing, what issues beyond the usual writing issues might be worth considering? Should we be talking about the difficulty of self-representation in a space with multiple audiences, including your friends, your future employer, and your grandmother? Should we talk about who owns our texts online and what platforms such as Goodreads and Facebook can do with our contributions? Should we talk about balancing free speech and civility with case studies of people behaving badly online?"

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
There are two additional professional development opportunities open to all BRCC faculty. The first occurs on October 8 and continues our Blackboard Series. This interactive workshop will focus on the Gradebook function and there will be a session for beginners and for more advanced users. The two sessions will begin at 3:00 and 4:00 PM that day. On October 10 the Teaching+Learning Center will present a workshop about test preparation. It will focus on the areas of alignment, rigor, and reliability. You will also learn about using a blueprint to build the perfect test. This workshop will be held in 311 Magnolia and begin at 3:00 PM. Look for registration information in your email-box in the very near future but save the dates now.

THE PLIGHT OF OUR ADJUNCT COLLEAGUES
The recent discussion about the effectiveness of adjunct faculty at our nation's colleges, reminded me of a study focused on this area. Although it was published in 2011, it bears a second glance. As the number of adjunct faculty continues to grow on campuses across the U.S., there is growing concern that due to a lack of training and/or time, most adjunct faculty are not using effective teaching methods. Roger Baldwin and Matthew Wawrzynski, two faculty at Michigan State, conducted the research and stressed in an interview that they fault the conditions part-time instructors work under, and not the instructors themselves, for their failure to use effective teaching methods more often. The researchers found that, compared with full-time adjuncts or tenured or tenure-track faculty, part-time adjuncts "are less likely to use learning-centered strategies such as essay exams, term research papers, multiple drafts of written work, oral presentations, group projects, or student evaluations of each others' work," the paper says. Such learning-centered practices are generally regarded by practitioners as some of the most effective means of teaching students and are certainly what the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support is suggesting all of our faculty use in their courses.

FREE YOUR MIND ONLINE
Audrey Heinesen has written a fascinating opinion piece about the need for more faculty who are willing to teach using the online course delivery method. She notes, "Online instructors can revel in a newfound ability to defy some of the most fundamental aspects of a typical classroom. The whiteboard is no longer erased at the end of the day. Your best moments reach beyond students in your physical presence. Your teaching can be set free in your online classroom. You’re free to structure content in new ways to reach your students. Try different types of content and multimodal teaching strategies that might not work in a traditional setting. Experiment with new course ideas that are harder to champion in more structured environments. Backward design, flipped classroom, video-based instruction? Instructors can return to a creative place by developing new ideas around curriculum and teaching." As we continue to expand our eLearning offerings, we are certainly looking to add to the number of faculty who are certified to teach using the online delivery method. Contact your dean or department chair if you are interested in receiving the training to teach for our eLearning department.

STOPPING BULIMIC LEARNING
One of the ideas recently discussed at the Common Reader Faculty Learning Community was the topic of comprehensive testing. The idea is to have each test that you give in your class not only build on the previous test but actually include material that should have been learned before. Craig Nelson, a biology instructor from Indiana, notes that comprehensive tests help us to avoid creating bulimic learners. He explains that this is the student who learns things for the test and then purges the information, thinking they will never have to use it again. Research shows however that continued interaction with content increases the chances that it will be remembered and can be applied subsequently. An article in the August/September 2013 issue of The Teaching Professor also supports this claim. Preparing for Comprehensive Finals contains a number of great suggestions that we can use to help our students prepare for their encounter with this type of assessment.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY
Would you like to turn your class into a paperless operation?  Have you ever tried to sit down and grade student assignments only to find that you left them at the office?  Or perhaps you are ready to return an assignment to students only to find that you left them at home. Utilizing the Assignments function in Blackboard may be a good solution for you. On Thursday, September 26 two training sessions on using the Blackboard Assignment function will be held. You can register now for one of two sessions to be taught by Susan Nealy and Lenora White. The first session is for those faculty who are new to Blackboard. The beginner level session will be held at 3:00 PM and is recommended for faculty who are just learning how to navigate Blackboard and may need a little extra time getting started. The session will be very deliberate through the process from setup to submission and grading. The advanced level session will begin at 4 PM. This is for faculty familiar with using Blackboard but who have not used Assignments before and will cover assignment setup, submission and grading. This workshop is part of the Teaching+Learning Center faculty professional development programming. Both sessions of the workshop will be held in 206 Cypress Building.

TESTING CENTER EXPANDS HOURS AND SERVICE

The Testing Center at the Mid City Campus has new hours of operation beginning on September 16. We will now be open on Monday and Tuesday from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM, Wednesday and Thursday from 8:00 AM until 7:00 PM, Friday from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM and Saturday from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM. In addition, the new Testing Center scheduler has been activated. Students can now make appointments for any type of testing via the BRCC website. Students or faculty who have questions should contact one of the Testing Center specialists at testingcenter@mybrcc.edu. The Testing Center at the Acadian Campus offers testing on Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM. Questions or scheduling for the Acadian Campus should be directed to yolandabatton@catc.edu.

HOW TO MAKE IDEAS STICK

Have you read the article by Chip Heath and Dan Heath entitled "Teaching that Sticks"? It is based on their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (HM291.H43). The Heath brothers have identified the six traits that they feel make an idea sticky and they include: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and story. The Heath's say, "As a teacher, you are on the front lines of stickiness. Every single day, you've got to wake up in the morning and go make ideas stick. And let's face it, this is no easy mission. Few students burst into the classroom, giddy with anticipation, ready for the latest lesson on punctuation, polynomials, or pilgrims."

KEEP CALM AND BE ENGAGED

Another outstanding faculty member has been recognized and rewarded with a coveted green shirt. Paul Guidry, who teaches in the Criminal Justice program, is a big proponent of active learning methods and truly believes that engagement is the ultimate weapon in fighting attrition. His student, Raven Groom, says "Mr. Guidry doesn't just hand out papers and ask us to read them. He actually teaches the material and uses real-life situations to make sure we comprehend." Another of his students, Daniel Lynch, says "Mr. Guidry genuinely cares about the future of his student's lives and helps us prosper by leading us in the classroom." The Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support is proud to recognize Paul Guidry for his dedication to his students and his chosen craft.

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITY BEGINS WORK
The Common Reader Faculty Learning Community kicked off with an abundance of enthusiasm and participation on Wednesday. So much so, that there is currently a waiting list of folks who would like to join the FLC. The Teaching+Learning Center is currently exploring the idea of opening another section of the FLC to accommodate the need. Participants discussed the profession of teaching, explored the syllabus, and examined the learning outcomes at the first faculty professional development session. The FLC is developing a set of group objectives as well. FLC members include: Nisha Aroskar, Robbie Burleigh, Emily Graves, Wes Harris, Susan Nealy, Jennifer Perkins, Todd Pourciau, Angela Pursley, Kathleen Schexnayder, Jeanne Stacy, and Lin Warmsley.

GROUP WORK TEACHES VALUABLE LESSONS AND SKILLS
Group projects are a great active learning experience that has proven benefits for student learning. Randall Hansen's article Benefits and Problems with Student Teams: Suggestions for Improving Team Projects published in the Journal of Education for Business lists a number of great suggestions that you may want to employ. Hansen says that we should emphasize the importance and benefits of teamwork by pointing out the special skills acquired that are useful in any job the student may be seeking. Team-building exercises help to build cohesive groups and promote engagement. If you are looking to have your students learn how to work with others whom they may not know (similar to most work environments), you should form the groups. The workload expectations should be reasonable and you should provide some class time for meetings. The goals of the project should have clearly defined learning objectives and you should require interim reports and group process feedback. Always remind the students that they should keep a log or journal of their experience that indicates their contributions and peer assessment should be part of the evaluation process.


THE RANKING BUSINESS EXPANDS
Did you know that the U.S. Department of Education is set to launch a rating system for all colleges and universities by 2015? It will apparently reward colleges with a high rating if they graduate large numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and do not saddle such students with heavy debt without graduating them. Once in place, the program would give larger Pell Grants and more-affordable loans to students attending higher-rated institutions. The focus on college completion sharpened this past year, as campus leaders pursued national goals for higher-education attainment, and more states tied a portion of colleges' appropriations to performance measures such as graduation rates. Louisiana of course has the GRAD ACT. The US News and World Report ranking focuses on the national level. Washington Monthly started publishing a national rankings system as well in 2005. The rankings, whose most recent edition was published last month, "give high marks to institutions that enroll low-income students, help them graduate, and don't charge them an arm and a leg to attend," the magazine said.

CAN A ROBOT DO YOUR JOB
As the debate about the role of technology in education builds, two California community-college professors have published their own commentary on the automation of teaching—in the form of an illustrated comic according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Adam Bessie and Arthur King, who teach English and studio and computer arts, respectively, at Diablo Valley College, have weighed in with a piece of graphic journalism titled “Automated Teaching Machine: A Graphic Introduction to the End of Human Teachers.” The comic, published by the left-leaning Truth Out, has been circulating among faculty members on California community-college e-mail lists. It was inspired by the introduction of an automated reading machine to score English-placement assessments at Diablo Valley College, Mr. Bessie said in an e-mail. Previously, English-department faculty members had created and reviewed the assessments manually, a collective exercise that gave them the opportunity to discuss standards, he said. “We were told that the robo-reader could do the same job as us for cheaper, which seemed an absurd notion,” Mr. Bessie said. “I had, before this, never heard of a robo-reader and thought that I had the one job that couldn’t be automated: that written human communication was one area that technology could augment, but not replace.”