BLACKBOARD EXPERTS ON THE RISE AT BRCC
The day started with a bang as several of your colleagues new to Blackboard began their training session at 9:00 AM in the Teaching+Learning Center. eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy and IT Technical Support Manager Lenora White are facilitating the training sessions. The intermediate-level Blackboard users began their session at 11:00 AM. The training concludes with our advanced group at 1:00 PM today. The comments from the participants have been very positive about our latest version of Blackboard. Many are impressed with the analytics feature that will allow them to drill deep as they monitor their students progress during the semester. Next up is the eLearning teacher certification program planned for the summer. Those selected to participate in this year's program should be receiving their notification via email very shortly.

BEGIN SMALL WITH ACTIVE LEARNING
We have been encouraging the use of active learning as we move towards a learner-centered institution. One of the reasons that many faculty tell me they don't want to try using active-learning techniques is that they are comfortable lecturing and research shows that "they may find innovative instructional techniques intimidating." Paramount among your concerns is the fear of “losing control” of the class. In addition, some faculty may avoid incorporating active-learning strategies into their classrooms because they think that students will react negatively. Faust and Paulson note in their research, "A complaint we often hear is, “I tried active learning, but my students didn’t like it.” Indeed, most of us have had the experience of attempting to initiate class discussion and being faced with silence. These two issues are related, for both students and faculty tend to be comfortable with what they are trained to do. Thus, as long as faculty lean primarily on lecturing, students will expect to sit and listen (and often hide or sleep in class)." Faculty development experts suggest that you begin using active learning in small ways at first. You need to become comfortable with the approach before you can fully realize its potential. Some of the learning experiences listed in the revised Active Learning Manual that would be easy to try are the Muddiest Point or One-Minute Paper. The idea is to do something active each time you meet in a face-to-face class. You are building your expertise at the same time as you are creating expectation in your students. Let me know if you want a copy of the latest version of the Active Learning Manual.

CAN YOU HELP ME FIND A JOB
Why did you decide to go to college? Asking that question of new students in a more formal way might help colleges find ways to encourage more students to complete their programs, according to a new study from University of Rochester education researchers published in The Journal of College Student Development. The study found that students motivated by a desire for autonomy and competence tended to earn higher grades and show a greater likelihood of persistence than did other students. (The findings were controlled for academic background and various other factors, and were based on surveys of 2,500 students at a community college and a liberal arts college that were not identified.) The study also appears to validate other research that says that linking the subject matter to a student's current interests improves learning.

CELEBRATING THE PRESENT AND ASSESSING THE PAST

As we look forward to Commencement on Friday, May 24, it is also time to begin to assess our progress as an educational institution. That all starts and ends in each of your classes, whether you met face-to-face or virtually. Looking at the amount of students who did not pass your class with an acceptable grade is a good place to begin. A large number of failures indicate serious problems. As the educational process is a partnership, we must take part of the blame. If you taught in an online delivery mode this semester, you can certainly use analytics available to you through Blackboard. Those can be extremely helpful as you notice trends of when students stopped participating or what resources they utilized on their semester journey. If you taught in the classroom, it is more difficult to analyze the situation but you should still attempt to do so. I have encouraged you to keep a journal of each of your classes as you make your way through the semester. It is a great way to help you redesign your class for greater effectiveness. Many of you took advantage of the classroom observation resource that I offer. I urge those of you who did to revisit the analysis as you begin to look at what worked and what did not. I am pleased to tell you that we now have the capability to offer you a video rendition of your class. You simply need to contact me to set this up. Seeing yourself as your students do can be a very helpful exercise. I have also updated the Active Learning Manual. If you would like to have the latest version to help you plan new learning experiences, send me a request via email (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). Friday is about celebrating accomplishment. You have had a significant part to play in all of our graduates’ lives. Let's come together as a community and recognize the best of who we are in our graduates on Friday.

TEACHING LESS ALLOWS BETTER LEARNING

Many faculty complain that their deans and chairs insist that they "cover" a certain amount of material (usually defined by chapters in a textbook) in their classes during the semester. I have shared with you that research shows that teaching less allows our students to learn better. We must focus on learning outcomes. It is vital to have students who can think critically and integrate new material and then apply it to new situations. Active learning is proven to produce just this kind of learning. If a student is able to think critically, they can survive in any situations, whether they are receiving a certificate and going to work or whether they are transferring to a four-year institution. Faust and Paulson have developed a terrific research paper that compiles the best of active learning data. They note that the “coverage problem”—that is that an instructor cannot “cover” as much material in a course incorporating active-learning techniques as in a course using exclusively lecture—is built on faulty logic. A growing body of evidence suggests that students learn and retain more information when they are asked to engage it actively. However, weighing content coverage against active learning creates a devil’s bargain: Either teach more material and have students learn less, or teach less material and have students learn more of it. Little purpose is served by the first choice. Students always will be better educated if we expose them to slightly less content but require them to engage the material. We all have had the experience of students coming into our classes appearing to have little knowledge of what was covered in their previous courses. The material was “covered,” but the students did not learn it. Thus, even in courses in which there are mandates on the amount of material to be covered, students are likely to be better prepared for successive courses if they are actively engaged in learning the material.

COLLEGE DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Students show substantial gains in learning during college, as measured by a standardized test of critical thinking, according to two studies conducted by the creator of the test. While perhaps not a direct rebuke to Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the blockbuster 2011 book that documented what its authors argued was meager learning on campuses, the studies, by the Council for Aid to Education, do offer a sunnier counter narrative. In "Does College Matter?," the council found that, at a typical college, students' scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA, rose 108 points, on a scale that ranges from about 400 to 1600, between freshman and senior years. The council also found distinctions in the performance of students at different types of institutions. Students at baccalaureate colleges demonstrated the highest average growth on the CLA, followed by those at master's-level colleges and universities. Students at doctoral and research universities showed the lowest average growth.

CAN MY CLICKER TALK TO BLACKBOARD
The use of student response systems has been around for a number of years but the folks who provide the technology have not stopped trying to improve their effectiveness. Yesterday the Teaching+Learning Center hosted Paul King of Turning Technologies to share the latest on his version of "clickers." He was joined by Bill Joyce, who many at BRCC may remember as he was our "rep" for a number of years. The main updates focused on analytics. As with all technology, the tool only benefits us if it helps to improve teaching and learning and lightens the workload. When the conversation turned to how Turning Technologies products "talked" with our current version of Blackboard, those in attendance found out that there may indeed be some benefits to adopting the latest versions. At the end of the day we decided to continue talking with all the stakeholders to see how we can improve student learning through the use of deeper assessment. Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the progress.

ELEARNING RELAUNCH CONTINUES
This has been an interesting semester for our eLearning Program. In January, we hired Susan Nealy to manage the eLearning enterprise. We also embarked on a relaunch project that included course redesign based on industry-standard benchmarks. As you will recall, the eLearning offerings for the spring 2013 semester were limited to 28 classes to allow for evaluation and assessment to take place in a controlled environment. As we approach the end of the first semester since the relaunch, we are busy with the assessment part of the project. Many of you are about to receive a survey that will allow us to capture valuable information for the next step in the process. We are most interested in the student experience of this relaunch and will be surveying them as well. All of this is designed to provide our students with the best possible academic experience in an online environment. Student learning is still the main objective and we are optimistic that the changes being implemented will allow BRCC to provide a quality program of excellence.

EVERYBODY MULTITASKS BUT NOT VERY WELL
Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, has published some interesting research on a topic near to my own areas of interest. His study takes a look at the use of technology during learning experiences, an idea that emerged from his book Rewired. He based his idea on the fact that students are experiencing multiple streams of information and entertainment while they study, do homework, or even sit in class. In fact, we know that this has become so common that most students rarely write a paper or complete a problem set without multitasking (or switch tasking as many psychologists have come to describe it).  The evidence clearly shows that when students switch task while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. Rosen suggests that we ask our students to take "tech breaks" during class. He gives them a chance to look at email and websites during class in short spurts throughout the class as long as they adhere to his rules during the class. Rosen has found that this will allow the students to build their resistance and begin to work longer periods without the tech breaks.

STAND AND DELIVER
Here is another suggestion from Dr. Dakin Burdick for an end of the semester activity that will provide you with great immediate feedback from your students about their experience in your class. Christopher Uhl recommends ending the course with an invitation to students to stand and share their thoughts. Some prompts for this exposition are emotional in nature: What are your regrets? How did you fail to live up to your potential? For what are you thankful? What are your hopes for yourself and for your colleagues? Others are challenges to the student to commit him/herself towards change: How will you use what you have learned? How do you resolve to change?

JOINT OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING
Robert Carroll has written an interesting opinion piece about the teacher-student relationship. At its essence, it is about engagement but he frames it in terms of an athletic performance. He asks "So why do we, as teachers, still exist? The formal education process is no longer about information, and successful teachers have come to realize this. The ability of learners to access information has increased to the point of absurdity. The role of the teacher now is to help learners effectively identify and evaluate information sources, but this alone does not justify our continued presence in the educational process." He continues, "While learning is self-directed, it is the teacher that is accountable for the learning:  accountable to the students, to the program, and to themselves. Courses flourish when the student-teacher relationship is reciprocal and includes “joint ownership” of the course. And the responsibility flows both ways–a student performing poorly is a failure on my part, and I work with them to get them to perform to the best of their ability."

GROUP DISCUSSION WITH A TWIST
We have encouraged you to use class discussion as an active learning method in your classes and we have provided teaching and learning faculty development workshops in the past to provide you with the information and tools to implement this learning experience. B. J. Brooks and M. D. Koretsky provide a twist on this active learning method in their article "The Influence of Group Discussion on Students' Responses and Confidence During Peer Instruction" published in the Journal of Chemical Education. They advocate that you allow your student to respond to a discussion question individually in writing and then have them share that answer with two or three colleagues. After the discussion, the students can change their answers, write another explanation for the answer and once again indicate their degree of confidence in their answer. The research shows that the learning experience provided a richer understanding of the answer and improved their confidence level in having the correct answer. The depth of their explanation was enhanced as well. Students spent an average of seven minutes in discussion making this an active learning method that can be used each time you meet as a class. The research also confirmed that when faced with conceptual problems, students need the opportunity to practice problem solving and the discussion improves their ability to explain why the answer is correct.

CLOSING OUT A SEMESTER POSITIVELY
A fellow faculty development colleague reminds us that the end of the semester is the time to do some assessment that will provide you with valuable feedback as you plan for the next semester. There are a number of things you can do to help your students transition to the next phase of their academic careers or workforce lives. He suggests, "Just as you discussed the syllabus on the first day of class, do so again, this time to reaffirm that learning outcomes have been met and to remind students of the material that has been covered. Of course, it is a good idea to review that syllabus a few weeks out from the end of the semester to make sure that the outcomes have been met. The review can be done as a large group discussion, or you might assign groups within the class to assess how well the course had fulfilled its outcomes, material coverage, and other goals."

MUSIC DELIVERS IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
When designing and teaching a course through the online delivery method, research shows that you should build in authentic and relevant opportunities for your students to interact, connect, and present themselves as real people. Students see these opportunities to socially interact and connect with others as foundational attributes of your courses. Further, research suggests that opportunities like these influence students’ perception of the overall learning experience. Joanna Dunlap and Patrick Lowenthal conducted research in this area and suggest that using music as one of a number of ways to help students interact and connect with each other can produce positive student learning results. Music offers a way to involve students in student-to-content interaction through generative learning activities—by having students compile playlists, write lyrics, compose songs, perform songs, create music videos, and so on. Music-driven, student-to-content interaction also involves students in multisensory learning, further supporting knowledge acquisition and construction. They provide a number of discipline specific active learning methods that you can integrate into your online class.