PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY
Are you using the discussion board function on your Blackboard site? Do you receive angry emails for your students related to technology use in your courses? Have you ever wondered how you can increase your engagement by utilizing online resources? An answer of yes to any of these questions suggests that you should plan on attending the Transforming the Challenging Online Students into a Master Student webinar. It is being held in the Teaching+Learning Center on Thursday, February 6 from noon until 1:00 PM. Shawn Orr will deliver an informative webinar utilizing her more than 18 years of experience as a professor, department chair, adviser and dean. Orr also received the 2010 Post-Secondary Teacher of the Year for the Ohio Business and Technology Teacher Association and the 2011 North Central Educators Association Educator of the Year. She hold a Master's degree with a curriculum development specialty. Come and learn from her experience and the ideas and input from your faculty colleagues. You can register now for the faculty professional development webinar sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
USING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE LEARNING
We tweeted earlier about an article by Rob Kelly that explains how to create a learner-friendly online presence for your classes. Kelly points to Cynthia Schmitt, senior director of continuing education at Florida Institute of Technology, as a good example. According to the article, Schmitt tries to make the online learning experience comfortable and efficient for students. I'll share one of her tips here. "One way to increase the students’ comfort in the online classroom is to conduct synchronous sessions." Each unit in Schmitt’s course includes one-hour synchronous sessions. "Students select the time for these sessions at the beginning of the course and meet with the instructor in groups of 10 to 12 using Adobe Connect, which enables them to see the instructor on camera and hear her or his voice. (Adobe Connect has the capability to allow students to use video and voice as well, but students in remote areas typically do not use these features because of bandwidth limitations and instead communicate via text chat.) Remember that Susan Nealy, eLearning Program Manager is ready and willing to help you enhance your online presence.
TEACH FOR THE BRAIN
Terry Doyle and Todd Zakrajsek have put out a great little book entitled The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain. I have actually started using some of the information from the book to improve my teaching and my students learning in my CSSK classes. In the chapter on memory, Doyle and Zakrajsek point out that "when learning something new, it helps to be interested in it, see a value to it, pay a lot of attention to it, and practice it a lot. The human brain is wired to more easily learn things that are important, and for the most part, what's important is also interesting." They recommend distributed practice to take advantage of this scientific breakthrough. By repeating important information numerous times over the course of your semester, your students are more likely to make the links to memory stronger which will allow them to retrieve it more easily. Repeated exposure to the new knowledge is also enhanced by making your students use it often. If you want to read more from this terrific book, the BRCC Library does own a copy (LB1134 .D68 2013).
