Civil Unrest is Part of America and Provides a Teachable Moment

Earning a college degree is about getting a job. But it is also so much more. A good educational experience inspires life-long learning. It can also impact the area because it creates an informed citizenry. Folks who can think critically begin to impact and shape the environment they choose to make their home. The civil unrest occurring now provides us with a great opportunity to connect the real world to the learning that is occurring in your classes this summer. Yesterday, I posted a tweet to the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement Twitter account with a link to an opinion piece on the Inside Higher Ed website. Colleen Flaherty included the following as a subtitle to her article Making Sense of the Senseless: Academics are called to help interpret and guide a national response to police violence and related civil unrest. It is a role that we have played for a long time but the current situation provides us with an opportunity to have uncomfortable conversations. Of course and learning experience should be related to what you are teaching but at times, when something horrific occurs, we are distracted and that includes our students. So begin by creating a safe environment in your classes. Since we are fully online, this means netiquette. Respect is important, so if you are holding a Zoom meeting or using the discussion board, make sure you set the ground rules and hold everyone to them. Using the article as a starting point and asking for reflection in light of your discipline would be appropriate. Here is a resource provided by colleagues at SUNY Empire State College that contains not only some good parameters but a number of videos you might want to use to help your students understand the history of social unrest in our country. As many of us can attest, we have been in this place before and we know that change can occur. What is more natural than a community college that helps to heal the community around it?

Maymester Bootcamp Proves Beneficial

For the first time in our brief history, BRCC is fully online for the summer 2020 semester. We recently had more than 50 faculty and staff complete the eLearning Program Training Institute led by Director of Innovative Learning Susan Nealy. Because of the shortened time frame available for the training, we redesigned it and called it the Maymester Bootcamp. Three weeks of intense work using a new curriculum heavily supported by the Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) approach to course design was certainly a challenge. LEM is a visual planning system that makes designing learning experiences like courses simple and effective. Bootcamp participants used the LEM material to create visual blueprints. The participants emerged from the Bootcamp with certification to teach in the online, hybrid, and hyflex modalities. In addition, we utilized a Community of Practice (CoP) team which is is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The CoP that we utilized provided a network of support for the Bootcamp participants in a way that improved efficiency and allowed the team to learn new things in the process, which will help us going forward. The next Training Institute will occur from June 15-July 19 and will focus on preparing all the faculty who are slated to teach in the fall 2020 semester. If you are interested in participating, please contact Susan Nealy.

eLearning Program Offers Bootcamp Version of Training Institute

We are very excited about the start of the eLearning Program Training Institute Bootcamp which begins on Monday. More than seventy of our full and part time faculty are going through this new experience. I say new because we have modified the time to completion without losing the quality of the training. In addition, we will be offering a Community of Practice (CoP) to assist with the training process. A CoP is a group of people who share a concern for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.  CoPs are particularly useful for online course development because they "provide ongoing support that can alleviate many of the curricular and institutional challenges online instructors face." (Melancon & Arduser, 2013, p. 74) . Our team will include the faculty member (as the subject matter expert), the Dean of Innovative Learning and Academic Support, the Director of Innovative Learning, the Director of the Academic Learning Center, and the LMS Administrator.  In addition, we will be using the Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) curriculum created by the University of Central Oklahoma, which has been used by numerous colleges and universities as part of their faculty certification programs. UCO explains the process as, "Learning environment design is technically an architectural process. Think about how an architect envisions and designs buildings. Learning architects design and build learning environments in much the same way. They often do this without many of the foundational tools used by building architects such as common, uniform practices and models that assist in the understanding, decision-making, and collaborating on the design of the learning environment.Learning Environment Modeling, or LEM, addresses this issue by providing a simple system for designing learning environments that uses an easy-to-understand language combined with a visual modeling process. LEM is used for improving understanding, decision-making, and communication within learning environment design experiences." What we learn in this bootcamp version will be used to enhance the training institute to be held this summer for faculty wanting to teach an eLearning course in the fall semester. This is definitely an exciting time to be involved in the eLearning Program at BRCC.

Don't Worry, We Will Get Through This Together

The move to digital delivery has gotten us to this point and we can see the final exam period at the end of the tunnel. Now the real work begins. How do we take the classes that we taught onsite, that were then altered for distance learning, and create a robust, engaging, and interactive elearning course that will provide the deep learning our students need to compete in the new career landscape (Maloney and Kim do a good job of explaining the various stages of where higher ed finds itself). Recent research indicates that a well designed online course can have the same or better completion and retention rates as an onsite class. Another benefit of our current situation is that as our students become better at navigating online and hybrid classes, the larger their skill set becomes in tech literacy, one of the key abilities employers are looking for in new hires. We are certainly not alone in this transition but luckily we have a strong history of providing the training and support needed to create elearning courses of excellence. As we prepare for the summer semester, the eLearning Program will be offering a Training Institute Bootcamp. As in the past, the eLearning Training Institute will be conducted fully online. New for this next iteration is training that will combine what is needed to teach either online, hybrid or both. This multimodal training will essentially set us up for whatever comes next. Any faculty who plan to teach in the summer semester that are not currently certified to teach eLearning courses should notify their department chairs that they would like to participate in the Training Institute Bootcamp. For those looking to begin teaching eLearning courses in the fall, there will be another Training Institute in the summer. For those looking for resources  now, check out the on-demand webinars on the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement events calendar.