Have you ever considered teaching an online class? The eLearning Program at BRCC offers online and hybrid class delivery as options for our students. One of the next options could be a synchronous course taught live from wherever your internet, camera, headphones, and mic will allow you to broadcast. Is that something that excites or creates anxiety for you? Dr. Devoney Looser recently posted a very revealing essay on this topic. Initially she was very nervous about teaching online but a family situation challenged her to take another look at online teaching. She writes, "The stereotype that online instruction is less rigorous, or that students cannot be engaged in it with appropriate rigor, isn’t borne out by my experience. Anyone who’s taught an on-the-ground class has looked out into the classroom and seen boredom or disconnection. By comparison, my online students were choosing when to log on to do their work. They seemed very tuned in when they did. It’s possible I’m just not as skilled at recognizing online students merely going through the motions, but I found them, as a group, exceptionally dedicated, motivated, and talented." If you are interested in becoming certified to teach in the BRCC eLearning Program, contact Susan Nealy. You can continue reading Dr. Looser's post here.

GIVERS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE NO MORE
Shana Oliver has done an exceptional job of pulling together all of the best ideas that have emerged from the research about faculty and student engagement. The article provides a nice concise list of ten ways you can use to engage under-performing students. She writes, "What is the intended goal of the lesson? Remember, there is one essential question per lesson, and students must be able to answer this question by the end of the lesson. With essential questions, teachers really have to be intentional about what they want the students to be able to do, and it has to be at the highest-level of learning. The students have to be able to analyze and apply; they cannot just answer the question with a yes or no. It has to be an extended response. An essential question must be "multi-skill" in order for it to be a good one." To read the rest of the article, click here.

ADOPT A BEAR TIPS
If Santa Monica College had relied solely on data analytics to predict whether Jaime J. would succeed, the picture would have looked bleak. He was, after all, a financially struggling, first-generation Hispanic student who was juggling a job with classes. His math skills were shaky. But there was more to the picture than that. Using a 30-minute online assessment that focuses on noncognitive skills, advisers at the two-year institution in Southern California learned that Jaime was also a conscientious student with good study habits who had long dreamed of becoming a computer engineer. The college assigned him a success coach (the college’s dean of counseling and retention), who met with Jaime weekly to keep him motivated. Continue reading.

GRADING IS ABOUT LEARNING
When students talk about the grades we’ve “given” them, we are quick to point out that we don’t “give” grades, students “earn” them. And that’s correct. It’s what the student does that determines the grade. But that statement sort of implies that we don’t have much of a role in the process—that we’re simply executing what the grading policy prescribes. We shouldn’t let that response cloud our thinking. Who sets up the course grading policy? Who controls it? Who has the power to change it or to refuse to change it? It’s these policies that involve us up to our eyeballs. Continue reading.

AVOID STUDENT EXCUSES WITH POLICY
Dr. John Orlando offers some great advice on how to handle student excuses in a recent article he wrote for Faculty Focus. He writes, as new teachers very quickly learn, students will come up with all kinds of excuses for missing assignments and other work. Students will never say, “I missed the exam because I was out late last night—it was one dollar taps at the Silver Horse, you know how it goes.” As a result, teachers must have a policy for handling these situations, which invariably involves a decision on trust. The problem is that grandparents do die—it happens—but they don’t die as often as we are told and their deaths don’t always coincide with major deadlines in the syllabus. So how do we know when a grandparent really dies, or a roommate actually does get deathly ill in the middle of the night, and when we are being handed a line? Read more here.

STUDENT PERSISTENCE HELPED BY COHORTS
As we continue our campus-wide discussion about improving our student persistence and completion rates, the idea of learning communities keep coming to the front. Looking at the research in that area can be very instructional and can point us to some interventions that have worked elsewhere. Learning communities may be established in many areas of study to effectively address the learning needs for a wide variety of students while providing both faculty and students with an academic structure that promotes collaboration. Learning communities also help to develop a strong sense of student identity as they traditionally have smaller enrollment numbers. Grouping students into cohorts should not only be done for students who initially declare majors, but also for students transferring in from other colleges. It may be useful for BRCC to look at the Tiger Bridge student's data moving forward as somewhat of a pilot of this concept. If you want to read more about this approach, go here.

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITY STUDIES BEST TEACHERS
The Best Teachers Faculty Learning Community has settled into their group study using Ken Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do. Faculty learning communities, as defined by Dr. Milton Cox who runs a summer institute to train facilitators, is a group of trans-disciplinary faculty of 8-12 members engaging in an active, collaborative, semester-long program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning and with frequent meetings and activities that provide learning, development, transdisciplinarity, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community building. The Teaching+Learning Center has sponsored three previous FLC including a Best Teachers group during the fall 2013 semester. The current Best Teachers FLC members include Dr. Jo Dale Ales (STEM), Dr. Gabriel Aluko (Science), Dr. Amy Atchley (Speech), Mollye DeLoach (Speech), Gery Frie (Construction Management), Vinetta Frie (Liberal Arts), Lucas Gassen (English), Steven Keeton (English), and Dr. Todd Pourciau (DILAS). Look for information on new Faculty Learning Communities planned for the spring 2015 semster in the near future or contact Academic Support Specialist Barbara Linder (linderb@mybrcc.edu or 216.8228) for more information.