From Science Daily: Study shows for first time that a free, online course can change students' mindsets towards their mathematical abilities, leading to increased academic achievement. A free 'massive, open, online course' (MOOC) designed to change students' attitudes towards mathematics makes them more engaged in class -- leading to significantly higher test scores. Published in open-access journal Frontiers in Education, these findings go against the discouraging results of previous studies. It is the first of its kind to show the impact of an online course in changing students' mindsets and beliefs about mathematics and their achievement, with the potential for more widespread dissemination. Continue reading here.

From Faculty Focus: So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course — from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assignments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes

From Univ. of Washington's The Daily: With all the recent advancement in science, from virtual reality to genetic editing to artificial intelligence, one issue that still plagues society is how best to teach students how these things work. Dr. Carl Wieman, one of the world’s leading thinkers on science education, spoke to a sizeable crowd at Kane Hall on Thursday, April 26 to outline techniques for finding more effective teaching tactics. Wieman holds a joint appointment as professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his research in atomic and optical physics. Wieman, 67, argued for a shift away from lecture-style teaching toward what he calls an “active learning” process where students spend more time working with their peers than being talked to by professors. In his physics classes, Wieman isn’t just teaching material, he is teaching his students to become physicists through classroom activities, tests, and critical reasoning.

From Education Week: Contrary to popular stereotypes, many young people are acutely concerned about online privacy, spending significant time managing how they present themselves on social media and worrying about what happens to the digital trails they leave behind. That's the takeaway, at least, from new research presented here Sunday at the annual conference of the American Association of Educational Research by Claire Fontaine. As part of a small study, Fontaine and colleagues interviewed 28 teens and young adults, ranging from 16 to 26 years old. All were low-income New Yorkers, all owned a smartphone or similar mobile device, and all regularly used at least one social media platform. 

Are you looking to add diverse perspectives into your course curriculum? Then don't miss the professional development webinar set for February 22 at 1:00 pm. This NISOD webinar, titled Are Your Students Global Citizens? How to Teach Diversity to the Leaders of Tomorrow, is a great first step. The webinar information notes that teaching diversity requires strong relationships that encourage dialogue and action so today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders. Confederation College has embedded Indigenous knowledge into classrooms since 2010 through specially developed Indigenous Learning Outcomes (ILO). The infusion of ILOs into program-specific courses throughout the college provides all students with opportunities to develop an understanding of Indigenous Knowledge through diverse world views and cultural frameworks in relation to their chosen career field. The concept of embedding diverse perspectives into the curriculum is a transferable skill. This webinar presents the ILOs as a case study while encouraging participants to adapt the model to fit their own curriculum. This webinar also demonstrates how embedding diverse perspectives into the classroom leads to a better understanding of cultural frameworks and how incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into the curriculum can improve critical-thinking skills.
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While we often talk about moving from lectures to more active learning methods, we sometimes forget an important component. Student feedback can be very useful when we are transitioning. That is why Dr. Grant Wiggins post about engaging lessons caught my attention. His results are from high schoolers but so many of the comments could be put to good use in our college classrooms as well. One student wrote, "I thought that making your own nation in politics was extremely interesting and fun. It was interesting because it gave us students the ability to design our perfect environment." How many different discussions can you see coming from this type of learning experience based on that response? In a time when students are becoming hyper-interested in the political system, assigning this type of learning experience could really allow students to develop critical thinking skills. Another student wrote, "For our AP French class we had to construct a resume and cover letter for a foreign French related career opportunity that we found. This is interesting as we learned a highly useful life skill that should’ve been taught in another class but also because we got to explore opportunities around the world." This illustrates the very critical need to make lessons as relevant as possible. It is one of the most repeated complaints that many students share about their classroom experience. How many times have you heard the question, "Why do we have to know this?" Luckily, active learning lends itself to these types of lessons. So as you begin thinking about increasing the amount of active learning you have in your classes, take a look at your student rating comments and use them to help shape your teaching.

BEING TIRED CAN ALTER YOUR TEACHING
Teachers can reach a place where teaching does nothing for them or their students. They don’t just wake up one morning and find themselves burned out; they’ve moved there gradually, and it’s a journey that often starts with tired teaching. Teaching is relentless. It happens every day, several times a week—or potentially 24/7 if it’s online. And it’s demanding. There’s so much more than the actual teaching. There’s considerable planning involved before each class. Plus, we need to spend time with students—those who want to talk, those needing help, and those with questions or, sometimes, complaints. There are assignments to grade and feedback to provide—all carrying the expectation of a quick turnaround. Continue reading here.

BREAKING A VICIOUS CYCLE
Working as a school psychologist has allowed Kathy Casale the opportunity to notice something about many of the students who don’t turn in assignments: They are often stuck in a cycle that involves a pernicious interaction of three overlapping cognitive processes: sustained attention, working memory, and anxiety or stress. When students have a problem with one or, more typically, all of these functions, it’s hard for them to produce. She notes that students often get caught in the same repeating cycle: Anxiety and stress reduced working memory capacity, making it harder to pay attention, so they missed work, which in turn increased their anxiety, and so on. Continue reading here.

TEACHING STUDENTS TO AVOID PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism can be a real pain. Most teachers have had to deal with it in some form or another, and a whole lot of you still haven’t quite figured out the best way to combat it. Many of us issue stern warnings and threaten serious, soul-crushing consequences. Others also use software to detect plagiarism. While these methods can deter students from plagiarizing and catch them if they do, they operate on the assumption that all plagiarism is devious, that all students who plagiarize know exactly what they’re doing, and our mission is to catch and punish. Now because I don’t believe that assumption is true, I think we could be handling the problem with a lot more finesse. To continue reading or to listen to the podcast, click here.

THINKING LIKE A STUDENT MAY MAKE YOU A BETTER TEACHER
Can you remember what it was like to be a student? Rod Starling went back to school and then wrote about his experience. He writes, "Most teachers start courses pretty much the same way—introduce the content, go over the course requirements, talk about grades, and spell out various policies. Starling was surprised by how confusing, indeed disorienting, he found this. Every course had its own set of details and requirements that students are supposed to immediately understand and follow. He and his fellow classmates (they all took the same four courses) quickly moved from learning to survival mode." Continue reading here.

WORKING TOGETHER TO BUILD BETTER WRITERS
Most educators acknowledge that literacy is important, but often the focus is on reading because for a long time that is what achievement tests measured. In the last few years there has been more focus on writing in classrooms and on tests, but many students still have difficulty expressing their ideas on paper. Often students struggle to begin writing, so some teachers have shifted assignments to allow students to write about something they care about, or to provide an authentic audience for written work. While these strategies are important parts of making learning relevant to students, they may not be enough on their own to improve the quality of writing. Practice is important, but how can teachers ensure students are practicing good habits? Continue reading here.

STAYING OUT OF THE BEEN THERE-DONE THAT TRAP
David Gooblar has posted an interesting essay. He writes, "I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been teaching at my best this semester. Oh, there have been some good classes. And I think I'm finally getting a handle on the one group of students who don't want to speak up in class. But in general it feels like I'm going through the motions a little bit, not fully reaching as many students as I have in the past, talking too much from the front of the room. I have a theory as to why this is happening." Continue reading here.

GOOD HABITS FOR INSTRUCTORS
Julie DuNeen has written an interesting piece about the habits of successful teachers. She writes, "If you ask a student what makes him or her successful in school, you probably won’t hear about some fantastic new book or video lecture series. Most likely you will hear something like, it was all Mr. Jones. He just never gave up on me. What students take away from a successful education usually centers on a personal connection with a teacher who instilled passion and inspiration for their subject. It’s difficult to measure success, and in the world of academia, educators are continually re-evaluating how to quantify learning. But the first and most important question to ask is: Are teachers reaching their students? Here are 25 things successful educators do differently.

IS COURSE REDESIGN FOR YOU

At the height of the buzz around MOOCs and flipped classrooms three years ago, Bridget Ford worried that administrators might try to replace her introductory history course with a batch of videos. She agreed that something should change: Drop-outs and failures were high in the 200-person class—at about 13 percent. But the assistant professor of history at California State University at East Bay wanted something less drastic than giving up on live lectures entirely. Looking through a collection of teaching portfolios by her colleagues helped reassure her that she could redesign her course while preserving what worked about the classroom experience. Plenty of colleagues on other campuses were wrestling with the same question, she saw in the portfolios, and they were finding ways that tried new approaches without throwing out the old completely—call it turning the class on its side rather than making a full flip. For her, that meant reducing the amount of lecture time and spending part of class sessions on team-based projects. “It was helpful to me to see that my field wasn’t an outlier in arriving at a middle ground,” she says. Continue reading here.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR REST
As we approach the final exam period, reminding your students about good study habits that lead to success is important. Many students are still under the impression that cramming or "pulling an all-nighter" is the way to learn. Here is an article that focuses on how rest can actually make you perform better on assessments. It begins, "Sleep is critical for mind and body health. Without it, the effects can be severe. But what if you suffer from insomnia? Neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre provides seven healthy tips for a better night’s sleep."

Joshua Kim's post on where our focus should be in college classrooms is very insightful. Of the three recommendations he makes, I am happy to say we are actually working on all three. Not as efficiently as we could if we had more resources but nevertheless all three are foci. Kim writes, "Teaching and learning are core to the mission and operation of (almost) every college and university. An erosion of the relative quality in teaching and learning, (as compared to peer schools or emerging competitors), will eventually result in an inability to compete for students, faculty, and funding." Continue reading here.

Ready for the semester to begin? No really, we are starting August 22. Did I just hear a few screams? The first day of the semester always seems to sneak up on us. Sims Wyeth has a good post on how we can increase the impact of our opening remarks. You know, the stuff you say every first day of class. It turns out that students form a really strong opinion of us on that first day and it may not change much over the course of the semester. He writes, "It turns out that our first impressions are not altogether accurate. Scientists call our tendency to leap to judgment the Fundamental Attribution Error. Nevertheless, as speakers, we can take advantage of this human frailty. When we step to the front of the room to deliver a presentation and all eyes are on us, we can take control using the tools at our disposal: physical, vocal, and verbal skills meant to capture the mind of the listener." Continue reading here.

Traditionally we make resolutions around the first of the year. But what if we made resolutions tied to each of our new semesters. Adjustments and corrections based on critical self-reflection are what I am talking about. David Gooblar provides us with a good start and writes, "The real new year in academe— the time for new beginnings and fresh starts — comes now, in August. I’ve had time away from the classroom to recharge my batteries and to forget about teaching for a while. I want to be a better teacher this year than I was last year. August is my month of big plans, of good intentions, of new leaves ready to be turned over." Continue reading here.

MOTIVATING ONLINE STUDENTS
It seems that we talk a lot about motivation but it truly is such a complex topic that it needs lots of study. Michelle Pacansky-Brock provides the latest bit of thought on this topic and how it specifically impacts students taking courses online. She writes, "It’s not a fixed trait that some humans either have or don’t have. Rather, motivation is more like water; its qualities are impacted by other forces. Water can be serene and glass-like one day and rough and choppy the next, depending on factors like the weather or the number and type of boats in use. Motivation is similarly influenced by outside factors." Continue reading here. 

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE MIDDLE SKILLS WORKPLACE
In the next year alone, an estimated 2.5 million middle-skill jobs will be added to the workforce, accounting for a whopping 40 percent of all job growth. These professions — welders, pharmacy technicians, paralegals, automotive technicians, and aviation workers— offer a solid pathway to the middle class yet require less training than a traditional four-year degree. Still, these jobs require a specialized skill-set which is usually provided by community colleges. Dawn Gerrain has written an article for Educause Review on this topic. Read more here.

USING GAMIFICATION TO IMPROVE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Gamification was one of the topics we discussed in the Creating Self-Regulated Learners Faculty Learning Community today. Many faculty have successfully implemented gamification techniques and the research shows that it can be highly effective. One of the areas that has shown improvement is student engagement with the course material and participation in discussions. Barata, Gama, Jorge, and Gonçalves provide some good examples in their Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification article. Stott and Neustaedteris provide a good review of existing literature on the subject as well as a case study on three different applications of gamification in the post-secondary setting. As in all course redesign it will take some time to add gamification, but the research literature seems to be demonstrating that it can improve student success.

PEER FEEDBACK IS A TWO WAY STREET
If you were ever dissatisfied with the quality of peer feedback in your classes, Christina Moore's article can definitely help you and, most importantly, help your students offer and receive better feedback from their colleagues.She writes, "I started teaching students that peer review is a two-way street. Getting useful feedback depends on how students frame their requests for it. Developing this skill not only teaches students how to receive effective feedback, but also gets them in the habit of reflecting on and analyzing their work."

MAKING LEARNING RELEVANT
Are you considering how you can create opportunities for students to apply course content outside the classroom? The IDEA Center has a great paper on this topic. Here is a brief excerpt. Although there are many examples in academia, nursing education offers one of the clearest examples of applying course content outside the classroom. Learning content in the classroom is supplemented with field-based application, in some cases, from the very first courses in a nursing program. Nursing students complete many hours working in hospitals alongside licensed nurses to apply their learning and sharpen their skills. And it doesn’t take a nurse educator to understand that this learning outside the classroom is vital to a nursing student’s education. No one would want to be treated by a nurse that only had classroom experience!

CREATING ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES ONLINE
Creating online courses doesn’t end at uploading videos to your site and getting enrollments. As an online educator, you need to ensure that your students are actively participating in your course and getting real value out of it. This will pay off in the long run as people come to recognize your course as the most valuable in the market. In this post, Dr. Eileen McGurty, an expert in online education, shares her strategies for boosting participation in online courses.

Do you have a no-tech policy in your class? Do you encourage the use of cell phones, tablets, and laptops during your class? There are arguments for both and more faculty seem to be taking sides. Dr. Laura Tropp has an interesting post on her blog about this topic and writes, "It seems that people tend to be divided into two camps: those that have given up (or are adapting to the new technology environment, which sounds better) and let their students use the screens, and those that enact strict rules and policing policies to prevent students from using screens while in the classroom. I have found myself sitting in both camps in the past. This summer, however, I am noticing that those in the former camp are thinking about reverting to a no-technology policy because they think it is interfering with students’ ability to focus and reflect. Clay Shirky, a Professor at NYU who specializes in emerging media technologies, wrote an interesting piece last fall about his new policy to ban all screens in his classes. He even made an intriguing analogy comparing technology in a classroom to second-hand smoke. However, many faculty have responded that banning technology does not work but only creates a deceptive culture in which students slyly sneak their technology use in class." Read the entire post here.

Are you spending part of your summer on a course redesign project or maybe you are focusing your attention on creating a master syllabus. Both of the projects, one small and the other very labor intensive, are worthwhile and lead to many benefits for you and your students. Dr. Vicki Caruana has a nice article in the Faculty Focus online newsletter about how a course map can help you remained focueds on the important outcomes. She writes, "Course mapping, as a step in the curriculum mapping process (Jacobs, 2004), offers faculty new pathways to meet shared outcomes. The five principles of curriculum design (Fink, 2003) inform the development of learning experiences that are structured in such a way that they scaffold student thinking and progressively move them toward the desired course outcomes. A course should: (1) challenge students to higher level learning; (2) use active forms of learning; (3) give frequent and immediate feedback to students on the quality of their learning; (4) use a structured sequence of different learning activities; and (5) have a fair system for assessing and grading students." Read the entire article here.

There is nothing so dispiriting for teacher or for student as a discussion section in which questions fall flat, conversation drifts aimlessly, and a small number of predictable voices predominate. That is the opening sentence of Dr. James Dawes article concerning class discussions. He offers a list of ten strategies to help you bring out the best in your students. Read the entire article here.

ASSIGNMENT DESIGN AFFECTS LEARNING
"We can more effectively shape learning outcomes if we start with objectives that force us to get specific about what we want students to know and be able to do. Most of us write objectives for the course approval processes and they appear on many of our syllabi, but are they front and center when we make assignment decisions? If not, we can come at this from the other direction. We can look at the products produced by the assignment to make some determinations about what and how students are learning. I can hear some being adamant that the better way to start is with objectives, and that may be right. I’d rather be adamant about all of us understanding the relationship between assignment design and the learning that results." That is just part of Dr. Maryellen Weimer's post about how the design of assignments affect student learning. Read more here.

DESIGNING ACCESSIBLE ELEARNING COURSES
Since we are migrating to Canvas as our new LMS, now is a great time to look at the design of your course material. Take a look at this free ebook. You will have to create an account first. There you will find a great explanation of what accessibility means in the e-learning setting. Course navigation is also discussed as well as the use of audio and video. Here is one of the tips from the ebook, "Make sure that every activity, object, and element in your course that conveys meaning is keyboard accessible. And just what does 'keyboard accessible' mean? It means you shouldn’t include any activities that require a mouse—such as drag-and-drop assessments and rollover effects. If visually impaired learners can’t use their keyboards to access content or an activity, they’ll miss it."

INCREASING STUDENT SUCCESS
The excellent folks in our Academic Learning Center recently sent us some reminders about the services they offer for all of our students. As we enter the home stretch of the spring semester, it is a great time to make sure that your students are aware of all of the academic support available to them. For instance, Smarthinking is an online tutoring service that provides assistance 24/7. Our students can access it through their Blackboard account. If your students would rather work individually, the peer-tutor program in the ALC is the best option. The program was developed using the best research available and the ALC staff continue to update their strategies and intervention methods. If you are looking for more information on the ALC, visit the website or contact them at 216.8300.

ENDING WITH A BANG
Here we are at the end of another semester in the week of final exams. For some of us, it is our very first semester teaching. For others it is something we feel we have always done. So what do we do at the end of the semester that will help us to improve our teaching and in turn increase our student's learning in the next semester. As Dr. Margaret Walsh pointed out in her terrific article from the past, "The ending of a course deserves greater attention than it typically receives. While we have thoroughly ritualized the start of a new semester often somewhere between weeks 11 and 14, what seemed like reasonable plans are regretfully sidelined and we launch into catch-up overdrive." She offers this suggestion among a number of other useful tips: On the last day of class, hand out a list of suggested readings from your own bookshelf, along with a brief commentary on why you’re recommending them. Dr. Maryellen Weimer also shares some of her wisdom about the end of the semester. She urges "everyone to write about the courses that have just ended. What do you think you will remember about them in five years? Are there students you will remember? Others you hope to forget? What were the best and worst moments in those courses? How did your relationship with each class begin, evolve and end? What was new, different and exciting about the content? Did you teach well? Did students learn well? If you could change one thing about your teaching and their learning next semester, what would it be?"

COURSE REDESIGN ON TAP
The breaks between our semesters are a perfect time for course redesign. I have already pulled my journal entries made throughout the semester (usually right after class had ended) that deal with this issue. I am using those notes to redesign my class in the hopes that the new approaches and learning experiences will create a more fertile learning environment for my students. I recently read an interesting article related to this topic. It focused more on gateway courses that have been shown to give students the most problems. The article suggests that peer instruction may be just the active learning method that turns the light on for our students in those gateway courses. The research has shown that peer instruction is a great teaching method to use in larger classes. The article is very well done and includes videos and lists the research on this topic. If you are beginning to work on your course redesign, you should take a look at the article. The information on how to get started with peer instruction is very useful. Also, feel free to reach out to me throughout the semester break if you are looking for advice or help in finding resources.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ONLINE
Dr. Michelle Miller, a professor of psychological sciences and co-director of the first-year learning program at Northern Arizona University, has a new book out about how to best use the online environment to improve learning. Her book Minds Online: Teaching Effectively With Technology, published this fall by Harvard University Press is highly recommended by many educationalists including James Lang. He says, "If you teach with technology in any form, at any level, I recommend you put this book at the top of your tottering pile of required reading on higher education. It’s an outstanding book that provides a road map for truly effective online teaching." He goes on to say that what distinguishes her book from much of the research available on teaching with technology, and pushes it beyond arguments about improving access, is her emphasis on the ways in which online teaching tools can actually improve learning for all students—not just those who have no access to traditional face-to-face classrooms. Online courses—or an online component of a traditional class—offer a way to "give students repeated, challenging practice with the concepts we want them to know and the skills we want them to master," Miller said. "When I started out as a teacher, we cognitive psychologists already knew that things like frequent quizzing were incredibly beneficial to learning. I was excited to apply these findings, but when I got into a real classroom environment I found that it was overwhelmingly difficult and time consuming to actually do so. In many traditional courses you also can’t do things like offer repeated quiz attempts with different questions, or adapt the quiz to the topics that individual students are having the most trouble with."

COLLEGE SUCCESS SKILLS THAT WORK
With no classes scheduled for the next two weeks, things should be slowing down at BRCC, right? Not so, because this is traditionally a time for graduating high school seniors to start their college orientation process. We have held a number of sessions already with more to come. I was asked to participate and give the orientation crowds a ten minute version of how to succeed in college. Impossible you say? Not really, I say and here is part of what I tell them. College and high school are different. The clearest way to send this message is to talk about the 80/20 and 20/80 rule. In high school 80 percent of the information students learned came from the teacher. That means that 80 percent of what a student may need to pass a test is being provided in carefully crafted learning experiences that do not require any active learning to occur. In college, that role is (or should be) reversed. Students must realize that their professor will provide about 20 percent of what they need to be successful in the course. The rest of the information needs to come from other reliable sources like textbooks, journal articles, personal research, and most importantly, application of the basic knowledge. This process, usually described as critical thinking, is what sets the college experience apart from high school. So how do we get our student to shift from the 80/20 to the active learning model? First by having them understand the difference by talking about it and having them think about it. Next, talk about the college experience, your expectations, and the effort that is required to be successful (or strongly encourage them to take the College Success Skills class that we offer). Finally, talk about how the college experience and the approach they learn to apply here will benefit them for the the rest of their lives. The "real world" requires them to think critically, write well, and work with others. These are all of the skills they learn in college. At the end of my presentation at orientation, I challenge the incoming students to begin to write their own story. I ask them, "Who do they want to be and how will they get there?" I close by reminding them that making the decision to come to college infinitely increases the chance that their future will be bright.

EXPECTATIONS VERSUS ABILITIES
In a classic survey of campus faculty, Browne and Osborne noted a large discrepancy between faculty expectations for incoming students and incoming students’ perceptions of their own abilities. In particular, faculty expect college students to: critically think, manage their time, monitor their own stress levels, solve problems, clearly articulate what they do and do not know, and prioritize tasks so more important tasks are afforded more time. In this same poll, however, first year students cited the following areas of weakness in their own preparation for college: poor time management skills, ineffective methods for coping with stress, frustration with communication abilities, and poorly developed critical thinking skills. It may not surprise you that this survey was released in 1998. So here we are sixteen years later and not much has changed. The good news, according to Browne and Orborne's research, is that the process of critical thinking can be taught and modeled well enough in one semester to initiate some long-term change. Even with a model for critical thinking in hand, however, student success is not guaranteed. Students need ongoing and frequent practice with applying the critical thinking model, and they need practice with applying the model in diverse ways. Discipline-specific applications on the process of critical thinking may be less effective in the long run than requiring students to implement critical thinking in ways that are relevant to their daily lives. As you begin to plan your learning experiences for next semester, remember to look for ways to help students develop their critical thinking skills. Take another look at the survey list above at the beginning of your next semester. If your class is filled with first-time students, who were most recently in high school, they may not have all the skills your expect. That means you have to change your approach but in the end it will create less frustration for you. Remember to keep calm and be engaged.

GO BACK IN TIME
Before you leave for the summer (if you have decided not to teach during the summer term), you might want to request a copy of the updated Active Learning Manual. It is filled with active learning strategies that can be used in any type of class. There are even some suggestions specific for those teaching in the online environment. You might also want to take another look at this post on active learning. Can you spot a good learner? Revisit this post and match the list with the students in your class who had success. Is the article validated by what you observed? If you are looking at a course redesign project over the summer, take a look at this information to help you stay focused.

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.

SUMMER IS ABOUT COURSE REDESIGN
Dr. Maryellen Weimer has an interesting article about course redesign. She notes, introductory courses are packed with content. Teachers struggle to get through it during class; students struggle to master it outside of class. Too often learning consists of memorizing material that’s used on the exam but not retained long after. Faculty know they should use more strategies that engage students, but those approaches take time and, in most courses, that’s in very short supply. Blended-learning designs can be used to help with the problem. Technology offers other options for dealing with course content. This article recounts one faculty member’s experiences redesigning a gateway cell biology course. In a nutshell, all the lecture content was recorded as 10-20 minute voiceover PowerPoint presentations. Class time was devoted to “activities … entirely focused on student engagement with the content and with each other.” (p. 35) What happened in class did not repeat the content but was based on assigned readings in the text and material covered in the recorded lectures. A variety of interesting classroom activities was used, including a version of the time-tested muddiest-point strategy. Upon arriving in class students submitted index cards with questions about things from the readings or the lecture that they did not understand. A sample of these questions was read aloud and then students and the professor discussed and answered them. Students also participated in another index-card activity that presented them with a scenario or experimental data not discussed in the lectures or readings. Students worked on these questions in small groups and then developed and submitted a group answer. During class the instructor also had students respond to questions using clickers.

RESOURCES FOR YOU
Student engagement is just as critical in the online delivery mode as it is in face-to-face classes. If you are looking to add some active learning experiences to your eLearning course or would like to enhance your f2f classroom, you might want to take a look at the Interactive Activities in Online and Hybrid Courses website. There are examples of individual as well as collaborative learning experiences. Dr. Betsy Winston also presents a number of learning experience ideas in her article Enhancing Critical Thinking and Active Learning in Online Courses.

IS THERE A SUCCESS GENE
Paul Voosen reports on the search for a "gene for finishing college." The article points out that there will never be a “gene for educational success” or a “gene for entrepreneurship,” just as there will never be a “gene for intelligence” or a “gene for personality.” He notes that the research reveals that there is a gene variant that increases the likelihood to read books, and it is the reading, in turn, that helps determine scholastic futures. He suggests that we still encourage kids who don’t have the variant to read and that will raise their chances for educational success.

SUB-PRIME STUDENTS
Did you catch the comment by Trace Urdan about "subprime students." Apparently in a public debate, Urdan argued with David Halperin that the relatively low graduation rates of many for-profit colleges were actually pretty good, when compared to their subsidized competition (community colleges). Halperin countered, correctly, that it’s misleading to characterize most for-profits as unsubsidized, given their heavy reliance on Federal financial aid. Matt Read said in his blog post "But the line that jumped out at me was Urdan’s assertion that “[the] school offers quality instruction. The students make of it what they will.”  He continues, "If your unit of analysis is the disconnected individual, then it follows that any failures must be the fault of those individuals. If you have low graduation rates, you must have subprime students. It’s a convenient belief, because it lets everyone else off the hook. If people rise or fall entirely on their own merits, then those who fell must lack merit. If they lack merit, then their failure is nothing to worry about. After all, if they had merit, they wouldn’t have failed!" he concluded.

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.

ENGAGEMENT BRINGS DESIRED RESULTS
Do you call on one of your students in class every two to three minutes? Do you ask students what they know about a given topic before telling them what you know? Do you hold your students accountable through testing? These are just a few of the ways that Tara Gray and Laura Madson say you can engage with your students. They point to twenty years of research that shows that engagement in a classroom improves student learning. They point to one study of six thousand physics students that compared classes using passive lecture to classes using interactive techniques that allowed for discussion among students and between the professor and students. The study showed that students in classes that used interactive approaches rather than lecture learned twice as much. Their research paper gives some quick tips on improving engagement in your class.

YOUR BRAIN AND GOOGLE
Google wants to be the third "side" of your brain and they are not shy about admitting it. Google Glass, the wearable progeny of Ivan Sutherland's augmented reality display, the mobile phone, and science fiction -- accompanied by curiosity, excitement, and fear. Later this year, for less than $1,500, consumers will be able to get their hands on Google Glass, and we will begin to witness techies talking to their spectacle-mounted Google display and recording photos, video, and audio of their surroundings. "We want to make Google the third half of your brain," said Glass frontman and Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in 2010. That's what has some people worried about Glass. The third half of your brain could be perceived as your digital hemisphere locked in a Google cloud that captures all your interactions through the Glass lens and other Google access points, although Google would contend that the third half of your brain refers to a future search engine that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." Whatever the interpretation, Glass is a gateway to Google's goal to super-serve your digital soul.

UPCOMING WORKSHOP
The Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University is hosting their 12th annual Summer conference May 29-31, 2013. The Innovative Pedagogy and Course Redesign conference celebrates and showcases excellence and innovations in all areas of teaching, faculty support and development, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community-engaged teaching and scholarship. The conference is interactive and provides an opportunity to learn from other participants, to build connections and collaborations and to reflect upon the meaningfulness and impact of our work as educators and scholars.

THIS IS OUR COMPETITION
Earlier this year Capella University and the new College for America began enrolling hundreds of students in academic programs without courses, teaching professors, grades, deadlines or credit hour requirements, but with a path to genuine college credit. The two institutions are among a growing number that are giving competency-based education a try, including 25 or so nonprofit institutions. Notable examples include Western Governors University and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. These programs are typically online, and allow students to progress at their own pace without formal course material. They can earn credit by successfully completing assessments that prove their mastery in predetermined competencies or tasks -- maybe writing in a business setting or using a spreadsheet to perform calculations.