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."

MAKING PROMISES TO STUDENTS
Dr. Peter Filene says that there are two halves of the teaching/learning dialogue: aims and outcomes. Aims describe how you want to convey crucial aspects of your subject in lucid, interesting fashion. Outcomes describe how you want to change how your students think and feel, what he describes as the essence of learning. Dr. Filene says that faculty very often confuse outcomes with what they themselves will do rather than what they will ask of their students. He encourages us to think about outcomes as the promises we are making to our students. What will you ask them to understand and do? How will you (together) go about achieving these goals? What kind of assessment will you use to allow them and you to measure progress in learning? You can find more of Dr. Filene's wisdom in his book The Joy of Teaching: A practical guide for new college instructors (LB2331.F493).

NEW JOURNAL PROVIDES NEW OPPORTUNITY
Here is a great new opportunity for our eLearning faculty to publish their research findings. The inaugural issue of the Journal of Emerging Learning Design (ELDJ) was published in April. The ELDJ is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that provides a platform for academics and practitioners to explore emerging learning design theories, concepts, and issues and their implication at national and international levels.  An outgrowth of the annual Emerging Learning Design Conference, which makes its home at Montclair State University, the ELDJ invites scholarly communications in the emerging learning design field and will present best practices in design and implementation by offering articles that present, propose or review engaging and dynamic approaches to pedagogy and how technology can better enhance it.

RECRUITING AND RETAINING BLACK MEN
Marilyn L. Riley is still haunted by a teenager named Dante, who came reluctantly and angrily to her summer program for black men and ended up nearly walking away with five credits from Mesa Community College, in Arizona. The first few days, he slouched in his chair and glared at his instructor, his cap sideways, his pants sagging. "Sweetie, in my world, this isn't going to work," the petite adjunct professor and clinical psychologist, who is also black, told him. "You've got all this leadership potential, but no one's going to relate to you when you're looking like a thug." By the end of the summer session, she said, he was sitting up straight in his chair, was demonstrating critical-thinking skills, and was within striking distance of earning five college credits. But before that could happen, his mother packed up and moved the family to New Mexico, and he had to withdraw. Ms. Riley told that story at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges, in one of several sessions devoted to the challenges of recruiting and retaining black men. In another session, J. Luke Wood, an assistant professor of administration, rehabilitation, and post-secondary education at San Diego State University, described his research on black male students in community colleges. He visits community colleges to administer surveys and advise them on strategies for recruiting and retaining minority men. Mr. Wood said that faculty members tend to pay more attention to students who speak up in class and that many black men, in particular, lack the confidence to do so. In addition, "a lot of men are reluctant to ask for help because it makes them look weak," he said. "You have to be proactive in establishing relationships with these men."

IS A MOOC IN YOUR FUTURE
Community college leaders haven’t exactly jumped on the “disruption” bandwagon. That may be understandable given the popular narrative that digital innovation will replace faculty members and even entire colleges according to an Inside Higher Ed story. But the two-year sector’s wariness seems to be fading, if the annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges is any indication. The conference featured many sessions on how budget-strapped colleges can use self-paced online courses and free digital content, such as massive open online courses, to boost efficiency and serve more students. The two-year sector is open to that idea, said Walter G. Bumphus, the association’s president and former BRCC Chancellor. Bumphus later told the meeting’s attendees that he and fellow leaders of the association talked with Khan backstage about possible collaborations, and discussed setting up a committee to consider how to use the academy’s material. “It’s going to be good for community colleges and good for AACC,” Bumphus said.

DISRUPTION CAN BE GOOD
The U.S. Department of Education is hosting a meeting today to talk about the "disruptive ideas" that are changing the landscape of higher education. On the agenda for discussion were the topics of massive open online courses (MOOCs), competency-based education, course redesign and prior learning assessment. The latter two topics are also trending at BRCC right now. This past Friday and Saturday, I was joined by Susan Nealy, Gail Suberbielle, and Laura Younger at a course redesign workshop. We were joined by colleagues from around the world to talk about how good course redesign can not only improve student learning but typically drive down costs as well.

LIFE EXPERIENCE FOR CREDIT
Prior Learning Assessment, awarding college credit for college-level learning from work and life experience, is becoming a standard practice at many institutions. Pat Green Smith and I have been working on developing a PLA policy that will allow us to recruit and retain more adult students. PLA has been proven to be beneficial to student success. The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) recently conducted a study on PLA and adult student outcomes. The study examined data on 62,475 adult students at 48 colleges and universities across the country. CAEL found that graduation rates are two and a half times higher for students with PLA credit. PLA students also had higher persistence rates and a faster time to degree completion.

MID-SEMESTER ASSESSMENT
As we approach the middle of the term, I want to encourage you to take the temperature of your classes. Mid-semester assessments help you avoid the surprises that a once a semester student rating survey can only reveal once it is too late. You can, of course, create your own survey instruments or you can have the Teaching+Learning Center come in and help either with the creation of the tool, implementation, assessment or all of it. If you want to do it on your own, the folks at Dalhousie University have a good website that can get you started. The Field Tested Learning Assessment Guide for Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology Instructors website is another good resource and gives you a very concise explanation of what assessment should accomplish.

INTRUSIVE INSTRUCTION
Revisiting the theme of engagement, I want to encourage you to use all of the available tools to track the activities of your students. If you assign reading, then you should be testing them on that and I would encourage you to use a short online quiz via your Blackboard site. If you are asking them to watch a video, then monitor who has watched it. Taking a look at these and other analytics will alert you to problems early. Research shows that if a student waits to become engaged with the material, that is a pretty good indicator that they will struggle with the class. Being intrusive with your students indicates that you are a good teacher who cares deeply about their learning. In addition, it is important to understand what types of learners you have enrolled in your courses. The use of a Learning Style Inventory (LSI) instrument can help them understand how they learn best but it also provides them with information on what they may need to work on to become a better student. You can also use this information to better tailor your instruction to your student's needs. There are a number of free LSI surveys that provide solid feedback.

WHAT DO YOU THINK
Finally, I want to remind those who have not done so to complete the T+LC Needs Assessment survey now.