WORST LECTURE EVER
Amy Blanding, Kealin McCabe, and Heather Smith, PhD take a humorous approach to a learner-center teaching method called the Worst Lecture Competition. They write, "effective oral skills, well-designed presentations, and quality feedback are attributes that employers typically want from graduates. However, these skills are often expected to exist without appropriate support and training. Recognizing that public speaking often induces fear, a more positive, out-of-the-box approach could ease students into developing presentation skills. Regardless of personal perceptions regarding their own lecture proficiencies, students possess life experiences that give them the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of other presentations; sometimes they just need a prompt to acknowledge the value of their own experience. In addition to cultivating their own skills, it’s also essential for students to work on peer feedback skills. With these goals in mind, we created the Worst Lecture Competition" Read the entire post here.

DID YOU LISTEN TO THE TEXT
Would you like to add podcasts to your teaching toolkit?  Michael Godsey has a helpful article that explains how he did just that. He writes, "I recently discovered my students voluntarily reading a story together, all at the same time. And they were inspired by an unlikely medium—podcasts—which is obviously ironic, as many people like podcasts precisely because they don’t have the time or inclination to sit down and read. In fact, Serial has an explicit warning at the beginning of their transcripts: Serial is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. Of course, teenagers are infamous for enjoying exactly what they’re told not to do, but I was nevertheless surprised that while listening to an episode of Serial in class, their collective eyes fixed on the transcripts displayed on a screen at the front of the room. And I was startled—happily so—by their shouts when I was tardy in scrolling down." Read the entire article here.

REAL TIME CHECK ON LEARNING
Don't have time to check out a set of clickers from the Library? Still want to survey your students during class? You can use Google Forms instead. Dr. Michael J. LaGier writes, "As many educators are, I am interested in exploring methods that provide real-time, formative assessment in the classroom. Being a teacher of such courses as microbiology, microbial genomics, and immunology, which are dense in jargon and abstract concepts, I need to be able to quickly get a snapshot of how well my students are grasping important ideas or concepts. My students also need this information in order to assess their own learning. To this end, I started exploring the use of personal response systems, or clickers, as a method for rapid classroom assessment.Within Google Drive, I discovered an online survey tool called Google Forms. With Google Forms I am able to create surveys that my students can answer in real time, for free, using any device that is Wi-Fi compatible and has an Internet browser capable of running Google (smartphones, tablets, and laptops all work)." Learn how to do it here.

CAN MY CLICKER TALK TO BLACKBOARD
The use of student response systems has been around for a number of years but the folks who provide the technology have not stopped trying to improve their effectiveness. Yesterday the Teaching+Learning Center hosted Paul King of Turning Technologies to share the latest on his version of "clickers." He was joined by Bill Joyce, who many at BRCC may remember as he was our "rep" for a number of years. The main updates focused on analytics. As with all technology, the tool only benefits us if it helps to improve teaching and learning and lightens the workload. When the conversation turned to how Turning Technologies products "talked" with our current version of Blackboard, those in attendance found out that there may indeed be some benefits to adopting the latest versions. At the end of the day we decided to continue talking with all the stakeholders to see how we can improve student learning through the use of deeper assessment. Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the progress.

ELEARNING RELAUNCH CONTINUES
This has been an interesting semester for our eLearning Program. In January, we hired Susan Nealy to manage the eLearning enterprise. We also embarked on a relaunch project that included course redesign based on industry-standard benchmarks. As you will recall, the eLearning offerings for the spring 2013 semester were limited to 28 classes to allow for evaluation and assessment to take place in a controlled environment. As we approach the end of the first semester since the relaunch, we are busy with the assessment part of the project. Many of you are about to receive a survey that will allow us to capture valuable information for the next step in the process. We are most interested in the student experience of this relaunch and will be surveying them as well. All of this is designed to provide our students with the best possible academic experience in an online environment. Student learning is still the main objective and we are optimistic that the changes being implemented will allow BRCC to provide a quality program of excellence.

EVERYBODY MULTITASKS BUT NOT VERY WELL
Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, has published some interesting research on a topic near to my own areas of interest. His study takes a look at the use of technology during learning experiences, an idea that emerged from his book Rewired. He based his idea on the fact that students are experiencing multiple streams of information and entertainment while they study, do homework, or even sit in class. In fact, we know that this has become so common that most students rarely write a paper or complete a problem set without multitasking (or switch tasking as many psychologists have come to describe it).  The evidence clearly shows that when students switch task while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. Rosen suggests that we ask our students to take "tech breaks" during class. He gives them a chance to look at email and websites during class in short spurts throughout the class as long as they adhere to his rules during the class. Rosen has found that this will allow the students to build their resistance and begin to work longer periods without the tech breaks.

STAND AND DELIVER
Here is another suggestion from Dr. Dakin Burdick for an end of the semester activity that will provide you with great immediate feedback from your students about their experience in your class. Christopher Uhl recommends ending the course with an invitation to students to stand and share their thoughts. Some prompts for this exposition are emotional in nature: What are your regrets? How did you fail to live up to your potential? For what are you thankful? What are your hopes for yourself and for your colleagues? Others are challenges to the student to commit him/herself towards change: How will you use what you have learned? How do you resolve to change?