SQ3R Is Not a New Star Wars Character

It is about that time in the semester when we begin to notice a pattern developing. We have assigned reading for our students and reminded them that it should be done before the class so that they can come with prepared questions. Yet they don't seem to have grasped the concept and so we fall back into presenting the entire reading material during class rather than using our active learning teaching interventions that promote deeper learning. We have shared some teaching interventions that work in this blog before. Dr. Dimple J. Martin offers us another process that she uses that may work for you as well. Dr. Martin writes, "First, let’s acknowledge this universal epidemic. College students despise reading textbooks and e-books that cover content with academic information. Fortunately, I discovered a cure for the reading plague that only requires five teaspoons of ingestion: 1) survey 2) question 3) read 4) retrieve and 5) review. In my class, I have found the SQ3R Method to be a step-by-step approach to learning and studying from textbooks. Although it took my students time and practice to master this method, it has been valuable in regards to preparing students for more content-driven class discussions, increased retention and understanding of information, strategic study skills, and test preparation." You can read the entire article here.

Intrusive In A Good Way

Intrusive advising is a term that has been making the rounds in higher education for a while now. It seems to appear whenever someone asks how the college where they are working can improve the student retention and completion numbers. While most of us can probably come up with a description of what we think intrusive advising is, it is always good to look to current research to help determine what is really working in the important areas of retention and completion. A research study by Paul Donaldson, Lyle McKinney, Mimi Lee, and Diana Pino does just that. They report that a key factor in successful intrusive advising is making it mandatory for students. They note that the motivation to seek help is often lower in students who may most need it. They also noted that students indicated other positive aspects of the intrusive model included degree planning activities, which included reviewing required courses, developing a plan for future course registration, completing an electronic course planner tool, learning transfer requirements, and participating in major and career exploration. You can read the entire research article here.

The BRCC community works hard at retaining students to completion (whether that be an academic credential, transfer to a bachelor's program or finding a job) and is not alone in searching for that "magic" solution. The truth is there isn't one intervention or approach that will serve all students. The solutions are as varied and diverse as our students. Looking at two research studies about retention and students enrolled in developmental education courses shows some surprising findings and useful interventions. In work done by Pamela S. Pruett and Beverly Absher, using data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, findings indicated that retention was significantly impacted by grade point average, engagement, type of remedial/developmental courses, time spent preparing for class, parents’ educational level, and students’ income level (measured indirectly by loans). They found that "Students who persist in college ask questions in class and contribute to class discussions, make class presentations, and work with other students on projects during class or outside the class (essentially engagement)." Gloria Crisp and Chryssa Delgado, in their study The Impact of Developmental Education on Community College Persistence and Vertical Transfer, demonstrate that developmental education may overall serve to decrease community college students’ odds of successfully transferring to a 4-year institution. Both studies offer suggestions for programming that could improve retention of students in developmental education courses.

Every now and then, someone posts a blog about their undergraduate experience. It is usually written by someone who is now an instructor in college. Sometimes the post is more about reminiscing rather than providing good ideas built on their experience. Susan Shapiro, who is an instructor at Columbia, has written one of the latter. She looks back on her undergraduate experience and regrets that she was the kind of student that currently gives her problems. She writes, "I enjoyed going to college at the University of Michigan, an hour from home, but my secret humiliation is: I was the type of mediocre student I now disdain. As a freshman, I cared about my friends, my boyfriend and my poetry. Or, I cared about what my boyfriend thought of my friends, what my friends thought of him, and what they thought of my poetry about him. Here’s what I wish I’d known and done differently." You can read the entire article here. More importantly, I encourage you to share this with your students.

Does it seem like every other conversation about higher education begins with the words retention or persistence? Are there differences between students who attend community college versus a four year institution? Do we have definitive results that can be applied in every situation? We know that one of the many problems posed by the questions surrounding retention and persistence are the myriad of factors that are at play. In the latest addition of The Review of Higher Education (Spring 2017, V40, N3), Deryl K. Hatch and Crystal E. Garcia report on their research about these topics. In "Academic Advising and the Persistence Intentions of Community College Students in their First Weeks in College," the authors point out that there has been very little work that connects the factors that lead to dropping out and the student's initial goal. They acknowledge that academic advising centers and training for faculty advisors are two practices that could contribute to improving retention. The main results they report from the research include: 1) the relationship between engagement and persistence intentions heavily depends on individual goals, 2) different kinds of advising may have different effects for different students, and 3) the role of academic and social support networks matter in the near term and likely in the long term. Continue reading here.

RETENTION, PROGRESSION AND THE TAKING OF ONLINE COURSES
As the amount of students taking an eLearning course at BRCC continues to grow, our focus on student success in courses offered online also grows. Scott James, Karen Swan and Cassandra Daston conducted some interesting research in the area of student success in face-to-face (f2f) and online classes. What they found was there really is no difference. Just as students experience success barriers in f2f classes, the same can happen in online classes. One of the more interesting findings is that older students typically have higher retention rates than younger students in the online environment. They conclude the article with the validation that online courses offer the best access to the widest number of students. You can read the entire article here.

MORE SUPPORT FOR STUDY GROUPS
By now we are used to hearing about issues related to student success and persistence. We also know that it is rarely one issue that causes a student to fail. Elizabeth J. Krumrei, Fred B. Newton, Eunhee Kim, and Dan Wilcox took a look at the various factors that can assist student success. Their findings are useful because they specifically sought to identify real solutions that could be implemented to help students succeed. They write, "An initial strategy is to help students increase opportunities for successful performance. Professionals can aid students in selecting courses in which success is probable. Second, finding role models in the domain where the student lacks efficacy is a helpful strategy for increasing self-efficacy. Students can be encouraged to observe peers who are performing successfully (this is where our Spring 2017 Student Success Initiative: Study Groups can play a big part). You can find more solutions in the full article here.

ARE YOUR READY FOR YOUR STUDENTS AND ARE THEY READY FOR YOU
I find it fascinating to look at lists and I can say with confidence that most of us do. If not, why would so many of the websites we browse provide lists of things like most viewed article, top story of the day, or other articles you might be interested in? The most read article from the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice is "Are College Faculty and First-Generation, Low-Income Students Ready for Each Other?" Now I think we can all understand why it would be popular. Doesn't the title just draw you in wanting for more? So I did take a look at the article and found it to be useful. Three major findings that emerged from the study are: (a) faculty beliefs about student readiness impact the degree to which faculty serve as cultural agents for First-Generation Low-Income (FGLI) students, (b) faculty who serve as cultural agents enact particular practices and dispositions that enable students to become more academically prepared, and (c) FGLI students arrive at college with diverse forms of readiness that require varying forms of nurturing and support. Read the entire article here.

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.

ADDING RELEVANCE TO INSTRUCTION INCREASES RETENTION
There are many reasons for incorporating real-life situations into instruction. Foremost are that applications of theoretical material in real-life situations make content easier to understand and that the relevance of content is demonstrated by real-life examples. If we are trying to connect content to real-life situations, our assessments must demonstrate face validity. That is, they have to model the situations in which the new knowledge and skills will be used. If we only test for knowledge the opportunity to demonstrate that learning is relevant is missed. The preceding comments are from Dr. Michael Theall's paper Related Course Material to Real Life Situations.

FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS FACE MANY CHALLENGES
Adam and Jaye Fenderson have released their new documentary chronicling the lives of several first-generation college students. The makers of the film are a married couple who said that they found it difficult not to help the students they were covering. “We actually made a decision when we started thinking about the film that we were not going to intervene in the students’ lives,” Mr. Fenderson said. “It was very difficult to sit there and listen to them talk about what their counselor told them when we knew that it was wrong. It was difficult to even sit in some of the counselor meetings and hear the counselors be so brief and quick with these students and these students not get answers that they really needed.” An absence of college graduates in a family can  result not only in a lack of financial support — many economic studies have suggested that college graduates make more money over time than high school graduates — but also a shortage of knowledge about the college admissions process. In the film First Generation, one of the student’s mothers is depicted as having no idea how to pay for college, and not knowing whether the cost is required to be paid in full upfront. The students, themselves floundering through the process, make misinformed financial decisions that limit their college choices and may even stifle their academic potential.

USING QUIZZES TO MEASURE LEARNING
One of our most valuable resources, Dr. Maryellen Weimer has a new post about quizzes and the many ways you can use them in your classes. She writes, "I’ve been rethinking my views on quizzing. I’m still not in favor of quizzes that rely on low-level questions where the right answer is a memorized detail or a quizzing strategy where the primary motivation is punitive, such as to force students to keep up with the reading. That kind of quizzing doesn’t motivate reading for the right reasons and it doesn’t promote deep, lasting learning. But I keep discovering innovative ways faculty are using quizzes, and these practices rest on different premises." Read the entire post.

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.

STUDENT RETENTION STRATEGIES THAT WE CAN USE
Dr. Patrick O'Keefee's research focuses on student retention issues. His article A Sense of Belonging: Improving Student Retention provides a number of strategies that are easily implementable. He notes, "With student attrition rates reaching between 30 and 50 per cent in the United States,the inability of higher education institutions to retain their students is a significant issue. This paper cites key risk factors which place students at risk of non-completion, which include mental health issues, disability, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Furthermore, first year students and higher degree by research students are susceptible to attrition. The capacity of a student to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution is recognized by this paper as a being a critical factor determining student retention. The creation of a caring, supportive and welcoming environment within the university is critical in creating a sense of belonging. This can be achieved by the development of positive student/faculty relationships, the presence of a well resourced counseling center and the encouragement of diversity and difference."

ADAPTIVE LEARNING MAY BE FOR YOU
As the adoption of adaptive learning strategies has spread, the uses have become more common to address issues like under-prepared students and developmental education. The Online Learning Consortium, of which we are a member, has some good information about how continuous adaptive learning can help solve college readiness problems. As the research emerges about adaptive learning, some interesting strategies have surfaced. Dr. Tseng and colleagues suggest an innovative adaptive learning approach that is based upon two main sources of personalization information, that is, learning behavior and personal learning style. Campus Technology interviewed several administrators and faculty members who have worked on adaptive projects about their experience. If you are interested in trying this strategy in your classes, please know that I am here to help.

FREE TEXTBOOKS FOR STUDENTS
Students have indicated that the high cost of textbooks in some subjects prevent them from purchasing this important resource. Did you know that in some instances there are free textbooks available online? The books are part of the Open Educational Resources or OER. In fact, some faculty members are creating their own textbooks to use in their classes. You can browse for available resources at the OER Commons website. Additional help is available from the BRCC Library faculty, with Peter Klubek leading the initiative.

WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL STUDENT NEED TO KNOW
While we continue to offer a college success skills course, many of the students who would benefit most are not enrolling in the class. If you are advising a student who has struggled with time management, test anxiety, metacognition issues, critical thinking or any other issues that prevent their academic progress, it may be time to suggest they enroll in a CSSK 102 class. In the absence of taking that class, you should strongly encourage them to take advantage of the various workshops offered by the Academic Learning Center. Karp and Bork, of the Community College Research Center, have written a working paper on the topic. They note "While low college success rates are typically linked to students’ lack of academic preparation for college and their subsequent need for developmental or remedial instruction, research suggests that even many students who are deemed “college-ready” by virtue of their placement test scores or completion of developmental coursework still do not earn a credential." Their paper builds on previous work arguing that community college success is dependent not only upon academic preparation but also upon a host of important skills, attitudes, and behaviors that are often left unspoken. The paper  clarifies the role of the community college student and the components of that role that must be enacted for students to be successful. They provide a concrete, actionable description of the community college student role and present a framework that practitioners can use to help students learn how to be successful community college students.

USING STUDENT RATING FEEDBACK EFFECTIVELY
As our students begin to complete their ratings of their experiences in our classes, it is a good time to take a look at how we as faculty can use the data and what the current research says about the process.  Safavi and Bakar, et al. suggest that faculty may want to add some additional questions to the ratings in order to gather information more specific to their subject matter and teaching approach. In research performed by Slocombe, Miller, and Hite, they note that students tended to give higher evaluations to professors who used humor and to professors they liked but the difficulty of the class did not impact students' ratings of faculty. Ronald A. Berk's research revealed that students' expectations about how the results will be used are also critical to future response rates. Chen and Hoshower found that students’ motivation to participate in  the  rating  system  hinged  on  the following semi-observable outcomes (in order  of decreasing importance): (1) improvements in teaching, (2) improvements in course content and format, and (3) faculty personnel decisions (promotion, tenure, salary increase).

BECOMING A LEARNER-CENTERED EDUCATOR
Dr. James Lang has written a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education about some of the small decisions he has made that had a big impact on his classes. He writes, "When I first started teaching, the open space of a 50- or 75-minute class period seemed an eternity. Like many a new faculty member, I worried about having enough material. I wanted to ensure that, if discussion faltered or if I rushed through the lecture too quickly, I would have options to fill the remaining time. My greatest fear was using up everything I had and finding 30 minutes still left on the clock. Twenty years later I seem to have the opposite problem: not enough time in the class period to accomplish everything I have planned. It seems so difficult to me now to do much of substance in 50 minutes. I don’t know whether to blame that shift in perspective on the fact that I have more teaching experience or that I’m just older. I suppose those two possibilities don’t untangle very easily." Continue reading here.

CUMULATIVE EXAMS HELP LEARNING RETENTION Now is a great time to begin revising your final exam. If you are like me, your finals are cumulative and that means it is time to remind our students (again) that the material they learned at the beginning of the semester will be needed again soon. Dr. Maryellen Weimer tells us, "The evidence that students retain content longer and can apply it better when exams and finals are cumulative is compelling. When I pointed to the evidence in a recent workshop, a faculty member responded, “But I can’t use cumulative exams. My students would revolt.” Students don’t like cumulative exams for the very reason we should be using them: they force regular, repeated encounters with the content. And it’s those multiple interactions with the material that move learning from memorization to understanding." You can read more here.

SAVE THE DATES
There are some exciting faculty development opportunities planned for November. First up is the The Millennial Learner: Greatest Generation or Generation Me? workshop being held at 9:30 AM in room 100 at BRCC-Frazier. Registration is now open. The Canvas Series continues on November 19 with Creating Reports Using Gradebook. That workshop starts at 1:00 PM in 311 Magnolia Building at BRCC-Mid City. You can register here. Our final event in November occurs on Friday the 20th beginning at 2:00 PM. Copyrighted Materials: How to Analyze Any Copyright Question in Five Steps will be facilitated by Ms. Peggy Hoon, J.D., Director of Copyright Policy and Education for the LSU Libraries.  Ms. Hoon serves as a campus-wide copyright resource for LSU faculty, staff, and students, providing education, information, and assistance for both the lawful use of copyrighted materials as well as the responsible management of authors’ rights in their works. This event is co-sponsored by the BRCC Magnolia Library and the Teaching+Learning Center. You can register here.

BEING A GOOD TEACHER
At this point in the semester, Dr. Maryellen Weimer reminds us that caring for our students is very important for their success and their drive to complete their studies towards a degree or certificate. She writes, "Good teachers care about their students. We all know that, but sometimes over the course of a long semester, it’s easy to forget just how important it is to show our students we care about them. I was reminded of this importance by two recent studies, which I read and highlighted for the December issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter. In terms of research design, the studies couldn’t have been more different. In terms of results, they both came to the same conclusion. The interactions students have with their teachers and the kind of relationships that teachers establish with students profoundly affect students’ learning experiences. And it’s a finding that’s been established in study after study." Continue reading

LEARNING TROUGH LAUGHTER
Boredom may be the largest pedagogical obstacle to teaching (Smith, 2007), and many believe it is up to teachers to spark students’ interest in classes. One way to ignite students’ enthusiasm is by using humor. In the classroom, humor can create a cheerful learning climate, enhance social bonding through increased student-instructor interaction, add variety to lectures, decrease test anxiety, and provide enjoyment and laughter. In addition to the social benefits, humor is cognitively and pedagogically important. For instance, instructional humor has been touted as an excellent way for students to learn
vocabulary, increase critical thinking, practice semantics, and remember more information. Because humor often plays with meaning, it helps individuals change their current mental perspective by visualizing problems in an alternate way, as well as engaging their critical thinking. In a study by Jana Hackathorn, Amy M. Garczynski, Katheryn Blankmeyer, Rachel D. Tennial, and Erin D. Solomon, results indicated that using humor to teach material significantly increased students’ overall performance on exams, particularly on knowledge and comprehension level quiz items, but not application level items. Moreover, learning a construct through the use of humor was most effective for comprehension level quiz items. Continue reading this article here.

EARLY COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOLS
Have you heard about the move afoot to turn high schools into college? Usually called early college high schools, they are growing in numbers due mainly to their success rates. Nationwide, 90 percent of early college students graduate from high school, 10 percentage points above the national average, and 30 percent of students get either an associate’s degree or a certificate, according to Jobs for the Future, the Boston-based nonprofit that runs the national Early College Designs program. Now, there are 280 early college schools nationwide – nearly 50 of which are in Texas. So far, the model has proven largely successful in graduating students from high school and introducing them to college courses. Most function like magnet schools, though, with students choosing to attend or even needing to apply. Continue reading this story here.

MENTORING OUR NEXT GROUP OF ENGAGED SCHOLARS
The BRCC Mentoring Program hosted the second meeting of the semester for the group of 14 Mentor/Mentee pairs yesterday. Our new faculty are reporting that having a mentor has improved their acclimation to teaching at BRCC and has greatly reduced their stress level. Topics during yesterday's session included student motivation, critical self-reflection, classroom management, and student retention. Participants also shared stories of what they have learned through their teaching experiences and how this continues to change and shape how they respond to their students. New faculty for fall 2015 include: Jennifer Bernard (Nursing), Matthew Buras (Mathematics), Danielle Burns (Art), Alexandra Cavazos (English), Tim Dykes (Construction Management), Zach Gasior (English), Darren Jones (Philosophy), Felecia McGhee (Surgical Technology), Lisa Namikas (History),  Gregory Otto (Aviation), Priya Pathak (Chemistry), Pam Potter (Nursing), Jose Taj (Spanish), and Shena Williams (Nursing).

JOIN US AT THE BRCC-ACADIAN
If you missed the recent faculty development workshop on Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Community College Students, you are in luck. We will have a repeat performance on October 21 from 2:00 - 3:30 PM in room 210 at the Acadian Campus. Attendees will learn about common warning signs of mental health problems in this population. Session facilitators Dr. Bridget Sonnier-Hillis and Wendy Devall will provide information about how to respond to students who are experiencing significant stressors or who have suspected mental health issues. This will include information about on-campus and community resources to which faculty may refer these students. Attendees also will learn basic, practical skills for dealing with behaviorally challenging students. Register

TEACHING VERSUS COVERING THE MATERIAL
Nicki Monahan writes, "With access to a world of information as close as our phones, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all there is to teach. New material continues to emerge in every academic discipline, and teachers feel a tremendous responsibility not only to stay current themselves, but to ensure that their learners are up to date on the most recent findings. Add to this information explosion the passionate desire by faculty members to share their particular areas of expertise and it’s easy to see why content continues to grow like the mythical Hydra of Greek legend. And like Hercules, who with each effort to cut off one of Hydra’s nine heads only to have two more grow in its place, faculty struggle to tame their content monsters. The two most common strategies for managing course content rarely yield positive results. Cutting back or trimming content leads to agonizing decisions but does not produce substantive changes." Continue reading here.

USING GRADES TO MOTIVATE
Barry Schwartz and Ken Sharpe ask the question "Do giving grades work as incentives?" In response they offer the following, "There is no question that we can use grades to get students to change their behavior, but are we getting them to learn more? One danger is that grade-focused teaching corrodes the very meaning of learning. The purpose of learning becomes merely the achievement of grades. Not the mastery of the material. Not finding innovative and imaginative solutions to tough problems. Not joining with fellow students to run with an idea and see how much each can learn from the others. It becomes instead what former Harvard dean Harry Lewis calls "an empty game of score maximization." It makes the work seem pointless." Continue reading here.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
The Teaching+Learning Center (T+LC) will be offering a workshop focused on mental health for the first time tomorrow at 1:00 PM. Dr. Bridget Sonnier-Hillis, a psychology instructor, and Wendy Devall, director of disability services for BRCC, will co-present on this important topic. There is still time to register. Then on October 6 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM, T+LC will be presenting a workshop about the millennial learner in response to your ranked requests at the fall faculty development kickoff. We will spend some time looking at the characteristics of this group of student and how we can tailor our teaching to their specific needs. The session will conclude with an open discussion session and registration is now open.

REPLACE POLICIES WITH DEMONSTRATION
Dr. Lolita Paff believes that that policies we put in place in our classes may not be garnering the response we hoped for. She writes, "Policies are necessary. They serve as a warning to students: this is what will happen if you are absent, miss an exam, turn work in late, text or surf the Web during class, and the like. Policies don’t teach students why these behaviors hurt their effort to learn. Despite extensive evidence to the contrary, many students believe their learning is unaffected by technology distractions. 'No screens' policies are aimed, at least in part, to minimize distractions that hurt learning (their own and peers’). But policies aren’t nearly as powerful as an activity that demonstrates the effects of distraction." Keep reading... 

STUDENT RETENTION IMPROVES WITH ONLINE CLASSES
Does online learning impede degree completion? That is the problem that Drs. Peter Shea and Temi Bidjerano sought to resolve in their research. What they found is just the opposite. They report, "Contrary to expectations, the study found that controlling for relevant background characteristics; students who take some of their early courses online or at a distance have a significantly better chance of attaining a community college credential than do their classroom only counterparts. These results imply that a new model of student retention in the age of the Internet, one that assumes transactional adaptation, may be warranted. Keep reading.

MISCOMMUNICATION, PERSONAL ATTACKS AND TROLLING
Adding a discussion component to your face-to-face or eLearning class is a great way to measure learning. The depth of a question can tell you plenty about where your students are along the learning spectrum. Having peer-to-peer discussions is also a great way to illustrate that students are part of the learning process and should not expect all of the answers to come directly from you. If you are thinking of adding discussions to your class, there are a few areas of concern that you should be prepared for and Anastasia Salter has written an article to help you out. She writes, "I’ve been teaching a large online class for the first time this semester, and as the course involves looking at a number of challenge interactive works and games I put a lot of emphasis on discussion forums and critical debate. However, discussion forums of this kind present a lot of potential problems in an online class. We only have to read the comments anywhere on the web (pro tip: don’t actually read the comments) to see that the online medium offers huge potential for miscommunication, personal attacks, trolling, and harassment–even when in the space of a virtual classroom." To see her tips click here. 

THE PAIN OF AWKWARD SILENCE
Dr. Kenneth L. Parker, Steber Professor in Theological Studies at St. Louis University, has an interesting post today about asking students questions. He writes, "At the beginning of each academic year, I have to relearn the same lesson: enduring the awkward silence after a question has been asked. At the start of my career this “skill” seemed unendurable. It felt far easier to fill the empty void of fifty or seventy-five minutes—or God forbid, two and a half hours—with the sound of my own voice and well chosen words recorded on paper. After all, students are conditioned to expect that of my guild. Yet as I began to take more seriously the need to create learner-centered classroom experiences, one of the first steps to achieve that goal proved to be silencing my own voice, and waiting for students to find theirs. Continue reading

IS PESSIMISM HURTING STUDENT SUCCESS
Some of your students may be falling behind because they suffer from a negative disposition. Dr. Travis Bradberry provides us with interventions that can help create student success through positivity. He writes, "When faced with setbacks and challenges, we’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings." Continue reading

MYTH OF MULTITASKING
Have you had the talk with your students? You know what I am talking about? The talk about the hazards of multitasking (or switch-tasking as it is more appropriately called). The research is clear on this subject. When we try to do two things at one time, everything suffers. If it is two simple tasks like folding laundry and listening to the weather report, our brain can handle them. If the competing tasks are challenging, like listening to a lecture while texting, the brain is using the same mental resources and both tasks suffer. Researchers have documented a list of negative outcomes that can occur when student switch task while doing classwork. The first (and this may be the one that can turn the tide for you as you share this with your students) is the task takes much longer to complete. Why? Each time the student returns to the classwork, the brain has to refamiliarize with the material. Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. Third, students' subsequent memory of what they are working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. Fourth, when we are distracted, research shows that our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. Looking to dig deeper into this topic? Here are a few of the scientists working in this field: Russell Poldrack, David Meyer, James Kraushaar, David Novak, and Larry Rosen.

LET'S TALK
High engagement levels between students and faculty is still the best way to prevent attrition and improve retention. Dr. Constance Staley offers the following advice, "Clear and cogent communication is a key to success in all of our relationships—and the instructor–student relationship is no exception to that rule. Of course, communication in the classroom concerns more than just your lecturing; it encompasses all the ways you listen to, speak to, and interact with students. How can you enhance or improve your communications with your students this semester? Continue reading...

UPCOMING WORKSHOP
During the Faculty Development Kickoff held earlier, we asked you which topics you wanted to learn about this academic year. Active learning was one of the top picks and will be the topic for the professional development workshop on Thursday, September 17 at 1:00 PM. We will spend some time on the how and why, discuss a few active learning methods, and then take some time redesigning one of your current lessons. You can register here. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu).

IS FAILURE REALLY VALUABLE
Many people learn from a young age that making mistakes feels terrible and can be embarrassing. That lesson often gets learned in school. But in her TED Talk, Kathryn Schulz says those terrible feelings come from realizing wrongness, not the feeling of actually being wrong. Because often, people are wrong for a while before they realize it, and in that intervening time, being wrong feels eerily like being right. In education there’s a lot of talk about valuable failure, the necessity of mistakes for learning and celebrating the learning that comes out of being wrong. And while teachers, parents and students may understand that concept in the abstract, in the moment, they still don’t want to be wrong. To protect ourselves from ever being wrong, we try to be perfect, but inevitably fail, making things worse. Schulz points out that nothing ever turns out as we expect, and that’s a core part of being human. Continue reading

4 EASY STEPS TO LEARN MATH
Math proficiency is a subject of a lot of anxiety for college leaders, students and even national leaders. Employers and educators alike know that math skills are crucial to many of the science, technology and engineering jobs expected to be ever more important in the future, but students’ math comprehension continues to stagnate. In his TED Talk, mathematician Conrad Wolfram argues much of this angst is about how well students can compute by hand, not how well they understand math. He breaks math down into four steps: 1. Pose the right question about an issue; 2. Change that real world scenario into a math formulation; 3. Compute; and, 4. Take the math formulation and turn it back into a real world scenario to verify it. Continue reading

MORE STUDENT SUCCESS RESOURCES
I recently sent you an update noting that I had added a student resource about avoiding procrastination on the Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Canvas site under Modules. Here is another short article you can share with your students about studying. The author, Dr. Christine Harrington, writes, "The strategy that most students use- and is unfortunately the least beneficial- is reviewing notes.  Think about it- reviewing your notes doesn’t take much effort or energy.  It’s a pretty low level cognitive task." Continue reading

WEB PLATFORM SEEKS TO GIVE STUDENTS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WALL OF TEXT
It’s difficult to keep students engaged — and awake — when assigning them readings from long and often dull textbooks. Two researchers wanted to change that. Their creation is zyBooks, a web-based platform that mixes learning activities such as question sets and animations with some written content, largely as a replacement for text. The idea is that professors can use zyBooks instead of traditional textbooks in order to help students engage with the material and perform better. zyBooks was founded in 2012 by Frank Vahid, a computer-science professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Smita Bakshi, a former assistant professor at the University of California at Davis who is the company’s chief executive. They say the platform is being used by professors at around 250 universities, primarily in courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Read more here.

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
Through explicit instruction and modeling, students can come to recognize the importance of taking brain. By wielding these skills and abilities, students decide where to focus their attention and which tasks to undertake. As a general

charge of their executive functioning in their academic endeavors and later in their careers. Executive functions can be defined as the awareness and directive capacities of the rule of thumb, when students of any age have difficulty completing developmentally appropriate academic tasks on their own, executive functioning may be at the root of the problem. In the human brain, executive functions are primarily regulated by the prefrontal regions (just behind the forehead) of the frontal lobes. Neuroscientists and psychologists have made significant gains in understanding the brain's executive functioning over the past several decades.An appropriate metaphor that often helps students and educators alike understand the role of executive functioning in thinking and behavior is to imagine an orchestra conductor. The conductor chooses what work the orchestra will perform, decides how to interpret that work, sets the tempo for the performance, and directs each section of musicians to contribute at the appropriate time. Read more here.

IS THAT GOING TO BE ON THE TEST?
At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from the book be on the exam?” “How long should the paper be?” “Can we use Google to find references?” “Would you repeat what you just said? I didn’t get it all down in my notes.” Rarely do they ask thoughtful questions that probe the content and stir the interest of the teacher and other students. So, how do we get them to ask better questions? What if we start by asking them the kinds of questions we hope they will ask us? Here are some suggestions that might help us model what good questions are and demonstrate how instrumental they can be in promoting thinking, understanding, and learning. Read more here.

MAXIMIZE YOUR TIME
One of the things that all faculty wish they had more of is time. That is why I try to give you as much information as possible in as many different formats as available. If you would like to see very brief teaching and learning tips, you should definitely become a follower on the Teaching+Learning Center's Twitter account. Each tweet is guaranteed to be 140 characters or less. You can easily create a Twitter account for yourself in order to follow. I would encourage you to use the account for your teaching as well. It is a great way to remind your students of upcoming deadlines, assessments, or any other important announcements or information.

NEW EDITION OF ALM AVAILABLE
The Active Learning Manual has been updated for the 2015-16 academic year. I have added additional methods on how you can quickly learn your student's names at the beginning of each semester. It is a sure fire way to enhance engagement and create an environment that promotes student success. I have also added a section specifically for our eLearning faculty but the methods can be used in face-to-face classes as well. Finally, I added a few interventions to help keep disruptive students on track. If you would like to receive the electronic version of the ALM, please send me an email request to pourciaut@mybrcc.edu.

GROWTH MINDSET AND SELF EFFICACY
During our most recent faculty professional development workshop. Dr. Crystal Allen of Lone Star College in neighboring Texas spoke about helping students develop a growth mindset. Although I have presented this theory in previous workshops, Dr. Allen brought a fresh perspective to this important topic. Enhancing each of our student's self-efficacy levels is vitally important to increasing our retention and completion rates. Helping them to understand that knowledge is not a fixed commodity but something that can grow throughout our lives is the key to this approach.