HEALTHY LIVING CREATES BRAINS FOR LEARNING
One of the many topics we teach in the College Success Skills course offered at BRCC is the benefits of being healthy. The discussion centers on how your lifestyle really impacts your ability to learn. Part of the lesson is about diet and how foods affect your brain. Another aspect discussed is the benefits of exercise. I like to use some of the examples from Dr. Terry Doyle's book Learner-Centered Teaching. Doyle surveyed faculty members at different institutions to find out how they got their students moving rather than just having them sit and talk. One method he discovered is the "moving discussion" which allows student to walk for 15 to 20 minutes with a partner or a group and discuss various topics which are assigned by the instructor. When they return, they are asked to share their conclusions with the class. An even simpler method he shared allows students time to stand and stretch when needed during class. It provides a respite from boredom and allows you to recapture your student's attention. Research shows that having built in breaks during your class, will improve learning as it battles short attention spans and encourages deeper thinking about the subject at hand.

ASK FOR FEEDBACK REGULARLY
With all this talk about flipping, here is an idea about how you can increase the participation rate of your students on the end-of-the-semester ratings they are asked to complete. Ask your students to complete their student ratings on your teaching effectiveness based on their learning and explain to them that you plan to use their feedback to update and improve your approach based on their feedback. Ask them to give you specific comments on the things that helped them learn. Also, ask them to give you some examples of things they think would have helped them learn better in your classes. This is a continuation of the Stop-Start-Keep Doing periodic method that I have been encouraging you to use throughout the semester, so it ties in nicely if you have utilized this process. In addition, you might want to spend some time throughout the semester talking about the specific things that the student ratings are meant to capture. Sometimes students don't complete the ratings because they aren't really sure what we are asking of them. The flip in all of this is to move away from a mandate and towards a request for help.

CELEBRATING LEARNING
We continue to celebrate learning at BRCC. One of our Engaged Scholars, Paul Guidry who teaches criminal justice, sent us the following pictures from some of his classes. All of the students pictured increased their exam scores by one or more letter grades from the last exam. That is quite an accomplishment and illustrates the importance of having your students think about their preparation regimen when they receive their graded material back. Research shows that by having your students journal about how they prepared for the current test, they can begin to alter their preparation approach for the next assessment. Another technique that has been proven to improve performance on assessment instruments (like exams or papers) is to have the student correct the errors they made on the original assignment. It reinforces the right answers or methods and prepares them for the next time they are asked to apply the same knowledge. As I have shared with you in a previous tweet, research by Dr. Daniel Schacter shows that it takes both repetition and elaboration over time to form long-term memories. Dr. Carol Dweck's research also informs us that it is important when students fail, to focus the feedback on having them increase their effort and use improved strategies.

Rosalind and Kiara with Mr. Guidry

Xiaotang, Tarlesha, Devin, William, Felicia, Corey, Gloria, Hannah, Brandon, and AJ with Mr. Guidry

Terrance, Honore, Tyler, Ridge, Kiara, Maria, Juan-Guevara, Kimberly, and Guysthaino with Mr. Guidry

JOINT OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING
Robert Carroll has written an interesting opinion piece about the teacher-student relationship. At its essence, it is about engagement but he frames it in terms of an athletic performance. He asks "So why do we, as teachers, still exist? The formal education process is no longer about information, and successful teachers have come to realize this. The ability of learners to access information has increased to the point of absurdity. The role of the teacher now is to help learners effectively identify and evaluate information sources, but this alone does not justify our continued presence in the educational process." He continues, "While learning is self-directed, it is the teacher that is accountable for the learning:  accountable to the students, to the program, and to themselves. Courses flourish when the student-teacher relationship is reciprocal and includes “joint ownership” of the course. And the responsibility flows both ways–a student performing poorly is a failure on my part, and I work with them to get them to perform to the best of their ability."

GROUP DISCUSSION WITH A TWIST
We have encouraged you to use class discussion as an active learning method in your classes and we have provided teaching and learning faculty development workshops in the past to provide you with the information and tools to implement this learning experience. B. J. Brooks and M. D. Koretsky provide a twist on this active learning method in their article "The Influence of Group Discussion on Students' Responses and Confidence During Peer Instruction" published in the Journal of Chemical Education. They advocate that you allow your student to respond to a discussion question individually in writing and then have them share that answer with two or three colleagues. After the discussion, the students can change their answers, write another explanation for the answer and once again indicate their degree of confidence in their answer. The research shows that the learning experience provided a richer understanding of the answer and improved their confidence level in having the correct answer. The depth of their explanation was enhanced as well. Students spent an average of seven minutes in discussion making this an active learning method that can be used each time you meet as a class. The research also confirmed that when faced with conceptual problems, students need the opportunity to practice problem solving and the discussion improves their ability to explain why the answer is correct.

CLOSING OUT A SEMESTER POSITIVELY
A fellow faculty development colleague reminds us that the end of the semester is the time to do some assessment that will provide you with valuable feedback as you plan for the next semester. There are a number of things you can do to help your students transition to the next phase of their academic careers or workforce lives. He suggests, "Just as you discussed the syllabus on the first day of class, do so again, this time to reaffirm that learning outcomes have been met and to remind students of the material that has been covered. Of course, it is a good idea to review that syllabus a few weeks out from the end of the semester to make sure that the outcomes have been met. The review can be done as a large group discussion, or you might assign groups within the class to assess how well the course had fulfilled its outcomes, material coverage, and other goals."

MUSIC DELIVERS IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
When designing and teaching a course through the online delivery method, research shows that you should build in authentic and relevant opportunities for your students to interact, connect, and present themselves as real people. Students see these opportunities to socially interact and connect with others as foundational attributes of your courses. Further, research suggests that opportunities like these influence students’ perception of the overall learning experience. Joanna Dunlap and Patrick Lowenthal conducted research in this area and suggest that using music as one of a number of ways to help students interact and connect with each other can produce positive student learning results. Music offers a way to involve students in student-to-content interaction through generative learning activities—by having students compile playlists, write lyrics, compose songs, perform songs, create music videos, and so on. Music-driven, student-to-content interaction also involves students in multisensory learning, further supporting knowledge acquisition and construction. They provide a number of discipline specific active learning methods that you can integrate into your online class.