FACULTY DEVELOPMENT ON CRITICAL THINKING

The conversation about the idea of teaching students to think critically has gone from a whisper to a roar. Many states have adopted learning outcomes that designate critical thinking as one of the required standards for their institutions of higher education. Many of the questions I am often asked focus on critical thinking. In fact, the Common Reader Faculty Learning Community spent some time discussing the concept as well. In response to the curiosity, The Teaching+Learning Center is offering the webinar Teaching for Critical Thinking on October 31 at 3:00 PM. Dr. Stephen Brookfield, University Distinguished Professor at the University of St. Thomas, will be making the presentation. At the end of this webinar, you will be able to: Design and implement an Assumptions Audit; Implement the Critical Incident Questionnaire-a tool to model critical thinking; Design and conduct a Scenario Analysis exercise; Design and conduct a “Chalk Talk” exercise; and, Incorporate two or more techniques for modeling critical thinking into your practice as a teacher. You can register now for this faculty professional development workshop.

RELEVANCE AND AUTONOMY ARE KEY TO STUDENT SUCCESS

Underachievement in college students is linked to lack of motivation (Balduf, 2009 and references therein). Two major factors that contribute to poor motivation are inability of students to see the relevance of classroom activities to their chosen careers (Glynn et al., 2009) and lack of a sense of autonomy (Reeve and Jang, 2006; Reeve, 2009). Dr. Katherine Robertson has written an article addressing both of these issues. She suggest that experiential learning be used and describes it as "a process through which students develop skills through direct experience. While most people think of experiential learning as something that happens outside the classroom, it is possible to give students real-life experiences in the classroom, too," says Dr. Robertson. She also suggests that to enhance student autonomy, have your students write their own rubrics and guidelines under your guidance. 

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES ROLL ON 

The Common Reader Faculty Learning Community is wrapping up their faculty development project and will have some interesting outcomes based on the lively discussion in and out of the formal sessions. In addition, the Building a Hybrid Course Faculty Learning Community had their initial session yesterday. This FLC is looking to create a best-practices model or template that all faculty can use as they build their hybrid classes. The FLC membership includes: Becky Adcock, Joanie Chavis, Janet Daniel, Raven Dora, Jessie Hornbrook, Mary Miller, Susan Nealy, and Todd Pourciau. They are using the Jay Caulfield book How to Design and Teach a Hybrid Course as the text for the FLC. Look for updates as they move through their sessions.

TESTING WORKSHOP PROVES BENEFICIAL

The faculty professional development session Testing 101: Assessing Student Learning held on October 17 received high marks from the faculty who spent part of their fall break participating. Dr. Amy Atchly, speech communication, was able to learn new ways to help her students overcome test anxiety. Paul Guidry, criminal justice, decided to “stop being concerned with coverage and to be more concerned with actual learning.” Belvin Givens, CSSK, is planning to use the post-test assessment methods explained in the seminar. Leroy Waguespack, STEM, was happy to receive his own Bloom’s Taxonomy flipbook to help him develop higher level-thinking questions for his tests.  Almost all of the participants said that they planned to use a test blueprint to design their assessment instruments. Watch this blog and your email-box for information on a repeat of this session.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
There are two additional professional development opportunities open to all BRCC faculty. The first occurs on October 8 and continues our Blackboard Series. This interactive workshop will focus on the Gradebook function and there will be a session for beginners and for more advanced users. The two sessions will begin at 3:00 and 4:00 PM that day. On October 10 the Teaching+Learning Center will present a workshop about test preparation. It will focus on the areas of alignment, rigor, and reliability. You will also learn about using a blueprint to build the perfect test. This workshop will be held in 311 Magnolia and begin at 3:00 PM. Look for registration information in your email-box in the very near future but save the dates now.

THE PLIGHT OF OUR ADJUNCT COLLEAGUES
The recent discussion about the effectiveness of adjunct faculty at our nation's colleges, reminded me of a study focused on this area. Although it was published in 2011, it bears a second glance. As the number of adjunct faculty continues to grow on campuses across the U.S., there is growing concern that due to a lack of training and/or time, most adjunct faculty are not using effective teaching methods. Roger Baldwin and Matthew Wawrzynski, two faculty at Michigan State, conducted the research and stressed in an interview that they fault the conditions part-time instructors work under, and not the instructors themselves, for their failure to use effective teaching methods more often. The researchers found that, compared with full-time adjuncts or tenured or tenure-track faculty, part-time adjuncts "are less likely to use learning-centered strategies such as essay exams, term research papers, multiple drafts of written work, oral presentations, group projects, or student evaluations of each others' work," the paper says. Such learning-centered practices are generally regarded by practitioners as some of the most effective means of teaching students and are certainly what the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support is suggesting all of our faculty use in their courses.

FREE YOUR MIND ONLINE
Audrey Heinesen has written a fascinating opinion piece about the need for more faculty who are willing to teach using the online course delivery method. She notes, "Online instructors can revel in a newfound ability to defy some of the most fundamental aspects of a typical classroom. The whiteboard is no longer erased at the end of the day. Your best moments reach beyond students in your physical presence. Your teaching can be set free in your online classroom. You’re free to structure content in new ways to reach your students. Try different types of content and multimodal teaching strategies that might not work in a traditional setting. Experiment with new course ideas that are harder to champion in more structured environments. Backward design, flipped classroom, video-based instruction? Instructors can return to a creative place by developing new ideas around curriculum and teaching." As we continue to expand our eLearning offerings, we are certainly looking to add to the number of faculty who are certified to teach using the online delivery method. Contact your dean or department chair if you are interested in receiving the training to teach for our eLearning department.

STOPPING BULIMIC LEARNING
One of the ideas recently discussed at the Common Reader Faculty Learning Community was the topic of comprehensive testing. The idea is to have each test that you give in your class not only build on the previous test but actually include material that should have been learned before. Craig Nelson, a biology instructor from Indiana, notes that comprehensive tests help us to avoid creating bulimic learners. He explains that this is the student who learns things for the test and then purges the information, thinking they will never have to use it again. Research shows however that continued interaction with content increases the chances that it will be remembered and can be applied subsequently. An article in the August/September 2013 issue of The Teaching Professor also supports this claim. Preparing for Comprehensive Finals contains a number of great suggestions that we can use to help our students prepare for their encounter with this type of assessment.

LEARNING LIKE A VIKING
EDUCAUSE has an interesting article on the future of higher education. Here is an excerpt: The basic model of higher education that exists today was created in the 11th century, operates on a 19th-century calendar, yet is supposed to prepare students for life in the 21st century. Far too often, students are the passive recipients of content delivered by experts who lecture, a practice used since the 11th century but increasingly inappropriate today. School calendars, created two centuries ago, apparently remain resistant to change. And schools that are supposed to prepare a generation to confront today's challenges far too often fail at that task: only 63.2 percent of students who began college in 2003 earned a bachelor's degree by 2009.

DO IT YOURSELF CHEMISTRY
A study in Colorado has found little difference in the learning of students in online or in-person introductory science courses. The study tracked community college students who took science courses online and in traditional classes, and who then went on to four-year universities in the state. Upon transferring, the students in the two groups performed equally well. Some science faculty members have expressed skepticism about the ability of online students in science, due to the lack of group laboratory opportunities, but the programs in Colorado work with companies to provide home kits so that online students can have a lab experience.

WHAT ARE YOU TESTING
Testing your students is an essential part of the process to determine if they are indeed learning anything. Constructing a test is a learned behavior that needs practice and can usually benefit from assistance. In fact, creating good tests has become such a valuable skill that it has grown into a career for some folks. The test researchers note that true/false tests are the least effective for assessing learning and determining if you are indeed teaching your students. True/false tests are typically easy and you need a large number of items for high reliability. In addition, your students have a 50-50 chance of guessing the right answer and it is difficult to discriminate between students that know the material and students who don't. If you are looking for some assistance with test construction, contact the Teaching+Learning Center at 8534.

HIDDEN PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
Samuel Arbesman, author of The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date, writes that "since scientific knowledge is still growing by a factor of ten every 50 years, it should not be surprising that lots of facts people learned in school and universities have been overturned and are now out of date." Arbesman, a senior scholar at the Kaufmann Foundation and an expert in scientometrics, looks at how facts are made and remade in the modern world. And since fact-making is speeding up, he worries that most of us don’t keep up to date and base our decisions on facts we dimly remember from school and university classes that turn out to be wrong.