Is Linking Learning and Work a Must Do for Faculty?

The latest white paper from the American Council on Education (ACE) is creating a healthy discussion about what is and isn't part of a faculty's responsibilities when it comes to their students. The ACE paper suggests that having students career-ready should be something that faculty should be doing. The paper's authors acknowledge that both community college and university faculty influenced the work. Working at a community college and teaching a course called College Success Skills (CSSK) may be influencing my opinion on this matter but in talking with employers, local chamber members, and students themselves, many see it the same way. Our CSSK course provides knowledge about the obvious college success issues (test anxiety, taking notes, engaging with faculty, study habits) but we also spend time on what some would call soft skills (communication, netiquette, time management, critical thinking). Having worked previously at a flagship research-intensive university as well as a regional doctoral university, I will be the first to tell you that each mission was different. But at the end of the day students are attending college/university to get a job. This white paper comes at a really important time as the financial support from government continues to shrink and the public seems to have lost their faith in a college degree. Having a constructive conversation to reset our priorities is a useful thing to do and I welcome your feedback on this issue as well.

Teach Students How Their Brains Learn

With all of the knowledge we now know about how our brains work best, why are we still ignoring the benefits of sharing this information with our students? You have probably noticed that I like to tweet about brain research on the CTLE Twitter account. We have also incorporated brain research into our College Success Skills course as we teach students how to be better at critical thinking. Looking back at some of the material we used initially reminded me of a good article by Dr. Judy Willis that appeared in 2012 (are we really 8 years removed from that?). In the article she writes, "Curriculum in schools of education has changed in response to changes in society, pedagogy and technology. As computer technology became an asset in classrooms, schools of education appropriately included that instruction in the curriculum. Many states made similar education program curriculum adaptations in response to multiculturism, increases in English language learners, and the use of the concrete-connect-abstract progression in math instruction. Now that the neuroscience research implications for teaching are also an invaluable classroom asset, it is time for instruction in the neuroscience of learning to be included as well in professional teacher education." Her words are just as salient in 2020 and we now know even more about how the brain learns. Spending some time in your classes dispensing this new knowledge will pay off for your students and help them to learn the information you are sharing. You can find information on this topic on this blog and on the CTLE Twitter page.

First Day Of Spring Semester Is Great Time to Revisit Goals

When setting personal goals for yourself, we teach in the College Success Skills 1023 course to use the SMART method. It is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Each year at BRCC, we are asked to set personal goals and January is always a good time to review the selections we made since it is basically the mid-point of the academic year. So I encourage you to take a look at what you indicated you were going to focus on to help you improve your teaching and your student's learning. I also want to remind you to check out the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's blog from time to time for new ideas you might want to implement in your classes. In addition, take a look at the upcoming events for faculty development opportunities. We also tweet daily and try to focus on issues that are relative to BRCC and our student population. Here is to a great spring 2020 semester. As always, I am here to help you in all things teaching and learning so do not hesitate to contact me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). I am located in 120 Magnolia Building on the Mid City Campus.

How To Do College 101

Despite a great increase in the numbers of students enrolling in higher education, specifically at community colleges, the successful completion rates for these students has remained static since the 1970’s. When reviewing strategies to increase student retention and successful completion, the Student Success Course (SSC) has emerged as a promising and prominent strategy for community colleges. Given that, the purpose of the sequential mixed methods study by Kimbark, Peters, and Richardson (Effectiveness of the Student Success Course on Persistence, Retention, Academic Achievement, and Student Engagement) was to determine if participation in a SSC influences persistence, retention, academic achievement, and student engagement on a community college campus. Results of this study indicate that a relationship exists between participation in the SSC and persistence, retention, academic achievement in English and mathematics, and student engagement. Additionally, participants claim that taking the SSC not only altered their perceptions of the importance of the course, but their social and study skills as well.

Group Work Helps Students Solve Real World Problems

We often talk about the differences between high school and college, We even have a section about the differences in our (Open Educational Resource) textbook for College Success Skills, but that argument may be obscuring the fact that teaching and learning is just that. Stating that premise, a recent article about high school mathematics teacher Sandra Cover really got me excited. She is using a very unique method in her classroom that acknowledges the real world. The first reality is that many of today's problems are solved by teams. The second reality is that it is rare that the first suggestion for a solution is adopted without back and forth from members of that team. Covers allows students in her trigonometry class to work in groups and allows them to revise their work (even assessments) when it is incorrect. Cover, who teaches at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, Michigan, developed this new approach after realizing her students were learning the “what” of math, but not the “how” or “why.” One of the reasons I am so excited about her pedagogical approach is that I feel we can use it in any course we are teaching. Take a look at the entire article here and let me know what you think.

Managing Stress Key to Student Success

What do you know about anxiety related to testing and assessment? Did you experience anxiety when you were in college? Did you find a way to overcome it and succeed? Have you thought to share that with your students? The faculty who teach our College Success Skills course (CSSK 1023) include material about test taking and how to deal with anxiety and other issues that may arise when a student feels stress. Of course we cannot go through our lives without experiencing stress but learning how to manage it allows us to be successful. One of the ways you can help your students to be fully prepared for assessment is to have them think about the process itself. What is being assessed and why? Have them think about the types of test questions you are likely to use. Have them actually come up with questions that they think might be on the test. In this way, they can be more productive when it comes to preparing for assessments. Another method you might want to introduce is using music to set a calm and distraction free environment in your classroom. Using music can help students to focus on the task at hand and block out whatever else is going on in their lives at least for the hour or more that they are testing. I suggest using music like Japanese ambient selections. You can use songs like Still Space by Satoshi Ashikawa or Glass Chattering by Yoshio Ojima. Playing this for 3-5 minutes as your student enter the class on the day of testing will help them to be more mindful of what they have learned and allow them to share this with you. Let me know if you try it or if you have other suggestions of music that will help students perform their best.

We can all agree that many of our students struggle with how to best prepare for assessment. Many of them seem to "trust their gut" and go with the tried and true rereading of the entire chapter or pulling an all-nighter. Science proves that neither of those methods work very well. So I was interested to read an article that explains how Colorado State is using science and technology in a new course that helps students become better learners. My curiosity was piqued because of the College Success Skills course we offer (and I teach) but also because I am fascinated by how our brain really works. The article notes that, "Learning is not intuitive. Research shows a disconnect between what people think are the best ways to learn and the habits that actually lead to true understanding and retention." In my experience, that is true but how can we make learning more intuitive or is that even possible? The article goes on to say, "To that end, students study the research behind different learning strategies. Take cramming, for example. Students learn that, while people estimate they learn better studying all at once versus spacing out their learning, studies show the opposite. Similarly, people perform better when they test themselves on what they know while they are studying, as opposed to reading the same material over and over." That is reassuring as we based our Study Group Program administered by the Academic Learning Center on those very notions (garnered from research in the near past). You can read the entire article here and I encourage you (as you continue to prep for spring 2019) to apply the lessons learned by CSU to your own teaching.

Understanding what your students expect from you and the course they are taking may be as simple as asking them. However, research has shown that many students enter college with misconceptions about what they will be expected to do. This can happen more in first-generation students but some of the tendencies are exhibited by all students. In the College Success Skills course we offer at BRCC, one of the first classroom discussions we have is about the similarities and differences between high school and college. It is very often an eye opening discussion. If you are looking to share some of the differences, Dr. Sarah Forbes has written a nice post about this subject. She writes, "At our institution, we have noticed that many students have been given false expectations from their high school teachers and counselors regarding the level of effort they will need to expend. Students are often told that college will be easy, giving the impression that effort will not be necessary. Further, our students often have insufficient prior experience from which to guide their behaviors. College courses are more rigorous and conducted at a faster pace with a higher workload than they are used to in high school. Give students the benefit of the doubt because they initially have no idea they are not prepared for college. For example, if students fail to turn in an assignment, don’t assume they are apathetic about their education. If students fail to respond to your emails, don’t assume they are ignoring your information. Use these situations as teachable moments for the whole class, sharing both the rationale behind the assignment/email/etc., as well as your expectations for them." Read the entire article here.

A recent conversation with a colleague about problem-based learning (PBL) prompted me to take a look at the latest research on the topic. What I found is there is a lot of material and the research studies are very often giving what looks like conflicting results. A closer look however led me to understand that very often the context has a lot to do with whether PBL is beneficial to learners or not. If you are just jumping into PBL, John R. Savery has a nice overview with definitions that are helpful. One of the areas I am always interested in looking at is how to help learners develop their critical thinking abilities. It is one of the many topics we teach in the College Success Skills course and I often share with students that people who can solve problems will always find a job. Agnes Tiwari, Patrick Lai, Mike So, and Kwan Yuen tackle this issue in their study and found that PBL did aid in the development of critical thinking skills versus students who only received traditional lectures. Serkan Sendağa and H. Ferhan Odabas also found that using PBL in an online environment increases learners critical thinking skills. Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver found that using PBL methods can also improve learners collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation. Now you should be really intrigued and want to learn more about how you can implement PBL into your courses. Look for a follow-up post soon that will share some tips on how you can do just that. By the way, if you are already using PBL, be sure and post your comments so that we can all learn from your experiences.

This is the time of year when we can smell the fear in the air. It is the end of the semester and that means that finals are just around the corner. Our students anxiety levels are raised and some of them begin to panic. But it doesn't have to be this way. Maryellen Weimer posted a letter to students about finals back in December 2016. It is still a great piece and the relevance echoes throughout higher education. I also found it very useful in teaching College Success Skills (CSSK 1023) as we spend a good amount of time on helping students figure out how they learn best. Weimer begins where we also begin in CSSK--start with a plan. Very often students jump into finals prep with no game plan and that is surely a recipe for disaster. One of my favorite parts of the post is this gem: "Believe in yourself. Your brain is plenty big enough to handle any question I might toss at you. You’ve just got to get the information stored in a place where you can retrieve it. Build connections between the new material and what you already know. Short-term memory is like a sponge—once it gets full, it drips. If you truly understand something, it’s much less likely to leak out." I strongly encourage you to share this letter with your students. We have sent it to the student who are participating in study groups and have received some positive feedback from them as well (letting your students know it is peer-endorsed may get them to read it). You might also remind them that the Academic Learning Center provides assistance for all students and the Long Night Against Procrastination is occurring on May 2 from 4:00 until 10:00 pm in the Magnolia Building on the Mid City Campus.

Stephanie Kumi is a second year graduate student studying Information Security Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. She asks a very relevant question, "Who is responsible for teaching students about cyber-security?", in a recent blog post. I think that it is one of a number of topics that we as faculty assume our students know but to be honest, as computer systems become more and more sophisticated, I think even those of us who consider ourselves tech-savvy may not be prepared to help our students. At BRCC, we have adopted an eSkills Orientation that is required of all students before they can register for an eLearning course. The pre-requisite was developed in response to faculty feedback about many of their students enrolling in eLearning courses without understanding just what was required of them. Recently the eSkills Orientation was revised and a much more concise version is now required of students wanting to register for eLearning courses. The new instrument was developed using feedback from faculty teaching eLearning courses (both online and hybrid). In addition, this semester the faculty who teach College Success Skills 1023 adopted the eSkills Orientation as a technology literacy learning experience. The expected outcomes were twofold: first any student taking a CSSK class would then be eligible to register for an eLearning class and second, it was hoped that the experience would improve their technology literacy skills. Preliminary feedback from CSSK faculty has been very positive and our students are expressing that the learning experience really helped them to learn about Canvas and how to use all of the available tools more effectively. So back to the question at hand, who is responsible for teaching our students about cyber-security?

Here is a great way to start your semester off right. Make a few resolutions and stick to them. We can always improve our teaching toolkit and David Gooblar shares his ideas in this article. I really like his suggestions and have adopted them for my class. Let me know what you think.

"When given a reading assignment, some students feel they have met their obligation if they have forced their eyes to ‘touch’ (in appropriate sequence) each word on the pages assigned. How can we entice students to read the material we assign, and how do we help them develop strategies for deep comprehension and retention of the material? Are there subtle ways we can prod them to read and help them develop literary skills—without spending our own precious time explicitly teaching ‘reading?" Find out in this article by Dr. Maryellen Weimer.

"I firmly believe that there is a direct correlation between what we expect of our students and what we get. We know that higher expectations generate greater learning. But we also know that higher expectations alone are not sufficient. Greater learning also results from support — support that can be provided, for example, by college-success courses in which common readings are often used." See what else Dr. John Gardner has to say about student success.

HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS
Over the last 40 years we have learned more about the human brain than in the previous 400 years. Educators and neuroscientists have been trying to put this knowledge to work by transforming the information of basic and clinical neurosciences into practical insights for the classroom. In a series of special features, we will be looking at how the brain works and what this can tell us about your teaching. First, however, it is important to remember that all learning is brain-based. Through the process of education, we are trying literally to change the brain — not the pancreas, spleen, or lungs. Indeed, education is practical neuroscience. Take a look at the rest of Dr. Bruce Perry's post on how the brain learns.

PROVEN STUDENT SUCCESS STRATEGIES
While many students have weak academic skills because of language barriers or inferior secondary schools, a variety of non-cognitive traits can also hurt or help. Those include things like study habits, time management, self-confidence, and test-taking strategies. Another is "grit," a popular term in higher-education circles these days that is used to describe perseverance or resilience. Read about how one community college used analytics and engagement techniques to improve their student success rates.

GETTING BETTER EVERY DAY
Have you spent some time reading your student ratings from the fall semester yet? Sometimes it is good to read them and then put them away for about a week. Usually when we pull them out again, we are more open to some of the critical remarks. The worst thing we can do is ignore the comments all together. We know that there are usually a few outliers in the group. Someone who earned a failing grade and is not ready yet to own their lack of participation as the most likely reason for the honest grade. But just like our students, we must also use the student assessment to improve our teaching abilities. Dr. Rob Jenkins has written a thought provoking post for The Chronicle of Higher Education and it is posted here. He notes, "I know many faculty members don’t place much credence in such informal, online evaluations. But I find them to be remarkably honest, as well as reasonably, sometimes piercingly, accurate."

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.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW
Join us for what promises to be an energetic and informative faculty development session, Teaching as Performance: Learning to Get the Most Out of Your Voice, on October 15 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM. Dr. Tony Medlin, assistant professor of Theatre Arts, will facilitate this session. The workshop will cover simple and easy techniques to improve projection, articulation, and preserve your chops, based on Lessac speech production. The workshop will be held in 311 Magnolia and is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center. You can register now. You can also view all of the Teaching+Learning Center's upcoming events here.

HOW TO SUCCEED AT COLLEGE
If you are noticing that a student is struggling in your course, reaching out to them is always a good thing. Perhaps sending an email or catching them at the end of class and asking how things are going may be enough to get the student to open up. After talking with them about their study habits, you discover that is the area that is probably causing them the most trouble. So then what? I can suggest three things that you can offer. The first is suggesting that they enroll in the College Success Skills class offered each semester. The knowledge shared in this class is great not only for their academic progress but very valuable to their life post-college. The second is to suggest they take advantage of the workshops offered by the Academic Learning Center. The third is using your personal experience to illustrate how you were a successful student and Dr. Lisa Lawmaster Hess offers some great ideas in this Faculty Focus article that can be used to supplement your own suggestions. What has become more apparent to me over the last few years is under-prepared students don't want to stay that way. Talking with them honestly about what is required in order to be successful in college can really turn the tide for many of them. Finally, I would remind you to follow up with them in about a week to see if they have implemented the study strategies you suggested. If you have any suggestions on this topic, feel free to share them here or send them to me so that I can share them.


THE IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL LITERACY
In our most recent faculty development session on The Millennial Learner: Greatest Generation or Generation Me, we discussed how imperative it is for students to learn digital literacy. While many of us do not have time to teach on this topic for an entire class period, dropping bits of knowledge throughout your classes may be an option. To help you do that, Dr. Lauren Arend has posted an informative piece on the topic.  Here is a small sample of her article. "While students enter our programs with limited background on what they know about content in their respective fields, they come to us with some preconceptions about what it feels like and looks like to be a professional in that field.  Students come to us with a history of interactions with news media, film, television, music, literature, and advertisements that have shaped their understanding of who teachers are, what a doctor is like, or what it means to work in criminal justice. Without framing, it is highly unlikely that students were examining those decades worth of images through a critical lens.  This is where critical media literacy pedagogy becomes crucial."

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

GIVERS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE NO MORE
Shana Oliver has done an exceptional job of pulling together all of the best ideas that have emerged from the research about faculty and student engagement. The article provides a nice concise list of ten ways you can use to engage under-performing students. She writes, "What is the intended goal of the lesson? Remember, there is one essential question per lesson, and students must be able to answer this question by the end of the lesson. With essential questions, teachers really have to be intentional about what they want the students to be able to do, and it has to be at the highest-level of learning. The students have to be able to analyze and apply; they cannot just answer the question with a yes or no. It has to be an extended response. An essential question must be "multi-skill" in order for it to be a good one." To read the rest of the article, click here.

ADOPT A BEAR TIPS
If Santa Monica College had relied solely on data analytics to predict whether Jaime J. would succeed, the picture would have looked bleak. He was, after all, a financially struggling, first-generation Hispanic student who was juggling a job with classes. His math skills were shaky. But there was more to the picture than that. Using a 30-minute online assessment that focuses on noncognitive skills, advisers at the two-year institution in Southern California learned that Jaime was also a conscientious student with good study habits who had long dreamed of becoming a computer engineer. The college assigned him a success coach (the college’s dean of counseling and retention), who met with Jaime weekly to keep him motivated. Continue reading.

GRADING IS ABOUT LEARNING
When students talk about the grades we’ve “given” them, we are quick to point out that we don’t “give” grades, students “earn” them. And that’s correct. It’s what the student does that determines the grade. But that statement sort of implies that we don’t have much of a role in the process—that we’re simply executing what the grading policy prescribes. We shouldn’t let that response cloud our thinking. Who sets up the course grading policy? Who controls it? Who has the power to change it or to refuse to change it? It’s these policies that involve us up to our eyeballs. Continue reading.

STUDENT RETENTION TAKES A VILLAGE
In the research article Promoting Persistence and Success of Underrepresented Students: Lessons for Teaching and Learning by Kinzie, Gonyea, Shoup, and Kuh, the authors note that new students tend to benefit from early interventions and sustained attention during the first year in terms of their academic performance. They go on to say that it is wise to send clear messages to students through precollege mentoring programs and sustained interactions with faculty and staff through out the first year about the value of engagement and what students who succeed do on this particular campus. All educators need to coach students in the development of expected study habits. Experiences early in the first year set in place patterns of behavior that will endure over students' years in college. Many of you have spoken to me about the problem of not having students come to your office for advice. This article suggests that we build in advising and teaching study skills as part of our class time. Offering general advising tips at the beginning and end of each class can have a profound impact on student persistence and retention. You can find the complete article here or in New Directions for Teaching and Learning (#115) fall 2008 which includes other articles about student retention.

HOW DOES YOUR TEACHING TOOLKIT LOOK
Professional development opportunities for October include today's Blackboard Series and next Thursday's Active Learning and Engagement workshop. Yesterday's Mid-Day Musings gathering was filled with lively discussion on the topic of civility. Using several recent articles about the topic, which is trending nationally, helped to set the tone for our local discussion. Turning our own experiences into teachable opportunities was one of the outcomes that the participants seemed to rally around. Many of the participants discussed how they use the topic of civility in their classes in hopes of helping their students become critical thinkers and active participants in the community. One of the best active learning methods is the use of debate to expose your students to complex issues. There are still a few spots for today's Blackboard session and registration is ongoing for the workshop on October 30. All of these events are sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.

ADDING PATHWAYS FOR COMPLETION
Have you heard about the Ability to Benefit rule? It allowed students who lacked either a high school diploma or its equivalent (usually a GED) to get into college if they could demonstrate the ability to benefit through a test score. But the rule was repealed by the U.S. Congress. Now, there is a move to bring it back. Matt Read's blog which appears on the Inside Higher Ed website provides more details about this additional pathway.

ACADEMIC ADVISING FRONT AND CENTER
Academic advising discussions are probably still occurring after the past two days of professional development opportunities. Tuesday we heard from the professional development workshop panel that included Dr. Mary Boudreaux, Wendy Devall, Vinetta Frie, Brandy Gros, Lisa Hibner, and Jeanne Stacy. Each panelist brought a different aspect of expertise to the academic advising discussion held in the Teaching+Learning Center. The participants included academic advising staff, senior and new faculty who were more than willing to engage in serious discussions about the need for better advising as a deterrent for low retention rates. One of the main takeaways was agreement that a cohesive, consistent approach to academic advising would improve our persistence and graduation rates. The conversation continued on Wednesday at the Mid-Day Musings in the faculty and staff dining room of the Bienvenue Building. A different group gathered to discuss the merits of engaging students in conversation about their future. Many of the participants found the pre-session short video interview with Dr. Daniel Chambliss, who wrote How Colleges Work, to be very useful. The main takeaway from Wednesday's session was the importance of being engaged and making connections with our students regardless of your position. Research indicates that often a connection with anyone at the college, not just instructors or counselors, leads to student success and greater persistence rates. The advising handbook is close to being completed and will be distributed shortly. We also plan to post a list of some of the questions and answers from Tuesday's session on the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Community discussion board.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING IMPROVES CRITICAL THINKING ABILITY
Dr. James A. Griesemer has written an interesting article about the use of active, cooperative learning and how it can enhance student success. He writes, "Incorporating active, cooperative quality learning exercises in a course requires instructors to modify their teaching strategy in a number of important ways but the most critical is their roles as educator, mentor, and facilitator. Research confirms the effectiveness of active, cooperative learning. Compared to students taught with conventional methods, cooperatively taught students tend to exhibit better grades as well as better analytical, creative, and critical thinking skills among other traits. Both instructors and students reported numerous benefits of incorporating active, cooperative learning quality exercises into an undergraduate operations/supply chain management course." Read more.

IMPACTING THE PERSISTENCE RATE
As the nation becomes increasingly focused on improving college completion rates, policy makers, practitioners, and scholars are calling for renewed efforts to help students succeed (e.g., Lumina Foundation, 2009). Central to these plans is the promotion of postsecondary access and opportunity, as well as the improvement of persistence and completion rates. College student persistence, in particular, is a necessary condition for social mobility, bridging access and attainment. We are well aware of a renewed focus on persistence and completion at BRCC and we have implemented interventions intended to improve our rates in both categories. Drs. Gregory C. Wolniak, Matthew J. Mayhew, and Mark E. Engberg have written a paper based on their research in this area and published in the Journal of Higher Education. They note, "Several key areas inform our understanding of students’ likelihood of persisting after the first year of college. These areas consist of student demographics and socioeconomic status, precollege academics, college choice and financial aid, institutional characteristics, the role of academic and social integration, and college grades. Persisting students reported higher levels of academic and social integration during their first year of college in areas related to exposure to quality teaching, frequency of faculty contact, peer interactions, and cocurricular involvement, while also demonstrating greater average scores on three of the five measures of assessed student learning (leadership, need for cognition, and content mastery). Alternatively, compared to nonpersisting students, a smaller share of persisters obtained financial aid in the form of federal grants."

SEND AN EMAIL, CHANGE A LIFE
The numerous students we are seeing at the orientation sessions this summer tells me we are going to have a very busy fall semester. We have been stressing to all of the incoming students that the key to success is preparation. While you have some time, why not sift through your class lists from the spring semester and identify some students who could benefit from the College Success Skills class we offer. An email from you could be just the inspiration they need to take better control of their academic career. As we continue to focus on student success strategies that work, I encourage you to try some intrusive advising.

MULTIFACETED MISSION IS HARD TO MEASURE
Dr. Peter Riley Bahr has developed a new way to classify community colleges based on their use by students. As it is important for us to understand patterns like this to fully understand and prepare to meet the Grad Act benchmarks, I encourage you to read the full article that appeared in the Research in Higher Education journal (June 2013).  Bahr writes, "The implementation of performance accountability systems for community colleges is complicated by the multifaceted mission of these institutions. This mission often is divided into the three categories of workforce development, upward transfer to four-year institutions, and community education. In addition, it is not uncommon for a fourth category to be mentioned, though the specifics vary. Some argue that the fourth category is remediation, while others suggest that it is general education.”

ACTIVE LEARNING IMPROVES STUDENT SUCCESS
Active learning is most commonly defined as several models of instruction that focus the responsibility of learning on learners. To enhance learning, teaching must encourage students to do more than just listen: they must read, write, discuss, and be engaged in solving problems. We are currently working on updating the Active Learning Manual but the current version is still available and we will forward a copy to you if you send us an email request (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). A recent article in Faculty Focus extolled the virtues of the one-minute paper, an active learning standard. Problem-based learning is another good active learning technique that can be used by any discipline. The aforementioned article notes, "Case studies are a form of problem-based learning that encourage the student to think critically and apply “book knowledge” to everyday practice and problems that will occur in the workplace. A literature review reveals very little research on using case studies in fields other than health, law, and business. However, case studies could certainly be written for any field of study." You can also use video in your courses to promote active learning. Whether you are just getting started in the active learning realm or have moved far to the right of the continuum mid-point, there is always room for improvement. I have found that as I use some of the suggested active learning methods, new ideas begin to emerge. Sometimes the students themselves suggest new ideas.