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.

An Inventory Helps to Promote Higher Order Thinking

One of the issues I hear from many of you is the problem we encounter when students do not do the assigned reading prior to class. It certainly creates multiple teaching and learning problems and can really stifle the entire class. One of the suggestions I have made to help alleviate this problem is to have an "As You Come Into Class" question(s) on the board. In that way, as they are getting settled and I am checking attendance, they can be thinking more deeply about some of the things I plan to discuss in class. It helps to alleviate those "top of mind" responses that are usually anecdotal and totally off-topic. I also want to suggest something that Karen Harris uses in her classes. Her learning outcome is focused on having students use higher order critical thinking. She describes her teaching experience as a thinking inventory. Harris says, "Although a thinking inventory is made up of questions, it’s more than a questionnaire. When we say we’re “taking inventory”—whether we’re in a warehouse or a relationship—we mean we’re taking stock of where things stand at a given moment in time, with the understanding that those things are fluid and provisional. With a thinking inventory, we’re taking stock of students’ thinking, experiences, and sense-making at the beginning of the course. A well-designed thinking inventory formalizes the essential questions of any course and serves as a touchpoint for both teacher and students throughout that course." You can read the details of her inventory here. Students are engaged by learning that can be tied to real life. Assuring them that being able to think critically and offer the best solution in the workplace will always benefit them is the go to answer for how this relates to real-world situations.

Since we have learning objectives for each class we teach that correspond to broader course objectives, it is important to do a self check from time to time to make sure we are staying on track with both. Continuing to explore this topic, I have become more aware of alignment between the two in relation to my teaching. One of my course objectives is to help student to become better at critical thinking. Posing problems for them to solve and engaging them in group discussion while allowing for reflection time has created a truly active learning experience in my classroom. Lisa Nielsen's recent post about George Couros' book The Innovator’s Mindset provides a really clear visual for this process. Couros says that if we want innovative students, we must become innovative teachers. He goes on to list eight elements that he has noticed innovative teachers use to create this active learning environment that allows students to unleash their creativity. Continue reading here.

Are you looking to add diverse perspectives into your course curriculum? Then don't miss the professional development webinar set for February 22 at 1:00 pm. This NISOD webinar, titled Are Your Students Global Citizens? How to Teach Diversity to the Leaders of Tomorrow, is a great first step. The webinar information notes that teaching diversity requires strong relationships that encourage dialogue and action so today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders. Confederation College has embedded Indigenous knowledge into classrooms since 2010 through specially developed Indigenous Learning Outcomes (ILO). The infusion of ILOs into program-specific courses throughout the college provides all students with opportunities to develop an understanding of Indigenous Knowledge through diverse world views and cultural frameworks in relation to their chosen career field. The concept of embedding diverse perspectives into the curriculum is a transferable skill. This webinar presents the ILOs as a case study while encouraging participants to adapt the model to fit their own curriculum. This webinar also demonstrates how embedding diverse perspectives into the classroom leads to a better understanding of cultural frameworks and how incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into the curriculum can improve critical-thinking skills.
Register

As we begin our 12 week classes today, I thought it would be good to revisit some of the strategies we can use to integrate active learning into all of our classes. The goal is to create self-guided learning. Not stressing about coverage allows us to teach our students how to learn and thus create critical thinkers for the future. Students may approach coursework from a fairly mechanistic stance: If the instructor gives me information, I will memorize it, and get a good grade. This approach to learning doesn’t lend itself well to an active classroom, which requires students to wrestle with difficult ideas in order to lead to deeper conceptual learning. The good news is that most of your students are looking for cues from you on what you expect so they are malleable to your ideas. First, you might want to reflect on your own ideas about learning? Your own implicit ideas can have a big impact on how you teach (Good, Rattan and Dweck, 2012). Do you implicitly have performance goals for your students – and yourself -- and a "fixed" rather than a "growth" mindset about intelligence? Think about the messages that you send students. Do you show your students that you want to be questioned during class, that you own up to your own errors, and that you also can learn from them? Do you praise students for their effort or their grades? Consider intentionally framing your classroom for learning mastery. You can emphasize that learning takes effort and that anyone can improve if they work hard (Dweck 2010; Good, Rattan and Dweck 2012; Anderman and Dawson, 2010). You can create opportunities for students to reflect on the process of their own learning so they become more self-directed learners (Elby 2001; Redish and Hammer, 2009; Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000). Helping students reflect on their own learning, or “think about thinking” is termed “metacognition,” a learned skill that is unfortunately not directly addressed in many college courses. Spending a few minutes in each session about metacognition can pay off in big dividends when it comes to self-guided learning.

Beginning another semester always draws our focus to the tools of teaching. Things like the syllabus, the text, our learning experiences, and the course learning objectives. Good learning outcomes are a helpful reminder for us and our students. I challenge students to use the daily learning objectives as a tool to measure their learning. Using Linda Nilson's suggestions in her book Creating Self-Regulated Learners (BRCC Library LB1060 .N55 2013) helps us to understand how we can facilitate life-long learning habits in our students. Inside Higher Ed has a good article today written by Cathy Davidson about learning outcomes and the path that a senior faculty members takes as she tries to understand (in her own words) "what we require, how we organize knowledge, how we facilitate learning and what we hope our students will gain from what they learn." It is a terrific starting point to help us decide what it is we will truly focus on during that precious class time (or synchronous instruction time in our elearning courses). As our students move through the material we teach, how will they themselves know when they have truly learned something? Ms. Davidson concludes the article with samples of what she has come to determine to be good learning objectives. One of her aspirational learning objectives is, "Form an appreciation of the importance of critical and creative thinking and problem-solving and use these to guide my future life and work." A good standard for all of us to use I think.

While we often talk about moving from lectures to more active learning methods, we sometimes forget an important component. Student feedback can be very useful when we are transitioning. That is why Dr. Grant Wiggins post about engaging lessons caught my attention. His results are from high schoolers but so many of the comments could be put to good use in our college classrooms as well. One student wrote, "I thought that making your own nation in politics was extremely interesting and fun. It was interesting because it gave us students the ability to design our perfect environment." How many different discussions can you see coming from this type of learning experience based on that response? In a time when students are becoming hyper-interested in the political system, assigning this type of learning experience could really allow students to develop critical thinking skills. Another student wrote, "For our AP French class we had to construct a resume and cover letter for a foreign French related career opportunity that we found. This is interesting as we learned a highly useful life skill that should’ve been taught in another class but also because we got to explore opportunities around the world." This illustrates the very critical need to make lessons as relevant as possible. It is one of the most repeated complaints that many students share about their classroom experience. How many times have you heard the question, "Why do we have to know this?" Luckily, active learning lends itself to these types of lessons. So as you begin thinking about increasing the amount of active learning you have in your classes, take a look at your student rating comments and use them to help shape your teaching.

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.

What do employers look for when making a hire? It is something we as faculty should be asking. It actually isn't very difficult to find the answer. There are a number of surveys that provide us with the data.  Here are a few. A poll by USA Today reveals that grades still matter but there are ways to  get an interview despite a lower GPA. NACE's Job Outlook 2016 survey, tells us that employers are looking for leaders who can work as part of a team. More than 80 percent of responding employers said they look for evidence of leadership skills on the candidate's resume, and nearly as many seek out indications that the candidate is able to work in a team. Employers also cited written communication skills, problem-solving skills, verbal communication skills, and a strong work ethic as important candidate attributes. Monster tells us that critical thinking is one of the five things employers are looking for and not finding in college graduates. That may not make sense. We know that in order to be a successful student, students must learn how to learn. Being a critical thinker means that you can solve problems. You know where to go to find the different approaches that will allow you to come up with solutions. But in this complex world, being a critical thinker has to be paired with being able to work on teams. That means our students should be able to work with a diversity of people. They must also be able to have frank and open discussions where differences will be explored. Being able to hold a civil discussion is becoming a lost art. Students are very likely to mimic what is happening on their televisions (or even on the streets now) and resort to attacking the speaker rather than the idea, using a slippery slope argument, or resort to begging (for example). These are all logic fallacies that students need to be exposed to if there are to be productive in the work world. That is why the Center for Teaching+Learning Enhancement is offering three professional development sessions about the active learning method of using debate in your classrooms to help them develop critical thinking skills. Join us to add your voice to this important topic.

The BRCC Library has added a new book of interest for those of us looking to expand our teaching toolkit. Why Students Resist Learning edited by Anton O. Tolman and Janine Kremling is offered as a practical model for understanding and helping students. The authors spend some time on the subject of student resistance that you may encounter as you begin to move them from passive to active learners. The book is written in a way that helps us "develop a coherent and integrated understanding of the various causes of student resistance to learning...and enable them to create conditions conducive to implementing effecting learning strategies." There is also a new volume (54, number 1-February 2017) of the American Educational Research Journal in the collections. There are a number of articles related to teaching in the STEM disciplines. In addition, the opening article, Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation by Joseph Kahne and Benjamin Bowyer might be of interest to you in your attempt to teach information literacy and critical thinking to our students.

WHAT DOES CRITICAL THINKING MEAN TO YOU?
Here is how Dr. Rob Jenkins starts his classes each semester. "These days, the term “critical thinking” has been overused to the point where it has almost ceased to mean anything in particular. It has become more of a popular educational catchphrase, so that even the people who use it often don’t know exactly what they mean by it. None of that means, however, that critical thinking is not a real thing. It is — and it’s vital for you to understand what critical thinking is and how to do it. The extent of your success in college — not to mention life — ultimately depends on it." Continue reading here.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION MEANS EVERYONE PARTICIPATES
Are you looking for ways to improve your classroom discussions. Dr. Jennifer Gonzalez has recorded a podcast and written a post about just that. She writes, "I’ve separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it’s certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don’t really stand alone."

HOW IS YOUR CLASSROOM ALIGNMENT?
Read how Michigan State developed their Learning Design Strategy. Dr. Danielle DeVoss writes, "A Learning Design Strategy is crucial at this particular scholarly, public, technological, and cultural moment. We can’t rest on our digital laurels, congratulating ourselves for hosting phenomenal MOOCs; patting ourselves on the back for being a home for innovative minors and learner opportunities; or thinking we’ve done what we need to do to create an ecosystem of sustainable, robust digital learning. What we need to do now–as a university and as a community devoted to learning and learners, at all phases of their personal and professional lives–is strive to articulate the long-standing values we hold dear as an institution and make sure those align with the ways in which we engage learning on a daily basis."

Joshua Kim asks, "Is there really a war on lecturing going on across higher ed?  Do learning professionals want to kill the lecture? Read Christine Gross-Loh’s Atlantic piece, Should Colleges Really Eliminate the College Lecture?, and you would be forgiven in thinking that there is and that we do. The anti-lecture cadre is characterized as comparing the traditional lecture to "bloodletting—an outdated practice that has long been in need of radical reform". This story makes for a neat argument. Who has not experienced the power of a transformative lecture?  Who would not support the need for professors to “model the art of argument”? And who is not critical of the tendency of educational pundits and administrators to blindly follow the latest educational fads? Let me be very clear.  There exists no campaign - no organized plot or plan - to eliminate the college lecture.  There is a movement across many schools to improve learning.  The lecture is, and always will be, part of the mix of a rich and varied learning ecosystem." Continue reading here.

Now that you’ve finished assessing your students, it’s time to turn the assessment process around by looking in the mirror. If you limped across the finish line last semester, it may be time to identify some new strategies for self-care. In our “Tending the Teacher” session at the recent Teaching Professor Conference in Washington, D.C., we presented a menu of ideas to help faculty design a balanced and productive work life.  Here are our top tips.

Aubree Evans writes, "Let’s face it, most faculty were good students and always did well in school. For students, having a professor who is adept at learning can be inspiring. But what if academic work comes so naturally to faculty that they have trouble relating to the average student? I’ve worked with several faculty members who fall into this category. “Rose,” a business professor, stands out in my memory. When I suggested that she break her online course into modules to make the weekly tasks more manageable for students, she was baffled. “Everything is in the syllabus!” she responded. She then explained that when she was in college, she began each course by carefully reading the syllabus and organizing the assignments into a schedule that she diligently followed throughout the semester. It didn’t make sense to Rose to repeat that information again in modules. When I suggested that school must have come easily to her, she agreed. However, our university serves many students who don’t have much experience with academic learning strategies that may come naturally to faculty." Continue reading here.

WHY ARE YOU SITTING ON THAT SIDE
Looking for a good active learning method to kick off the second part of your semester? Forced debate is a great way to focus on critical thinking, allow your students to practice their communication skills, and gauge where the class is in terms of learning. To get started, identify an issue about which there are two clearly defined and opposed positions, and let students know one class in advance that they will be required to select a side and defend it. On the discussion day, divide the room physically into two sides and ask the students to sit on one side or the other. You should leave space in the middle for undecided students who, however, have to move to one side or the other before the class has ended. In fact, any student who changes their mind can move during the class: from one side to the other, from one side to the center, and back again. You can, of course, begin forced debates with a writing exercise, asking students to write a one‐paragraph explanation of why they are sitting on a certain side. Opening a forced debate is the easiest question you’ll ask all year: “Why are you sitting on that side?” Ask a handful of students on one side to respond to that question; by the time they are finished, the students on the other side are frantic to refute the points they are hearing. The physical division of the classroom facilitates the discussion as well, since whenever someone moves, you can pause and ask them why; it also helps the students see that others are changing their minds as a result of the discussion, as they learn from their peers. It is recommended that you use this learning experience at least once a semester in every class you teach. You can find more learning experiences like this one in the Active Learning Manual which is available on the Canvas site under Teaching and Learning Faculty Development under the Modules file.

KEEPING THEM ENGAGED IN AN ONLINE COURSE
Dr. Paula Bigatel, an instructional designer and instructor at Penn State University’s World Campus, has some good information for those of us teaching in the online environment. She writes, "During the past year and a half, our faculty development unit has been gathering data from students about how engaged they felt in their online courses. We wanted to use this data to develop a variety of strategies for faculty to use to better engage their students. Research provides evidence for the connection between higher student engagement and persistence and retention in online programs. We gained valuable insights from students when we asked: Define what it means to you to be engaged in a course." Read the full article here.

I WASN'T IN CLASS BECAUSE I GOT EVICTED
When a low-income parent gets evicted, what happens? Matthew Desmond’s new book, Evicted, looks closely at what happens to a series of low-income people, mostly parents, in Milwaukee. It should be required reading for anyone who works at a community college or a public school in a low-income area. Desmond insinuated himself into the lives of dozens of people in the Milwaukee area at the onset of the Great Recession, and followed their lives closely for years. The book is written mostly as a series of character-driven vignettes, rather than as academic sociology, though he connects the dots in passing and at the end. Continue reading Matt Reed's post here.

CREATING SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS
While the first faculty learning community of the spring semester has started meeting, there is still time to sign up for the second FLC that will begin to meet on Tuesday, February 16 at 2 pm. The topic is how we, as instructors, can create self-regulated learners. Dr. Linda Nilson defines a self-regulated learner as a student who is an intentional, independent, self-directed learner who can acquire, retain, and retrieve new knowledge on their own. The FLC will meet for eight sessions over the semester and finish on April 17. If you are interested in joining this FLC, please contact Barbara Linder.

HOW TO LIVE WISELY
Speaking of independent students, one of the best ways to get your students to improve is to spend a little time asking them to think about their thinking. How do they think they learn best? What are the things they have learned about themselves since they started attending college? Richard Light wrote a great story about a process he has used that appears to be a survey of student's wants and needs but ingenuously creates an environment that promotes critical self-reflection. He offers a number of conversation starters and activities that you can use to help your students through this process.

MAKE A CLEAR PATH
Helping under-prepared adult students earn a degree in a STEM discipline can be difficult without the added stressors of work and family commitment. But that is just what the folks in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are doing with a new bachelor's program in biomedical sciences. Because of their urgent need for medical professionals in an area that includes two of the three poorest counties in Texas, the local institution knew they had to respond with something different. Take a look at Steven Mintz's story from Inside Higher Ed.

THE ANSWERS ARE IN THE SYLLABUS
Now is a great time to begin to look at your syllabi for the spring semester. My colleague at George Mason's Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence provides the following suggestions. At its most fundamental level, a course syllabus is essentially a contract between the instructor and the student and is a vital tool for communicating expectations between students and faculty. A well-constructed syllabus provides a road map for the course, answers frequently asked questions, can help to lessen student anxiety, and allows the faculty member to concentrate on instruction. At another level, though, a syllabus is the embodiment of your philosophy of teaching and learning. Implicit in every assignment, every choice of textbook, every discussion topic should be an indication of what you want your students to learn from your course and why you want them to learn it.  Because critical thinking is at the heart of academic work, emphasize how your course will help them develop the kinds of skills with inquiry and problem solving that will benefit them throughout their time in college and into their lives as professionals. Continuing reading here.

GOING TO THE RESEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s latest post asks some really good questions about how we can use research to improve teaching and learning. She writes, “Evidence-based teaching seems like the new buzzword in higher education. The phrase appears to mean that we’ve identified and should be using those instructional practices shown empirically to enhance learning. Sounds pretty straightforward, but there are lots of questions that haven’t yet been addressed, such as: How much evidence does there need to be to justify a particular strategy, action, or approach? Is one study enough? What about when the evidence is mixed—in some studies the results of a practice are positive and in others they aren’t? In research conducted in classrooms, instructional strategies aren’t used in isolation; they are done in combination with other things. Does that grouping influence how individual strategies function?” Continue reading here.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Looking for some levity? Allison M. Vaillancourt’s latest post made me laugh while I was learning. She writes, “Who Melted My Cheese? would challenge the still-common worldview that academic life will eventually return to “normal” if we just sit patiently. According to that view, all the annoyances we are currently experiencing — state funding reductions, demands for accountability, and students who want their course content to be compelling — are simply fads that will soon fade if we just stay the course and insist on running our institutions like we did in the 1980s, or even the 1880s.” Continue reading here.

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.

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).

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

ENGAGED SCHOLARS CIRCLE ADDS TWO MEMBERS

The latest inductees to be recognized by the Teaching+Learning Center for student engagement excellence are Dr. Marcella Hackney and Jamie Gurt, Esq. Dr. Hackney is an associate professor of science in the STEM Division. Mrs. Gurt is Paralegal Program Manager and an instructor for the program, part of the Business, Social Sciences, and History Division.  Both faculty are big proponents of active learning methods and use the full teaching toolkit to get the most out of their students. As we made the presentation of the coveted green t-shirts to them during class, their students were very excited. Many of their students came up to us to validate the honor as they spoke of ways in which each of these teachers created strong relationships that nurtured learning. Congratulations to Jamie and Marcella who join Paul Guidry, Sandra Guzman, Wes Harris, Mary Miller, and Amy Pinero as examples of faculty who not only believe in the power of engagement as a retention strategy but creatively introduce methods that promote student success.

Dr. Marcella Hackney

Paul Guidry and Jamie Gurt

JOINING THE ELEARNING REVOLUTION
I received a number of positive comments on the Tech Tuesday Tip sent this week. I wanted to follow that with a new article by Dr. Maryellen Weimer about the online learning conversation. She notes, "Is it time to change the online learning conversation? The debate about whether online courses are a good idea continues with most people still on one side or the other. Who’s right or wrong is overshadowed by what the flexibility and convenience of online education has offered institutions and students. Those features opened the door, and online learning has come inside and is making itself at home in most of our institutions. No doubt the debate over the value of online learning will continue, but perhaps it’s being judged by the wrong criteria." Read more here.

CRITICAL THINKING CAN BE TAUGHT
Carlos Sanchez, Silvia Rivas, and Sonia Moral, in their article Collaborative Learning Supported by Rubrics Improves Critical Thinking, report that critical thinking can be improved by paying attention to instructional design. If you are looking to redesign your course with learning experiences aimed at improving the critical thinking abilities of your students, this article is a good start. The authors write, "In previous works we developed and assessed a teaching program with which we aimed to improve the fundamental skills of critical thinking. The results obtained were positive, but modest. After analyzing the limitations of the program we introduced certain modifications and assessed the new version. The changes involved designing the activities programmed by means of rubrics and making the students perform them with less direct orientation from the instructor. In sum specificity and initiative proved to be the key variables in the improved program, ARDESOS v.2. The data collected pointed to a significant improvement of the new version over the old one in the following aspects: a) version 2 improved all the fundamental dimensions, mainly in the pre- and post-test measurements, to a significant extent; b) the effect size was significantly higher, and finally c) these improvements in the program elicited better performance. Accordingly, an improvement in critical thinking can be achieved via an instruction design that attends to the factors that really induce change. Currently, these results have allowed us to successfully add a new improvement to the instruction, which we have re-evaluated." You can read more here.