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

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

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

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

CELEBRATE CHARACTER DAY
September 18 is character day and schools and organizations around the world are hosting screenings of a short film called The Science of Character, which explores the research behind character development and encourages us to focus on our character strengths for greater personal and community well-being. Amy Erin Borovoy has also compiled an impressive away of short videos for each of the seven highly predictive character strengths distilled by KIPP schools, in partnership with grit researcher Dr. Angela Duckworth, and psychologists Drs. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson (authors of the groundbreaking book Character Strengths and Virtues). Borovoy concludes, "I hope these videos will inspire you to celebrate #CharacterDay on September 18th, and to think about the importance of character every day!"

LOOKING FOR NEW TEACHING TOOLS
If you have not registered for the professional development workshop to be held on Thursday "Active Learning Overview: How and Why It Works", there is still time. Next up from the Teaching+Learning Center (T+LC) is "Engaging Students from Day 1" to be presented by Biology Instructor Russell Nolan on Thursday, September 24 at 1:00 PM. You can register for that session as well. The entire T+LC website has recently been updated so you may want to spend some time poking around to discover the array of resources provided by your center. In addition, if you have not accepted your invitation to join the Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Canvas group, you are missing out on a wealth of additional resources on teaching, active learning and material for your students.

PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITY
Beginning in July 2016, Teaching & Learning Inquiry will be hosted at the University of Calgary as part of the university’s Open Access publishing program through Libraries and Cultural Resources. The 4.2 issue (scheduled for September 2016) will be the first to appear in the new format. As noted in previous reports from the Publications Advisory Committee (PAC), the move to Open Access (OA) will have a number of advantages. This more accessible format will make the SoTL community’s work more widely available, open up the journal to online-only features, and reduce costs. The Committee sees OA as congruent with both the ethic of sharing that characterizes the SoTL community and the significant shifts in the scholarly publishing world. With TLI’s new online format, authors will be able to include audio or video files, as well as color images and photos. Articles can also include supplementary files, including supporting evidence or raw data, survey tools, and coding protocols. Readers will have easy access through live links to resources described in articles, opening the door to interaction between authors and readers. (For instance, authors may link to a feedback form that would send reader responses directly to them.) They are exploring ideas for other kinds of articles and would love to hear your thoughts. Please email the editorial office at TLIj@ucalgary.ca. For examples of the kinds of works an online environment can support, see The Spatial History Project and the Journal of Visualized Experiments.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

NEW SEMESTER BRINGS NEW HOPE
Another semester is about to begin and the bears are coming out of hibernation. I could add to your stress level by asking "are you ready?" I would rather help you make a smooth transition by giving you some resources that can help. There are a number of what to do during the first class/week suggestions here. I have also posted the latest version of our Active Learning Manual on the Canvas BRCC Teaching and Learning Faculty Development page. I sent an invitation for you to join that group on yesterday. If you have not accepted yet, you might want to take a minute to do that. Here is another tip sheet with some specific strategies you can use. This link includes videos that may be helpful to you.

COMMITTMENT TO OUR CRAFT
We had a nice turnout for the Faculty Development Kickoff on Wednesday morning. Thanks again to all of you that took the time to hear about the latest brain and learning research. Critical self-reflection, journaling, and participating in professional development workshop are three of the best things you can do to continue to grow as an instructor. The Teaching+Learning Center provided over 80 hours of professional development opportunities last academic year. Our job as instructors is hard but if we expect out students to put in the effort and succeed, it is vitally important that we continue to learn as well. The PowerPoint from the session on Wednesday is on the Canvas BRCC Teaching and Learning Faculty Development page as well. I will be sending out an invitation soon to invite you to continue the discussion about the "team-teaching" initiative proposed by the Faculty Learning Committees that met over the spring and summer semesters.

ADOPT A BEAR
For those who did not attend, I want to repeat the challenge I made at the Kickoff session. Please reach out to at least one student this semester  and make them your priority. As instructors we are always concerned about all of our students but I am encouraging you to do something extra. Really commit to being an intrusive force for good in at least one student's life. Take the time to develop a deeper relationship with them. Be their advocate, coach, mentor, and source of irritation (if that is what is needed). If we all "adopt" one bear this semester, we will see a lot of those students return to us in the spring with a renewed sense of having been successful. Self-efficacy is a powerful motivator. Imagine what you can do!

NEW LEADERSHIP AT BRCC
The upcoming fall semester is shaping up to be something special now that we have new leadership in place. Dr. Dennis Michaelis joined us in late July and will serve as acting chancellor until the end of August when he becomes interim chancellor. Dr. Joann Linville will be interim vice chancellor for academic affairs beginning August 17. Both bring a wealth of experience, much of it at the community college level. Moving forward with the plans for Our Louisiana 2020 remains a priority for BRCC as we continue to realize the benefits of our recent merger. Things are looking up!

CONVOCATION WEEK OPPORTUNITIES
Speaking of the new semester, we will be offering a few opportunities to jump into faculty development before classes gets started. Please plan to join us on Wednesday, August 19 at 8:30 am in the Louisiana Building's boardroom. You will hear about the professional development opportunities for the semester provided by the Teaching+Learning Center as well as a session on your Canvas requirements provided by the eLearning Program. We will close with a session on an overview of the academic support available through the Academic Learning Center. The session will be a quick two hours with an opportunity for questions and answers. If you are a new faculty member and have not received an invitation to the New Faculty Orientation to be held on Monday, August 17 from 1:00-5:00 pm, please contact me now (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). We will host a session on faculty development for all of our wonderful adjunct faculty on Monday, August 17 at 5:30 pm in the Louisiana Building's boardroom. This will be followed by a Canvas for Adjunct Faculty session at 6:30 pm in the same space. All eLearning faculty are required for a meeting on Wednesday, August 19 at 3:30 pm in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Bldg.). All of these events will be held on the Mid City Campus. Finally, if you are a veteran faculty who is looking to mentor the next generation of great instructors, please consider signing up to serve as a mentor for the 2015-16 academic year. You can do this by sending an email to me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu) now. You will receive credit that can be used for college service. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or Academic Support Specialist Barbara Linder, eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy, or Academic Learning Center Director Jeanne Stacy.

CANVAS CONTINUES TO IMPRESS
Over the summer session, we have implemented Canvas, our new learning management system (LMS). The smaller numbers proved beneficial as we were able to work out many of the kinks that could have caused serious disruption in what is typically our largest semester, namely fall. If you are looking to more fully understand how Canvas works with other software programs, you will want to attend eLearning Partner Integration Day on Wednesday, August 12. The day begins with check-in at 8:30 am while the programming begins at 9:00 am. Upon checking in, you will have a number of options as sessions will be running concurrently most of the day. The sessions set so far include ProctorU, Respondus lock down browser, TurnItIn, and Smartthinking. We will also have representatives from textbooks publishers Cengage, McGraw Hill, and Pearson. Each session will last between 30 and 45 minutes. Lunch is provided for the first 50 registrants. All sessions will be held in the Cypress Building on the Mid City Campus and the day concludes at 3:00 pm. You can register here. eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy can answer your questions at nealys@mybrcc.edu.