MENTORING PROGRAM RELAUNCH
As a learner-centered institution of higher education, BRCC is committed to fostering good teaching that develops deeper learning leading to student success. Good teaching, in its essence, is defined as helping students learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how they think, act, and feel. Research shows that constructive mentoring and reviewing of faculty works to help such faculty meet high standards of rigor, depth, and innovation in teaching and learning, and to realize their full potential as scholars, teachers, and members of the academic community. In addition, mentees, when compared with un-mentored faculty, tend to feel more self-assured, exhibit greater political savvy, profess to feel more confident about their teaching, and, generally, in the long run tend to be more prolific. Faculty with mentors have been found to be more productive and they indicate higher career and job satisfaction, while achieving greater long-term success than those not mentored. The Mentoring Program is being re-launched beginning with the fall 2103 semester. If you are interested in becoming a mentor or mentee, contact Dr. Todd Pourciau at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu or 216.8534.

KEEP CALM AND BE ENGAGED
The New Faculty Orientation for the fall 2013 semester will be held on Wednesday, August 21 from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM. All new full-time faculty hires are invited to attend the active workshop to be held in room 311 Magnolia Building. A special invitation is extended to the former CATC faculty who are joining the BRCC family. Topics to be covered include faculty development about teaching and learning, online delivery, responding to student's needs, testing, and student success. If you have not already received an invitation but would like to attend this event, contact Barbara Linder at 216.8228 or via email at barbaralinder@catc.edu.

CAN WE TALK
The Teaching+Learning Center will be offering a common reader Faculty Learning Community using Ken Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do (which will be provided to the participants). The Faculty Learning Community will begin on September 4 and run until October 10, meeting from noon until 1:00 PM in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building). Faculty Learning Communities have been utilized by higher education institutions for a number of years and are designed to provide faculty with quality time to focus on topics related to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Typically a FLC will agree on accomplishing a few learning objectives over the course of the term. If you are interested in joining this FLC, contact Barbara Linder at 216.8228 or via email at barbaralinder@catc.edu.

NOTE TAKING 101
Here are a few tips taken from a recent copy of The Teaching Professor newsletter on how you can help your students improve their note-taking abilities. When you say something important, go ahead and give students time to write it down--word for word if they like. Then give them 30 seconds to look at what they have written and put it in their own words. If you have two or three students read what they have written, you will reinforce the importance of the point and at the same time you can talk about the student's versions of the idea. Typically, students do not write enough in their notes. At the end of a lesson or content area, give students two minutes to look over their notes. Encourage them to add more or to ask you questions. Ask them, "What is the most important thing that you just got from your notes on this topic?" Correct any misguided remarks. Finally, facilitate a short discussion of what students can do with their notes as they prepare for an exam. If they say they will go over their notes, strongly suggest that they get into the notes. Suggest that they rewrite their notes, highlight the key points, compare them with another student, and compare the notes to the text. You can read more in the volume 27, number 6 issue in the periodical section of the BRCC Library.

BACK TO CHANGING LIVES

Welcome back to all of you. The Spring 2014 semester officially began yesterday and the Mid City Campus was certainly buzzing with activity.  The parking lots were full and the Library began to fill once again with patrons. I hope that all of your classes got off to a great start. I wanted to mention that I am teaching a College Success Skills class this semester and met with them for the first time last night at 5:30 PM. I am trying to implement as many of the teaching methods from the Active Learning Manual as I can. I have used many of them in the past but this class is unique for me as it is the first time I have taught a room full of all first time students. I promise to share the good, bad and everything in-between as we journey through the semester. I must say how pleased I was with last night's session. My students are attentive, respectful and ready to learn. Since the class focuses on learning how to learn, it is a great place to expand their conceptions about what it takes to be successful in college. Keep Calm and Be Engaged!

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT DAY RECAP

The recent visit by Dr. Mary Clement of Berry College was a resounding success. Not only were the comments and evaluations overwhelmingly positive, but the feedback has continued. As I run into many of you at the start of Spring 2014, I am hearing about changes that many of you have made based on what you heard at the faculty development workshops on Friday. Dr. Clement sent the nicest thank you note and complimented BRCC on many levels. She found the faculty to be warm, welcoming, and energetic. I agree wholeheartedly. We have placed two (autographed) copies of her book First Time in the College Classroom: A guide for teaching assistants, instructors, and new professors at all colleges and universities in the Library's collections. By the way, I had mentioned that the Teaching+Learning Center now has a Twitter account (@brcctlc) and we were able to tweet all day Friday during the workshops. You might want to check out the comments as many of them could be easily integrated into your classroom routines.

CAN YOU SPOT A GOOD LEARNER

The Faculty Focus newsletter had a great article by Dr. Maryellen Weimer about the characteristics that good learners possess. She notes that, "this could be a list for our students or anybody who aspires to learn well." Here is the short list.

1.     Good learners are curious

2.     Good learners pursue understanding diligently

3.     Good learners recognize that a lot of learning isn't fun

4.     Failure frightens good learners, but they know it's beneficial

5.     Good learners make knowledge their own

6.     Good learners never run out of questions

7.     Good learners share what they've learned

You can see the expand version here. Let me know what you think of the list and if there should be another item or two.

EXPANDING YOUR TEACHING TOOLKIT
Active learning provides opportunities for students to talk and listen, read, write and reflect, all of which require students to apply what they are learning. Register now for the next faculty development seminar entitled Active Learning Methods Revealed to be held on November 19, at 2:00PM. Drs. Marcella Hackney and Margaret McMichael, Biology Department faculty, will present using classroom experience and information they gathered from an intensive workshop they attended this past summer. The seminar will be interactive and will be held in 311 Magnolia, also known as the Teaching+Learning Center.

 STUDENT LEARNING DRIVEN BY EXCELLENT TEACHING
For anyone who has spent time with me, you have heard me say that everything I do is focused on improving student learning. It is our core mission and everything we do as an institution should be focused on that area. Of course, that begins in the classes that we teach. The interaction between the teacher and student is paramount to improving our retention, completion and transfer rates. Just as important is having students retain what they are learning in our classes. Nothing is more frustrating to a good teacher than having students who have completed prerequisite or lower-level courses but appear not to have learned anything. I have written about that previously on the blog and what James Lang refers to as "Coverage Theory." Getting through the material in the allotted time is not the same as having your students learn. The partnership between a teacher and student is crucial and both sides must take responsibility and remain committed for the process to be successful. It is what Barr and Tagg (1995) call The Learning Paradigm. We are designing a website for the Teaching+Learning Center. In the absence of that information, let me share some of the ways I can partner with you to help you continue to develop as a teacher. The classroom observation is a good start. I am also able to complete a focus group evaluation for you. You can also do your own assessment and I can share some methods with you. It all starts with contacting me at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu or calling me at 216.8534.

DEAR DIARY
Using the word diary may conjure up all sorts of memories for you. The diary in a general sense can be a useful thing. Even more effective is for you to begin to keep a journal. You can update it on a daily or weekly basis. The more effort you put into it, the more effective it becomes for you as a tool for critical self-reflection. A journal allows you to remember when you had a really good day in class. It also allows you to document when things go really wrong. It provides you with hard data that you can use to continue to improve your teaching. As many of you teach five, six or seven classes, it is impossible to remember what occurred in each class from semester to semester. A journal provides you documentation so that when you begin to update or alter your course in any way, you can scan the entries looking for clues that can be very useful. As we look to the Spring 2013 Semester, I am gathering names of folks who would like to participate in a journal community. Send me an email (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu) if you are interested and look for email in your mailbox on this opportunity.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR STUDENTS KNOW
Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent offer the following sage advice on the use of assessment in your course. Most institutions use only end-of-course student surveys to evaluate teaching quality. While student opinions are important and should be including in any assessment plan, meaningful evaluation of teaching must rely primarily on assessment of learning outcomes. Current trends in assessment reviewed by Ewell include shifting from standardized tests to performance-based assessments, from teaching-based models to learning-based models of student development, and from assessment as an add-on to more naturalistic approaches embedded in actual instructional delivery. Measures that may be used to obtain an accurate picture of students’ content knowledge and skills include tests, performances and exhibitions, project reports, learning logs and journals, metacognitive reflection, observation checklists, graphic organizers, and interviews, and conferences (Burke). A particularly effective learning assessment vehicle is the portfolio, a set of student products collected over time that provides a picture of the student’s growth and development. Panitz (1996) describes how portfolios can be used to assess an individual’s progress in a course or over an entire curriculum, to demonstrate specific competencies, or to assess the curriculum. Rogers and Williams (1999) describe a procedure to maintain portfolios on the Web. Angelo & Cross (LB2822.75.A54) outline a variety of classroom assessment techniques, all of which generate products suitable for inclusion in student portfolios. The devices they suggest include minute papers, concept maps, audiotaped and videotaped protocols (students reporting on their thinking processes as they solve problems), student-generated test questions, classroom opinion polls, course-related self-confidence surveys, interest/knowledge/skills checklists, and reactions to instruction.

ENGAGED SCHOLARS CIRCLE ADDS A MEMBER

The latest honoree to be recognized by the Teaching+Learning Center for excellence in the classroom is Catherine Doyle, Instructor of Nursing in the Nursing and Allied Health Division. Catherine is a big proponent of active learning methods and uses the full teaching toolkit to get the most out of her students. That is really great since she is helping to teach the next generation of nurses for our area. We caught up with Catherine at the LCTCS conference and took the picture at the left. Catherine's students told us that she is very invested in their future and that she always finds a way to help them understand even the most complex things they have to learn. Congratulations to Catherine who joins Paul Guidry, Sandra Guzman, Wes Harris, Mary Miller, and Amy Pinero as examples of faculty who believe in the power of engagement as a retention strategy.



BUILDING ON OUR MOMENTUM CONFERENCE
This year's LCTCS conference provided a great opportunity for all of us to interact with our counterparts at the sister institutions in our system. On Thursday, I was happy to join Russell Nolan, Instructor of Biology in the Division of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, for a presentation entitled Teaching Teachers How To Teach: The science of learning, from theory to application. We were fortunate to have more than 50 colleagues join us for a session that explained the art and science of teaching using kinesiology-focused research. We were also able to extol the virtues of the scholarship of teaching and learning as a tool to help improve our teaching and our students' learning. I was again fortunate to be joined by members of our outstanding faculty for a session on Friday entitled Good Teaching Can Be Learned: Results of a faculty learning community at BRCC. Nisha Aroskar (Economics) Wes, Harris (English/Honors College), and Angela Pursley (Accounting) shared their experience from the FLC with more than 30 colleagues from around the state. Their stories were inspiring and clearly illustrated  the power that faculty learning communities can have for change and growth.

JOKES CAN IMPROVE LEARNING
Dr. Alicia Rieger believes in the power of humor for the learning process. She writes, in a recent article, "Humor has been reported to increase motivation, enhance the retention of new information, advance problem-solving skills, encourage creativity and critical thinking, facilitate a positive learning environment, and decrease exam anxiety (Martin, 2007). In the college classroom, teaching should move beyond transmitting facts to encouraging students to think critically and creatively about the subject matter. According to Tamblyn (2003), students must use their imaginations and open their minds to new ideas if they are to think critically and creatively. Humor is about allowing oneself to be intellectually playful with ideas."

WHAT NOT TO WEAR
Does what you wear on the first day of a face-to-face class make a difference? You bet says James Lang in his book On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (the Library has an electronic copy). He tells the story of his first day when he dressed to blend in with the students and how he wanted them to realize how “cool” he was. He suggests that your dress sets the tone for the type of relationship you want to forge and the teaching persona you are trying to construct. Professional attire is the best way to go, he suggests. Lang also encourages you to begin the class on time and to use the entire session of allotted time. It sends a clear message that this class is about learning. Spend the time introducing the topic to your students. Ask them the big questions that your discipline considers. Be engaging and discover their like, dislikes, wants and needs. Remember you are creating a first impression but you also want to clearly explain your expectations. The first days of class are when students are still deciding if they are going to drop or stay so providing them with an entire picture helps them to make informed choices. Lang’s book is filled with wonderful advice for faculty at all stages of their careers.

BUILDING A PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
Robert Leamnson’s book Thinking About Thinking About Teaching (LB2331.L39) is a good resource if you are reexamining your classroom practices. He says, “Every teacher, even the beginner, has a philosophy of teaching. We all enter the classroom, even the first time, with certain beliefs about how teaching should be done. These beliefs might or might not be well-considered and articulated, but even the first-time teacher, trying to recall what his or her teachers did, is exhibiting some belief as to how teaching is done. A philosophy developed based solely out of experience is primarily reactive. The real goal of teaching is that someone learn something. Having that as a goal is not the same as having a philosophy.” He suggests that educators be systematic in their approach. Spend time with the literature on the scholarship of teaching and learning especially as it relates to pedagogy and assessment. He concludes, “A rational and considered philosophy of teaching serves as a beacon during stormy periods.”

ACTIVE LEARNING REQUIRES PRACTICE
“Students have different responsibilities in active learning than they do in traditional education,” says Elizabeth Barkley in her book Student Engagement Techniques. The primary method for orienting students to these new responsibilities and teaching students active learning skills lies in the learning tasks themselves: students will develop active learning skills if they are given tasks that ask them to apply concepts, solve problems, discuss issues or reflect upon the factors that influence their thinking. Rather than just explaining to students that you are using active learning methods, Mel Silberman (who has written several books on active learning) recommends starting the very first class session with an activity that orients students to active learning. You can find a number of active learning approaches in the BRCC Active Learning Manual (2013). Send me an email at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu to receive your electronic copy.

KEEP CALM AND BE ENGAGED
A number of you commented on this year’s theme for the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support. We spent the summer working on the various programs designed to help you enhance your teaching skills and felt we needed something to capture the spirit of our efforts. The theme of Keep Calm and Be Engaged was tweaked using an existing slogan that has become pretty common. The original version appears to be Keep Calm and Carry On used by the British government as a motivational slogan to lift the spirits of their citizens during the Second World War. Many organizations have adopted it in various forms. We felt it met our needs as well especially when you include the very un-calm version of the BRCC bear. You may see folks who are part of the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support with bright green t-shirts that have the slogan prominently displayed. We hope that it provides motivation for you as you embark on your very important mission this year. Teaching is such a difficult job and so much goes into becoming a great teacher. So Keep Calm and Be Engaged and have a great semester!

SUCCESS AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS
Mark Phillips has written a really interesting article for Eutopia about myths associated with education. His inspiration was a book by Drs. David Berliner and Gene Glass titled 50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. The book focuses on the U.S. public education system, but many of the myths apply equally to our own college students. Phillips put the myth that teachers are the most important influence on a child’s education as his number one. He writes, "Of course teachers are extremely important. Good teachers make a significant difference in achievement. But research indicates that less than 30 percent of a student's academic success is attributable to schools and teachers. The most significant variable is socioeconomic status, followed by the neighborhood, the psychological quality of the home environment, and the support of physical health provided." I understand his argument to mean that teachers are very important but part of a larger system that can include many impediments that a student and teacher must overcome for teaching and learning to occur. I am familiar with Dr. Berliner's work and have seen him present a number of sessions at the annual American Educational Research Association. I am anxious to read the entire book. Let me know what you think of the list and the book.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES PROVIDE A WAY UP
The Wall Street Journal ran an article this weekend that proclaims that economic mobility is alive and well for Americans who pursue technical or practical training. That is a fact that we are well aware of at BRCC and hopefully we are continuing to make sure that our course content is relevant in preparing a workforce-ready graduate. Tamar Jacoby writes, "Americans have a host of postsecondary options other than a four-year degree—associate degrees, occupational certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships. Many economists are bullish about the prospects of what they call "middle-skilled" workers. In coming years, according to some, at least a third and perhaps closer to half of all U.S. jobs will require more than high school but less than four years of college—and most will involve some sort of technical or practical training." The future is indeed bright for BRCC and our sister schools of LCTCS.

ARE YOU A GOOD TEACHER
How would you describe good teaching? Ben Johnson recently joined an online discussion about that topic. He remarked, "My experience is that good teachers care about students. Good teachers know the content and know how to explain it. Good teachers expect and demand high levels of performance of students. Good teachers are great performers and storytellers that rivet their students' attention. Great teachers engineer learning experiences that maneuver the students into the driver's seat and then the teachers get out of the way. Students learn best by personally experiencing learning that is physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. John Dewey had it right in 1935 when he espoused his theories on experiential learning. Today we call this constructivism" Many of the things he had to say echo what you will find in the pages of Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do, a book that we used as a common reader in the fall 2013 semester (and plan to use again this fall). So do you think the comments above describe you? Although I aspire to be what Johnson and Bain have described and challenge myself through critical self-reflection, I know it is a journey that we are all called as teachers to make.

JOIN US ON MARCH 7
Shifting the Teaching Paradigm is the title of the upcoming workshop to be held on March 7 in the Dumas Room of the Magnolia Building. Dr. Jim Johnston will be facilitating the sessions which begin at 12:25 and run through 3:30 pm. This interactive workshop  is being sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center (T+LC) and Cengage Learning's TeamUp. In response to several inquiries, I wanted to offer some suggestions. If you are interested in altering your approach to teaching in search of improving learning in your classes, this workshop is for you. BRCC's traditional student is a millennial who is typically under-prepared for the rigors and expectations of college. This presents special challenges for us but also opens up opportunities for rapid change and results that we can see almost immediately. But what does it take to inspire that change in their brains? That is what we hope to discover and discuss at this workshop. So register now and bring your ideas and concerns as we return from the Mardi Gras break.

INQUIRY-GUIDED TEACHING PRODUCES RESULTS
The importance of the student/teacher relationship has been acknowledged for centuries. Greek philosopher, Plato suggested that the relationship between teacher and student is essential to teaching and must be firmly established before learning can occur (Hoffman, 2014). We know from more recent research that the paradigm has changed and rather than regarding the teacher as someone who does something to someone, as in pouring knowledge into an empty vessel, the teacher is someone who does something with someone, as in equal participation in the acquisition of knowledge (McEwan, 2011). Virginia Lee, is her book Teaching and Learning Through Inquiry (LB1027.44.T43), tell us that inquiry-guided learning in terms of what happens in the classroom (or online) refers to a range of interventions or strategies used to promote learning through students active, and increasingly independent, investigation of questions, problems and issues, often for which there is no single answer. A range of teaching strategies is consistent with inquiry-guided learning including interactive lecture, discussion, problem-based learning, case studies, simulations, and independent study. In fact, she notes the only strategy not consistent with inquiry-guides learning is the traditional (and outdated) straight lecture.

TEXTBOOK READING MADE SIMPLE
Are you having trouble getting your students to read the textbook prior to your teaching the material? Here is something I have tried that has shown good results in both participation in class and is reflected in the assessment I used to measure learning. Give them a few short answer-type questions that helps to guide them through the reading material when you make the assignment. For instance, on a chapter about critical thinking I provided the following questions. 1)What are the three aspects of critical thinking? 2)Why should some assumptions be carefully examined? 3)Why is it important to examine evidence of an argument? 4)Why is it important to recognize bias? In class, we talked about each of these question but in different forms because I was using the repetition method for learning. For example, I had my students evaluate opinion pieces from major media outlets looking for bias and logic fallacies. They responded well to the reading and in-class assignments because I stressed the importance of critical thinking as a life skill and I used a topic from the opinion pieces (raising the minimum wage) that they could personally relate to. When I gave them the chapter test to measure the teaching and learning that had occurred, I used those same questions (some were worded slightly different). My assessment results from the chapter test showed marked improvement from the previous test. Let me know if you try this method or if you use a similar strategy in your classes.

WORKSHOP COUNTDOWN NOW AT 2 DAYS
Where will you be at 3:00 PM on Thursday, February 28? Hopefully you will be joining most of your fellow faculty members for Dr. Barbara Millis' workshop "A Learning-Centered Approach to Teaching that Fosters Retention." Registration is still open and although more than 80 people have registered the Bonne Sante Wellness Center gym provides us with room for the rest of you. Participation in the two hour workshop will provide you with two faculty development service points but more important is the knowledge you will gain. This workshop promises to expand your teaching toolkit and provide you with the confidence to explore new teaching techniques. This event is part of the Teaching+Learning Center's distinguished speaker’s series.

HOW DO YOU LEARN?
Empathy is a good quality to have if you want to be an effective and influential teacher. Our passion for helping others learn may become dimmed by the many challenges we face in our classrooms (whether in buildings or virtually). That is where the learning styles perspective can play a part. While the debate continues over the need for more empirical research, the fact remains that students do tend to learn better when the experience ignites their brain. That ignition is often caused by triggers that help them connect to previous learning and stored knowledge. Lynne Celli Sarasin tells us in Learning Style Perspectives: Impact in the Classroom (LB1060.S27) that "before instructors try to understand and accommodate their students learning styles, they need to understand their own learning style. Because we naturally tend to teach in ways that are consistent with how we learn or may even emulate a favorite teacher, we do have specific techniques that allow us to process information." Sarasin offers a number of short exercises to help you identify your preferences.

TEACHING AS SCHOLARSHIP
Ken Bain, in his book What the Best College Teachers Do (LB2331.B34), says that "teaching must be judged using a learning perspective. Institutions must rate the quality of teaching, both so they can help people improve and ultimately so they can keep the best teachers." He reminds us that "an evaluation is an informed attempt to answer important questions that require difficult decisions and can't be reduced to a formula." He states that the "quality of learning objectives" are important and the teachers "contribution to student learning" is what matters. He urges us to think about teaching "as a serious intellectual act, a kind of scholarship, a creation, complete with evidence" that the teacher is "fostering achievement and learning."

FOOD FOR LEARNING
Edward Nuhfer, Director of Faculty Development at California State University at Channel Islands, tells us that tryptophan is an important brain amino acid that is converted into useful brain chemicals such as melatonin. A deficiency of tryptophan reduces the chemicals that aid with restful sound sleep. As age reduces the body's ability to produce melatonin, tryptophan's role becomes increasingly important. Fowl is a source of tryptophan, so a chicken or turkey sandwich for lunch may cause drowsiness in afternoon classes. Because tryptophan is a nutrient that aids in sound sleep, sources of it are best taken at day's end. Tryptophan taken in before classes or before quiet study can cause problems for many of us and that is useful information you can share with your students. In addition, he notes that many students who are watching their budget tend to gravitate towards less expensive choices like breads or processed cereal. He says, "Such breakfasts, largely devoid of important nutrients tyrosine & choline, won't provide the boost for thinking and learning that good protein sources, such as eggs and meat provide. Creatine found in meats is known to benefit working memory and intelligence."