WHY DO YOU TEACH
Sam Intrator and Megan Scribner are co-editors of the upcoming book Teaching with Fire, Leading from Within and Teaching from
the Heart. They are looking for folks to
submit a poem and a brief 250-word commentary describing how that poem inspires
you, informs your work, or provides sustenance as you negotiate the complex
challenges at the center your vocation. Importantly, this project is not just
seeking poems about teaching and the classroom but poems on any topic that
intersects with how you think about your life and work as a teacher. The
deadline for submissions is February 1, 2013. This
book will be a brand-new edition modeled on their best-selling Teaching
with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach. If
you have questions, email megan@couragerenewal.org .
HOVERING SLINKIES AND SCIENCE EDUCATION
Brian Mathews has a very interesting blog post today that suggests that research should be more accessible. He notes that a new physics paper is being promoted using a YouTube video about slinkies. He writes, "This is exactly what research libraries are talking about: data,
visualization, modeling, social media, etc. While the open access aspect
of the article enables people to read the work, it’s the YouTube video
that creates buzz building word of mouth and fueling discovery."
NO CRITICAL THINKING REQUIRED
Kim Blank wants to kill the use of term papers as a type of assessment. Blank notes that the term paper is a practice adopted from the Germans in the early 20th century and writes, "It was one way for students to demonstrate that they could absorb what
they had read, in a form fairly close to what we now call a research
paper. The practice exploded in the second half of the century, and it
continues today, having also devolved into variations of the now
ubiquitous five-paragraph essay." Blank argues that the term paper has no connections to what students will encounter in the work place as one of the reasons (there are others) that we should discontinue the practice.
YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED
You have one more opportunity for faculty professional development before the fall semester ends. Lisa Hibner, Director of the Career Center at BRCC, will present a fascinating seminar on how you can integrate career activities in your courses. Helping your students to discover their strengths and abilities is a rewarding endeavor. Providing students with the knowledge they need to be productive citizens has always been a hallmark for community colleges. The seminar will be held on Wednesday, November 28 at 3:00 PM in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building). You can register now but walk-ups will be accepted. Your participation provides you with one professional development credit.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Take a look at the picture on the left to see your colleagues engaged in an active learning environment. The faculty development seminar, Active Learning Methods Revealed, held yesterday in the Teaching+Learning Center was both active and filled with learning opportunities. The participants learned from the presenters Drs. Marcella Hackney and Margaret McMichael and from each other. Although the subject matter used to illustrate the process was about life science (specifically diabetes), the methods employed could be implemented by anyone in any sort of course. Hackney and McMichael used their classroom experiences and lessons learned from the Gulf Coast Summer Institute they attended earlier this year to illustrate the effectiveness of using active learning experiences to enhance student learning. Your next opportunity for faculty development comes on November 28 at 3:00PM when Lisa Hibner presents Integrating Career Activities in the Classroom. The event will be held in the T+LC (311 Magnolia Building).
BENEFITS OF MENTORING
Have you ever offered to mentor a new colleague? Organized mentoring programs are beginning to gain traction as a proven method for providing the assistance necessary to help new faculty succeed in the academic arena. Research shows than an organized mentoring program promotes faculty productivity, advocates collegiality, and advances a broader goal of attracting, retaining, and advancing faculty members (Perna, Learner, & Yura, Journal of Education). Mentoring supports professional growth and renewal, which in turn empowers faculty as individuals and colleagues (Luna & Cullen, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports). It also serves to reduce the chances that a newcomer will experience isolation or job dissatisfaction (Boyle & Boice, Innovative Higher Education). Stress is also lessened for the new faculty member when there is a reliable mentor to address the initial uneasiness or potential impediments. An effective mentoring program promotes collaborative liaisons between junior and senior faculty and is generally felt to have a positive impact on building community within and among a campus population.
THRIVING IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM
In their book The Adjunct Professors Guide to Success (LB1778.2.L96), Lyons, Kysilka and Pawlas distill their research findings into useful nuggets of information. For instance, they describe what college students want and expect from college instructors in a straightforward and concise manner. Specifically, they note that students need the following: expectations of their performance that is reasonable in quantity and quality and consistently communicated; sensitivity to the diverse demands on them and reasonable flexibility in accommodating them; effective use of class time; a classroom demeanor that includes humor and spontaneity; exams that address issues properly covered in and outside of class, are appropriate to the level of the majority of students in the course, are punctually scored and returned, and are used fairly to determine final class grades; and, consistent positive treatment of individual students, including a willingness to spend extra time before or after class to provide additional support. The flip-side of this is what the teacher expects of the student. Our premise is that the education process is a 50/50 partnership that requires our students to take ownership for their academic career. As you develop your expectations, it is important to consider both sides and to communicate those to your students.
BAD TEACHING OR VALUABLE DATA
CourseSmart, the digital textbook provider that is partnered with five major publishers, recently announced the launch of CourseSmart Analytics. The Program, which is currently being piloted at three colleges, tracks students' engagement with their e-textbooks and provides and allows professors and colleges to evaluate the usefulness of learning materials and to track student work. The debate now begins. John Warner blogs that he thinks it is a bad idea. Alexandra Tilsley is mostly positive in this news article.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
LEARNING REFRAMED
Dr. Donna M. Qualters uncovers some interesting information in her research study Do Students Want to be Active? Four important themes emerged from the analysis: the students had an overall positive attitude toward active learning; active learning was perceived to enhance their ability and efficiency in studying; active learning was perceived to improve the learning environment; and, active learning promoted their thinking about their learning and thus helped them to better understand their individual learning style. She also uncovered a few negatives that could easily be converted using the right interventions. She concludes by writing, "The most important need to be addressed is the inability of some students to deal with change. Many of these students come to higher education with expectations of very passive classroom experiences and those expectations must be uncovered, probed and altered. For some students it may go as far as the necessity to reframe what learning is: learning is not about covering material or gathering facts, learning is about integrating and using information in a meaningful way."
Dr. Donna M. Qualters uncovers some interesting information in her research study Do Students Want to be Active? Four important themes emerged from the analysis: the students had an overall positive attitude toward active learning; active learning was perceived to enhance their ability and efficiency in studying; active learning was perceived to improve the learning environment; and, active learning promoted their thinking about their learning and thus helped them to better understand their individual learning style. She also uncovered a few negatives that could easily be converted using the right interventions. She concludes by writing, "The most important need to be addressed is the inability of some students to deal with change. Many of these students come to higher education with expectations of very passive classroom experiences and those expectations must be uncovered, probed and altered. For some students it may go as far as the necessity to reframe what learning is: learning is not about covering material or gathering facts, learning is about integrating and using information in a meaningful way."
USING FACEBOOK IN CLASS
Research shows that there is a correlation between social presence
and student success. When students feel connected to a community of
inquiry they are more enthusiastic, motivated, and they perform better.
If that engagement, communication, and awareness happens continuously
and in real-time, as it does in a face-to-face classroom — all the
better. Sidneyeve Matrix wrote a recent blog entry about bringing students together who are enrolled in a class that is being taught face-to-face and online concurrently so that the e-students would feel connected and not isolated online? Feeling out of the proverbial loop
is one of the most oft-cited challenges for distance learners.
Traditionally, a face-to-face classroom, “requires a disciplined
commitment from the students to actually participate in the learning
activities and reach out to others in the class,” observes Cory Stokes,
director of the University of Utah's Technology Assisted Curriculum Center, in charge of
testing for online courses. Matrix concludes, "In an online course, the onus is on the
student to be self-disciplined enough to engage in self-study, often
without the benefit of a class community to drive engagement and
interest."
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION
Joshua Kim has written an interesting post about Pearson's OpenClass. He discusses how it fits in the LMS ecosystem and how it compares to Blackboard and Moodle among others. Now that BRCC has decided to move forward with Blackboard 9.1, it is beneficial to take a look at the other add-ons out there. Stay tuned for more information about our eLearning and course delivery efforts.
FILLING IN THE GAPS
Here is an active learning method, pulled from the BRCC Active Learning Manual, that has proven to help students learn from each other and test themselves. Offer note completion time in your class.
Towards the end of a class that you have provided a heavy dose of information,
ask students to exchange notes and fill in any gaps they identify. This
technique helps them generate complete notes as they review the course
material. It also helps them to identify what they know and what they need to
study. In addition, it allows less-skilled note takers to learn from those who
are adept at taking notes. You could also have them share their note-taking tips with the class.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, November 2, 2012
TEACH THE STUDENTS YOU HAVE
Yesterday's seminar Engaging Millennial Learners was well attended and the participation during the session was terrific. The seminar focused on the active learning experience of class discussion and how to best implement that very effective method. Here are just a few of the many responses we got on the evaluation sheets from the seminar participants. Becky Adcock, Veterinary Technician program, said that she intends to use the Muddiest Point learning experience along with more discussion and less lecturing in her classes. Mary Miller, Science Department, plans to utilize more videos in her classes. Kathryn Arrington, CSSK instructor, plans to give her students a test covering the topics on her syllabus and will work to build a more conducive climate in her classes. Marty Lensing, Criminal Justice Program, plans to allow his students to think about the questions he poses to them for a few minutes, asking them to write down their thoughts, before he calls on them to respond. What I learned was how terrific and devoted our faculty are at BRCC. We were all united on the fact that our focus is all about improving student learning.
BECOMING THE GREAT MOTIVATOR
Elizabeth Barkley, in her book Student Engagement Techniques (LB 2342.92 .B.34), offers a number of tips for fostering motivation in your students. She notes that "Teacher personality and behavior have a powerful impact on whether students feel motivated in a course." Building on studies by industrial and organizational psychologists, educational researchers have found that even students who are intrinsically motivated by their studies will put forth reasonable effort if they like and admire their teacher, just as they may become apathetic or resistant if they view their teacher negatively (Brophy, 2004). She concludes, "This does not mean that you have to be false to your basic personality but it does suggest that students will be more likely to engage in your class if you cultivate and display attributes of well-liked and respected teachers, such as energy, enthusiasm, passion, approachability, fairness, and optimism."
WHAT IS ACTIVE LEARNING
Drs. Marcella Hackney and Margaret McMichael will present a faculty development seminar on Monday, November 19 at 2:00 PM in the Teaching+Learning Center. Active Learning Methods Revealed will offer insight into a variety of the best teaching methods that can help you to improve student learning while increasing the tools in your teaching toolkit. Hackney and McMichael participated in the Gulf Coast Summer Institute this past summer held on the LSU campus. Look for more information in your email-box soon.
LIGHTING THE FIRE OF INQUIRY
Here is a great learning experience utilizing video clips offered by fellow blogger Julia Phelan. We often start a topic, at least in the sciences, by outlining the background of the topic, creating a simple picture, and building up an understanding of something complex. But what about starting with the complex, interesting thing, and then gaining the tools to understand that complex idea through a variety of activities? You might show students an object, picture, or video of something a little confusing or curious and ask them to generate a series of “I wonder” questions. In the sciences, this could be achieved with many existing YouTube or other videos of interesting phenomena by simply turning off the sound, leaving students to view the phenomena without hearing the explanation. These “I wonder” questions can then be used to lead into activities or lecture, tailored to students’ innate curiosity and questions. They can also be used to generate inquiry questions for a laboratory or other hands-on activity, providing authentic motivation for students to explore a phenomenon. For example, a video showing a levitating superconducting magnet could lead into questions such as “is the magnet cold?” “What kind of material is that?” “Will it still float if you put a piece of paper between the two magnets?” These questions could be used to generate inquiry activities about magnets and superconducting magnets.
Yesterday's seminar Engaging Millennial Learners was well attended and the participation during the session was terrific. The seminar focused on the active learning experience of class discussion and how to best implement that very effective method. Here are just a few of the many responses we got on the evaluation sheets from the seminar participants. Becky Adcock, Veterinary Technician program, said that she intends to use the Muddiest Point learning experience along with more discussion and less lecturing in her classes. Mary Miller, Science Department, plans to utilize more videos in her classes. Kathryn Arrington, CSSK instructor, plans to give her students a test covering the topics on her syllabus and will work to build a more conducive climate in her classes. Marty Lensing, Criminal Justice Program, plans to allow his students to think about the questions he poses to them for a few minutes, asking them to write down their thoughts, before he calls on them to respond. What I learned was how terrific and devoted our faculty are at BRCC. We were all united on the fact that our focus is all about improving student learning.
BECOMING THE GREAT MOTIVATOR
Elizabeth Barkley, in her book Student Engagement Techniques (LB 2342.92 .B.34), offers a number of tips for fostering motivation in your students. She notes that "Teacher personality and behavior have a powerful impact on whether students feel motivated in a course." Building on studies by industrial and organizational psychologists, educational researchers have found that even students who are intrinsically motivated by their studies will put forth reasonable effort if they like and admire their teacher, just as they may become apathetic or resistant if they view their teacher negatively (Brophy, 2004). She concludes, "This does not mean that you have to be false to your basic personality but it does suggest that students will be more likely to engage in your class if you cultivate and display attributes of well-liked and respected teachers, such as energy, enthusiasm, passion, approachability, fairness, and optimism."
WHAT IS ACTIVE LEARNING
Drs. Marcella Hackney and Margaret McMichael will present a faculty development seminar on Monday, November 19 at 2:00 PM in the Teaching+Learning Center. Active Learning Methods Revealed will offer insight into a variety of the best teaching methods that can help you to improve student learning while increasing the tools in your teaching toolkit. Hackney and McMichael participated in the Gulf Coast Summer Institute this past summer held on the LSU campus. Look for more information in your email-box soon.
LIGHTING THE FIRE OF INQUIRY
Here is a great learning experience utilizing video clips offered by fellow blogger Julia Phelan. We often start a topic, at least in the sciences, by outlining the background of the topic, creating a simple picture, and building up an understanding of something complex. But what about starting with the complex, interesting thing, and then gaining the tools to understand that complex idea through a variety of activities? You might show students an object, picture, or video of something a little confusing or curious and ask them to generate a series of “I wonder” questions. In the sciences, this could be achieved with many existing YouTube or other videos of interesting phenomena by simply turning off the sound, leaving students to view the phenomena without hearing the explanation. These “I wonder” questions can then be used to lead into activities or lecture, tailored to students’ innate curiosity and questions. They can also be used to generate inquiry questions for a laboratory or other hands-on activity, providing authentic motivation for students to explore a phenomenon. For example, a video showing a levitating superconducting magnet could lead into questions such as “is the magnet cold?” “What kind of material is that?” “Will it still float if you put a piece of paper between the two magnets?” These questions could be used to generate inquiry activities about magnets and superconducting magnets.
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