REMEMBERING OUR PAST IMPROVES OUR FUTURE

Today marks the 50^th anniversary of one of the most terrible days in our history as a nation. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding through the downtown area of Dallas, Texas. Some say it changed America forever. It certainly provides a teachable moment for you in your courses. Kennedy was the youngest person elected to be President of the U.S. His education agenda was part of his New Frontier program. He was also active on the Civil Rights front which had broad impact for education as well. One example includes his intervention when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the President. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation—to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS SHARE BEST PRACTICES

The faculty development workshop, Teaching and Learning Interventions for Student Success, held yesterday is still generating conversation. The comments started during the workshop, increased at the end of the session, and have continued to come via email. As a community of scholars, we are learning to depend on each other to solve our problems and it is encouraging. Facilitated by Dr. Todd Pourciau and Jeanne Stacy, every participant was actively engaged throughout the workshop and idea generation was at an all-time high. Tommy Domangue, psychology, said he will begin to model his thought processes “out loud” to help his students learn about learning. Paul Guidry, criminal justice (and a Keep Calm and Be Engaged professor) plans to use the stuff happens cards to reduce student excuses and the parking lot active learning strategy to prevent his classes from being hijacked. Raven Dora, computer science, plans to use the roundtable review to help her students scaffold information from previous classes, create study guides, and center her students to begin class. April Witting, practical nursing, wants to implement the question and answer match intervention to allow her student to learn from each other and build classroom community. Lee Buckner, economics, plans to use the Stop-Start-Keep Doing intervention to increase his awareness of his students needs and more closely gauge the “temperature” of his courses. All of these intervention and more can be found in the Active Learning Manual, which is currently being updated. Look for an electronic copy in your email in early December.

COURSE REDESIGN OPPORTUNITY

The upcoming holiday break during December and January is a great time to take on a course re-design project. Building meaningful learning experiences that are student-centered can greatly enhance student success. Dr. Gary Smith, University of New Mexico, has a terrific article in the National Teaching and Learning Forum about how he went from a lecture-based presenter to an active learning teacher. His story includes the level of critical self-reflection he was willing to do in order to improve student achievement and his student ratings. In fact, his article was the pre-reading assignment for the most recent faculty development workshop sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center. 

FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGES

While attending the Association for the Study of Higher Education conference last week, I heard so many presentations about the community college experience. What was surprising (and a little alarming) is that none of the expert presenters worked at community colleges themselves.  That tells me that the missing link in the international conversation about community colleges is us. I also learned that recent research shows that students prefer teachers who are organized and clear. That sounds simple yet how often are we challenged by multiple deadlines, responsibilities, and life in general? The Chronicle of Higher Education actually published an article about the conference presentations in today’s online issue.  One of the presentations highlighted by the article is by Dr. Chad Loes, a professor of criminal justice at Mount Mercy University, who studied how students' perceptions of organized teaching correlated with gains in critical-thinking skills measured at the beginning and end of their first year. After controlling for students' background characteristics, Dr. Loes and the other author, Dr. Mark H. Salisbury of Augustana College, in Illinois, found that well-organized teaching had only a small effect on the critical-thinking skills of students in general. But the perception of such teaching had a pronounced effect on students in minority groups, whose gains in critical-thinking skills were nearly five times as large as those of white students.