ACTIVE LEARNING ON TAP FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The fact that active learning methods help to improve student success has been widely documented. Implementing active learning into your courses requires some time and attention but the rewards for you and your students is immediate and immeasurable. If you are interested in adding new tools to your teaching toolkit, especially in the active learning area, then this professional development workshop on Friday, March 28 is built for you. Teaching and Learning Interventions for Student Success will be presented at 10:00 am at the Frazier Site in room 227. Presenters Todd Pourciau and Jeanne Stacey will facilitate a lively interactive workshop that will have you ready to go. Whether you are just joining the active learning movement or are looking for supplements to enhance your current skill set, this workshop is for you. Registration is now open.

TAKING TESTING TO NEW HEIGHTS
The Testing Center at our Mid City Campus has seen a measurable increase in customer usage. The staff is working hard to accommodate the diverse numbers of users and the expanded hours this semester and testing at Acadian Campus and several of the sites has helped to relieve some of the pressure. However, it is more important than ever that we remind our students that appointments must be made in advance in order to insure that they have a spot to test. We are asking for a 24 hour minimum appointment request for all test takers. In addition, if you are teaching a course through the eLearning Program, please make sure that the Testing Center staff has all of the pertinent information before your students begin arriving for testing. As we work to improve the service we offer and to create a relaxing environment that provides the best testing opportunity for our students, it is important that we work together to maximize student success. Should you have any questions, you can contact a Testing Center staff member at 216.8038 or via email (testingcenter@mybrcc.edu). If you have specific eLearning-related questions, please contact Program Manager Susan Nealy at 216.8130 or via email (nealys@mybrcc.edu).

ONLINE TEACHING WISDOM
Liz Timbs, a Ph.D. student in History at Michigan State, has written an interesting opinion piece about how delivering a class in an online environment takes some special skills and training. She writes, "Compared to a traditional classroom setting, the virtual classroom requires a different approach to communicating with students. While email occupies a central role in how I communicate with students in a traditional course, email becomes vital for a successful virtual course. The more detail the better; this saves you from writing 2-3 emails when you can communicate all of the directions in one clear, straightforward email. Writing emails of this nature can seem very tedious and pointless, but being precise helps both the students and the teachers (or teaching assistants) a lot!"  She goes on to describe a few other pearls of wisdom that she has learned on the Superhighway.