STUDENT RATINGS EXPLAINED
Tomorrow's professional development workshop "Interpreting Your Student Ratings and Using Them for Professional Development" will be your opportunity to have a frank and open discussion about the student rating currently being used at BRCC. I encourage you to bring your ratings with you so that we can focus our time and energy on the issues you find most important or most in need of improving. You can register now for the workshop set to begin at 1:00 pm in 311 Magnolia Building. This professional development event is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
WHAT ABOUT THE NON-COMPLETERS
Inside Higher Ed reports that most research on the payoff of attending community college actually
doesn’t measure the effect of attending, but rather what happens for
those who graduate. Yet when the majority of students who enroll in community colleges
don’t complete their programs, the financial benefit should be adjusted
given the likelihood of failure. That’s the philosophy driving a recently published report that tries
to measure the economic benefit of two-year college for the mass of
dropouts. The report was published by the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment at Columbia University’s Teachers College. The report also compares the outcomes of completers and non-completers based on the students’ stated intent or goal. The algorithm, intent and goal models delivered different outcomes, demonstrating that students often don’t pursue the path they intended. (Sometimes there’s a deliberate change of paths, but often this reflects students’ confusion about what courses they need to take, the study said.)
WRITING GOOD NOTES
Students nowadays can be pretty demanding about wanting the teacher’s PowerPoints, lecture notes, and other written forms of the content presented in class. And a lot of teachers are supplying those, in part trying to be responsive to students but also because many students now lack note-taking skills. Maryellen Weimer writes in an article on this topic, "If they can’t take good notes, why not help them succeed by supplying them with notes?" She answers her own question by noting that providing the notes denies students the chance to improve their critical thinking skills. We know that once students hear new information they should spend some time writing and talking about it and then forming questions in their own words about the knowledge. She concludes, "Students should find out in college (as they will in life) that they don’t always get what they want. They need to take their own notes and not think they are excused from doing so because they’ve got the teacher’s notes."
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
STUDENT RATING WORKSHOP
What role does faculty organization play in student ratings? How can you better illustrate concern for your student's success in your courses? How many ways can you state the course objectives? Can you increase rigor without hurting your student rating scores? These are some of the questions we will discuss at the upcoming professional development session, Interpreting Your Student Ratings and Using Them for Professional Development, on Thursday, February 26. The session begins at 1:00 pm in 311 Magnolia Building. If you have specific issues that have cropped up in your student rating feedback, now if a great time to send me an email (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). I will include it in the anonymous list and provide suggestions for improvement at the workshop. You can register now for this event being sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
INCREASING OFFICE VISITS
One of the more common complaints we hear is that students rarely take advantage of our office hours. Having a student visit you is not only a proven method to improve student success but provides us with a wonderful opportunity to provide some career advice for our students. So how do we get them to make a purposeful trip to our offices? The latest blog from Faculty Focus offers several suggestions. One of the more straight-forward is requiring your students to visit. It is suggested that you require this visit to occur early in the semester. The post suggests, "If the visit is to discuss some course issue, say possible term paper topics, that conversation can show students the value of meeting with the prof. They get good feedback on the topic they’re considering, get ideas about other options, and can ask questions about assignment details." The post also suggests using course centers which consist of scheduled one- or two-hour time blocks in unoccupied classrooms.
IMPROVING COURSE RIGOR
Most of us have heard of (and hopefully are using) Bloom's Taxonomy to increase rigor in our classrooms. The Teaching+Learning Center has been distributing a Quick Flip Question booklet for the past several years. If you have not received one of these handy resources, contact me and we will get one to you. Another good resource to help you increase rigor in your classes is Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DoK) Levels. Many instructors are using the DoK scale to improve instruction leading to better learning by their students. Take a look at this site which provides an overview and some videos to help you understand how to use DoK properly.
What role does faculty organization play in student ratings? How can you better illustrate concern for your student's success in your courses? How many ways can you state the course objectives? Can you increase rigor without hurting your student rating scores? These are some of the questions we will discuss at the upcoming professional development session, Interpreting Your Student Ratings and Using Them for Professional Development, on Thursday, February 26. The session begins at 1:00 pm in 311 Magnolia Building. If you have specific issues that have cropped up in your student rating feedback, now if a great time to send me an email (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). I will include it in the anonymous list and provide suggestions for improvement at the workshop. You can register now for this event being sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
INCREASING OFFICE VISITS
One of the more common complaints we hear is that students rarely take advantage of our office hours. Having a student visit you is not only a proven method to improve student success but provides us with a wonderful opportunity to provide some career advice for our students. So how do we get them to make a purposeful trip to our offices? The latest blog from Faculty Focus offers several suggestions. One of the more straight-forward is requiring your students to visit. It is suggested that you require this visit to occur early in the semester. The post suggests, "If the visit is to discuss some course issue, say possible term paper topics, that conversation can show students the value of meeting with the prof. They get good feedback on the topic they’re considering, get ideas about other options, and can ask questions about assignment details." The post also suggests using course centers which consist of scheduled one- or two-hour time blocks in unoccupied classrooms.
IMPROVING COURSE RIGOR
Most of us have heard of (and hopefully are using) Bloom's Taxonomy to increase rigor in our classrooms. The Teaching+Learning Center has been distributing a Quick Flip Question booklet for the past several years. If you have not received one of these handy resources, contact me and we will get one to you. Another good resource to help you increase rigor in your classes is Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DoK) Levels. Many instructors are using the DoK scale to improve instruction leading to better learning by their students. Take a look at this site which provides an overview and some videos to help you understand how to use DoK properly.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
CANVAS CHOSEN AS NEW LMS FOR SYSTEM
As you know LCTCS has asked for bids for a LMS to be used for all of the system's colleges. Canvas was the LMS selected and the contract was supposed to be signed yesterday. It appears that we will be moving to the new LMS for the Fall 2015 semester. If you visit the Canvas website, they describe themselves as an educational revolution with an industry-pushing platform and millions of satisfied users. I know that our eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy has begun to share some resources with you including a free version of Canvas that will allow you to begin to build your course. I would encourage you to begin to become familiar with the product over the next several months. Take a look at this page which contains free webinars about the Canvas product and look for some professional development opportunities down the road as we move closer to implementation.
INSTITUTIONAL ENGAGEMENT CRUCIAL TO STUDENT SUCCESS
Last week a number of you attended a professional development workshop on the topic of engagement. We discussed four types of engagement including faculty-student, student-student, interpersonal, and institutional. Using the research literature from Chickering and Gamson, Bransford and colleagues, and Ambrose and colleagues (who's book How Learning Works was used in a Faculty Learning Community last semester at BRCC), we were able to discern what areas of engagement would best help us to improve our student success rates. Some of your colleagues wondered about the role of motivation and we were able to watch a TEDx talk from Dr. Scott Geller of Virginia Tech called the psychology of self-motivation. The brief fifteen minute YouTube video delivers a powerful punch that you can begin to use in your classrooms immediately. We also came to the conclusion that there should be a consistent institutional approach to engagement which will take a commitment on the part of all educators and academic support staff to achieve. If we as a community are committed to being flexible, attentive, and empathetic to our student's needs, we believe that our students will begin to succeed in greater numbers.
USING STUDENT RATINGS FOR TEACHING IMPROVEMENT
As you begin to plan for your Mardi Gras break, take some time to plan for the next faculty development opportunity to be held on Thursday, February 26 at 1:00 pm. Interpreting Your Student Ratings and Using Them for Professional Development is the title of the workshop that has been developed in response to your requests. Come and learn how to address student comments about how to address concepts more clearly, how to interpret what is most, more or less important, setting out clear objectives, pacing the class properly, and more. You can register now. For more information, please contact me at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu or 216.8534. This workshop is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
As you know LCTCS has asked for bids for a LMS to be used for all of the system's colleges. Canvas was the LMS selected and the contract was supposed to be signed yesterday. It appears that we will be moving to the new LMS for the Fall 2015 semester. If you visit the Canvas website, they describe themselves as an educational revolution with an industry-pushing platform and millions of satisfied users. I know that our eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy has begun to share some resources with you including a free version of Canvas that will allow you to begin to build your course. I would encourage you to begin to become familiar with the product over the next several months. Take a look at this page which contains free webinars about the Canvas product and look for some professional development opportunities down the road as we move closer to implementation.
INSTITUTIONAL ENGAGEMENT CRUCIAL TO STUDENT SUCCESS
Last week a number of you attended a professional development workshop on the topic of engagement. We discussed four types of engagement including faculty-student, student-student, interpersonal, and institutional. Using the research literature from Chickering and Gamson, Bransford and colleagues, and Ambrose and colleagues (who's book How Learning Works was used in a Faculty Learning Community last semester at BRCC), we were able to discern what areas of engagement would best help us to improve our student success rates. Some of your colleagues wondered about the role of motivation and we were able to watch a TEDx talk from Dr. Scott Geller of Virginia Tech called the psychology of self-motivation. The brief fifteen minute YouTube video delivers a powerful punch that you can begin to use in your classrooms immediately. We also came to the conclusion that there should be a consistent institutional approach to engagement which will take a commitment on the part of all educators and academic support staff to achieve. If we as a community are committed to being flexible, attentive, and empathetic to our student's needs, we believe that our students will begin to succeed in greater numbers.
USING STUDENT RATINGS FOR TEACHING IMPROVEMENT
As you begin to plan for your Mardi Gras break, take some time to plan for the next faculty development opportunity to be held on Thursday, February 26 at 1:00 pm. Interpreting Your Student Ratings and Using Them for Professional Development is the title of the workshop that has been developed in response to your requests. Come and learn how to address student comments about how to address concepts more clearly, how to interpret what is most, more or less important, setting out clear objectives, pacing the class properly, and more. You can register now. For more information, please contact me at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu or 216.8534. This workshop is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
LETS GET ENGAGED
Join us tomorrow for the professional development workshop "Do You Know Who I Am? Creating a Culture of Engagement in your Classes." The session starts at 1:00 pm, is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center, and will be held in 311 Magnolia Building (Mid City Campus). You can register here but feel free to come tomorrow if your schedule changes. We will be discussing the various forms of engagement, which research proves is one of the best methods to enhance student retention and is very effective for creating a sense of community for institutions. If you are looking to add a few new tools to your teaching toolkit, this is a great opportunity for you.
USING DATA TO HELP STUDENTS SUCCEED
Although it’s important to understand effective practices from peer institutions, each institution has a unique culture that needs to be understood in order to help students succeed. At the outset, “most people really couldn’t characterize our student population. We might have had some sense of gender distribution, maybe a little bit about ethnicity, but not a whole lot. So part of it was plodding along, trying to ask very simple questions about our students and adding that to our dataset,” says Margaret Martin, Title III director and sociology professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. Higher education institutions generate a wealth of data that can be used to improve student success, but often the volume of data and lack of analysis prevent this data from having the impact it could have. “I think it’s hard for the general faculty population or administrator population to really have a handle on the data that is really driving decisions,” says Martin. “They don’t get a chance to see it or they just get very infrequent information about it. So there may be too much data, but it’s often not communicated effectively to people in ways that are both understandable and useful to them.” You can continue reading about this topic here.
BECOMING RETENTION SAVVY
Retention is a very important issue in higher education right now. It is not difficult to understand why, when you look at the budget constraints facing colleges like BRCC. The new thinking is that institutions have a responsibility to promote and support student learning and that they should measure their success as institutions based upon how well their students learned. Certainly, students have a great deal of responsibility for their own success, but so does the institution and, by implication, the faculty members. The shift from “teaching” to “learning,” then, is really a shift away from measuring the success of a college or university based upon resources and processes to measuring success based upon outcomes. These imperatives are behind the current drive to collect student success data and to help faculty and staff develop strategies to raise success rates. In short, institutions are turning to their faculties for help in improving upon dismal retention numbers. Want to see what your student retention IQ is? Take the quiz here.
Join us tomorrow for the professional development workshop "Do You Know Who I Am? Creating a Culture of Engagement in your Classes." The session starts at 1:00 pm, is sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center, and will be held in 311 Magnolia Building (Mid City Campus). You can register here but feel free to come tomorrow if your schedule changes. We will be discussing the various forms of engagement, which research proves is one of the best methods to enhance student retention and is very effective for creating a sense of community for institutions. If you are looking to add a few new tools to your teaching toolkit, this is a great opportunity for you.
USING DATA TO HELP STUDENTS SUCCEED
Although it’s important to understand effective practices from peer institutions, each institution has a unique culture that needs to be understood in order to help students succeed. At the outset, “most people really couldn’t characterize our student population. We might have had some sense of gender distribution, maybe a little bit about ethnicity, but not a whole lot. So part of it was plodding along, trying to ask very simple questions about our students and adding that to our dataset,” says Margaret Martin, Title III director and sociology professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. Higher education institutions generate a wealth of data that can be used to improve student success, but often the volume of data and lack of analysis prevent this data from having the impact it could have. “I think it’s hard for the general faculty population or administrator population to really have a handle on the data that is really driving decisions,” says Martin. “They don’t get a chance to see it or they just get very infrequent information about it. So there may be too much data, but it’s often not communicated effectively to people in ways that are both understandable and useful to them.” You can continue reading about this topic here.
BECOMING RETENTION SAVVY
Retention is a very important issue in higher education right now. It is not difficult to understand why, when you look at the budget constraints facing colleges like BRCC. The new thinking is that institutions have a responsibility to promote and support student learning and that they should measure their success as institutions based upon how well their students learned. Certainly, students have a great deal of responsibility for their own success, but so does the institution and, by implication, the faculty members. The shift from “teaching” to “learning,” then, is really a shift away from measuring the success of a college or university based upon resources and processes to measuring success based upon outcomes. These imperatives are behind the current drive to collect student success data and to help faculty and staff develop strategies to raise success rates. In short, institutions are turning to their faculties for help in improving upon dismal retention numbers. Want to see what your student retention IQ is? Take the quiz here.
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