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.