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."