TO DO LIST FOR SUMMER
Finals week is upon us and soon we will be preparing for another exciting commencement day (May 22). But there is still work to be done. We all need to submit our grades by Monday (May 18) and while we have prepared and given our finals, there is grading so this weekend may be very busy for many of us. I thought I would continue the end-of-semester theme for you. While many of you are transitioning your online content to the new LMS Canvas, some of you may be too busy for that now. The good news is that Blackboard does not go away until June but then, that is it. Dr. Steve Volk of Oberlin College provides us with an interesting post that is filled with great end-of-semester ideas. One that I particularly like concerns looking back at the semester and judging our progress. Dr. Steve Krause at Eastern Michigan University has a nice post also. One of my favorite quotes from his post is this gem, "When I was growing up, my mother—who, like me, was a “contingent” professor—would sequester herself for days to grade, emerging Medusa-haired and demanding of sympathy. But the older I got, the more that sympathy dissipated: “If you hate grading papers so much,” I’d say, “there’s an easy solution for that.” My mother, not to be trifled with when righteously indignant (that favored state of the professoriate), would snap: “It’s an English class. I can’t not assign papers.” Be at peace and send me your thoughts.

BEST USE OF YOUR CLOUD
So that brings us to another topic that is top-of-mind at this time. How and where are we going to store all of our electronic data and files? Hopefully you are using one of the Teaching+Learning Center USBs that I have been distributing but that is mainly for things you use frequently. The cloud is the obvious place that you want to save things, especially long-term. EdTech, the epublication that focuses on technology used by higher education, has an informative article about using the full potential of the cloud. Take a look here for more information.

ACADEMIC ADVISING TOPIC
A report recently released by the William T. Grant Foundation sheds some light on how we can best advise our students about alternative paths to the baccalaureate. This new research indicates progress on the access front, but many unexpected obstacles (lack of counseling, confusing choices, chaotic schedules) that contribute to students failing to complete.  While 37 percent of on-time high school graduates enrolled in a community college with the intention of getting a bachelor's degree, nearly half drop out within eight years often taking on debt and gaining no wage advantage from the experience. Just 33 percent of community college students earn an associate degree in eight years, the report found. Read more here.