HOW TO WIN A TEACHING AWARD
Have you ever stopped to think about what it takes to win a teaching award? Dr. Stephen Chew has written an interesting essay about just that. He writes, "What, then, is the critical element for teaching success? I say the best teachers are learning driven; their teaching is wholly focused on developing a deep understanding of the subject matter in the minds of their students. This entails much more than presenting information. Learning-driven teachers don’t simply wish or hope their students learn -- they take actions to see that the desired kind of learning takes place. Consciously or not, learning-driven teachers are concerned with an array of factors that influence student learning. For example, they manage the class’s collective attention, monitor metacognitive awareness, respect the constraints of working memory and promote transfer-appropriate processing, even if these teachers are unaware of the formal names of such concepts." Read more here.

HELP FOR UNDER-PREPARED STUDENTS
African-American students’ college readiness is lagging compared with that of other underrepresented students, according to a new report released on Monday by ACT and the United Negro College Fund. Sixty-two percent of African-American students who graduated from high school in 2014 and took the ACT met none of the organization’s four benchmarks that measure college readiness, which was twice the rate for all students. Read more here including suggestions to help the situation.

INSTRUCTOR FOR A DAY
Cengage recently ran a contest asking students what they would do if they could be an instructor for one day. More specifically, they asked them to suggest ways to better engage students. The votes are in, winners have been selected, and you can watch the videos here. Although none of the winning entries were from community college students, many of the ideas are appropriate for all students and types of higher education institutions. You could certainly use this type of assignment in your class to help make a solid connection with your students. Let me know what you think of the videos.

WEB PLATFORM SEEKS TO GIVE STUDENTS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WALL OF TEXT
It’s difficult to keep students engaged — and awake — when assigning them readings from long and often dull textbooks. Two researchers wanted to change that. Their creation is zyBooks, a web-based platform that mixes learning activities such as question sets and animations with some written content, largely as a replacement for text. The idea is that professors can use zyBooks instead of traditional textbooks in order to help students engage with the material and perform better. zyBooks was founded in 2012 by Frank Vahid, a computer-science professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Smita Bakshi, a former assistant professor at the University of California at Davis who is the company’s chief executive. They say the platform is being used by professors at around 250 universities, primarily in courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Read more here.

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
Through explicit instruction and modeling, students can come to recognize the importance of taking brain. By wielding these skills and abilities, students decide where to focus their attention and which tasks to undertake. As a general

charge of their executive functioning in their academic endeavors and later in their careers. Executive functions can be defined as the awareness and directive capacities of the rule of thumb, when students of any age have difficulty completing developmentally appropriate academic tasks on their own, executive functioning may be at the root of the problem. In the human brain, executive functions are primarily regulated by the prefrontal regions (just behind the forehead) of the frontal lobes. Neuroscientists and psychologists have made significant gains in understanding the brain's executive functioning over the past several decades.An appropriate metaphor that often helps students and educators alike understand the role of executive functioning in thinking and behavior is to imagine an orchestra conductor. The conductor chooses what work the orchestra will perform, decides how to interpret that work, sets the tempo for the performance, and directs each section of musicians to contribute at the appropriate time. Read more here.

IS THAT GOING TO BE ON THE TEST?
At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from the book be on the exam?” “How long should the paper be?” “Can we use Google to find references?” “Would you repeat what you just said? I didn’t get it all down in my notes.” Rarely do they ask thoughtful questions that probe the content and stir the interest of the teacher and other students. So, how do we get them to ask better questions? What if we start by asking them the kinds of questions we hope they will ask us? Here are some suggestions that might help us model what good questions are and demonstrate how instrumental they can be in promoting thinking, understanding, and learning. Read more here.

Do you have a no-tech policy in your class? Do you encourage the use of cell phones, tablets, and laptops during your class? There are arguments for both and more faculty seem to be taking sides. Dr. Laura Tropp has an interesting post on her blog about this topic and writes, "It seems that people tend to be divided into two camps: those that have given up (or are adapting to the new technology environment, which sounds better) and let their students use the screens, and those that enact strict rules and policing policies to prevent students from using screens while in the classroom. I have found myself sitting in both camps in the past. This summer, however, I am noticing that those in the former camp are thinking about reverting to a no-technology policy because they think it is interfering with students’ ability to focus and reflect. Clay Shirky, a Professor at NYU who specializes in emerging media technologies, wrote an interesting piece last fall about his new policy to ban all screens in his classes. He even made an intriguing analogy comparing technology in a classroom to second-hand smoke. However, many faculty have responded that banning technology does not work but only creates a deceptive culture in which students slyly sneak their technology use in class." Read the entire post here.

Are you spending part of your summer on a course redesign project or maybe you are focusing your attention on creating a master syllabus. Both of the projects, one small and the other very labor intensive, are worthwhile and lead to many benefits for you and your students. Dr. Vicki Caruana has a nice article in the Faculty Focus online newsletter about how a course map can help you remained focueds on the important outcomes. She writes, "Course mapping, as a step in the curriculum mapping process (Jacobs, 2004), offers faculty new pathways to meet shared outcomes. The five principles of curriculum design (Fink, 2003) inform the development of learning experiences that are structured in such a way that they scaffold student thinking and progressively move them toward the desired course outcomes. A course should: (1) challenge students to higher level learning; (2) use active forms of learning; (3) give frequent and immediate feedback to students on the quality of their learning; (4) use a structured sequence of different learning activities; and (5) have a fair system for assessing and grading students." Read the entire article here.

There is nothing so dispiriting for teacher or for student as a discussion section in which questions fall flat, conversation drifts aimlessly, and a small number of predictable voices predominate. That is the opening sentence of Dr. James Dawes article concerning class discussions. He offers a list of ten strategies to help you bring out the best in your students. Read the entire article here.