GOOD HABITS FOR INSTRUCTORS
Julie DuNeen has written an interesting piece about the habits of successful teachers. She writes, "If you ask a student what makes him or her successful in school, you probably won’t hear about some fantastic new book or video lecture series. Most likely you will hear something like, it was all Mr. Jones. He just never gave up on me. What students take away from a successful education usually centers on a personal connection with a teacher who instilled passion and inspiration for their subject. It’s difficult to measure success, and in the world of academia, educators are continually re-evaluating how to quantify learning. But the first and most important question to ask is: Are teachers reaching their students? Here are 25 things successful educators do differently.

IS COURSE REDESIGN FOR YOU

At the height of the buzz around MOOCs and flipped classrooms three years ago, Bridget Ford worried that administrators might try to replace her introductory history course with a batch of videos. She agreed that something should change: Drop-outs and failures were high in the 200-person class—at about 13 percent. But the assistant professor of history at California State University at East Bay wanted something less drastic than giving up on live lectures entirely. Looking through a collection of teaching portfolios by her colleagues helped reassure her that she could redesign her course while preserving what worked about the classroom experience. Plenty of colleagues on other campuses were wrestling with the same question, she saw in the portfolios, and they were finding ways that tried new approaches without throwing out the old completely—call it turning the class on its side rather than making a full flip. For her, that meant reducing the amount of lecture time and spending part of class sessions on team-based projects. “It was helpful to me to see that my field wasn’t an outlier in arriving at a middle ground,” she says. Continue reading here.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR REST
As we approach the final exam period, reminding your students about good study habits that lead to success is important. Many students are still under the impression that cramming or "pulling an all-nighter" is the way to learn. Here is an article that focuses on how rest can actually make you perform better on assessments. It begins, "Sleep is critical for mind and body health. Without it, the effects can be severe. But what if you suffer from insomnia? Neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre provides seven healthy tips for a better night’s sleep."

CAN LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES HELP
Many students struggle with early college courses—whether developmental courses preparing them for college-level math and English or introductory courses in subjects like biology, psychology and business. Colleges and universities concerned with high failure rates in these courses are exploring how new learning technologies, like courseware that delivers and personalizes instructional content, can help faculty adapt the learning experience to the needs of individual students. So what do we know about these learning technologies? Find out here.

IT'S NOT THE DEBT
There is a lot of talk these days about student debt and the challenges that families face managing this burden. Rightfully so, particularly at a time when too many families are struggling with flat wages and rising costs. But the discussion of a debt crisis often fails to address what I would argue is the greater crisis: the fact that more than half of those who start college fail to finish. Think about it: Tens of millions of people in the US are saddled with student debt and have no degree to help pay it off. They won’t get the substantial return on their investment—graduates with a bachelor’s degree earn about $1 million more in additional income over their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma—and they typically have not developed the adaptive learning skills that will help them prosper in a rapidly changing economy. See what Michael Crow, President of Arizona State says next here.

BEAR BRIEFS
Did you know that students are more likely to view your content pages if it includes a video? Take a look at this.

“It’s estimated most human beings only use 10% of their brains’ capacity,” said Morgan Freeman–playing a well-known neurologist in the film Lucy. See what follows here.

NEW CANVAS CAPABILITY
Canvas, our open online learning management system, recently announced the immediate availability of a new annotation feature in its mobile application. This new functionality allows students to open, annotate, and submit an assignment directly within Canvas. Historically this has been accomplished through a third-party app, which can create an additional expense for our students. Providing one platform where all of these capabilities reside eliminates the need for students to buy additional software and reduces the need for paper, both cost saving actions. The mobile annotation feature allows instructors to spend less time demonstrating procedures for moving and transitioning digital assignments and more time teaching. Digitizing assignments inside Canvas also allows instructors to grade assignments using the Canvas SpeedGrader. Read more here.

ENGAGEMENT IN THE ELEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Learning is about personal relationships. Deep learning doesn’t happen through reading or rote memorization online any more than in the physical world. It is the experiences and meaningful conversations (or maybe human interactions) within a course that enable students to critically reflect, and deepen their learning. All too often, online students feel isolated, which can decrease motivation and increase attrition. When learning occurs entirely through computer-mediated instruction, professors often overlook simple steps like asking participants to introduce themselves. Details like asking your students to create a video introduction to a class can have a powerful impact. Video-based introductions can help develop a community of learners more quickly than simply posting text on a discussion board. Students who are in courses with introductory videos have been shown to actively participate in online discussions very early in the course. And research shows that learners who are more engaged and have higher levels of interaction, have higher success rates. Read more here.

THE FEEDBACK IS FOR YOU
The classroom is a non-stop hub of feedback: test grades, assignment scores, paper comments, peer review, individual conferences, nonverbal cues, and more. Feedback is essential for student learning. Still, students’ ability to process and use feedback varies widely. We have some students who eagerly accept feedback or carefully apply rough draft comments, while many others dread or dismiss their professors’ notes or reject exam grades as “unfair.” Although feedback is integral to our classrooms and work spaces, we often forget to teach students how to manage it. Two Harvard law professors, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, argue that identifying different kinds of feedback is a good place to start. Continue reading here.

DOES YOUR MAJOR MATTER
Since we are about to open registration for the Spring 2017 semester, I thought you might like related to that topic. June Y. Chu has an interesting take on student majors. "As an adviser to college-age students, it could be easy for me to say major in what you love and be done. Research shows that employers often recruit for transferable skills, and there is no direct correlation between one’s major and career. In fact, Forbes magazine has presented research findings indicating that only 27 percent of college graduates are working in a job that relates to their major. Google the phrase “Does your major matter?” and you will find that most articles out there succinctly state, “Nope, doesn’t matter.” Yet, sometimes, it does. To be better advisers, we need to consider the cultural baggage a student brings to a conversation when discussing their major."

NO LAUGHING MATTER
If you were not able to attend the classroom management faculty development session yesterday, we missed you. The good news is there are more sessions planned, so I encourage you to take a look at the events calendar. One of the topics we discussed was the use of humor in the classroom. Mary Bart offers her take on this teaching technique in a new post. She writes, "I am still pretty regularly criticized for my use of humor—I have been known to use too much. The long-standing objection is that education is serious business. It’s no laughing matter. Our goal is education; not entertainment. Writing about the history of humor in the classroom, Debra Korobkin notes that before the 20^th century, “collectively, teachers perceived instructing with a sense of humor as unprofessional, uncontrolled, and undignified.” (p. 154) Use humor and don’t expect to be taken as a serious professional. Some of that thinking still lingers today." Continue reading here.

DECODING THE BRAIN
Scientists can now map what happens neurologically when new information influences a person to change his or her mind, a finding that offers more insight into the mechanics of learning according to a recent research paper. "At a fundamental level, it is difficult to measure what someone knows," said co-author and psychology associate professor Alison Preston. "In our new paper, we employ brain decoding techniques that allow us deeper insight into the knowledge people have available to make decisions. We were able to measure when a person's knowledge changes to reflect new goals or opinions." The process, researchers said, involves two components of the brain working together to update and "bias" conceptual knowledge with new information to form new ideas. Continue reading here.

AN ARMY OF ONE
Karin Fischer says if you want to find a model that works for low-income students, look no further than the armed services in the U.S. Was Daniel M. Piston college material? A decade ago, as a high-school student in Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Piston didn’t think so. He lacked focus. His grades were so-so. And it wasn’t like he was surrounded by college graduates; of his family, only his mother had earned an associate degree. "The truth is," Mr. Piston says, "I didn’t think I was smart enough for college." After finishing high school, he signed up for an automotive-technology program at nearby Onondaga Community College — a similar course his senior year was the first thing he had been any good at, he says — but, still unmoored, he dropped out after two semesters. He found himself on the doorstep of the local Navy recruiter. The Navy promised excitement, and it offered something else: a life path. Continue reading here.

PLEASE SEE ME
It all began with a simple message that I wrote on the tests or assignments of students who were struggling: “Please see me so we can discuss your performance on the test (or assignment). Let’s see what we can do to improve your grade.” Although initially I was not collecting data on the effectiveness of my “invitation,” I soon realized that most of students—about 80 percent—responded to it. Notably, those who met with me began to do better on future tests; their assignments improved as well. When students did not respond to my invitation, after about a week I reached out to them with a simple email. Some responded, some did not. Over time it became difficult to ignore the benefits of having those meetings with students who were struggling. I think the most important message of these meetings was to convey to them that they were not simply a name in my gradebook but that I really cared about their learning and their success. Continue reading here.

STUDENT SUCCESS IN INNOVATIVE LEARNING
As we continue to broaden the innovative learning opportunities, it is always important to remember that student success is as important as providing scheduling options for our students. Rob Kelly has written an interesting article on this topic. He says, "Offering different kinds of courses is not a simple matter of taking the content and dividing it in ways to fill an unusual time slot. Imagine converting a lecture-based course that normally meets three times a week to a block format that consists of a single four-hour session. The instructor might be a great lecturer, but it’s unlikely that he or she could engage students for hours at a time. “There is a world of difference, or there should be a world of difference, between teaching a class that meets three times a week for fifty minutes, teaching that same class that meets once a week from eight until noon, teaching that class in an accelerated format that meets three or four days a week, or teaching it online,” Glenn says. “As we get better at offering these different formats, hopefully we get better at delivering the instruction in these formats.” Continuing reading here.

HOW TO MONOTASK
Here is an interesting article about the battle for attention that our reading assignments face. Stop what you’re doing. Well, keep reading. Just stop everything else that you’re doing. Mute your music. Turn off your television. Put down your sandwich and ignore that text message. While you’re at it, put your phone away entirely. (Unless you’re reading this on your phone. In which case, don’t. But the other rules still apply.) Just read. You are now monotasking. Maybe this doesn’t feel like a big deal. Doing one thing at a time isn’t a new idea. Indeed, multitasking, that bulwark of anemic résumés everywhere, has come under fire in recent years. A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that interruptions as brief as two to three seconds — which is to say, less than the amount of time it would take you to toggle from this article to your email and back again — were enough to double the number of errors participants made in an assigned task.

DISCOVERING WHAT WORKS IN STUDENT LEARNING
Here is an interesting story about faculty-led solutions to student learning issues. "The long search for an answer to one of higher education’s most pressing questions led here, to the basement of a bistro outside Hartford. What do students really learn in college? To find answers, about 20 faculty members from Central Connecticut State University came to spend the waning days of summer break analyzing hundreds of samples of students’ work. Carl R. Lovitt, their provost, gave them a pep talk over bagels and coffee: "You are engaged in work of meaningful national significance." Academe has been pilloried for decades, he said, for its lack of accountability. This project could remedy that. It’s the kind of acronym-heavy, jargon-laced endeavor that’s easily overlooked. But by measuring students’ intellectual skills, it might turn out to provide telling insight into one of higher education’s central functions." Keep reading

UPCOMING FACULTY DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS
There are a number of faculty development events coming up. The first is this Wednesday at 4:00 pm. Turnitin is offering a free webinar on how to use the Quickmarks feature to give students really useful feedback. Register here. On Tuesday, October 25 at 3:00 pm, the Teaching+Learning Center's Canvas Series continues with a session on the use of Gradebook. Register now. In response to your request, the Teaching+Learning Center will host a session on classroom management on November 3 at 3:00 pm. You can register now for that session. For those of you looking to build and keep an engaging classroom experience, the Teaching+Learning Center will host a session on November 29 at 3:00 pm. You can reserve your spot now. If you are looking for a specific faculty development topic, please let me know. If you would like to have a private consultation, please send me an email request at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu.

WE WANT YOUR OPINION
Faculty Learning Communities have proven to be a great way to deliver professional development at BRCC but the residual effect is even more impactful as colleagues share ideas discovered during the FLC sessions with office-mates and others. We are now planning for the next round of FLCs for the fall 2016 semester. If you have not yet participated in the survey to determine the best time and days to meet, I encourage you do it now. Besides being a great way to explore new pedagogy, you will inevitably make a connection with a colleague from another division that will quickly turn into a new friendship. Building community is just a lucky byproduct of FLCs. Look for more information about FLCs next week.

NEED A BRAIN TUNEUP?
Dr. Lori Desautels writes, "When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. A brain break is a short period of time when we change up the dull routine of incoming information that arrives via predictable, tedious, well-worn roadways. A focused-attention practice is a brain exercise for quieting the thousands of thoughts that distract and frustrate us each day." Here are some strategies you can use in your classes now.

COME ONE, COME ALL
Rick Sheridan has a great article suggesting ways we can improve student attendance. He writes, "The general consensus among most faculty members is that regular class attendance helps students learn and retain the course content more effectively. According to Park & Kerr (1990), research demonstrates that the lack of attendance was statistically significant in explaining why a student received a poor grade." To see his suggestions, click here.

CHANGING HOW WE THINK
We have shared research here in the past about how the brain learns. Rachel Barry explains that she spent her summer reading John Medina's Brain Rules. She writes, "This book helped me to understand how our brain works and how our societal norms tend to go against the natural inclinations of the human brain. I also never realized how much I was creating my own frustrations: in work, school, and life. This book both confirmed and contradicted some of my beliefs and practices, providing years of research and clear examples to back their opinions." Click here to learn more about her thoughts on the book.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TIPS
It is about that time in the semester when some of our students discover that missing class is very detrimental to their grades and success. They often ask to meet and talk about how they can catch up. My answer is always the same. Get organized. I then help them do just that by showing them how to create a schedule on their cellphone or in their planner. I encourage them to spend some time writing down everything that they do during the week. I do this to help them discover free time that can then be used for studying. I also do this to illustrate that they are usually overestimating the time they thing they are spending preparing for classes. That is another thing. We need to remind them from time to time that the reading we require is actually a big part of their learning process and that class time should really be more about questions for clarification. Earlier this week I sent you a student success tip that I called the Weight Watcher approach to time management. I encourage you to take another look at that especially when your students come in and complain that they don't have enough time to be successful. Everything is a teachable moment.

WHAT IS TEACHING AND LEARNING
Dale Schlundt asks us to "consider the lessons we learn without being fully aware they are taking place. Take something simple, such as walking into a new building for the first time. With everyone and everything you observe, your mind is giving you feedback based on a multitude of judgments. These impressions, while sometimes incorrect, come to us with little effort. Yet they could loosely be considered teaching and learning without calling it either. I have found this to be a fruitful concept from a pedagogical standpoint. How many of us actively question this point to ourselves, “What am I teaching students, and what are they learning?” To continue reading his post, click here.

Foundational or “soft” skills occupy an unusual position in the debate over America’s workforce. Employers say these skills are hard to find, but they are also notoriously hard to define. Soft skills are called crucial and then treated dismissively in the next breath, as if these were abilities any child should have. “Works well with others” is a cliché on a school report card, but businesses grind to a halt when employees can’t meet deadlines, treat customers with respect, or waste time scrambling to properly format a document. Take a look at what employers want in the full report.

Regardless of their credentials, many freshmen doubt that they have the necessary brainpower or social adeptness to succeed in college. This fear of failing hits poor, minority and first-generation college students especially hard. If they flunk an exam, or a professor doesn’t call on them, their fears about whether they belong may well be confirmed. The cycle of doubt becomes self-reinforcing, and students are more likely to drop out. The good news is that this dismal script can be rewritten. Several recent research projects show that, with the right nudge, students can acquire ways of thinking that helps them thrive. Continue reading here.

Have you ever wondered if your students are as concerned about their learning as you are? If you prioritize student learning, you may be the only person in your classroom with that goal. Learning-centered teachers seek to coauthor classroom experiences with their students, whereas students may seek only to be taught passively. How might you inspire your students to share accountability for their learning? These five considerations can help you teach your students to be learning centered, too. Continue reading here.

Alana Joli Abbott  writes, "It can be frustrating to face a classroom of college students who appear uninterested in the material and topic of the course, or to ask a question of the class and receive only silence in response. How can you increase class participation? Engaging students in learning can be a challenge, but there are many techniques you can use to grab the attention of your college students and hold their interest. In some cases, you can integrate elements of pop culture into their assignments." Continue reading here.

James Lang writes, "I have always been less concerned about those students than with the collateral damage they’re causing. If students choose to distract themselves in my classroom, they will find a way to do so whether they have a laptop or not. The real problem arises from their ability to distract others who may be trying valiantly to pay attention and learn but whose eyes are continually drawn to the video playing on their neighbor’s laptop." Continue reading here.

David Gooblar writes, "So much of the work that goes into teaching is necessarily invisible. Nobody sees your best teaching days — when everything clicks, when you get your class to truly see the world differently — except for the students in the room. Most of us don’t teach for plaudits, but it’s a shame that our best work in the classroom is usually unseen by our peers and superiors. It’s also a shame that those of us who want to improve as teachers don’t get the benefit of learning directly from excellent teachers in our fields." Continue reading here.

What will higher education look like in 2025 or 2100? Those are two of the questions the faculty asked recently at Stanford University. They were specifically looking at the student experience and how they imagined it will change. In their own words, "A design team from the Stanford d.school worked with hundreds of perceptive, creative, and generous students, faculty, and administrators over the course of a year to explore this territory." The project culminated in Stanford2025, an online and in-person exhibit on higher education circa 2025, imagined from the perspective of the year 2100. One of the project's leaders, Kelly Schmutte, said, "The world is rapidly changing, and the types of leaders and citizens that we need to be graduating are changing. Our problems are more challenging and ambiguous." Read more here.

Larry Ferlazzo is an educationalist who strongly believes that we should be helping all students become self-regulated learners. In his new book Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond, he provides research on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and describes the four qualities that have been identified as critical to helping students motivate themselves: autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance. He says, "A high-quality relationship with a teacher whom they respect is a key element of helping students develop intrinsic motivation." Read more here.

Students who frequently check their grades throughout the semester tend to get better marks than do those who look less often. That’s one of the findings from a new study by Blackboard, a company that sells course-management software to hundreds of colleges. It’s probably one of the deepest data dives ever done on student clicks on college web systems, analyzing aggregate data from 70,000 courses at 927 colleges and universities in North America during the spring 2016 semester. The promise: Big data could lead to insights on how to keep struggling students on track, or at least let professors test their long-held assumptions about student habits. Read more here or listen to the podcast.

Here is a great way to start your semester off right. Make a few resolutions and stick to them. We can always improve our teaching toolkit and David Gooblar shares his ideas in this article. I really like his suggestions and have adopted them for my class. Let me know what you think.

"When given a reading assignment, some students feel they have met their obligation if they have forced their eyes to ‘touch’ (in appropriate sequence) each word on the pages assigned. How can we entice students to read the material we assign, and how do we help them develop strategies for deep comprehension and retention of the material? Are there subtle ways we can prod them to read and help them develop literary skills—without spending our own precious time explicitly teaching ‘reading?" Find out in this article by Dr. Maryellen Weimer.

"I firmly believe that there is a direct correlation between what we expect of our students and what we get. We know that higher expectations generate greater learning. But we also know that higher expectations alone are not sufficient. Greater learning also results from support — support that can be provided, for example, by college-success courses in which common readings are often used." See what else Dr. John Gardner has to say about student success.

Joshua Kim's post on where our focus should be in college classrooms is very insightful. Of the three recommendations he makes, I am happy to say we are actually working on all three. Not as efficiently as we could if we had more resources but nevertheless all three are foci. Kim writes, "Teaching and learning are core to the mission and operation of (almost) every college and university. An erosion of the relative quality in teaching and learning, (as compared to peer schools or emerging competitors), will eventually result in an inability to compete for students, faculty, and funding." Continue reading here.

Ready for the semester to begin? No really, we are starting August 22. Did I just hear a few screams? The first day of the semester always seems to sneak up on us. Sims Wyeth has a good post on how we can increase the impact of our opening remarks. You know, the stuff you say every first day of class. It turns out that students form a really strong opinion of us on that first day and it may not change much over the course of the semester. He writes, "It turns out that our first impressions are not altogether accurate. Scientists call our tendency to leap to judgment the Fundamental Attribution Error. Nevertheless, as speakers, we can take advantage of this human frailty. When we step to the front of the room to deliver a presentation and all eyes are on us, we can take control using the tools at our disposal: physical, vocal, and verbal skills meant to capture the mind of the listener." Continue reading here.

Traditionally we make resolutions around the first of the year. But what if we made resolutions tied to each of our new semesters. Adjustments and corrections based on critical self-reflection are what I am talking about. David Gooblar provides us with a good start and writes, "The real new year in academe— the time for new beginnings and fresh starts — comes now, in August. I’ve had time away from the classroom to recharge my batteries and to forget about teaching for a while. I want to be a better teacher this year than I was last year. August is my month of big plans, of good intentions, of new leaves ready to be turned over." Continue reading here.

When Alice E. Marwick, an assistant professor of media studies at Fordham University, assigned her social-media class to create a post on BuzzFeed, the instructions were simple: Go viral. Several students nailed the assignment, collecting more than 50,000 hits on their listicles and quizzes — BuzzFeed’s bread-and-butter articles. One student devised a quiz on She’s the Man, a quirky romantic comedy from 2006, that surpassed 250,000 page views in mere days, surprising the student and leaving her professor and classmates in awe. Ms. Marwick is one of several professors using BuzzFeed’s free publishing platform in its community section for class assignments. The section is open to anybody who wants to create a post, and instructors are using it to teach a variety of subjects, including marketing, creative writing, human development, and even the work of the ancient Roman poet Ovid. Continue reading here.

Take a look at Antonio Tooley's post if you are asking your students to do a research paper. He notes, "Writing a research paper does not actually take long at all. Your students can do a 10-page paper in one day if they really knuckle down and get going. The most annoying things about this academic assignment are at the beginning and the end of the process: the research and the bibliography. Your students will seldom find all the information they need in one database. When they do have enough information, they then have to wade through hundreds of pages of obfuscating language that academics love to use to get a couple of pages of useful material. Once they have the ample resource materials to back their arguments, students then need to “bag it and tag it” in preparation for the citations and references." Read more here.

When failing lessons need to be abandoned, it's time to implement a sponge. Madeline Hunter originated the term sponge activities to describe "learning activities that soak up precious time that would otherwise be lost." The best sponges are academically rich and provoke laughter. Nicholas Ferroni says that laughter activates dopamine and the learning centers of the brain.So give your students a dopamine snack when they finish the test earlier than expected or when the Wi-Fi goes out. Download the list of sponge learning experiences.

Joshua Kim asks, "Is there really a war on lecturing going on across higher ed?  Do learning professionals want to kill the lecture? Read Christine Gross-Loh’s Atlantic piece, Should Colleges Really Eliminate the College Lecture?, and you would be forgiven in thinking that there is and that we do. The anti-lecture cadre is characterized as comparing the traditional lecture to "bloodletting—an outdated practice that has long been in need of radical reform". This story makes for a neat argument. Who has not experienced the power of a transformative lecture?  Who would not support the need for professors to “model the art of argument”? And who is not critical of the tendency of educational pundits and administrators to blindly follow the latest educational fads? Let me be very clear.  There exists no campaign - no organized plot or plan - to eliminate the college lecture.  There is a movement across many schools to improve learning.  The lecture is, and always will be, part of the mix of a rich and varied learning ecosystem." Continue reading here.

Now that you’ve finished assessing your students, it’s time to turn the assessment process around by looking in the mirror. If you limped across the finish line last semester, it may be time to identify some new strategies for self-care. In our “Tending the Teacher” session at the recent Teaching Professor Conference in Washington, D.C., we presented a menu of ideas to help faculty design a balanced and productive work life.  Here are our top tips.

Aubree Evans writes, "Let’s face it, most faculty were good students and always did well in school. For students, having a professor who is adept at learning can be inspiring. But what if academic work comes so naturally to faculty that they have trouble relating to the average student? I’ve worked with several faculty members who fall into this category. “Rose,” a business professor, stands out in my memory. When I suggested that she break her online course into modules to make the weekly tasks more manageable for students, she was baffled. “Everything is in the syllabus!” she responded. She then explained that when she was in college, she began each course by carefully reading the syllabus and organizing the assignments into a schedule that she diligently followed throughout the semester. It didn’t make sense to Rose to repeat that information again in modules. When I suggested that school must have come easily to her, she agreed. However, our university serves many students who don’t have much experience with academic learning strategies that may come naturally to faculty." Continue reading here.

A Clemson University psychology professor has published research revealing a positive link between mood, motivation and physical activity during work and study. June J. Pilcher, alumni distinguished professor of psychology, studied the cognitive effects of physical activity workstations and traditional desks on Clemson student volunteers. The results of the study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggest the inclusion of light physical activity during work or study has positive effects without detracting from work or study effectiveness. Pilcher wanted to determine whether or not the positive benefits associated with light exercise could be attained while working in sedentary environments. According to Pilcher, working in sedentary environments might not be harmful in the short term, but this type of behavior is related to long-term chronic disease and physical frailty.

If you are looking to increase participation in classroom discussion, you should take a look at this three part post from Lolita Paff. She shares several methods from the research literature that may prove useful in your classes. She writes, "Whether a teacher incorporates protocols, empty rewards, or signals, the key to engaging interactions that advance learning is students’ role in setting and administering the process. Shared control promotes shared responsibility for learning. The teacher isn’t dictating rules about participation. The teacher isn’t solely responsible for ensuring the discussions are successful."

Teaching has completely become a different ball game with the adoption of modern tools of education technology that have been incorporated in classrooms all over the world. There are quite a few positive changes that have come into effect but even though technology has been seeping slowly into the world of education, there are people who are still in the dark about the advantages of technology in teaching. Let’s have a look at some of the ways technology can impact teaching and how it can connect students from all over the world to a global classroom. Continue reading here.

TECHNOLOGY PROMOTES REAL WORLD SKILLS
Meg Conlan has a good article about how using technology in the college classroom (F2F and virtually) is preparing students for the real world after graduation. She writes, "Landing that first post-grad job may be difficult, but many college seniors think they’ve got the digital skills employers want, thanks to their time on campus. That insight comes from McGraw-Hill Education’s third annual Workforce Readiness Survey, which states that 52 percent of students surveyed believe that their use of technology during college classes and study sessions will help them secure a job."

HOW TO WRITE THAT PERFECT TEST QUESTION
Assessment tools offer tremendous advantages to both the instructor and the learner, and are thus an important part of instructional design. Despite their importance, developing quality assessments is not as simple or straightforward as one might think. A great deal of care needs to go into developing quality assessments to ensure that the question actually assesses the target knowledge rather than something else, such as test-taking skills. Additionally, the instructor needs to remain open to revising questions based on learner performance—if all students get a single question wrong or right, both are considered poor questions and both should be removed from the test because they’re actually not testing anything. Thus, instructors need to pay attention to student performance on each individual testing item to ensure each one is doing its job of actually assessing the target knowledge. Are you looking to improve your test-question writing skills. Here is an article with some basic tips.

GROUP WORK PROVIDES GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
Dr. Lindsay Doukopoulos notes, "Teaching first-semester freshmen presents some unique challenges. You are teaching them not only your subject, but also how to be college students. One of the best strategies I have found is to begin with a collaborative project that asks them to research their new home: the campus." Read the entire article here.

MOTIVATING ONLINE STUDENTS
It seems that we talk a lot about motivation but it truly is such a complex topic that it needs lots of study. Michelle Pacansky-Brock provides the latest bit of thought on this topic and how it specifically impacts students taking courses online. She writes, "It’s not a fixed trait that some humans either have or don’t have. Rather, motivation is more like water; its qualities are impacted by other forces. Water can be serene and glass-like one day and rough and choppy the next, depending on factors like the weather or the number and type of boats in use. Motivation is similarly influenced by outside factors." Continue reading here. 

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE MIDDLE SKILLS WORKPLACE
In the next year alone, an estimated 2.5 million middle-skill jobs will be added to the workforce, accounting for a whopping 40 percent of all job growth. These professions — welders, pharmacy technicians, paralegals, automotive technicians, and aviation workers— offer a solid pathway to the middle class yet require less training than a traditional four-year degree. Still, these jobs require a specialized skill-set which is usually provided by community colleges. Dawn Gerrain has written an article for Educause Review on this topic. Read more here.

USING GAMIFICATION TO IMPROVE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Gamification was one of the topics we discussed in the Creating Self-Regulated Learners Faculty Learning Community today. Many faculty have successfully implemented gamification techniques and the research shows that it can be highly effective. One of the areas that has shown improvement is student engagement with the course material and participation in discussions. Barata, Gama, Jorge, and Gonçalves provide some good examples in their Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification article. Stott and Neustaedteris provide a good review of existing literature on the subject as well as a case study on three different applications of gamification in the post-secondary setting. As in all course redesign it will take some time to add gamification, but the research literature seems to be demonstrating that it can improve student success.

PEER FEEDBACK IS A TWO WAY STREET
If you were ever dissatisfied with the quality of peer feedback in your classes, Christina Moore's article can definitely help you and, most importantly, help your students offer and receive better feedback from their colleagues.She writes, "I started teaching students that peer review is a two-way street. Getting useful feedback depends on how students frame their requests for it. Developing this skill not only teaches students how to receive effective feedback, but also gets them in the habit of reflecting on and analyzing their work."

MAKING LEARNING RELEVANT
Are you considering how you can create opportunities for students to apply course content outside the classroom? The IDEA Center has a great paper on this topic. Here is a brief excerpt. Although there are many examples in academia, nursing education offers one of the clearest examples of applying course content outside the classroom. Learning content in the classroom is supplemented with field-based application, in some cases, from the very first courses in a nursing program. Nursing students complete many hours working in hospitals alongside licensed nurses to apply their learning and sharpen their skills. And it doesn’t take a nurse educator to understand that this learning outside the classroom is vital to a nursing student’s education. No one would want to be treated by a nurse that only had classroom experience!

CREATING ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES ONLINE
Creating online courses doesn’t end at uploading videos to your site and getting enrollments. As an online educator, you need to ensure that your students are actively participating in your course and getting real value out of it. This will pay off in the long run as people come to recognize your course as the most valuable in the market. In this post, Dr. Eileen McGurty, an expert in online education, shares her strategies for boosting participation in online courses.

BEST PRACTICES FOR ONLINE RESPONSE RATES
Now that you have finished posting your grades, it is time to take a look at your student rating report. This can be accessed using your Canvas account. As I have said in the past, taking a look today and then putting it away for a week will help give you some perspective. The next time you take a look, really open yourself up to "hear" your student's perspective. The IDEA Center also has some sage advice ON THIS TOPIC in this paper.

ACTIVE LEARNING WEBINAR MAY HELP YOU GET STARTED
Implementing active learning is a fantastic way to liven up discussions and encourage higher-level thinking. But what does active learning look like in practice? Shawn Orr, Manager of Faculty Training & Engagement at Cengage Learning, recently led a webinar on this very topic, in which she shared strategies she uses to get her students enthusiastically participating.  You can access the webinar here.

TAKE A RISK TO INVIGORATE YOURSELF
Do you consider yourself a risk taker? Some of us would like to try new things but assume that it may be overwhelming or not worth the effort. Karine Veldhoen has a blog post that encourages us to take the risk. She writes, "Pedagogy is the method or practice of teaching an academic subject or theoretical concept. We are pedagogues, yet we can always try new methods or practices and take risks. It will be out of our comfort zone and might even be scary. We won't feel like an expert, but it might be exhilarating, and who knows what our potential is? What new pedagogy can you risk? Project-based learning? A new technology? A different assessment method? Student-led conferences?" Read the entire post here.

SUMMER OPPORTUNITY FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
If you are looking to spend some time this summer enhancing your teaching toolkit, the Teaching+Learning Center will be hosting a Faculty Learning Community (FLC). The topic will include strategies to strengthen students' self-awareness and learning skills. We will meet five times at a date and time to be determined by the FLC membership and will use Dr. Linda Nilson's book Creating Self-Regulated Learners (which will be provided by the Teaching+Learning Center). If you are interested in participating or need additional information, please send an email to pourciaut@mybrcc.edu.

DISRUPTING OURSELVES: THE PROBLEM OF LEARNING IN HIGHER ED

Dr. Randy Bass has written a thought provoking post about the intersection of what we know about teaching and the application of that knowledge to enhance learning. A growing appreciation for the porous boundaries between the classroom and life experience, along with the power of social learning, authentic audiences, and integrative contexts, has created not only promising changes in learning but also disruptive moments in teaching. Our understanding of learning has expanded at a rate that has far outpaced our conceptions of teaching. This tension between an expansion of learning and the limits of our structures is intrinsic to the learning paradigm. Read the entire post here.

WHERE IS ONLINE EDUCATION HEADING

Yoram Neumann and Edith Neumann tell us what we have learned about online education over the past few decades. In its infancy, online learning was viewed as a more accessible alternative for students unable to commit to the traditional higher education path. But in recent years online education has been gaining more acceptance. The most recent U.S. Department of Education data from fall 2014 indicate that 5.8 million students took at least one online course, with 2.85 million of them studying exclusively online. After thousands of online launches and millions of students, it is important to assess the advancement made in online learning as we look to further enhance online learning for future students. Read more here.

STEM LEARNING CYCLE
Most of you are familiar with the active learning paradigm that encourages students to listen, write, read, discuss, and apply new knowledge so that it becomes part of their long-term memories. Dr. Rodger Bybee and his colleagues have come up with a similar pedagogy based on teaching in the sciences. It is called the 5E Learning Cycle and is based on the constructivist view of learning. The five E's are engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. Using this process allows the instructor to identify and challenge students' misconceptions and provide students time to explore, investigate, and reconstruct their knowledge. You can learn more about this process in the article Which Comes First-Language or Content? in the Science Teacher magazine (April/May 2016).

HELPING STUDENTS LEARN ONLINE
When teaching in a traditional classroom, we are often able to assess how our students learning best through observation, low-stakes feedback, or by using active learning methods. So how does that work in an online environment? Adrienne Erin has an interesting post about just that. "Different Learning Styles: How to balance your eLearning program" describes the way different learners might be motivated to learn. She notes, "Learners work alone, in groups or with instructors. Interactions with others are either synchronous or asynchronous. Because of its open-ended nature, eLearning has exceptional advantages. Learners can be located anywhere in the world, as long as an ISP is available." Read more here. To learn more about the dual coding theory, click here.

IT'S JUST A TEST
With the final exam period beginning on Monday, you may notice that your students are more tense and anxious. This is certainly understandable as they struggle to indicate to you what they have learned and how they can apply it. Dr. Maryellen Weimer has posted an informational piece about how you can help your students lower their anxiety and produce their best work. She writes, " Teachers can’t cure test anxiety. But they can offer remedies that students should be encouraged to try. Information about good study strategies should be included in every course. Sometimes that information is more persuasive if it comes from fellow classmates. Discussion of the study strategies used for the test ought to be part of the debrief session." Read more here.

WATER COOLER TALK
When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always get the same response: “Oh, a colleague told me about it.” I continue to be amazed by the amount of pedagogical knowledge that is shared verbally (and electronically) between colleagues. And I’m equally impressed by the spirit of sharing. Even if it’s an idea I thought up myself, one I’ve spent time and energy developing that I could ostensibly copyright or patent, if you want to use it—go right ahead. It’s yours. There are no intellectual property rights on good teaching ideas, and that’s a beautiful part of our culture. So writes Dr. Maryellen Weimer in a new post about pedagogy sharing. You can read the entire post here.

THE BLENDED WAY TO SUCCESS
Did you know that blended courses, that meet face-to-face and online throughout the week, have some of the highest completion rates and students report that they are very effective at helping them learn? Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti has an interesting post about blended courses and offers, "Think about what it takes to make a blended learning class successful. Of course, you need a faculty member who is able to teach the course, a robust set of learning objectives, a clear instructional design that integrates both the online and face-to-face aspects, and the instructional content required to successfully teach the course. But you also need support of librarians who can help students with varied types of assignments, academic advisors who can effectively counsel students into the right kind of blended course for their learning style, plus various student support services that can help students with variable campus attendance requirements navigate registration, book purchase, and payment. Indeed, the decision to offer a blended course or program can influence the entire university." Read more here.

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS FOR ELEARNING CLASSES
Group assignments teach students far more than simply what they glean from the research they conduct and the project they complete. Astute students will also learn important lessons about communicating clearly, establishing plans and schedules, and collaborating in a proactive and positive manner. They may also hone their leadership skills along the way.Students taking online courses gain the additional benefit of learning to work with others in technology-mediated settings. To learn more about this topic, click here.

NOTHING BAD HAS HAPPENED
Dr. Maryellen Weimer gives us some ideas for the last class of the semester. She writes, "First and last class sessions are the bookends that hold a course together.” I heard or read that somewhere—apologies to the source I can’t acknowledge. It’s a nice way to think about first and last class sessions. In general, teachers probably do better with the first class. There’s the excitement that comes with a new beginning. A colleague said it this way: “Nothing bad has happened yet.” Most of us work hard to make good first impressions. But by the time the last class rolls around, everyone is tired, everything is due, and the course sputters to an end amid an array of last-minute details. Here are a few ideas that might help us finish the semester with the same energy and focus we mustered for the first class." Continue reading here.

ARE YOUR STUDENTS GRITTY
Before she was a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Angela Duckworth was a middle school math teacher. As a rookie teacher, she was surprised when she calculated grades. Some of her sharpest students weren't doing so well, while others who struggled through each lesson were getting A's. "The thing that was revelatory to me was not that effort matters—everybody knows that effort matters," Angela told Shankar. "What was revelatory to me was how much it matters." Read more about the power and problem of grit here.


CARING THAT OUR STUDENTS LEARN
At this time of the semester, our attention turns to finals, projects, and the inevitable student ratings. Dr. Stephen Burt, a professor of English at Harvard University, explains how he has come to see the value in this ritual. He writes, "O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!” Robert Burns wrote, in a poem with a thick Scottish accent. “It wad frae manie a blunder free us.”  That power lies in student evaluations. They have obvious flaws, and all college teachers know how they can be misused—but colleges, and instructors, do better with them than without them. They can free teachers from blunders as well as flatter our self-regard, they remind us that if we care what our students learn, we ought to care about what they think; anonymous evaluations are one of the few ways that we can try to find out. Read the entire post here.

LET'S BE HONEST
David F. Feldon in his article Why Magic Bullets Don't Work (Change ) encourages us to "let our students in on the secret once we have figured out what content needs to be taught." He notes that students "sincerely appreciate knowing up front what they will be learning, what is expected of them, how they will be assessed, and how all of these elements fit together." Sharing this, he explains, prevents them from "extraneous effort."

MEETING STUDENTS EXPECTATIONS
Rediscovered this op-ed by Steven J. Bell in which he opines that many professors are perplexed by their students’ entitlement complex. To their way of thinking, say the faculty, students see themselves as customers who deserve being treated as “always right” no matter how wrong, rude, inconsiderate, or otherwise bizarre they behave. Bell suggest that "faculty members should try designing an actual experience for their students, modeled on the principles and qualities of iconic user experiences."

FLIPPING DONE RIGHT
If you are open to trying some new techniques to ramp up student learning in your classes, take a look at this short post by Anthony Persico. The use of videos in his mathematics class has proven to him that active learning is enhanced by flipping. "My students’ final-exam pass rates nearly doubled from the previous year," he writes. Read the entire post here.

ADDING RELEVANCE TO INSTRUCTION INCREASES RETENTION
There are many reasons for incorporating real-life situations into instruction. Foremost are that applications of theoretical material in real-life situations make content easier to understand and that the relevance of content is demonstrated by real-life examples. If we are trying to connect content to real-life situations, our assessments must demonstrate face validity. That is, they have to model the situations in which the new knowledge and skills will be used. If we only test for knowledge the opportunity to demonstrate that learning is relevant is missed. The preceding comments are from Dr. Michael Theall's paper Related Course Material to Real Life Situations.

FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS FACE MANY CHALLENGES
Adam and Jaye Fenderson have released their new documentary chronicling the lives of several first-generation college students. The makers of the film are a married couple who said that they found it difficult not to help the students they were covering. “We actually made a decision when we started thinking about the film that we were not going to intervene in the students’ lives,” Mr. Fenderson said. “It was very difficult to sit there and listen to them talk about what their counselor told them when we knew that it was wrong. It was difficult to even sit in some of the counselor meetings and hear the counselors be so brief and quick with these students and these students not get answers that they really needed.” An absence of college graduates in a family can  result not only in a lack of financial support — many economic studies have suggested that college graduates make more money over time than high school graduates — but also a shortage of knowledge about the college admissions process. In the film First Generation, one of the student’s mothers is depicted as having no idea how to pay for college, and not knowing whether the cost is required to be paid in full upfront. The students, themselves floundering through the process, make misinformed financial decisions that limit their college choices and may even stifle their academic potential.

USING QUIZZES TO MEASURE LEARNING
One of our most valuable resources, Dr. Maryellen Weimer has a new post about quizzes and the many ways you can use them in your classes. She writes, "I’ve been rethinking my views on quizzing. I’m still not in favor of quizzes that rely on low-level questions where the right answer is a memorized detail or a quizzing strategy where the primary motivation is punitive, such as to force students to keep up with the reading. That kind of quizzing doesn’t motivate reading for the right reasons and it doesn’t promote deep, lasting learning. But I keep discovering innovative ways faculty are using quizzes, and these practices rest on different premises." Read the entire post.

WORST LECTURE EVER
Amy Blanding, Kealin McCabe, and Heather Smith, PhD take a humorous approach to a learner-center teaching method called the Worst Lecture Competition. They write, "effective oral skills, well-designed presentations, and quality feedback are attributes that employers typically want from graduates. However, these skills are often expected to exist without appropriate support and training. Recognizing that public speaking often induces fear, a more positive, out-of-the-box approach could ease students into developing presentation skills. Regardless of personal perceptions regarding their own lecture proficiencies, students possess life experiences that give them the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of other presentations; sometimes they just need a prompt to acknowledge the value of their own experience. In addition to cultivating their own skills, it’s also essential for students to work on peer feedback skills. With these goals in mind, we created the Worst Lecture Competition" Read the entire post here.

DID YOU LISTEN TO THE TEXT
Would you like to add podcasts to your teaching toolkit?  Michael Godsey has a helpful article that explains how he did just that. He writes, "I recently discovered my students voluntarily reading a story together, all at the same time. And they were inspired by an unlikely medium—podcasts—which is obviously ironic, as many people like podcasts precisely because they don’t have the time or inclination to sit down and read. In fact, Serial has an explicit warning at the beginning of their transcripts: Serial is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. Of course, teenagers are infamous for enjoying exactly what they’re told not to do, but I was nevertheless surprised that while listening to an episode of Serial in class, their collective eyes fixed on the transcripts displayed on a screen at the front of the room. And I was startled—happily so—by their shouts when I was tardy in scrolling down." Read the entire article here.

REAL TIME CHECK ON LEARNING
Don't have time to check out a set of clickers from the Library? Still want to survey your students during class? You can use Google Forms instead. Dr. Michael J. LaGier writes, "As many educators are, I am interested in exploring methods that provide real-time, formative assessment in the classroom. Being a teacher of such courses as microbiology, microbial genomics, and immunology, which are dense in jargon and abstract concepts, I need to be able to quickly get a snapshot of how well my students are grasping important ideas or concepts. My students also need this information in order to assess their own learning. To this end, I started exploring the use of personal response systems, or clickers, as a method for rapid classroom assessment.Within Google Drive, I discovered an online survey tool called Google Forms. With Google Forms I am able to create surveys that my students can answer in real time, for free, using any device that is Wi-Fi compatible and has an Internet browser capable of running Google (smartphones, tablets, and laptops all work)." Learn how to do it here.

WHY ARE YOU SITTING ON THAT SIDE
Looking for a good active learning method to kick off the second part of your semester? Forced debate is a great way to focus on critical thinking, allow your students to practice their communication skills, and gauge where the class is in terms of learning. To get started, identify an issue about which there are two clearly defined and opposed positions, and let students know one class in advance that they will be required to select a side and defend it. On the discussion day, divide the room physically into two sides and ask the students to sit on one side or the other. You should leave space in the middle for undecided students who, however, have to move to one side or the other before the class has ended. In fact, any student who changes their mind can move during the class: from one side to the other, from one side to the center, and back again. You can, of course, begin forced debates with a writing exercise, asking students to write a one‐paragraph explanation of why they are sitting on a certain side. Opening a forced debate is the easiest question you’ll ask all year: “Why are you sitting on that side?” Ask a handful of students on one side to respond to that question; by the time they are finished, the students on the other side are frantic to refute the points they are hearing. The physical division of the classroom facilitates the discussion as well, since whenever someone moves, you can pause and ask them why; it also helps the students see that others are changing their minds as a result of the discussion, as they learn from their peers. It is recommended that you use this learning experience at least once a semester in every class you teach. You can find more learning experiences like this one in the Active Learning Manual which is available on the Canvas site under Teaching and Learning Faculty Development under the Modules file.

KEEPING THEM ENGAGED IN AN ONLINE COURSE
Dr. Paula Bigatel, an instructional designer and instructor at Penn State University’s World Campus, has some good information for those of us teaching in the online environment. She writes, "During the past year and a half, our faculty development unit has been gathering data from students about how engaged they felt in their online courses. We wanted to use this data to develop a variety of strategies for faculty to use to better engage their students. Research provides evidence for the connection between higher student engagement and persistence and retention in online programs. We gained valuable insights from students when we asked: Define what it means to you to be engaged in a course." Read the full article here.

I WASN'T IN CLASS BECAUSE I GOT EVICTED
When a low-income parent gets evicted, what happens? Matthew Desmond’s new book, Evicted, looks closely at what happens to a series of low-income people, mostly parents, in Milwaukee. It should be required reading for anyone who works at a community college or a public school in a low-income area. Desmond insinuated himself into the lives of dozens of people in the Milwaukee area at the onset of the Great Recession, and followed their lives closely for years. The book is written mostly as a series of character-driven vignettes, rather than as academic sociology, though he connects the dots in passing and at the end. Continue reading Matt Reed's post here.

CREATING DYNAMIC LECTURES
Over the last 25 years, traditional lectures have taken a beating often portrayed as bad pedagogy. While some of the criticism is warranted, there are ways you can take your lecture-based learning experience and infuse it with active learning methods that promote student success. That is what the upcoming faculty professional development session is all about on March 17. Come and hear about the latest research, like Linda Nilson's self-regulated learners approach, that you can use to deepen your students recall and learning. The session begins at 3:00 pm and will be held in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building) at BRCC-Mid City. Register now.

MORE EFFORT CAN LEAD TO BETTER LEARNING
Effort and habit are instrumental to learning and writing, but they are often dimly lit in our grading systems according to Dr. Gary Hafer. He says that light needs to brighten with the help of new research and popular literature that highlight how essential habit, effort, and perseverance are to learning. "I’ve used an effort-aware grading system in my teaching for some time now, a B-grading contract that locks hardworking students into a minimum final grade of B. For grades rising above B, the quality of the writing is the focus (the product), but only for students who fulfill the contract (the process). I’ve become a proponent of the “Contract for B,” first proposed by Peter Elbow, because I like how it encourages students to experiment with their college writing in new and novel ways. As experts in our own disciplines, we can write stipulations of the contract to identify how and what we see prolific writers do in our disciplines. Even habits such as writing daily and talking about their writing in specific ways are tasks that students can achieve no matter their writing proficiency. Moreover, it’s important for students to read in the syllabus that 'any student who works really, really hard can achieve these tasks because they are habits that define a process.'”Continue reading his article here.

WE CAN'T IGNORE STUDENT'S REALITY
Joshua Block's latest post on the Edutopia blog  reminds us to understand where our students have been before we help them to move forward. He writes, "At their best, schools and classrooms affirm the power of community and what it means to be human. Teaching is complex work, and the challenges make it all too easy for teachers to lose focus of a greater vision for students and for society. Celebrating the potential of young people and the power of democratic education also means acknowledging and understanding the different ways that our society falls short." Continue reading his post here.

THAT FEEDBACK REALLY HURT
It took fewer than three semesters for Michael Howell to realize that he might need to change how he provided written feedback to his students. Dr. Howell, an associate professor at Appalachian State University, used sarcasm and wit in feedback to students during his early years as an instructor. Students complained that the feedback was negative and unhelpful. In one case, his feedback provoked a tearful response from one “grief-stricken” student. “Worst of all, most students were not performing any better on later assignments, despite being provided with copious, and what I considered helpful, feedback,” Howell writes. “Most of my feedback was simply being disregarded.”Howell shares his personal reflection in the introduction of a scholarly article published in the latest issue of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. Howell reviewed the literature and identified five essential principles of written feedback for college instructors to follow. Check out “The Feedback 5”.

QUICK ACTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Integrating active learning experiences into your class can be simple and allow you to gauge the learning that has occurred. Here is one example called "Student Response to a Demonstration (or Other Teacher-Centered Activity)." After a classroom or laboratory demonstration, the instructor asks students to write a paragraph that begins with the phrase “I was surprised that . . . , ” “I learned that . . . ,” or “I wonder about. . . .” This lead allows students to reflect on what they actually got out of the teacher’s presentation. It also helps students realize that the day’s activity was designed for more than just entertainment. To find more quick and easy ways to implement active learning opportunities in your class, take a look at the Active Learning Manual on the Teaching and Learning Faculty Development page under Modules on Canvas.

WRITING AS A GROUP
Are you interested in how to promote collaborative learning among university students via instructor-guided writing groups? Faustin Mutwarasibo has an interesting article based on her research. She writes, "In their responses, students acknowledged having improved their interpersonal and collaborative skills through writing groups. Students also indicated that, while discussing and interacting with their group members and with the support from their instructor, they improved their English, gained new ideas and perspectives, and learned better about text coherence." Some strategies are proposed on how an instructor can help make group work a relevant and effective learning tool in the full article.

STUDENT RETENTION STRATEGIES THAT WE CAN USE
Dr. Patrick O'Keefee's research focuses on student retention issues. His article A Sense of Belonging: Improving Student Retention provides a number of strategies that are easily implementable. He notes, "With student attrition rates reaching between 30 and 50 per cent in the United States,the inability of higher education institutions to retain their students is a significant issue. This paper cites key risk factors which place students at risk of non-completion, which include mental health issues, disability, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Furthermore, first year students and higher degree by research students are susceptible to attrition. The capacity of a student to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution is recognized by this paper as a being a critical factor determining student retention. The creation of a caring, supportive and welcoming environment within the university is critical in creating a sense of belonging. This can be achieved by the development of positive student/faculty relationships, the presence of a well resourced counseling center and the encouragement of diversity and difference."

ADAPTIVE LEARNING MAY BE FOR YOU
As the adoption of adaptive learning strategies has spread, the uses have become more common to address issues like under-prepared students and developmental education. The Online Learning Consortium, of which we are a member, has some good information about how continuous adaptive learning can help solve college readiness problems. As the research emerges about adaptive learning, some interesting strategies have surfaced. Dr. Tseng and colleagues suggest an innovative adaptive learning approach that is based upon two main sources of personalization information, that is, learning behavior and personal learning style. Campus Technology interviewed several administrators and faculty members who have worked on adaptive projects about their experience. If you are interested in trying this strategy in your classes, please know that I am here to help.

FREE TEXTBOOKS FOR STUDENTS
Students have indicated that the high cost of textbooks in some subjects prevent them from purchasing this important resource. Did you know that in some instances there are free textbooks available online? The books are part of the Open Educational Resources or OER. In fact, some faculty members are creating their own textbooks to use in their classes. You can browse for available resources at the OER Commons website. Additional help is available from the BRCC Library faculty, with Peter Klubek leading the initiative.