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.