Don't Let Your Students Zoom Out

As we enter the second week of the eLearning Training Institute, I wanted to share a really good article about the limitations of Zoom meetings. As we navigate what our fully online courses will look like in the fall, it is important that we not lose sight of the need for active learning. Any "lecture" of 15-20 minutes needs to be followed by interaction but it also needs to be varied. Think about your participation in Zoom meetings. Do you find yourself losing interest or being distracted? Breana Bayraktar has some good suggestions here on how you can keep students engaged.

Civil Unrest is Part of America and Provides a Teachable Moment

Earning a college degree is about getting a job. But it is also so much more. A good educational experience inspires life-long learning. It can also impact the area because it creates an informed citizenry. Folks who can think critically begin to impact and shape the environment they choose to make their home. The civil unrest occurring now provides us with a great opportunity to connect the real world to the learning that is occurring in your classes this summer. Yesterday, I posted a tweet to the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement Twitter account with a link to an opinion piece on the Inside Higher Ed website. Colleen Flaherty included the following as a subtitle to her article Making Sense of the Senseless: Academics are called to help interpret and guide a national response to police violence and related civil unrest. It is a role that we have played for a long time but the current situation provides us with an opportunity to have uncomfortable conversations. Of course and learning experience should be related to what you are teaching but at times, when something horrific occurs, we are distracted and that includes our students. So begin by creating a safe environment in your classes. Since we are fully online, this means netiquette. Respect is important, so if you are holding a Zoom meeting or using the discussion board, make sure you set the ground rules and hold everyone to them. Using the article as a starting point and asking for reflection in light of your discipline would be appropriate. Here is a resource provided by colleagues at SUNY Empire State College that contains not only some good parameters but a number of videos you might want to use to help your students understand the history of social unrest in our country. As many of us can attest, we have been in this place before and we know that change can occur. What is more natural than a community college that helps to heal the community around it?

Maymester Bootcamp Proves Beneficial

For the first time in our brief history, BRCC is fully online for the summer 2020 semester. We recently had more than 50 faculty and staff complete the eLearning Program Training Institute led by Director of Innovative Learning Susan Nealy. Because of the shortened time frame available for the training, we redesigned it and called it the Maymester Bootcamp. Three weeks of intense work using a new curriculum heavily supported by the Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) approach to course design was certainly a challenge. LEM is a visual planning system that makes designing learning experiences like courses simple and effective. Bootcamp participants used the LEM material to create visual blueprints. The participants emerged from the Bootcamp with certification to teach in the online, hybrid, and hyflex modalities. In addition, we utilized a Community of Practice (CoP) team which is is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The CoP that we utilized provided a network of support for the Bootcamp participants in a way that improved efficiency and allowed the team to learn new things in the process, which will help us going forward. The next Training Institute will occur from June 15-July 19 and will focus on preparing all the faculty who are slated to teach in the fall 2020 semester. If you are interested in participating, please contact Susan Nealy.

eLearning Program Offers Bootcamp Version of Training Institute

We are very excited about the start of the eLearning Program Training Institute Bootcamp which begins on Monday. More than seventy of our full and part time faculty are going through this new experience. I say new because we have modified the time to completion without losing the quality of the training. In addition, we will be offering a Community of Practice (CoP) to assist with the training process. A CoP is a group of people who share a concern for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.  CoPs are particularly useful for online course development because they "provide ongoing support that can alleviate many of the curricular and institutional challenges online instructors face." (Melancon & Arduser, 2013, p. 74) . Our team will include the faculty member (as the subject matter expert), the Dean of Innovative Learning and Academic Support, the Director of Innovative Learning, the Director of the Academic Learning Center, and the LMS Administrator.  In addition, we will be using the Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) curriculum created by the University of Central Oklahoma, which has been used by numerous colleges and universities as part of their faculty certification programs. UCO explains the process as, "Learning environment design is technically an architectural process. Think about how an architect envisions and designs buildings. Learning architects design and build learning environments in much the same way. They often do this without many of the foundational tools used by building architects such as common, uniform practices and models that assist in the understanding, decision-making, and collaborating on the design of the learning environment.Learning Environment Modeling, or LEM, addresses this issue by providing a simple system for designing learning environments that uses an easy-to-understand language combined with a visual modeling process. LEM is used for improving understanding, decision-making, and communication within learning environment design experiences." What we learn in this bootcamp version will be used to enhance the training institute to be held this summer for faculty wanting to teach an eLearning course in the fall semester. This is definitely an exciting time to be involved in the eLearning Program at BRCC.

Don't Worry, We Will Get Through This Together

The move to digital delivery has gotten us to this point and we can see the final exam period at the end of the tunnel. Now the real work begins. How do we take the classes that we taught onsite, that were then altered for distance learning, and create a robust, engaging, and interactive elearning course that will provide the deep learning our students need to compete in the new career landscape (Maloney and Kim do a good job of explaining the various stages of where higher ed finds itself). Recent research indicates that a well designed online course can have the same or better completion and retention rates as an onsite class. Another benefit of our current situation is that as our students become better at navigating online and hybrid classes, the larger their skill set becomes in tech literacy, one of the key abilities employers are looking for in new hires. We are certainly not alone in this transition but luckily we have a strong history of providing the training and support needed to create elearning courses of excellence. As we prepare for the summer semester, the eLearning Program will be offering a Training Institute Bootcamp. As in the past, the eLearning Training Institute will be conducted fully online. New for this next iteration is training that will combine what is needed to teach either online, hybrid or both. This multimodal training will essentially set us up for whatever comes next. Any faculty who plan to teach in the summer semester that are not currently certified to teach eLearning courses should notify their department chairs that they would like to participate in the Training Institute Bootcamp. For those looking to begin teaching eLearning courses in the fall, there will be another Training Institute in the summer. For those looking for resources  now, check out the on-demand webinars on the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement events calendar.

Take a Moment for Some Humor

In this brave new world, one of the things we may be losing is our sense of humor. It is easy to do because this pandemic is a very serious and dangerous situation. Will we return to normal? What does the new normal look like? Will we ever go back to our classrooms? When will all of this be over? In the middle of all of our questions, one thing we may all agree on is how resilient we and our students are. The Zoom meetings that allow us to engage with students and colleagues are also a window into our worlds away from BRCC. Are you brave enough to go live with your video? How many times did you move your computer to get the right background? Some of us have decided to just put a picture of ourselves on the screen. Even that comes with anxiety. Which shot do I use? Should I create a new shot just for my courses? Wait, where did this all start? Oh yes, with some levity. Take a look at Kristie Kaiser's blog post about teaching online. Her message is on point but she also remembers to bring the humor in at the end.

Your Resilience Is Amazing and Inspiring

In talking with a number of you over the last two weeks, it became apparent that the new way we are required to deliver our teaching would create some challenges and also provide us with a different way to look at things. We all use computers everyday whether it is a cell phone, laptop, iPad, or the very large computer that gets us from point A to point B (auto technicians will tell you that your car is just a bunch of computers now). So teaching in this new modality should be something that is familiar and also should look something like our onsite classes. I am talking about our learning outcomes and objectives in the latter part of that last sentence. Our curriculum must still be engaging, active, and connect to the current knowledge of the learner. It should also be logical as we build on the past to help our students develop new meanings and create new knowledge all in the ultimate goal of having them work-force ready when they graduate. Instructional designers will tell you that no matter how you plan to deliver the teaching, it still must start with the learning outcomes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? That is what we have tried to stress in the past 10-14 days in our daily Zoom sessions, discussion boards, and one-on-one meetings (both by phone and through emails). By focusing on what the ultimate goal of your course has always been, you remain focused on the important things. We can still accomplish our teaching goals with simple, straightforward learning experiences. Continue to reach out if you need help. The amount of networking that is taking place across all disciplines is incredible. Even when the hardest job in higher education is compounded by something like a pandemic, our faculty still rise to the occasion with amazing resiliency..

Recovering the Joy of Teaching in the COVID Era

As we end the first day for all of our onsite classes to be delivered remotely, I wanted to share a well done essay recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The author, Flower Darby, has taught using the online environment for the last 12 years and is an instructional designer at Northern Arizona University. Her comments may not come into play for many of you until about two weeks and for some of you it may never appear but the advice is sage and important. She notes, "In the first few weeks of the pandemic, a lot of faculty members were rushing out of their comfort zone, moving their face-to-face courses online, and figuring out how to teach from home with kids and pets. As head of a teaching center on my campus, I am seeing many of my earnest colleagues overcome their nerves and experiment with unfamiliar modes of instruction. They are excitedly posting their first attempts at recording mini-video lectures and drafting syllabus statements of flexibility and support for students. But how long will that fizz last? After all, many faculty members are sacrificing much of what they love about their chosen vocation. At some point, they will need time to mourn the loss of spring 2020." Continue reading here.

Remember to Update Your Syllabus for Online Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly caused a major disruption for colleges around the globe. As BRCC works to move all of our onsite (face-to-face) courses to be offered using Canvas, it is important to remember to look at your syllabus. Some of the information students may now need may not be part of your current version. Dr. Danielle Geary wrote a straightforward article complete with a list of important items back in 2018. It is very relevant to us now as we transition and I encourage you to take a look at it as you redesign your course including your syllabus. We will continue to post relevant information and updates to the Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Canvas class as well so remember to check that resource at least daily. Finally, if you are looking for some assistance, send an email to elearning@bears.mybrcc.edu along with a brief description of your needs.

Moving Your Onsite Classes to Canvas

The spread of the COVID-19 (commonly referred to as the coronavirus) is causing may colleges to cancel classes and many are moving to the online delivery method to continue classes. BRCC faculty are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the Canvas LMS which can provide an online learning environment in the event that the situation worsens and potentially spreads to Louisiana. There will be a professional development webinar provided the OLC today at 1:00 pm. You can register to participate here. In addition, the OLC has a Continuity Planning and Emergency Preparedness resource page with tips to help you turn your face-to-face class into a hybrid. The BRCC Chancellor's Office has released the following guidelines to be used by all staff, students, and faculty.

·         -Stay home if you are exhibiting any of the following symptoms:

o   Fever

o   Cough

o   Shortness of breath

·         -Seek medical attention.

·        - If you are experiencing any symptoms, contact your instructors and the Dean of Students at dos@mybrcc.edu or submit a report in BRCC Cares (Request for Assistance Link).

·        - Any student that is absent and has exhibited the symptoms above must provide medical clearance to the Dean of Students to return to campus.

·       -  Accommodations (e.g., extended due dates, electronic submission of assignments, videos of instructor lectures posted to Canvas, ect.), when possible, will be made for individuals who may be temporarily unable to attend class due to restrictions placed on them related to possible exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19.

·       -  Please communicate electronically with your instructors regarding all course related matters.  

A Dickens for the 21st Century

Can old things be made new again within the context of 21st century cultural norms? A paper by Megan Witzleben with Hilbert College suggests just that. She writes, "Today, we may not teach Dickensian prose as superior. However, we do seek to empower students through verbal and cultural literacy to connect them with influential stories of the past and present. This paper demonstrates how teaching a little-known Dickens detective story, “Hunted Down,” in its original serialized context, and then performing a dramatic reading of that story to a community partner, helps students understand Dickens in his own time and in ours." What she is suggesting is another way to incorporate active learning into our classes. She even suggests some service learning opportunities around the work of Dickens. I encourage you to view the student's personal journals towards the end of the article.

Is Linking Learning and Work a Must Do for Faculty?

The latest white paper from the American Council on Education (ACE) is creating a healthy discussion about what is and isn't part of a faculty's responsibilities when it comes to their students. The ACE paper suggests that having students career-ready should be something that faculty should be doing. The paper's authors acknowledge that both community college and university faculty influenced the work. Working at a community college and teaching a course called College Success Skills (CSSK) may be influencing my opinion on this matter but in talking with employers, local chamber members, and students themselves, many see it the same way. Our CSSK course provides knowledge about the obvious college success issues (test anxiety, taking notes, engaging with faculty, study habits) but we also spend time on what some would call soft skills (communication, netiquette, time management, critical thinking). Having worked previously at a flagship research-intensive university as well as a regional doctoral university, I will be the first to tell you that each mission was different. But at the end of the day students are attending college/university to get a job. This white paper comes at a really important time as the financial support from government continues to shrink and the public seems to have lost their faith in a college degree. Having a constructive conversation to reset our priorities is a useful thing to do and I welcome your feedback on this issue as well.

Does Active Learning Work?

Dr. Donna M. Qualters uncovers some interesting information in her research study Do Students Want to be Active? Four important themes emerged from the analysis: the students had an overall positive attitude toward active learning; active learning was perceived to enhance their ability and efficiency in studying; active learning was perceived to improve the learning environment; and, active learning promoted their thinking about their learning and thus helped them to better understand their individual learning style. She also uncovered a few negatives that could easily be converted using the right interventions. She concludes by writing, "The most important need to be addressed is the inability of some students to deal with change. Many of these students come to higher education with expectations of very passive classroom experiences and those expectations must be uncovered, probed and altered. For some students it may go as far as the necessity to reframe what learning is: learning is not about covering material or gathering facts, learning is about integrating and using information in a meaningful way."

Providing Feedback That Will Be Used

You can always tell when the first round of assessment begins in the 16 week classes. That is because we always see a rise in the number of eLearning and accommodated testers in the Testing Center. In addition, after more than three decades in higher education, I know that having enough time to do all of the things we need to do for good teaching and learning is one of the tasks that faculty constantly struggle with. That is why a recent article that ran in Inside Higher Ed caught my attention. Dr. Deborah J. Cohen provides us with what she describes as a faster way to grade in 2020. She writes, "I came of age teaching when students picked up their graded work in boxes outside of professors’ offices. That also meant many students never came to retrieve their final papers after I had spent hours on tedious commenting. Some had graduated, and some simply did not care -- they were fine just seeing the final posted grade. It was as if I were writing long, involved letters to myself. I refuse to engage in that wasted work now. Whatever requires my feedback happens earlier in the semester, so that students have an opportunity to use the comments to improve their work. And on every syllabus, I indicate the following, which sets clear boundaries and places accountability squarely on the student: “You will get much more out of this course, and any course you will ever take, if you concern yourself more with the processes of how to think, how to learn and how to write than on the letter grades. In 10 years, you will probably forget the grade you got in my class, but I hope that what will stay with you are the learning tools and skills that you will acquire." I suggest you read the entire short article to learn more about her time-saving grading practices.

Is Your Teaching a Downpour or Drizzle?

Teaching occurs when learning happens. They are intrinsically connected and the relationship depends on trust, engagement, and respect. A recent Teaching Professor article uses the analogy of rain occurring as a downpour or a drizzle. Dr. Maryellen Weimer notes, "Storms come and go fast. When the downpour reaches the ground, the water runs away quickly—little gets into the ground. Drizzle offers a different image—fine, slow, silent, and yet penetrating. Drizzle soaks into the ground." She then poses the question to us wondering if our teaching is a downpour or a drizzle. Living in Louisiana, where it rains quiet often, we can certainly relate to this metaphor. While a good downpour is needed every now and then to clean off the roads and ground, we know that a good, steady drizzle is best for our plants, flowers, trees, and crops. Dr. Weimer writes, "Getting wet in a drizzle is a holistic experience. You don’t get some drizzle on your face but none on your feet. You’re in it, surrounded by it, unable to escape from it. Is education that kind of holistic experience? Not usually. If the work in multiple courses comes together, forms coherent connections, that doesn’t happen because we teach the curriculum as an integrated whole." So is your teaching more like a downpour or a drizzle?

Teach Students How Their Brains Learn

With all of the knowledge we now know about how our brains work best, why are we still ignoring the benefits of sharing this information with our students? You have probably noticed that I like to tweet about brain research on the CTLE Twitter account. We have also incorporated brain research into our College Success Skills course as we teach students how to be better at critical thinking. Looking back at some of the material we used initially reminded me of a good article by Dr. Judy Willis that appeared in 2012 (are we really 8 years removed from that?). In the article she writes, "Curriculum in schools of education has changed in response to changes in society, pedagogy and technology. As computer technology became an asset in classrooms, schools of education appropriately included that instruction in the curriculum. Many states made similar education program curriculum adaptations in response to multiculturism, increases in English language learners, and the use of the concrete-connect-abstract progression in math instruction. Now that the neuroscience research implications for teaching are also an invaluable classroom asset, it is time for instruction in the neuroscience of learning to be included as well in professional teacher education." Her words are just as salient in 2020 and we now know even more about how the brain learns. Spending some time in your classes dispensing this new knowledge will pay off for your students and help them to learn the information you are sharing. You can find information on this topic on this blog and on the CTLE Twitter page.

SQ3R Is Not a New Star Wars Character

It is about that time in the semester when we begin to notice a pattern developing. We have assigned reading for our students and reminded them that it should be done before the class so that they can come with prepared questions. Yet they don't seem to have grasped the concept and so we fall back into presenting the entire reading material during class rather than using our active learning teaching interventions that promote deeper learning. We have shared some teaching interventions that work in this blog before. Dr. Dimple J. Martin offers us another process that she uses that may work for you as well. Dr. Martin writes, "First, let’s acknowledge this universal epidemic. College students despise reading textbooks and e-books that cover content with academic information. Fortunately, I discovered a cure for the reading plague that only requires five teaspoons of ingestion: 1) survey 2) question 3) read 4) retrieve and 5) review. In my class, I have found the SQ3R Method to be a step-by-step approach to learning and studying from textbooks. Although it took my students time and practice to master this method, it has been valuable in regards to preparing students for more content-driven class discussions, increased retention and understanding of information, strategic study skills, and test preparation." You can read the entire article here.

Yes, I Agree and...

We all know the drill. We have decided to use the discussion board feature on Canvas to engage with our students and have them increase their peer-to-peer interaction. We determine the topic and issue an assignment with directions asking students to begin the topics. Once that is done, they are also asked to comment on the topics started by their fellow students. We sit back and wait and nothing happens. Well, to be fair, some students post and then other students give one to five word responses that do not move the conversation forward at all. So what went wrong? Dr. Beth René Roepnack has written a concise article on how we can improve online discussion by simply changing a couple of things. Her article appears on Faculty Focus and she offers the following suggestions. " I adjusted the structure of my online discussions from students starting threads (you know the drill, post-and-reply-to-two) to the instructor starting them, which creates a more organic discussion structure similar to classroom conversations. This simple modification, along with asking open-ended questions from the deep end of Bloom’s Taxonomy, creates discussions that support student learning and engagement with the material and each other." You can read the entire article here. If you use her suggestions, let me know if you experienced the same results that she did.

Culturally Responsive Teaching Increases Student Engagement

It has been great to hear from some of you about how you integrated things you heard from our convocation speaker Dr. Jennifer Waldeck into your classes. Her presentation was filled with so many things but one of the important topics she covered was how to be culturally responsive with your students. That ties in nicely with today's Faculty Focus article. Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) has been defined as a philosophy of education that centers students’ cultural backgrounds as essential to their learning by Gloria Ladson-Billings in 1995. Dr. Gwen Bass and Michael Lawrence-Riddell propose integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with CRT to create "a powerful tool for preparing [students] for today’s professional environment, which increasingly acknowledges diversity as integral to success." They go on to note, "While educators need not be experts on every culture, they should make efforts to ensure that their students’ experience their own learning styles and their own cultures in the teaching and learning process." One of the ways they suggest we can do this is by giving students the opportunity to understand their own identities and to feel that they are honored in the class through identity mapping. They conclude by writing, "Simply providing choice for students in terms of the input of information, or their own output, is a step toward a culturally responsive classroom, as is inherent in the guiding principles of UDL—providing multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement."

An Inventory Helps to Promote Higher Order Thinking

One of the issues I hear from many of you is the problem we encounter when students do not do the assigned reading prior to class. It certainly creates multiple teaching and learning problems and can really stifle the entire class. One of the suggestions I have made to help alleviate this problem is to have an "As You Come Into Class" question(s) on the board. In that way, as they are getting settled and I am checking attendance, they can be thinking more deeply about some of the things I plan to discuss in class. It helps to alleviate those "top of mind" responses that are usually anecdotal and totally off-topic. I also want to suggest something that Karen Harris uses in her classes. Her learning outcome is focused on having students use higher order critical thinking. She describes her teaching experience as a thinking inventory. Harris says, "Although a thinking inventory is made up of questions, it’s more than a questionnaire. When we say we’re “taking inventory”—whether we’re in a warehouse or a relationship—we mean we’re taking stock of where things stand at a given moment in time, with the understanding that those things are fluid and provisional. With a thinking inventory, we’re taking stock of students’ thinking, experiences, and sense-making at the beginning of the course. A well-designed thinking inventory formalizes the essential questions of any course and serves as a touchpoint for both teacher and students throughout that course." You can read the details of her inventory here. Students are engaged by learning that can be tied to real life. Assuring them that being able to think critically and offer the best solution in the workplace will always benefit them is the go to answer for how this relates to real-world situations.

Academic Success Strategies For All Students

The ability to help students improve their academic performance is enhanced by their participation in study groups. This fact is revealed by research like Kalaian, Kasim, and Nims report that appeared in the Journal of Technology Education (Spring 2018). The meta-analytic results showed that cooperative learning, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, and peer-led team learning pedagogies were effective. The Academic Learning Center (ALC) has been providing assistance to students looking to create and manage study groups for several years now. They have a suite of resources about how to create a study group that works for all participants including organization and leadership instructions. As the classroom (onsite or virtually) is one of the best conduits for forming these types of academic success groups, I encourage you to reach out to Ms. Nina Joshi at the ALC. Working in unison, our faculty and ALC can help our students be more successful and we owe it to our students to make them aware of this academic support resource.

First Day Of Spring Semester Is Great Time to Revisit Goals

When setting personal goals for yourself, we teach in the College Success Skills 1023 course to use the SMART method. It is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Each year at BRCC, we are asked to set personal goals and January is always a good time to review the selections we made since it is basically the mid-point of the academic year. So I encourage you to take a look at what you indicated you were going to focus on to help you improve your teaching and your student's learning. I also want to remind you to check out the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's blog from time to time for new ideas you might want to implement in your classes. In addition, take a look at the upcoming events for faculty development opportunities. We also tweet daily and try to focus on issues that are relative to BRCC and our student population. Here is to a great spring 2020 semester. As always, I am here to help you in all things teaching and learning so do not hesitate to contact me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). I am located in 120 Magnolia Building on the Mid City Campus.

Aren't We All Math People?

Working in higher education for the last 36 years (how did that happen?) has given me a lot of opportunity to hear lots of opinions about developmental education (formerly remedial education, etc.). Nothing causes a life-long educator more pain than to see a student come to you underprepared. How can this happen when they have been duly approved to graduate from an accredited high school? But I am not here to argue that point, I would rather talk about this nonsense of math versus non-math people. We often say things like "Everyone should be able to read; how are you going to function in life without learning how to read." Shouldn't we be saying the same thing about math? How would you function without understanding math? That is why I was excited to read Sarah D. Sparks' piece on the matter. She writes, "My 2nd grader finishes his math enrichment, then gleefully creates blank versions for his dad and me to try: a subtraction-based, number-placement logic puzzle, intended to be challenging. My husband withdraws for 10 minutes or so, returns and hands over the completed puzzle. I stare at my blank triangle. Mom, aren’t you done yet? my son asks. Are you struggling? A dull pressure starts to thud behind my eyes. I’m thinking, I say, a little too sharply." Did reading that make you feel a little uncomfortable? It certainly made me remember when I sat in Ms. Sparks place with my children. I encourage you to read the brief, concise article and join us who say we are all math people.

Student Success Starts With Communication

If you were able to make the faculty development session yesterday delivered by Dr. Jennifer Waldeck, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. This event occurred because of the support of VCASA Laura Younger, who provided the funding. Speaking of VC Younger, she mentioned that not only did several people stop her on the way out to indicate their pleasure at the quality of the speaker but several of you called her as well. What a great way to kick off the 2020 spring semester. One of the resources referenced by Dr. Waldeck during her talk was an article that appeared in Inside Higher Ed written by Jane E. Dmochowsk. I had posted the link on the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's events calendar but the link was broken and has been repaired. Looking back on the tweets that I sent during yesterday's event, I wanted to share three that stood out in my mind. The first is "inclusion and celebrating diversity builds credibility and promotes engagement." The second is "the fear of communication is very real for some of our students" (this goes to class participation and meeting with you privately). The third is "student to student interaction is critical to their learning experience." I hope you have a terrific semester. If you are looking for ways to get started on the first day of class, here are some things you can try.

Intrusive In A Good Way

Intrusive advising is a term that has been making the rounds in higher education for a while now. It seems to appear whenever someone asks how the college where they are working can improve the student retention and completion numbers. While most of us can probably come up with a description of what we think intrusive advising is, it is always good to look to current research to help determine what is really working in the important areas of retention and completion. A research study by Paul Donaldson, Lyle McKinney, Mimi Lee, and Diana Pino does just that. They report that a key factor in successful intrusive advising is making it mandatory for students. They note that the motivation to seek help is often lower in students who may most need it. They also noted that students indicated other positive aspects of the intrusive model included degree planning activities, which included reviewing required courses, developing a plan for future course registration, completing an electronic course planner tool, learning transfer requirements, and participating in major and career exploration. You can read the entire research article here.