A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed focused on the teaching of GRIT, a concept that emerged from research and personal experience of Dr. Angela Duckworth. Grit focuses on passion and perseverance as a way to help students persist and complete. The article writer (Dr. David DeSteno) notes "The way people usually solve such dilemmas — accepting sacrifices in the present in order to reach future goals — is with self-control. It’s no wonder, then, that colleges have placed great emphasis on teaching students better self-control. But the strategies that educators are recommending to build that self-control — a reliance on willpower and executive function to suppress emotions and desires for immediate pleasures — are precisely the wrong ones. Besides having a poor long-term success rate in general, the effectiveness of willpower drops precipitously when people are feeling tired, anxious, or stressed. And, unfortunately, that is exactly how many of today’s students often find themselves." He goes on to suggest that "strong interpersonal relationships were necessary to thrive. But to be identified as a good partner, a person had to be trustworthy, generous, fair, and diligent." Are those traits teachable? We can certainly talk about how someone who is fair or generous acts. We may be able to teach skills that support diligence. Trustworthiness can be modeled in the hopes that the student sees the value in attaining this trait. Creating learning experiences that allow students to practice these set of traits will take some time to develop. What do you think?

The BRCC community works hard at retaining students to completion (whether that be an academic credential, transfer to a bachelor's program or finding a job) and is not alone in searching for that "magic" solution. The truth is there isn't one intervention or approach that will serve all students. The solutions are as varied and diverse as our students. Looking at two research studies about retention and students enrolled in developmental education courses shows some surprising findings and useful interventions. In work done by Pamela S. Pruett and Beverly Absher, using data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, findings indicated that retention was significantly impacted by grade point average, engagement, type of remedial/developmental courses, time spent preparing for class, parents’ educational level, and students’ income level (measured indirectly by loans). They found that "Students who persist in college ask questions in class and contribute to class discussions, make class presentations, and work with other students on projects during class or outside the class (essentially engagement)." Gloria Crisp and Chryssa Delgado, in their study The Impact of Developmental Education on Community College Persistence and Vertical Transfer, demonstrate that developmental education may overall serve to decrease community college students’ odds of successfully transferring to a 4-year institution. Both studies offer suggestions for programming that could improve retention of students in developmental education courses.

What skills did you possess as an undergraduate that made you successful? Who taught you about the methods you used to navigate college? Were you lucky enough to have a mentor? A recent discussion about our undergraduate experience made me take a new look at the current research about student mentoring. As expected, having a mentor increases a students chance to persist and graduate under the right circumstances. In Buffy Smith's Mentoring At-risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education, she notes three actions that mentors should do in order to help students including: (1) telling students what they should do (advising), (2) advocacy, defined as motivating and connecting students with individuals on campus, and (3) showing and empowering students how to acquire the highest degree of capital from the mentoring relationship (academic apprenticeship). Many institutions include mentoring as part of their first-generation programs. Joya Misra and Jennifer Lundquist provide a really nice overview of mentoring in their article for Inside Higher Ed. The article focuses on what faculty can do in the form of mentoring to help students succeed. One of the points they make is about the relationship itself as they note, "Individual faculty mentors also should recognize the backgrounds, resources and needs of their students, rather than assuming that students are all the same and have all of the resources they need. Students benefit from faculty mentors who see them as whole people. By recognizing who a student is beyond their role as a student, faculty members can develop trusting relationships with them."

Before adult learners will learn something, they often need to know why they need to learn it. That sounds really easy right? Just like you and me, understanding the relevance to our lives will cause us to focus more deeply on something. So translating that to our classroom makes great sense. Just develop and deliver learning experiences that have direct applicability and relevance to our student's lives. The other important concept to remember as we develop our curriculum is that adult learners are autonomous and self-directed. Now this may be where some of our student persistence issues begin to occur. If most of your students are first-timers and recent high school graduates, they are very much set in something we like to call the 80/20 model. Eighty percent of everything that happened to them in high school was delivered by their teachers. Books are free. The bell rings to change classes. The bus picks you up and takes you home. You get a study guide for all tests. So it is understandable that many of our students are expecting the same thing from us. But college is not high school in so many ways. So getting our students to not resist the college experience begins with that simple statement. Turn 80/20 on its ear and tell your students that it is time for them to begin to write their own future. Asking them questions like "what do you want to do with your life or what type of job are you hoping to find once you earn your academic credential" (degree/certificate/etc.) can begin to help them understand that college is the beginning of their adult life. Then have them create goals for themselves. Suggest they do this for each class, for the semester as a whole, and for the next 5 years of their lives. You should also remind them to revise them as the semester progresses. It is a subtle thing but it helps them to begin to understand that becoming a self-guided learner is the optimal goal. After all, once they complete college, they will still need to continue to build their knowledge base on their own. Holding this type of conversation during the first class session will certainly help our students to begin the semester moving in the right direction and should also improve our student persistence rates.

Does it seem like every other conversation about higher education begins with the words retention or persistence? Are there differences between students who attend community college versus a four year institution? Do we have definitive results that can be applied in every situation? We know that one of the many problems posed by the questions surrounding retention and persistence are the myriad of factors that are at play. In the latest addition of The Review of Higher Education (Spring 2017, V40, N3), Deryl K. Hatch and Crystal E. Garcia report on their research about these topics. In "Academic Advising and the Persistence Intentions of Community College Students in their First Weeks in College," the authors point out that there has been very little work that connects the factors that lead to dropping out and the student's initial goal. They acknowledge that academic advising centers and training for faculty advisors are two practices that could contribute to improving retention. The main results they report from the research include: 1) the relationship between engagement and persistence intentions heavily depends on individual goals, 2) different kinds of advising may have different effects for different students, and 3) the role of academic and social support networks matter in the near term and likely in the long term. Continue reading here.

MYTH OF MULTITASKING
Have you had the talk with your students? You know what I am talking about? The talk about the hazards of multitasking (or switch-tasking as it is more appropriately called). The research is clear on this subject. When we try to do two things at one time, everything suffers. If it is two simple tasks like folding laundry and listening to the weather report, our brain can handle them. If the competing tasks are challenging, like listening to a lecture while texting, the brain is using the same mental resources and both tasks suffer. Researchers have documented a list of negative outcomes that can occur when student switch task while doing classwork. The first (and this may be the one that can turn the tide for you as you share this with your students) is the task takes much longer to complete. Why? Each time the student returns to the classwork, the brain has to refamiliarize with the material. Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. Third, students' subsequent memory of what they are working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. Fourth, when we are distracted, research shows that our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. Looking to dig deeper into this topic? Here are a few of the scientists working in this field: Russell Poldrack, David Meyer, James Kraushaar, David Novak, and Larry Rosen.

LET'S TALK
High engagement levels between students and faculty is still the best way to prevent attrition and improve retention. Dr. Constance Staley offers the following advice, "Clear and cogent communication is a key to success in all of our relationships—and the instructor–student relationship is no exception to that rule. Of course, communication in the classroom concerns more than just your lecturing; it encompasses all the ways you listen to, speak to, and interact with students. How can you enhance or improve your communications with your students this semester? Continue reading...

UPCOMING WORKSHOP
During the Faculty Development Kickoff held earlier, we asked you which topics you wanted to learn about this academic year. Active learning was one of the top picks and will be the topic for the professional development workshop on Thursday, September 17 at 1:00 PM. We will spend some time on the how and why, discuss a few active learning methods, and then take some time redesigning one of your current lessons. You can register here. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu).

MAXIMIZE YOUR TIME
One of the things that all faculty wish they had more of is time. That is why I try to give you as much information as possible in as many different formats as available. If you would like to see very brief teaching and learning tips, you should definitely become a follower on the Teaching+Learning Center's Twitter account. Each tweet is guaranteed to be 140 characters or less. You can easily create a Twitter account for yourself in order to follow. I would encourage you to use the account for your teaching as well. It is a great way to remind your students of upcoming deadlines, assessments, or any other important announcements or information.

NEW EDITION OF ALM AVAILABLE
The Active Learning Manual has been updated for the 2015-16 academic year. I have added additional methods on how you can quickly learn your student's names at the beginning of each semester. It is a sure fire way to enhance engagement and create an environment that promotes student success. I have also added a section specifically for our eLearning faculty but the methods can be used in face-to-face classes as well. Finally, I added a few interventions to help keep disruptive students on track. If you would like to receive the electronic version of the ALM, please send me an email request to pourciaut@mybrcc.edu.

GROWTH MINDSET AND SELF EFFICACY
During our most recent faculty professional development workshop. Dr. Crystal Allen of Lone Star College in neighboring Texas spoke about helping students develop a growth mindset. Although I have presented this theory in previous workshops, Dr. Allen brought a fresh perspective to this important topic. Enhancing each of our student's self-efficacy levels is vitally important to increasing our retention and completion rates. Helping them to understand that knowledge is not a fixed commodity but something that can grow throughout our lives is the key to this approach.

AVOID STUDENT EXCUSES WITH POLICY
Dr. John Orlando offers some great advice on how to handle student excuses in a recent article he wrote for Faculty Focus. He writes, as new teachers very quickly learn, students will come up with all kinds of excuses for missing assignments and other work. Students will never say, “I missed the exam because I was out late last night—it was one dollar taps at the Silver Horse, you know how it goes.” As a result, teachers must have a policy for handling these situations, which invariably involves a decision on trust. The problem is that grandparents do die—it happens—but they don’t die as often as we are told and their deaths don’t always coincide with major deadlines in the syllabus. So how do we know when a grandparent really dies, or a roommate actually does get deathly ill in the middle of the night, and when we are being handed a line? Read more here.

STUDENT PERSISTENCE HELPED BY COHORTS
As we continue our campus-wide discussion about improving our student persistence and completion rates, the idea of learning communities keep coming to the front. Looking at the research in that area can be very instructional and can point us to some interventions that have worked elsewhere. Learning communities may be established in many areas of study to effectively address the learning needs for a wide variety of students while providing both faculty and students with an academic structure that promotes collaboration. Learning communities also help to develop a strong sense of student identity as they traditionally have smaller enrollment numbers. Grouping students into cohorts should not only be done for students who initially declare majors, but also for students transferring in from other colleges. It may be useful for BRCC to look at the Tiger Bridge student's data moving forward as somewhat of a pilot of this concept. If you want to read more about this approach, go here.

FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITY STUDIES BEST TEACHERS
The Best Teachers Faculty Learning Community has settled into their group study using Ken Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do. Faculty learning communities, as defined by Dr. Milton Cox who runs a summer institute to train facilitators, is a group of trans-disciplinary faculty of 8-12 members engaging in an active, collaborative, semester-long program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning and with frequent meetings and activities that provide learning, development, transdisciplinarity, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community building. The Teaching+Learning Center has sponsored three previous FLC including a Best Teachers group during the fall 2013 semester. The current Best Teachers FLC members include Dr. Jo Dale Ales (STEM), Dr. Gabriel Aluko (Science), Dr. Amy Atchley (Speech), Mollye DeLoach (Speech), Gery Frie (Construction Management), Vinetta Frie (Liberal Arts), Lucas Gassen (English), Steven Keeton (English), and Dr. Todd Pourciau (DILAS). Look for information on new Faculty Learning Communities planned for the spring 2015 semster in the near future or contact Academic Support Specialist Barbara Linder (linderb@mybrcc.edu or 216.8228) for more information.

STUDENT RETENTION TAKES A VILLAGE
In the research article Promoting Persistence and Success of Underrepresented Students: Lessons for Teaching and Learning by Kinzie, Gonyea, Shoup, and Kuh, the authors note that new students tend to benefit from early interventions and sustained attention during the first year in terms of their academic performance. They go on to say that it is wise to send clear messages to students through precollege mentoring programs and sustained interactions with faculty and staff through out the first year about the value of engagement and what students who succeed do on this particular campus. All educators need to coach students in the development of expected study habits. Experiences early in the first year set in place patterns of behavior that will endure over students' years in college. Many of you have spoken to me about the problem of not having students come to your office for advice. This article suggests that we build in advising and teaching study skills as part of our class time. Offering general advising tips at the beginning and end of each class can have a profound impact on student persistence and retention. You can find the complete article here or in New Directions for Teaching and Learning (#115) fall 2008 which includes other articles about student retention.

HOW DOES YOUR TEACHING TOOLKIT LOOK
Professional development opportunities for October include today's Blackboard Series and next Thursday's Active Learning and Engagement workshop. Yesterday's Mid-Day Musings gathering was filled with lively discussion on the topic of civility. Using several recent articles about the topic, which is trending nationally, helped to set the tone for our local discussion. Turning our own experiences into teachable opportunities was one of the outcomes that the participants seemed to rally around. Many of the participants discussed how they use the topic of civility in their classes in hopes of helping their students become critical thinkers and active participants in the community. One of the best active learning methods is the use of debate to expose your students to complex issues. There are still a few spots for today's Blackboard session and registration is ongoing for the workshop on October 30. All of these events are sponsored by the Teaching+Learning Center.

ADDING PATHWAYS FOR COMPLETION
Have you heard about the Ability to Benefit rule? It allowed students who lacked either a high school diploma or its equivalent (usually a GED) to get into college if they could demonstrate the ability to benefit through a test score. But the rule was repealed by the U.S. Congress. Now, there is a move to bring it back. Matt Read's blog which appears on the Inside Higher Ed website provides more details about this additional pathway.