MENTORING PROGRAM RELAUNCH
As a learner-centered institution of higher education, BRCC is committed to fostering good teaching that develops deeper learning leading to student success. Good teaching, in its essence, is defined as helping students learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how they think, act, and feel. Research shows that constructive mentoring and reviewing of faculty works to help such faculty meet high standards of rigor, depth, and innovation in teaching and learning, and to realize their full potential as scholars, teachers, and members of the academic community. In addition, mentees, when compared with un-mentored faculty, tend to feel more self-assured, exhibit greater political savvy, profess to feel more confident about their teaching, and, generally, in the long run tend to be more prolific. Faculty with mentors have been found to be more productive and they indicate higher career and job satisfaction, while achieving greater long-term success than those not mentored. The Mentoring Program is being re-launched beginning with the fall 2103 semester. If you are interested in becoming a mentor or mentee, contact Dr. Todd Pourciau at pourciaut@mybrcc.edu or 216.8534.

KEEP CALM AND BE ENGAGED
The New Faculty Orientation for the fall 2013 semester will be held on Wednesday, August 21 from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM. All new full-time faculty hires are invited to attend the active workshop to be held in room 311 Magnolia Building. A special invitation is extended to the former CATC faculty who are joining the BRCC family. Topics to be covered include faculty development about teaching and learning, online delivery, responding to student's needs, testing, and student success. If you have not already received an invitation but would like to attend this event, contact Barbara Linder at 216.8228 or via email at barbaralinder@catc.edu.

CAN WE TALK
The Teaching+Learning Center will be offering a common reader Faculty Learning Community using Ken Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do (which will be provided to the participants). The Faculty Learning Community will begin on September 4 and run until October 10, meeting from noon until 1:00 PM in the Teaching+Learning Center (311 Magnolia Building). Faculty Learning Communities have been utilized by higher education institutions for a number of years and are designed to provide faculty with quality time to focus on topics related to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Typically a FLC will agree on accomplishing a few learning objectives over the course of the term. If you are interested in joining this FLC, contact Barbara Linder at 216.8228 or via email at barbaralinder@catc.edu.

NOTE TAKING 101
Here are a few tips taken from a recent copy of The Teaching Professor newsletter on how you can help your students improve their note-taking abilities. When you say something important, go ahead and give students time to write it down--word for word if they like. Then give them 30 seconds to look at what they have written and put it in their own words. If you have two or three students read what they have written, you will reinforce the importance of the point and at the same time you can talk about the student's versions of the idea. Typically, students do not write enough in their notes. At the end of a lesson or content area, give students two minutes to look over their notes. Encourage them to add more or to ask you questions. Ask them, "What is the most important thing that you just got from your notes on this topic?" Correct any misguided remarks. Finally, facilitate a short discussion of what students can do with their notes as they prepare for an exam. If they say they will go over their notes, strongly suggest that they get into the notes. Suggest that they rewrite their notes, highlight the key points, compare them with another student, and compare the notes to the text. You can read more in the volume 27, number 6 issue in the periodical section of the BRCC Library.

BLACKBOARD COMMUNITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
One of the great features of Blackboard is the ability to create a community that allows us to discuss, share and communicate virtually. I am currently working on creating the Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Blackboard site. It will include a discussion board and online resource library among other things. As soon as it is ready to go live, all of the faculty will be added so that you can access the resources and interact with your colleagues. Hopefully it will be useful to you and become the place for online discussion about the scholarship of teaching and learning at BRCC.

NEW FACULTY ORIENTATION
The Office of Teaching and Learning will be coordinating an orientation session for all new faculty. It will be held from 9:00 AM until 12 noon on Wednesday, August 21 in room 311 Magnolia Building. The focus will be on providing our newest faculty colleagues with a good foundation as they begin their teaching career at BRCC. The topics will include faculty development, using Blackboard effectively, closing the loop with the Academic Learning Center, utilizing the Testing Center, exploring the Library, explaining what our CSSK course is all about and the eLearning certification process. While the event will be open to our new hires, we are also extending an invitation to our colleagues from the former Capital Area Technical College.

TEACHING AND LEARNING FROM BOTH SIDES
The recent announcement by Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs that the Academic Learning Center had joined the Teaching and Learning team means that the loop is now closed. The combined forces will allow us to provide unique solutions for some of our more pressing problems related to retention and student learning. The combined expertise of Jeanne Stacy, Yvette Ferguson, and Donna Newman brings the student experience into play. The Teaching and Learning team, which also includes the eLearning Program, Evening+Weekend, and the Testing Center, is here to work with all academic units and faculty to design and implement strategies and interventions based on the latest empirical research. We are excited about the possibilities created by this new collaborative and look forward to meeting the needs of our various constituencies.

ENGAGEMENT PROVIDES VALUABLE INFORMATION
Instead of doing one of the standard ice-breaker activities, why not give a pre-test? This type of learner-based assessment allows you to find out as much as possible about your students. Not only is it a great engagement tool but it will help you to modify your class to meet the needs of each of your students. You want to ask them questions about their ambitions, their approaches to and conceptions of learning, the way they reason, their temperaments, habits, and the things that attract their attention on a daily basis. Ken Bain, in his book What The Best College Teachers Do, notes that this type of activity is endorsed by the best teachers. Once you have the information, you should use it to build a class profile and compare it to the learning experiences, projects, and assessment instruments you plan to use in the course. You can then use this information throughout the semester to generate conversations and to make specific points to motivate your students. The pre-test also allows you to understand the complexities of your students.

SUMMER IS ABOUT COURSE REDESIGN
Dr. Maryellen Weimer has an interesting article about course redesign. She notes, introductory courses are packed with content. Teachers struggle to get through it during class; students struggle to master it outside of class. Too often learning consists of memorizing material that’s used on the exam but not retained long after. Faculty know they should use more strategies that engage students, but those approaches take time and, in most courses, that’s in very short supply. Blended-learning designs can be used to help with the problem. Technology offers other options for dealing with course content. This article recounts one faculty member’s experiences redesigning a gateway cell biology course. In a nutshell, all the lecture content was recorded as 10-20 minute voiceover PowerPoint presentations. Class time was devoted to “activities … entirely focused on student engagement with the content and with each other.” (p. 35) What happened in class did not repeat the content but was based on assigned readings in the text and material covered in the recorded lectures. A variety of interesting classroom activities was used, including a version of the time-tested muddiest-point strategy. Upon arriving in class students submitted index cards with questions about things from the readings or the lecture that they did not understand. A sample of these questions was read aloud and then students and the professor discussed and answered them. Students also participated in another index-card activity that presented them with a scenario or experimental data not discussed in the lectures or readings. Students worked on these questions in small groups and then developed and submitted a group answer. During class the instructor also had students respond to questions using clickers.

RESOURCES FOR YOU
Student engagement is just as critical in the online delivery mode as it is in face-to-face classes. If you are looking to add some active learning experiences to your eLearning course or would like to enhance your f2f classroom, you might want to take a look at the Interactive Activities in Online and Hybrid Courses website. There are examples of individual as well as collaborative learning experiences. Dr. Betsy Winston also presents a number of learning experience ideas in her article Enhancing Critical Thinking and Active Learning in Online Courses.

IS THERE A SUCCESS GENE
Paul Voosen reports on the search for a "gene for finishing college." The article points out that there will never be a “gene for educational success” or a “gene for entrepreneurship,” just as there will never be a “gene for intelligence” or a “gene for personality.” He notes that the research reveals that there is a gene variant that increases the likelihood to read books, and it is the reading, in turn, that helps determine scholastic futures. He suggests that we still encourage kids who don’t have the variant to read and that will raise their chances for educational success.

SUB-PRIME STUDENTS
Did you catch the comment by Trace Urdan about "subprime students." Apparently in a public debate, Urdan argued with David Halperin that the relatively low graduation rates of many for-profit colleges were actually pretty good, when compared to their subsidized competition (community colleges). Halperin countered, correctly, that it’s misleading to characterize most for-profits as unsubsidized, given their heavy reliance on Federal financial aid. Matt Read said in his blog post "But the line that jumped out at me was Urdan’s assertion that “[the] school offers quality instruction. The students make of it what they will.”  He continues, "If your unit of analysis is the disconnected individual, then it follows that any failures must be the fault of those individuals. If you have low graduation rates, you must have subprime students. It’s a convenient belief, because it lets everyone else off the hook. If people rise or fall entirely on their own merits, then those who fell must lack merit. If they lack merit, then their failure is nothing to worry about. After all, if they had merit, they wouldn’t have failed!" he concluded.

BLACKBOARD EXPERTS ON THE RISE AT BRCC
The day started with a bang as several of your colleagues new to Blackboard began their training session at 9:00 AM in the Teaching+Learning Center. eLearning Program Manager Susan Nealy and IT Technical Support Manager Lenora White are facilitating the training sessions. The intermediate-level Blackboard users began their session at 11:00 AM. The training concludes with our advanced group at 1:00 PM today. The comments from the participants have been very positive about our latest version of Blackboard. Many are impressed with the analytics feature that will allow them to drill deep as they monitor their students progress during the semester. Next up is the eLearning teacher certification program planned for the summer. Those selected to participate in this year's program should be receiving their notification via email very shortly.

BEGIN SMALL WITH ACTIVE LEARNING
We have been encouraging the use of active learning as we move towards a learner-centered institution. One of the reasons that many faculty tell me they don't want to try using active-learning techniques is that they are comfortable lecturing and research shows that "they may find innovative instructional techniques intimidating." Paramount among your concerns is the fear of “losing control” of the class. In addition, some faculty may avoid incorporating active-learning strategies into their classrooms because they think that students will react negatively. Faust and Paulson note in their research, "A complaint we often hear is, “I tried active learning, but my students didn’t like it.” Indeed, most of us have had the experience of attempting to initiate class discussion and being faced with silence. These two issues are related, for both students and faculty tend to be comfortable with what they are trained to do. Thus, as long as faculty lean primarily on lecturing, students will expect to sit and listen (and often hide or sleep in class)." Faculty development experts suggest that you begin using active learning in small ways at first. You need to become comfortable with the approach before you can fully realize its potential. Some of the learning experiences listed in the revised Active Learning Manual that would be easy to try are the Muddiest Point or One-Minute Paper. The idea is to do something active each time you meet in a face-to-face class. You are building your expertise at the same time as you are creating expectation in your students. Let me know if you want a copy of the latest version of the Active Learning Manual.

CAN YOU HELP ME FIND A JOB
Why did you decide to go to college? Asking that question of new students in a more formal way might help colleges find ways to encourage more students to complete their programs, according to a new study from University of Rochester education researchers published in The Journal of College Student Development. The study found that students motivated by a desire for autonomy and competence tended to earn higher grades and show a greater likelihood of persistence than did other students. (The findings were controlled for academic background and various other factors, and were based on surveys of 2,500 students at a community college and a liberal arts college that were not identified.) The study also appears to validate other research that says that linking the subject matter to a student's current interests improves learning.

CELEBRATING THE PRESENT AND ASSESSING THE PAST

As we look forward to Commencement on Friday, May 24, it is also time to begin to assess our progress as an educational institution. That all starts and ends in each of your classes, whether you met face-to-face or virtually. Looking at the amount of students who did not pass your class with an acceptable grade is a good place to begin. A large number of failures indicate serious problems. As the educational process is a partnership, we must take part of the blame. If you taught in an online delivery mode this semester, you can certainly use analytics available to you through Blackboard. Those can be extremely helpful as you notice trends of when students stopped participating or what resources they utilized on their semester journey. If you taught in the classroom, it is more difficult to analyze the situation but you should still attempt to do so. I have encouraged you to keep a journal of each of your classes as you make your way through the semester. It is a great way to help you redesign your class for greater effectiveness. Many of you took advantage of the classroom observation resource that I offer. I urge those of you who did to revisit the analysis as you begin to look at what worked and what did not. I am pleased to tell you that we now have the capability to offer you a video rendition of your class. You simply need to contact me to set this up. Seeing yourself as your students do can be a very helpful exercise. I have also updated the Active Learning Manual. If you would like to have the latest version to help you plan new learning experiences, send me a request via email (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). Friday is about celebrating accomplishment. You have had a significant part to play in all of our graduates’ lives. Let's come together as a community and recognize the best of who we are in our graduates on Friday.

TEACHING LESS ALLOWS BETTER LEARNING

Many faculty complain that their deans and chairs insist that they "cover" a certain amount of material (usually defined by chapters in a textbook) in their classes during the semester. I have shared with you that research shows that teaching less allows our students to learn better. We must focus on learning outcomes. It is vital to have students who can think critically and integrate new material and then apply it to new situations. Active learning is proven to produce just this kind of learning. If a student is able to think critically, they can survive in any situations, whether they are receiving a certificate and going to work or whether they are transferring to a four-year institution. Faust and Paulson have developed a terrific research paper that compiles the best of active learning data. They note that the “coverage problem”—that is that an instructor cannot “cover” as much material in a course incorporating active-learning techniques as in a course using exclusively lecture—is built on faulty logic. A growing body of evidence suggests that students learn and retain more information when they are asked to engage it actively. However, weighing content coverage against active learning creates a devil’s bargain: Either teach more material and have students learn less, or teach less material and have students learn more of it. Little purpose is served by the first choice. Students always will be better educated if we expose them to slightly less content but require them to engage the material. We all have had the experience of students coming into our classes appearing to have little knowledge of what was covered in their previous courses. The material was “covered,” but the students did not learn it. Thus, even in courses in which there are mandates on the amount of material to be covered, students are likely to be better prepared for successive courses if they are actively engaged in learning the material.

COLLEGE DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Students show substantial gains in learning during college, as measured by a standardized test of critical thinking, according to two studies conducted by the creator of the test. While perhaps not a direct rebuke to Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the blockbuster 2011 book that documented what its authors argued was meager learning on campuses, the studies, by the Council for Aid to Education, do offer a sunnier counter narrative. In "Does College Matter?," the council found that, at a typical college, students' scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA, rose 108 points, on a scale that ranges from about 400 to 1600, between freshman and senior years. The council also found distinctions in the performance of students at different types of institutions. Students at baccalaureate colleges demonstrated the highest average growth on the CLA, followed by those at master's-level colleges and universities. Students at doctoral and research universities showed the lowest average growth.

CAN MY CLICKER TALK TO BLACKBOARD
The use of student response systems has been around for a number of years but the folks who provide the technology have not stopped trying to improve their effectiveness. Yesterday the Teaching+Learning Center hosted Paul King of Turning Technologies to share the latest on his version of "clickers." He was joined by Bill Joyce, who many at BRCC may remember as he was our "rep" for a number of years. The main updates focused on analytics. As with all technology, the tool only benefits us if it helps to improve teaching and learning and lightens the workload. When the conversation turned to how Turning Technologies products "talked" with our current version of Blackboard, those in attendance found out that there may indeed be some benefits to adopting the latest versions. At the end of the day we decided to continue talking with all the stakeholders to see how we can improve student learning through the use of deeper assessment. Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the progress.

ELEARNING RELAUNCH CONTINUES
This has been an interesting semester for our eLearning Program. In January, we hired Susan Nealy to manage the eLearning enterprise. We also embarked on a relaunch project that included course redesign based on industry-standard benchmarks. As you will recall, the eLearning offerings for the spring 2013 semester were limited to 28 classes to allow for evaluation and assessment to take place in a controlled environment. As we approach the end of the first semester since the relaunch, we are busy with the assessment part of the project. Many of you are about to receive a survey that will allow us to capture valuable information for the next step in the process. We are most interested in the student experience of this relaunch and will be surveying them as well. All of this is designed to provide our students with the best possible academic experience in an online environment. Student learning is still the main objective and we are optimistic that the changes being implemented will allow BRCC to provide a quality program of excellence.

EVERYBODY MULTITASKS BUT NOT VERY WELL
Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, has published some interesting research on a topic near to my own areas of interest. His study takes a look at the use of technology during learning experiences, an idea that emerged from his book Rewired. He based his idea on the fact that students are experiencing multiple streams of information and entertainment while they study, do homework, or even sit in class. In fact, we know that this has become so common that most students rarely write a paper or complete a problem set without multitasking (or switch tasking as many psychologists have come to describe it).  The evidence clearly shows that when students switch task while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. Rosen suggests that we ask our students to take "tech breaks" during class. He gives them a chance to look at email and websites during class in short spurts throughout the class as long as they adhere to his rules during the class. Rosen has found that this will allow the students to build their resistance and begin to work longer periods without the tech breaks.

STAND AND DELIVER
Here is another suggestion from Dr. Dakin Burdick for an end of the semester activity that will provide you with great immediate feedback from your students about their experience in your class. Christopher Uhl recommends ending the course with an invitation to students to stand and share their thoughts. Some prompts for this exposition are emotional in nature: What are your regrets? How did you fail to live up to your potential? For what are you thankful? What are your hopes for yourself and for your colleagues? Others are challenges to the student to commit him/herself towards change: How will you use what you have learned? How do you resolve to change?

JOINT OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING
Robert Carroll has written an interesting opinion piece about the teacher-student relationship. At its essence, it is about engagement but he frames it in terms of an athletic performance. He asks "So why do we, as teachers, still exist? The formal education process is no longer about information, and successful teachers have come to realize this. The ability of learners to access information has increased to the point of absurdity. The role of the teacher now is to help learners effectively identify and evaluate information sources, but this alone does not justify our continued presence in the educational process." He continues, "While learning is self-directed, it is the teacher that is accountable for the learning:  accountable to the students, to the program, and to themselves. Courses flourish when the student-teacher relationship is reciprocal and includes “joint ownership” of the course. And the responsibility flows both ways–a student performing poorly is a failure on my part, and I work with them to get them to perform to the best of their ability."

GROUP DISCUSSION WITH A TWIST
We have encouraged you to use class discussion as an active learning method in your classes and we have provided teaching and learning faculty development workshops in the past to provide you with the information and tools to implement this learning experience. B. J. Brooks and M. D. Koretsky provide a twist on this active learning method in their article "The Influence of Group Discussion on Students' Responses and Confidence During Peer Instruction" published in the Journal of Chemical Education. They advocate that you allow your student to respond to a discussion question individually in writing and then have them share that answer with two or three colleagues. After the discussion, the students can change their answers, write another explanation for the answer and once again indicate their degree of confidence in their answer. The research shows that the learning experience provided a richer understanding of the answer and improved their confidence level in having the correct answer. The depth of their explanation was enhanced as well. Students spent an average of seven minutes in discussion making this an active learning method that can be used each time you meet as a class. The research also confirmed that when faced with conceptual problems, students need the opportunity to practice problem solving and the discussion improves their ability to explain why the answer is correct.

CLOSING OUT A SEMESTER POSITIVELY
A fellow faculty development colleague reminds us that the end of the semester is the time to do some assessment that will provide you with valuable feedback as you plan for the next semester. There are a number of things you can do to help your students transition to the next phase of their academic careers or workforce lives. He suggests, "Just as you discussed the syllabus on the first day of class, do so again, this time to reaffirm that learning outcomes have been met and to remind students of the material that has been covered. Of course, it is a good idea to review that syllabus a few weeks out from the end of the semester to make sure that the outcomes have been met. The review can be done as a large group discussion, or you might assign groups within the class to assess how well the course had fulfilled its outcomes, material coverage, and other goals."

MUSIC DELIVERS IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
When designing and teaching a course through the online delivery method, research shows that you should build in authentic and relevant opportunities for your students to interact, connect, and present themselves as real people. Students see these opportunities to socially interact and connect with others as foundational attributes of your courses. Further, research suggests that opportunities like these influence students’ perception of the overall learning experience. Joanna Dunlap and Patrick Lowenthal conducted research in this area and suggest that using music as one of a number of ways to help students interact and connect with each other can produce positive student learning results. Music offers a way to involve students in student-to-content interaction through generative learning activities—by having students compile playlists, write lyrics, compose songs, perform songs, create music videos, and so on. Music-driven, student-to-content interaction also involves students in multisensory learning, further supporting knowledge acquisition and construction. They provide a number of discipline specific active learning methods that you can integrate into your online class.

MAKING PROMISES TO STUDENTS
Dr. Peter Filene says that there are two halves of the teaching/learning dialogue: aims and outcomes. Aims describe how you want to convey crucial aspects of your subject in lucid, interesting fashion. Outcomes describe how you want to change how your students think and feel, what he describes as the essence of learning. Dr. Filene says that faculty very often confuse outcomes with what they themselves will do rather than what they will ask of their students. He encourages us to think about outcomes as the promises we are making to our students. What will you ask them to understand and do? How will you (together) go about achieving these goals? What kind of assessment will you use to allow them and you to measure progress in learning? You can find more of Dr. Filene's wisdom in his book The Joy of Teaching: A practical guide for new college instructors (LB2331.F493).

NEW JOURNAL PROVIDES NEW OPPORTUNITY
Here is a great new opportunity for our eLearning faculty to publish their research findings. The inaugural issue of the Journal of Emerging Learning Design (ELDJ) was published in April. The ELDJ is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that provides a platform for academics and practitioners to explore emerging learning design theories, concepts, and issues and their implication at national and international levels.  An outgrowth of the annual Emerging Learning Design Conference, which makes its home at Montclair State University, the ELDJ invites scholarly communications in the emerging learning design field and will present best practices in design and implementation by offering articles that present, propose or review engaging and dynamic approaches to pedagogy and how technology can better enhance it.

RECRUITING AND RETAINING BLACK MEN
Marilyn L. Riley is still haunted by a teenager named Dante, who came reluctantly and angrily to her summer program for black men and ended up nearly walking away with five credits from Mesa Community College, in Arizona. The first few days, he slouched in his chair and glared at his instructor, his cap sideways, his pants sagging. "Sweetie, in my world, this isn't going to work," the petite adjunct professor and clinical psychologist, who is also black, told him. "You've got all this leadership potential, but no one's going to relate to you when you're looking like a thug." By the end of the summer session, she said, he was sitting up straight in his chair, was demonstrating critical-thinking skills, and was within striking distance of earning five college credits. But before that could happen, his mother packed up and moved the family to New Mexico, and he had to withdraw. Ms. Riley told that story at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges, in one of several sessions devoted to the challenges of recruiting and retaining black men. In another session, J. Luke Wood, an assistant professor of administration, rehabilitation, and post-secondary education at San Diego State University, described his research on black male students in community colleges. He visits community colleges to administer surveys and advise them on strategies for recruiting and retaining minority men. Mr. Wood said that faculty members tend to pay more attention to students who speak up in class and that many black men, in particular, lack the confidence to do so. In addition, "a lot of men are reluctant to ask for help because it makes them look weak," he said. "You have to be proactive in establishing relationships with these men."

IS A MOOC IN YOUR FUTURE
Community college leaders haven’t exactly jumped on the “disruption” bandwagon. That may be understandable given the popular narrative that digital innovation will replace faculty members and even entire colleges according to an Inside Higher Ed story. But the two-year sector’s wariness seems to be fading, if the annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges is any indication. The conference featured many sessions on how budget-strapped colleges can use self-paced online courses and free digital content, such as massive open online courses, to boost efficiency and serve more students. The two-year sector is open to that idea, said Walter G. Bumphus, the association’s president and former BRCC Chancellor. Bumphus later told the meeting’s attendees that he and fellow leaders of the association talked with Khan backstage about possible collaborations, and discussed setting up a committee to consider how to use the academy’s material. “It’s going to be good for community colleges and good for AACC,” Bumphus said.

ENGAGEMENT BRINGS DESIRED RESULTS
Do you call on one of your students in class every two to three minutes? Do you ask students what they know about a given topic before telling them what you know? Do you hold your students accountable through testing? These are just a few of the ways that Tara Gray and Laura Madson say you can engage with your students. They point to twenty years of research that shows that engagement in a classroom improves student learning. They point to one study of six thousand physics students that compared classes using passive lecture to classes using interactive techniques that allowed for discussion among students and between the professor and students. The study showed that students in classes that used interactive approaches rather than lecture learned twice as much. Their research paper gives some quick tips on improving engagement in your class.

YOUR BRAIN AND GOOGLE
Google wants to be the third "side" of your brain and they are not shy about admitting it. Google Glass, the wearable progeny of Ivan Sutherland's augmented reality display, the mobile phone, and science fiction -- accompanied by curiosity, excitement, and fear. Later this year, for less than $1,500, consumers will be able to get their hands on Google Glass, and we will begin to witness techies talking to their spectacle-mounted Google display and recording photos, video, and audio of their surroundings. "We want to make Google the third half of your brain," said Glass frontman and Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in 2010. That's what has some people worried about Glass. The third half of your brain could be perceived as your digital hemisphere locked in a Google cloud that captures all your interactions through the Glass lens and other Google access points, although Google would contend that the third half of your brain refers to a future search engine that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." Whatever the interpretation, Glass is a gateway to Google's goal to super-serve your digital soul.

UPCOMING WORKSHOP
The Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University is hosting their 12th annual Summer conference May 29-31, 2013. The Innovative Pedagogy and Course Redesign conference celebrates and showcases excellence and innovations in all areas of teaching, faculty support and development, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community-engaged teaching and scholarship. The conference is interactive and provides an opportunity to learn from other participants, to build connections and collaborations and to reflect upon the meaningfulness and impact of our work as educators and scholars.

THIS IS OUR COMPETITION
Earlier this year Capella University and the new College for America began enrolling hundreds of students in academic programs without courses, teaching professors, grades, deadlines or credit hour requirements, but with a path to genuine college credit. The two institutions are among a growing number that are giving competency-based education a try, including 25 or so nonprofit institutions. Notable examples include Western Governors University and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. These programs are typically online, and allow students to progress at their own pace without formal course material. They can earn credit by successfully completing assessments that prove their mastery in predetermined competencies or tasks -- maybe writing in a business setting or using a spreadsheet to perform calculations.