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| ALL FACULTY ARE INVITED, INCLUDING ADJUNCTS. Sessions will begin with a demonstration followed by conversation among those who may want to use the same method(s), those who have other ideas, skeptics—any interested faculty-ranked folks. |
Using the Syllabus as a Retention Tool
(Course Practices That Provide a Safety Net)
So far: Wed., August, 18, at JTCC, 9:30-10:45 a.m. and Friday, August 20, 1999, at JSRCC, 1-3 p.m.; scheduled for October 15, 1-4, at Rappahannock--Warsaw and on compressed video
Adding details, practice questions, organizing resources of the course; making a syllabus template, using desktop publishing to enhance the appearance of the syllabus, such as a monthly calendar showing assignments, field trips, projects, etc. Establishing the "tone" of your course, revealing options from extra-credit to submitting work by email will be considered, as will ideas such as an information sheet, a quiz on the syllabus, getting students to sign off on course policies, and other issues related to student responsibility. Paper copy, as well as the Electronic Classroom (computer & projector on a cart), will be used during the demonstration part.
Improving Tests
So far: Friday, September 17, 1999, JSRCC, B-351, 1-3
Updating, varying question formats, keeping tests focused on what was taught, item analysis, peer review, test banking of one's own items, using commercial publishers' test banks will all be considered. Uses of application vs. memory questions, Scantron pros and cons and logistics, writing effective short-essay questions and thought-provoking multiple-choice questions will also be discussed. The demonstration will include dissertation research conducted on thought-provoking multiple-choice questions and the kinds of thinking students show as they work on such questions.
New Faculty Gathering:
Toward Mentoring/Collaborating
October 18, 1999, PRC, B-351, 1-3
The "high touch" portion, co-sponsored by JSRCC’s Human Resources and the Midcentral Region Center for Teaching Excellence, will include time for veteran faculty to meet and chat informally with the most recently hired teachers at the college. A "high tech" approach will include an introduction of the "Know JSR" Front Page website. Handouts will include an observation form that can be adapted for visiting each other’s classes to provide specific, helpful observations to each other, along with copies of forms used at another college for mentoring each semester. Ideas will be gathered toward a mentoring/collaboration grant that would include--
 | Reading and discussing Taking Teaching Seriously: Meeting the Challenge of Instructional Improvement |
| Using some of the forms in How Am I Teaching? Forms and Activities for Acquiring Instructional Input |
| Discussing the feasibility of mentoring or collaborating in triads or pairs |
| Possibly visiting each other's classrooms or exchanging course materials for making finite observations, such as looking at one test |
(Available after this date for other MRCTE colleges separately or all at once and adapted to their needs and information, perhaps during professional days just before Thanksgiving)
Helping Students Learn to Take Notes
and Tests in Our Courses
Suggested for November
Note-taking and annotation methods, purposes, and pay-offs that we can show our students to use in our courses; collecting and evaluating notes, one-minute papers, etc., will be methods examined. Increasing students' writing skills, especially, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, will be discussed. Using teacher-made notes, e.g. PowerPoint speaker notes, incomplete outlines, etc. to understand a lecture; helping students take better notes from group work, whole-class discussion, and audio-visuals, as well as helping students to learn from their and teachers' notes, textbooks, and study guides, will be prime topics.
Writing Grants to Get the Time and Funding to Make and Implement Curricular Changes
Suggested for early January
VCCS grants and the requirements for each, researching private grants and small (individual?) federal and state grants will be discussed. Ideas on writing formats and styles, budgeting and promising what you can deliver, along with travel, hardware, and intangibles will be shared. The crucial considerations of feasibility and adequate evaluation will be highlighted with good and poor examples and suggestions for using peer, student, and external evaluators.
Dealing with and Motivating Diverse and Nontraditional Students
Suggested for later January
Learning the sociological, psychological, and cultural issues faced by first-time college students; learning to motivate students, raising their expectations to realistic levels, showing them the tools to thrive in academia while advising them on handling the changes in their lives will be the major topics of this session. Detecting signs of attitude changes from the first week, the first assignment, the first test, and other milestones in a course will be part of the workshop, along with dealing with students one-on-one.
Retaining Students in Our Classes and Programs
Suggested for February; scheduled for October 22, 1-4, Rappahannock CC—Glenns and on compressed video
Drawing from the above ideas, plus research, developing focused plans by discipline, even by course, will be practiced. The role of the ASC and counseling, along with drawing ideas and principles from the BASE grant of the late '80s, will help focus discussion. We’ll also consider how assessment can help: of students' work habits, study skills, test-taking know-how, attitudes about school, logistical control, debriefing the first test, valuing the in-class experience and seeing out of class study as worthy. Student study groups, classroom dynamics, dominance games, racial issues vs. team building, getting students to value each other, collaborative vs. competitive projects, grades, etc., will all be discussed.
What Works for Me--by Discipline and Across Disciplines (a colloquium)
April
Exchanging concrete "good practices" with colleagues from JSRCC, JTCC, Piedmont, RCC, and SVCC, especially those from the sharing sessions listed above.
From Sharing and Workshops to "Strands of Inquiry"
May
If the series above is successful within the colleges of the Midcentral Region of the Center for Teaching Excellence, interested parties will gather at an open meeting in May to plan activities for the next academic year, including the notion of singling out the most successful topics from 1999-2000 for a series or even inquiry groups in 2000-2001.
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Web Workshops
The following hands-on workshops can be done any afternoon (one week’s notice preferred) in the computer lab of your choice at your college campus. Links to the materials for these workshops are also available online at--
http://staff.jsr.cc.va.us/ehibbison/ Click on "Training Manuals" on the menu in the top left corner of this page to access these and more.
Making Your Own Web Page
If your computer lab has Word97 (or 2000) with its Web Page Wizard installed, bring your contact information, professional interests, or vita on a diskette with any photos you might want to include.
Objective: By the time you finish this workshop, you should be able to decide whether one of two ways to make web pages is easy enough for you to use—and if you want to have such a web page for your students and peers to view.
We will use the Word Web Page Wizard to fill out a template that can include the following or variations of them:
| Work information: job title, department, main duties |
| Hot list: favorite links relevant to your job |
| Contact information: email, web page address, phone |
| Current projects: e.g. courses you teach regularly with space for comments about each |
| Biographical information: probably vita highlights and whatever facts about where you were raised, etc., to humanize your students’ view of you |
| Interests: e.g. professional interests or memberships, maybe hobbies |
In addition, we will discuss commercial sites for displaying your web page vs. coordinating with your local computer staff to get your own folder and a procedure for revising your web page(s).
Your "homework" will include
| a detailed invitation to try out a contrasting web page wizard that is built into Netscape Communicator, called simply Page Composer |
| an invitation to try out the classroom site at Tripod to see if you would want individual students or groups to make web pages there for course projects. |
Using the Web to Enhance Your Teaching
This workshop shows how and why to use the Internet to increase students’ time on task with your course concepts.
Objective: By the end of the workshop, you should be able to decide which of the following you might want and be able to integrate into your course to meet at least one objective for one lesson. (The online work has to be evaluated in some way and count in some way toward the course grade.) Secondarily, if you are already offering a lesson, unit, or course online, you might wish to add one of these or increase its potential.
| Email: How and why to have students email you and each other for troubleshooting, as a "classroom committee," to submit work online, efficient ways to respond to email, as well as cognitive and affective pros and cons |
| Forms: Using surveys to increase students’ self-monitoring and to get instructional feedback for course improvement; includes trial of a free form maker at the University of Hawaii that emails you a completed form containing a "submit" button programmed to send responses to your email address |
| Forums: Forums can stimulate, follow-up, and to some extent substitute for class discussion—usually with more thoughtful answers. If your college does not support software that will make forums (such as Web Course in a Box, Blackboard, or Front Page, which are all in use in the VCCS), you can use free (commercial) sites. We’ll try one. |
| Chats: Pros and cons as a learning device will dominate our discussion as we try out a chat site and contrast it with using a forum synchronously or asynchronously. |
| Web sites: Making your own vs. using someone else’s. |
| Web research: Web search engines vs. VIVA = consideration of public, online resources, as opposed to searching for closed and possibly more professional online sources. |
Web Course in a
Box vs. Front Page:
A Demonstration and Discussion
Two popular authoring systems among VCCS colleges offer templates (WCB) and more free-form software (Front Page) for making web sites.
Objectives: If your college has to decide which of these to buy and support with its own server, join me via compressed video (or I can come to your campus and display online work with a data projector) and we’ll talk over the pros and cons. If your college supports both of these authoring software, which one do you use as a faculty member to make a course website?
This topic was first done on request via compressed video for about a dozen folks at CVCC. Dr. Sharon Martin summarized that session on a web page (made with Front Page).
We’ll consider topics such as these—
| Which "interface" is better—the six buttons of WCB or the variable number of hover buttons in Front Page? |
| Which makes forums more easily and easier to edit? |
| Which makes links more easily? |
| Which handles sound and video files more reliably for Netscape and for Internet Explorer? |
Contact = Eric Hibbison, MRCTE Chair, AHSS, PRC, JSRCC (B-353)
P.O. Box 85622; Richmond, VA 23285-5622
Ehibbison@jsr.cc.va.us or
804-371-3205
Reminder for folks new to the Web: UNDERLINED WORDS (and some graphics images) ARE HOT LINKS. To preview them, hold your mouse on the hotlink (the arrow becomes a hand as you "mouseover" a link) and read the "URL" (Web address) in the "status line" (bottom) of your maximized Web browser. To visit, just click. |
Instructional Development Sharing Series: 
1999