iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (1/18/2016)

Welcome to iDevelop, a weekly eNewsletter providing faculty with information about professional development opportunities at NSCC. The intent of this eNewsletter is to spotlight the various professional development events for faculty in one convenient location as well as share best practices, resources and tips related to the teaching practice. iDevelop is being brought to you by Instructional Technology and Design (ITD) and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CTLA). 

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The Monday Morning Mentor series, professional development in twenty minute snippets, will kick off the spring semester on January 25, 2016 with How Do Master Teachers Create a Positive Classroom? More information will be available in the next issue of iDevelop. The complete spring schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2015/12/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

1. NERCOMP Virtual Workshop on Using VoiceThreads. On Thursday, January 21st at 1:00pm, Andrea Milligan will be facilitating a virtual workshop on utilizing VoiceThreads to expand discussion. More information on the workshop is available at http://nercomp.org/index.php?section=events&evtid=506. NSCC is a NERCOMP members so the workshop is free to attend.

2. Free Workshop on Assignment Design facilitated by Bonnie Orcott, Director of Learning Outcomes Assessment, Massachusetts DHE. The workshop will take place on Friday, January 29, 2016 from 2:00-4:30 p.m. at UMass Lowell (Campus Rec Center Meeting Room 111) and will be on three key student learning outcomes: Critical Thinking, Quantitative Literacy, and Written Communication. If you have an assignment that addresses one or more of these outcomes, and you’d like to fine-tune it to help provoke strong work from your students, this workshop is a great opportunity to get some feedback from other faculty who share your aims. Participants should bring an assignment to work on! Both full- and part-time faculty are welcome! RSVP via e-mail to assess@uml.edu.

3. Free Online Course (MOOC) on Accessibility: Designing and Teaching Courses for All Learners is a Course. For more information and to register, visit https://www.canvas.net/browse/empirestate/empirestate-buffalostate/courses/accessibility-designing-teaching. The course will run from February 22 - April 5, 2016.

4. MSC Initiative. NSCC is once again participating in the Multi-State Collaborative (MSC) initiative. You may recall that last year a number of you submitted student artifacts (e.g., essays, journal entries, and quantitative papers) to examine the validity of the AAC&U rubrics in written communication, quantitative literacy, and critical thinking.

The MSC is continuing to test these rubrics and has requested additional artifacts (e.g., essays, journal entries, and quantitative papers) in the following areas:

• written communication
• quantitative literacy
• critical thinking
• civic engagement

We received a small grant to stipend faculty interested in participating. Depending upon the level of faculty participation, these stipends will be somewhere in the range of $50-$100 per faculty member. The process is entirely voluntary and is intended to assess the rubrics only, not the student work or scope of the assignment. If you are willing to partake, here's what the MSC would need:

• A completed Assignment Cover Sheet
• Your assignment sheet that generated the artifact
• 10-12 student artifacts (e.g., essays, journal entries, and quantitative papers) that demonstrate written communication, quantitative literacy, critical thinking, or civic engagement. These artifacts should be at least 3 pages in length. All names and identifying features will be scrubbed. No releases from students are needed for this project.

Please let Chris Bednar know if you are willing to participate. We would need the materials by May 2016. Thanks!
 

Resources

• Great Icebreakers for the College Classroom
  http://blog.cengage.com/great-icebreakers-for-the-college-classroom/
• First Impressions: Activities for the First Day of Class http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/first-impressions-activities-for-the-first-day-of-class/
• First Day of Class Activity: The Interest Inventory http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/first-day-of-class-activity-the-interest-inventory/
• The Rhythms of the Semester: Implications for Practice, Persona
  http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/philosophy-of-teaching/the-rhythms-of-the-semester-implications-for-practice-persona/

Share your Teaching Strategies
With classes starting this week, we wanted to invite you to share your teaching strategies with each other around getting students started in your courses successfully and building a course community.  What are some strategies that you employ to ensure that students start your course on the right track?  How do you use ice breakers to develop a course community so you and your students can get to know each other? Send an email with your teaching strategies to itd@northshore.edu and we will share them in the next few issues of iDevelop.

We hope you have enjoyed this weekly eNewsletter and would love your input. Please let us know if you have any feedback on the format, content, and resources or if there is anything else you would like to see in the eNewsletter.

Good luck with the start of the semester!

Thank you,
Instructional Technology and Design and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment