20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Spring 2025 Schedule

 The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI) offers faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the 20 Minute Mentor. The goal of the 20 Minute Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.

Information on how to access the 20 Minute Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin and the iDevelop e-newsletter.

New video presentations (with supplementary materials) go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday. 

The following sessions are on the schedule for spring 2025. For session descriptions, objectives, and mentor bios, click on the titles below. 

• January 20th - How Can I Re-envision Office Hours to Increase Engagement?*
• January 27th - How Can I Spark and Sustain Engagement in Reluctant Learners?
• February 3rd - How Can I Incorporate Best Practices into My Online Teaching?
• February 10th - What Challenges Do Neurodivergent Students Face in the College Classroom?*
• February 17th - How Can I Create Assignments that Teach Ethical AI Literacy?
• February 24th - How Can I Create Community in My Online Courses?*
• March 3rd - How Can I Alleviate Student Stress and Anxiety in My Class?
• March 10th - How Can I Use Backward Design for Online Discussions?*
• March 17th - How Can AI Feedback Tools and Blended Grading Develop Growth-Minded Students?*
• March 24th - What Assessment Strategies Are Effective for Asynchronous Online Teaching?
• March 31th - Conspicuously Human: How to be You in an AI-Driven Classroom*
• April 7th - How Can I Reframe Online Discussions into Dynamic and Engaging Conversations?*
• April 14th - How Can I Use Surveys and Polls to Support Active Learning?
• April 21st - How Can I Teach AI Prompt Engineering to My Students?
• April 28th - How Can I Assess Active Learning Strategies in the Classroom?
• May 5th - Recharging Your (Personal and Professional) Batteries*

Programs denoted with * are still in production and will be finalized shortly. 

We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to ctli@northshore.edu. 

20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Fall 2024 Schedule

 The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI) offers faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the 20 Minute Mentor. The goal of the 20 Minute Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.

Information on how to access the 20 Minute Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin and the iDevelop e-newsletter.

New video presentations (with supplementary materials) go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday. 

The following sessions are on the schedule for spring 2024. For session descriptions, objectives, and mentor bios, click on the titles below. 

• August 19th - How Can I Use My Teaching to Improve Student Study Skills?
• August 26, 2024 - How Can I Use AI Tools to Better Manage My Time?
• September 2, 2024 - How Can I Apply Virtual Reality to Create Meaningful Assignments and Assessments?
• September 9, 2024 - How Do I Get Students to Complete Reading Assignments?
• September 16, 2024 - How Can I Teach Courses That Are Inclusively Accessible to All Learners?
• September 23, 2024 - How Can I Use AI to Create Engaging Discussion Boards?
• September 30, 2024 - How Can I Recover Student Engagement Mid-Semester?
• October 7, 2024 - How Can I Enhance the Quality of Class Discussions Using Shared Documents? 
• October 14, 2024 - How Can I Create Alternative Syllabi  to Make My Class More Inclusive?
• October 21, 2024 - How Can I Supercharge My Slide Deck?
• October 28, 2024 - How Can I Leverage ChatGPT to Support Students with Disabilities?
• November  4, 2024 - How Can I Help Students Become Comfortable with the Uncomfortable?
• November 11, 2024 - How Can I Ensure Students Are Prepared for My Class?
• November 18, 2024 - How Can I Teach Transferable Skills for Career Readiness?
• November 25, 2024 -  How Can I Use OER to Create a More Inclusive Classroom?
• December 2, 2024 - How Can I Use Mindfulness Strategies to Prepare Students for Learning?

Programs denoted with * are still in production and will be finalized shortly. 

We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to ctli@northshore.edu. 

Preparing your Blackboard Learn Course Sites for Spring 2024

 As you start to work on your spring courses, we wanted to share with you the following important information that will help you prepare your course site in Blackboard Learn.

Copying a Course
If you had us increase your course content collection quota in the course you are copying forward, please make sure to reach out to us before starting the course copy. We will need to increase the course content collection quota in the new course first.

To copy a previous course site into a new one in Blackboard Learn:

1. Go into the course site that has the content to copy. In the Control Panel, expand the "Packages and Utilities" section and click Course Copy.
2. In the “Select Copy Options” section, next to the Destination Course ID field, click Browse. Then, find and select the Course ID for the new course (the one you want to put the content into). Click Submit.
3. Select the Course Materials that you want to copy over to the new course. Usually, Select All is the best choice, although you might not want to copy announcements.
• If Select All is not used, make sure to include Grade Center Columns and Settings if Assignments and/or Tests are being copied.
• Also, under Discussion Board, select "Include only the forums, with no starter posts" if threads are not created by the instructor for students to respond to. If not, all student threads will copy over as anonymous and they will need to be deleted.
  
  
4. In the “File Attachments” section, keep the default settings.
5. Click Submit.

Please note: When a previous course site is copied over into a new course site, any new or changed content areas will be added to the bottom of the course menu (below Help). You can easily move them up into the appropriate spot in the course menu by dragging/dropping the menu item. 

Uploading your Syllabus

Once your syllabus is ready, please make sure to upload it into your Blackboard course site. 

To upload your syllabus:

1. In your Blackboard Learn course site, click Syllabus and Course Information in the course menu.
2. Click Build Content and then Item.
3. On the Create Item page, enter Name and Text.
4. Click Browse My Computer to upload a file.
5. Select Date and Time Restrictions if needed.
6. Click Submit.

Linking to Your Video Conference Classroom

If you are teaching a video conference class or a class with a video conference component, we highly encourage you to also include a link to your Zoom Meeting Room or Collaborate Session on the course menu or in an announcement so students can easily find and access it. By default, Collaborate is already on the course menu. If you would like to switch that out for Zoom and need assistance, please reach out to us. We would be happy to help.

Opening your Course (Make your Course Available for Students)

When your course shell is ready for students to view, you will need to give them access. All course sites are unavailable to students by default.

To open your courses (when you are done updating it for the new semester):

1. Click Courses to access your class list.
2. Click the More Options icon (…) to the far right of the course title.
3. Select Open course.
4. Confirm by selecting Open to Students.

OR

1. In your Blackboard course, expand the Control Panel, click Customization, and then Properties.
2. Scroll down to the Set Availability section and choose Yes. In the Set Course Duration section, make sure Continuous is selected.  We recommend these settings to ensure that your course site does not become unavailable to students on the last day of classes.  
3. Click Submit to enable students to access your course site.

OR

1. In your Blackboard course, click the red lock icon at the top of your course window to make your course available.

Preparing your Blackboard Learn Course Site for a New Semester

If you have already been using Blackboard Learn for your courses, please check out this handy reference to help you prepare your Blackboard Learn course site for a new semester at https://bit.ly/3a0NjCT.

Blackboard Learn Pre-Semester Course Checklist
Once your course has been copied over, please review this checklist at https://bit.ly/3sulKrZ to help you make sure your course site in Blackboard Learn is ready to go for the upcoming semester.

Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty
If you have any questions about using some of the features of Blackboard Learn, we encourage you to check out our Blackboard Learn How-To Guide for Faculty at https://sites.google.com/northshore.edu/blackboard-faculty/home. Here we have step-by-step guides to learn how to use the top ten Blackboard Learn features as well as links to some additional resources for faculty and students.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me or the Blackboard Learn Helpdesk at bbhelp@northshore.edu.