The Learning, Education, Technology and Support (LETS) Blog

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (3/2/2020)

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 the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CTLI).

Sign reads: Got 20 minutes? Then you have time to learn with the Monday Morning Mentor

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The Monday Morning Mentor series will be available over the spring semester to bring you professional development in twenty minute snippets. The topic for the week of March 2nd is How Can Change Management Principles Help New Educational Programs Succeed? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-can-change-management-principles-help-new-educational-programs-succeed-15252-1.html. The complete spring 2020 schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2019/12/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Other Professional Development Opportunities - Happy Open Education Week!
All week, during Open Education Week, there will be a variety of webinars offered to learn more about open educational resources. A full calendar of events for Open Education Week is available at https://www.openeducationweek.org/.

To celebrate Open Education Week, CCCOER will host three webinars. For more detailed descriptions and speaker information, please visit https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/march-2-6-open-education-week-2020-oeweek-webinars/.

Beginning to Open Up: Ideas for Colleges Early in their OER Journey on Tuesday, March 3rd at 3:00pm EST. "When starting out using OER at your college/institution, it can seem like everyone else is much further along with us OER, and there aren’t any resources for those just starting out. Join us to hear from a panel of educators from smaller colleges and colleges that are new to OER as they discuss how they got started, recent accomplishments, things they would do over, what they wish they knew when starting out, and future plans." Registration URL: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vpUrd-uhrTkuO9xAMJbL6Qw4jSRjEHMXtA
Regional Leadership in Open Education (RLOE) on Wednesday, March 4th at 3:00pm EST. "Launched by CCCOER in fall 2019, the Regional Leadership for Open Education (RLOE) initiative was inspired by the need for leaders to work together and share solutions for issues impacting OER adoption at diverse, multi-institution systems. Many open education leaders face similar issues of advocacy and implementation beyond their home institution and wish for the opportunity to craft common solutions and eliminate duplication of efforts. Leaders from colleges, universities, library consortia, and government agencies were invited to participate in four workgroups to discuss and build solutions. Each workgroup has developed a focus project for pursuing in 2020 and will share early efforts and invite community feedback." Registration URL: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/uJMrf-GsqTwjBBnljuk_EBeSsikzoyVsHw
Students and OER Advocacy on Thursday, March 5th at 3:00pm EST.
"Open Education Resources (OER) remove cost barriers and provide a better learning experience for students who are unable to afford the required commercial textbooks. Student OER advocates directly understand these benefits and can effectively articulate them to their peers as well as to faculty, administrators, and policymakers. Come and meet two Student OER Advocates who have also lead the development of an OER Toolkit for students throughout California higher education systems to share guidelines and best practices for advocating for OER adoption on their own campuses. We’ll also hear from the Director of Affordable Textbooks at US Pirgs on concrete next steps for students to take action." Registration URL: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/v5EqdOGrrzMjlpApcZItOy2hW1CHHAL3ig

Also, the State University of New York (SUNY) will host and showcase several presentations from our SUNY campuses in celebration of Open Education Week, March 2-6, 2020. Presentations are focused around open pedagogy, open educational resources, open textbooks, and open access. Details can be found here: http://bit.ly/SUNYOEW2020.

Interesting Resources

NSCC Open Educational Resources, https://library.northshore.edu/friendly.php?s=open
Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images + Data into the Public Domain CC0, https://creativecommons.org/2020/02/27/smithsonian-releases-2-8-million-images-data-into-the-public-domain-using-cc0/
OER at Scale: The Academic and Economic Outcomes of Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree, https://www.achievingthedream.org/resource/17993/oer-at-scale-the-academic-and-economic-outcomes-of-achieving-the-dream-s-oer-degree-initiative

Share Your Teaching Resources and Professional Development OpportunitiesIf you have any teaching resources that you would like to share with other NSCC faculty or know of any other professional development opportunities that NSCC faculty might be interested in, please feel free to send them to ctli@northshore.edu and we will share them in the upcoming 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.

Thank you,
CTLI

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (2/17/2020)

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The Monday Morning Mentor series will be available over the spring semester to bring you professional development in twenty minute snippets. The topic for the week of February 17th is How Can Media Richness Theory and Social Presence Theory Improve My Instruction? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-can-media-richness-and-social-presence-improve-instruction-15203-1.html. The complete spring 2020 schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2019/12/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

Call for proposals! Massachusetts Community College Teaching, Learning & Student Development Conference (TLSD). This year’s conference theme is "Equity Through Innovation: Ensuring Success for All Students". The conference will be hosted by Roxbury Community College on Friday, April 3, 2020. The TLSD planning committee is now accepting presentation proposals at https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=0hNSGIfS20ygO0yVaRDAkMCwcamJJJ5Et5ICQkLTt_tUQk0wRkUxU1JOV1ZBWk1ERUUyODFDUFo3US4u. The proposal submission deadline is 11:59pm on Saturday, February 29, 2020.

Interesting Resources

Media Richness and Communication in Online Education, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/media-richness-and-communication-in-online-education/
What is the Value of Social Presence in Online Learning?, https://youtu.be/1-YafD8upsQ
Social Presence and Interaction in the Online Classroom, https://ctl.byu.edu/tip/social-presence-and-interaction-online-classroom
The Power of Social Presence for Learning, https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/5/the-power-of-social-presence-for-learning
Eight Ways to Increase Social Presence in Your Online Classes, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/eight-ways-to-increase-social-presence-in-your-online-classes/

Friday, February 14, 2020

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (2/10/2020)

Attributions, Authoring, Platforms [CCCOER Webinar] on Wednesday, February 12, 2020 from 3:00pm-4:00pm.“Remixing openly licensed materials from different sources is a hallmark of OER but can make for complicated attributions. The webinar will start with best practices for attribution of curated openly-licensed works. Three faculty will then share their experiences authoring and providing attributions of remixed OER in the Pressbooks and Libretexts platforms.” Register at: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/upcvd-ChrjkreDxqh3CiW1SDzua_J11EvA

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (2/3/2020)

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The spring Monday Morning Mentor series, professional development in twenty-minute snippets, kicks off today with this week’s topic, How Can Online Instructors Better Manage Their Workload? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-can-online-instructors-better-manage-their-workload-15277-1.html. The complete spring 2020 schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2019/12/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Upcoming Webinars of Interest

Friday, January 3, 2020

Preparing for Spring 2020 Courses in Blackboard Learn

As you start to think about 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
To copy a previous course site into a new one in Blackboard Learn:

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.
On the next screen, in the “Select Copy Type” section, make sure Copy Course Materials into Existing Course is selected in the drop down menu.
Now, 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.
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.

In the “File Attachments” section, keep the default settings.
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.

Make Your Course Available
All Blackboard Learn course sites are unavailable to students by default. Here are the directions for making the course site available to your students. If you are in your course site, you should see a lock icon up at the top of your course site (to the left of Edit Mode). If you click that lock icon, it will make the course available to students.

If you do not see the lock icon, here are the directions for making it available to your students.

To open your course:

Go into the course site.
On the Control Panel, expand the "Customization" section and click Properties.
On the next screen, in the "Set Availability" section, select Yes to make the course available.
Click Submit.

Preparing a Blackboard Learn Course Site for a New Semester
Please check out this handy reference at http://goo.gl/pZbUZ8 to help you prepare a Blackboard Learn course site for a new semester.

Blackboard Learn Pre-Semester Course Checklist
Once you course has been copied over, please review this checklist at https://goo.gl/18q3r5 to help you make sure your course site in Blackboard Learn is ready to go for the upcoming semester.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Blackboard Learn Helpdesk at bbhelp@northshore.edu if there are any issues with Blackboard Learn.

Monday, December 9, 2019

Blackboard Learn Grade Center Checkups for Final Grades

The fall semester is winding down and it will soon be time to enter final grades for your courses. If you are using Blackboard Learn to record and/or calculate student grades, the CTLI is offering Blackboard Learn Grade Center checkup drop-in sessions to help you double check the Blackboard Learn Grade Center in your course sites.

If you want to make sure the Grade Center is set up correctly to calculate a final grade, please feel free to stop by the CTLI offices in Danvers DB387 and Lynn LS313. Team members will be available Monday, December 9th through Thursday, December 12th from 9:00am to 3:00pm (please note that on Tuesday, December 10th, staff will be available until 2:00pm).

As a reference, here are the directions to set up the Blackboard Learn Grade Center to calculate a weighted grade. You can use these directions to also check to make sure the weighted grade column is calculating correctly.

Step 1: Create categories
a. Manage > Categories > Create Category (make sure you have one for each of the %s listed in your grade calculation statement)

Step 2: Assign percentages in Weighted Total column
a. Click on chevron to the right of the Weighted Total column and select Edit Column Information
b. In the Select Columns section (middle of screen), under Categories to Select, select the categories to the left and send them over to the right
c. Once the categories are over to the right under Selected Categories, enter in the appropriate %s

Step 3: Ensure all columns are associated with appropriate categories
a. Manage > Column Organization (make sure all columns are in the correct categories)
b. On the Column Organization page, you can change any of the column categories by checking off the boxes to the left of the column name and selecting a new category in the Change Category to drop down menu

Here is a great article from Virginia Commonwealth University with some tips on troubleshooting weighted totals.

Troubleshooting Weighted Totals, https://ts.vcu.edu/askit/teaching-and-learning/blackboard-elearning/courseorganization-management-/facultyleader/control-panel/grade-center/create-calculated-column/weighted-column/troubleshooting-weighted-totals/

If you are using the Total column to calculate a grade, you just want to make sure there is a column in the Grade Center for every gradable item that should be included in the grade. To see the number of points that the grade is calculating on, go to Manage > Column Organization. You will see the Total column listed with the number of possible points over to the right. That number should match what you think the total points at mid-term should be.

Also, it is important to make sure a 0 has been entered into a column if a student did not complete an assignment or assessment. The default setting is to calculate the Weighted Total or Total columns as a running total which means that columns and categories without grades aren't included in the calculations.

If you are unable to stop by and would like us to look at your Grade Center, please feel free to send us an email at ctli@northshore.edu.

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (12/9/2019)

20 Minute Online Professional Development
This is the last of the sessions for the fall Monday Morning Mentor series (professional development in twenty minute snippets.) The topic for the week of December 9th is How Can I Teach Soft Skills to Better Prepare Students for the Workplace? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-can-i-teach-soft-skills-to-better-prepare-students-for-the-workplace-15238-1.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

The Monday Morning Mentor series, professional development in twenty minute snippets, will kick off in the spring semester on January 27, 2020 with What is the Best Teaching Advice I Ever Received? More information will be available in an upcoming issue of iDevelop. The complete spring 2020 schedule of Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available at http://nscclets.blogspot.com/2019/12/20-minute-mentor-online-faculty.html.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

Faculty Conversations: Small Teaching Online. This fall, the CTLI will host informal faculty conversations around making small changes in your teaching practice that can increase student engagement and learning. The final meeting will be Thursday, December 12th from 2:30pm to 3:30pm. Please save the date in your calendar. An email with additional information about the November session will be sent out in early December.

Blackboard Learn Grade Center Checkups for Final Grades
The fall semester is winding down and it will soon be time to enter final grades for your courses. If you are using Blackboard Learn to record and/or calculate student grades, the CTLI is offering Blackboard Learn Grade Center checkup drop-in sessions to help you double check the Blackboard Learn Grade Center in your course sites. If you want to make sure the Grade Center is set up correctly to calculate a final grade, please feel free to stop by the CTLI offices in Danvers DB387 and Lynn LS313. Team members will be available Monday, December 9th through Thursday, December 12th from 9:00am to 3:00pm (please note that on Tuesday, December 10th, staff will be available until 2:00pm).

Share Your Teaching Resources and Professional Development OpportunitiesIf you have any teaching resources that you would like to share with other NSCC faculty or know of any other professional development opportunities that NSCC faculty might be interested in, please feel free to send them to ctli@northshore.edu and we will share them in the upcoming issues of iDevelop.

This will be the last issue of iDevelop for the fall semester. We will publish the first one for the spring semester on January 13, 2020. 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.

Thank you,
CTLI

20 Minute Mentor - Online Faculty Professional Development - Spring 2020 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.

Banner with "Got 20 Minutes? Then you have time to learn with the Monday Morning Mentor!"

The following sessions are on the schedule for spring 2020. For session descriptions, objectives, and mentor bios, click on the titles below.

January 27th – What is the Best Teaching Advice I Ever Received?
February 3rd – How Can Online Instructors Better Manage Their Workload?
February 10th – How Can I Cost-Effectively Use Virtual Reality to Enhance Instruction?
February 17th – How Can Media Richness Theory and Social Presence Theory Improve My Instruction?
February 24th – What Technology and Tools Do I Need to Create a Podcast for My Students?
March 2nd – How Can Change Management Principles Help New Educational Programs Succeed?
March 9th – How Can I Become a Better Online Instructor?
March 16th – How Can I Write a Course Syllabus That’s Worth Reading?
March 23rd – What Teaching Strategies Help Engage All Learners Online?
March 30th – How Do I Master Mastery Grading?
April 6th – How Can I Spark Conversation in the Classroom?
April 13th – How Do I Lead Change from the Middle?
April 20th – How Can Universities Empower Adult Learners?
April 27th – How Can I Be My Own Instructional Designer?
May 4th – How Can Post-Exam Reviews Become a Powerful Teaching Strategy?
May 11th – How Can I Use LMS Conditional Releases to Efficiently and Intentionally Engage My Students?

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

Monday, November 25, 2019

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (11/25/2019)

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The topic for the week of November 25th is How Do I Design Effective Combinations of Gamified Elements to Encourage Deeper Learning? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-do-i-design-effective-combinations-of-gamified-elements-14863-1.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

Monday, November 4, 2019

iDevelop – NSCC’s Faculty Professional Development eNewsletter (11/4/2019)

20 Minute Online Professional Development
The topic for the week of November 4th is How Can I Ensure Academic Honesty in My Online Assessments? The presentation is available Monday at 10:00am and is accessible through Sunday of that week. For information on accessing the presentation and supplemental materials, please view the Bulletin or the email version of iDevelop.

More information about this session (including description, topics, and learning goals) is available at https://www.magnapubs.com/online/mentor/how-can-i-ensure-academic-honesty-in-my-online-assessments-15195-1.html.

Looking for transcripts of past Monday Morning Mentor sessions? Please email ctli@northshore.edu with the session title and we can provide you with the transcript and supplementary materials.

Other Professional Development Opportunities

(LS)^2 Fall 2019 Lecture. This semester’s Liberal Studies Lecture Series is “An Artist and a Philosopher Go to the Doctor” and will take place on Wednesday, November 6th from 12:30-1:45 in Danvers, MS119. Join Bonnie Ashmore, full time faculty in the Fine Arts/Visual Studies program, and her colleague, Dr. Dien Ho, as they discuss the intersection of medicine and the humanities and specifically how it impacted their collaboration in creating the cover for Dr. Ho’s book. For more information, see the flyer at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B78eXBKxK6wWS0xjTkZuUVdtOE43c2k3WFpSdHBBNm9QZEhv/view.

Affordable Textbooks Awareness Panel. The SGA and MASSPIRG Students are working together this semester to make college more accessible to students. Join us on Wednesday, November 6th from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in Danvers, MS 106B to learn more about the movement. You will hear testimonials from NSCC students and from faculty who have made the switch from traditional textbooks to free or cheaper options. Following the testimonials will be a discussion, we want to hear from you and hope to answer your questions and hear your ideas. Join us to learn more! Refreshments will be provided.

Faculty Conversations: Small Teaching Online. This fall, the CTLI will host informal faculty conversations around making small changes in your teaching practice that can increase student engagement and learning. The third meeting will be Thursday, November 14th from 2:30pm to 3:30pm. Please save the date in your calendar. An email with additional information about the November session will be sent out in early November.

Affordable Textbooks Awareness Panel
MASSPIRG students are excited to be working on our Affordable Textbooks Campaign this semester with the SGA and we have an event on November 6th from 1:30-2:30PM in the Math and Sciences building on the Danvers campus room 106B. So far we have collected dozens of surveys from students who want to tell their story about their college experience with high cost textbooks and are hoping for a solution. 65% of students are opting out of buying textbooks because they are too expensive and therefore are not able to succeed as well simply because they cannot afford the book. I am sure you are aware, there is a solution. Open Educational Resources (OER) are widely used across the state and the whole country.

NSCC has already begun taking action on this issue by providing faculty with grants to switch from traditional textbooks to open resources, but there is more to be done! We can tell from the student surveys that students are still paying ridiculous amounts of money of textbooks. This is because 3 companies control 80% of the textbook industry and have increased the cost of textbooks by 88% in the past decade — that’s three times the rate of inflation!

MASSPIRG students and the SGA at NSCC believe that faculty need more information about OER and need to have the discussion with statewide staff and their peers to know exactly what it takes to make the switch. So, we are hosting a panel next week. Robert Awkward, the HED Director of Learning Outcomes, will be talking about what they are doing at the state level, other faculty members who use OER or some other form of open access books will talk about their experiences, and students will tell their stories about how the high cost of course materials has affected their college experience.

Co-Curricular Planning Dates
Student Engagement is hosting a series of co-curricular planning dates for faculty and staff to share ideas and programming options. Hopefully you can attend one of these meetings.

Tuesday, November 5 - Lynn Campus 11:30 am - 12:30 pm CTLI Conference Room
Wednesday, November 6 - Danvers Campus 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm CTLI Conference Room
Tuesday, November 12 - Lynn Campus 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Room LE 203
Thursday, November 14 - Danvers Campus 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm Room DB 313
Monday, November 18 - Lynn Campus 9:30 am - 10:30 am Room LE 303
Tuesday, November 19 - Danvers Campus 9:30 am - 10:30 am Room DB 313

Celebrate National Distance Learning Week (November 4-November 8)
Throughout the week, various organizations will be offering free webinars around online learning and instructional technologies that support online teaching.

United States Distance Learning Association, https://usdla.org/2019-ndlw/
Online Learning Consortium (focus of 2019 is Neuroscience as related to distance learning), https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/learn/celebrate-national-distance-learning-week-2019-with-olc/
Purdue University Global Village Online Conference, https://sites.google.com/purdueglobal.edu/pgv/home

Resources

Academic Dishonesty and Online Education (Part 1): Understanding the Problem, https://evolllution.com/uncategorized/academic-dishonesty-and-online-education-part-1-understanding-the-problem/
Academic Dishonesty and Online Education (Part 2): Strategies for Supporting Academic Honesty in the Digital Age, https://evolllution.com/uncategorized/academic-dishonesty-and-online-education-part-2-strategies-for-supporting-academic-honesty-in-the-digital-age/
Promoting Academic Integrity in the Online Classroom, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/promoting-academic-integrity-online-classroom/
Designing Online Courses to Discourage Dishonesty, https://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0348.pdf