Getting Ready for Fall Quarter – Managing your time Part 2

Last week I wrote a post about time management. In that time I have worked on the to-do list, and am feeling pretty good about my efforts. How about you?

As I mentioned last week, I looked in my College 101 archives and found materials I used to discuss time management. I had a Top Ten list and shared 1 – 5 last week. Here’s the rest of the list!


6.    Combine Efforts:  Consider scheduling different tasks that can be done at the same time.  For example, while waiting in line or on the bus do some reading, planning or relaxing (it's important to schedule relaxing and other wellness activities).

7.    Avoid Perfectionism and Procrastination:  Often these common dynamics are rooted in a fear of results (i.e. failure, success, completion).  Examine your self-talk and/or try to temporarily depersonalize the tasks.  People often procrastinate by doing less important busy work instead of truly important tasks.

8.    Don't Overcommit:  Learn how to say NO and focus on your priorities or you'll do a lot of things not very well with too much stress.  Delegate and negotiate with others and remember to focus on your prioritized goals.

9.    Limit and Control Time Bandits:  Identify things or people who rob your time against your wishes and be assertive against interruptions.  Take action to limit the temptations of television, telephone calls, unexpected visits, extra food breaks, etc. . .  If possible, try to study in the same quiet and prepared space.

10.    Include Rewards:  Which one will motivate you?  You can arrange your environment to have someone give you this reward when you finish your task(s).  The reward can be a more enjoyable activity you decide you won't do until the task is done. But the best reward is finding a personal rewarding feeling of satisfaction through your accomplishments.

This week my favorite in #7. This is me sometimes! It makes me feel really good when all my pencils are sharpened and lined up nicely, but that doesn’t help me get my next large task, like writing a program review, checked off my to-do list. Have you ever heard the phrase “the perfect is the enemy of the good”? That’s me too. So I promise that in Fall Quarter I will work on these two tips from the list. Let us know how you’re doing!

Getting Ready for Fall Quarter – Managing your time Part 1

by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC 
 
Several years ago I taught a College 101 class. As you might expect, time management skills are an important thing for new college students to assess. Have they ever had to manage their time? Have they learned to manage it efficiently? And what, exactly, is time management?


Of course I went to Wikipedia:
Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities – especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity.
It is a meta-activity with the goal to maximize the overall benefit of a set of other activities within the boundary condition of a limited amount of time, as time itself cannot be managed because it is fixed.

A meta–activity. I love it! I never thought of time management in that way!

So…maybe you are about to start your first teaching job. Maybe you are teaching at multiple campuses, spending time commuting from one campus to another, possibly on the same day. Or maybe you work a full-time job, and teach part-time in the evening. Let’s talk about some ways to help you get through your day to increase “effectiveness and efficiency.” I pulled this out of my College 101 archives, but I bet you will find these reminders helpful:

Time Management Tips

1.    Discover How You Spend Your Time:  Keep a temporary 24 hour schedule recording how you live your life (i.e. habits, peak productive times, free time, and common distractions).

2.    Prepare Written To-Do Lists:  Make and update a list of specific tasks you want to complete, including the time you plan to start and finish.  It is very important to create a priority rating system by using numbers, ABC's or symbols (*,!,+).  Don't put it on your list unless you have a good reason to do it.

3.    Improve Decision-Making:  Develop your ability to prioritize based on many factors including your values, deadlines, resources, available time and consequences.

4.    Break Down the Tasks:  Often tasks are viewed as unmanageable and "too much".  To make them appear less threatening, schedule the tasks in divided parts that are easier to do in shorter time periods.

5.    Prepare Written Time Schedules:  Especially for visual learners, it's important to see your daily, monthly, quarterly and/or annual schedule.  First fill in all of your commitments and life necessities (i.e. work, class, meetings, grooming, eating).  The free space available is your time to schedule your to-do list items.  Make sure these schedules are placed where you can frequently read and modify.

My favorite, and one I have to remind myself to do all the time is the to-do list. Like many people, I get a lot of satisfaction from being able to cross something off of that list! My goal is to have a list for the day as soon as I get to my desk. I’m not always successful, but I find that on the days I accomplish this I get more done (like writing blog posts!) Pick one of these tips, and let’s practice!

Why I Read Blogs

Why I Read Blogs – Keeping Up with the Latest in Educational Blogs

by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning

 

If you are reading this post, then you are a blog reader. As defined by Wikipedia, “A blog (a truncation of the expression weblog) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries ("posts").”

This blog, the The 5-Star Consortium, is written by members of the 5-Star Consortium College’s professional developers group, and is regularly updated with posts on a variety of topics including “What Would You Do Wednesday?” with classroom management scenarios that are all based on real situations. Other topics have included growth mindset and formative assessments. 

Why do I read blogs? My office bookshelves are crammed full of scholarly works that I keep meaning to read. At times it seems overwhelming – the thought of getting through several hundred pages of scholarly texts in a short amount of time (i.e. in addition to an already lost list of things to do) makes me a bit crazy. But blogs? I can get through them pretty quickly. They are meant to be short (mostly) and offer a variety of viewpoints. 

Here is a sampling of the blogs that I read with the title of the most recent post. I hope you enjoy reading them. 

The Center for Transformative Teaching

Using an accessible syllabus to create an inclusive classroom: As we reach the end of one academic quarter and prepare for the next here at EvCC, you may find yourself thinking about updating the syllabus for one or more of the courses you’ll be teaching. Revisiting a syllabus is always a good opportunity to make some simple changes that can dramatically improve its accessibility. (Full disclosure – I am one of the contributors to this blog!)

The Dream Dean

High impact practices: Last month, I was at a meeting on my campus regarding High-Impact Educational Practices, where the discussion centered around the need to incorporate more of these practices into students’ educational experience.

Faculty Focus

How do students learn from participation in class discussion? Despite numerous arguments favoring active learning, especially class discussion, instructors sometimes worry that discussion is an inefficient or ineffective way for students to learn. What happens when students make non-value added, irrelevant, or inaccurate contributions?

The Teaching Professor

Learning outside your comfort zone: When we learn something outside the comfort zone, we attempt to acquire knowledge or skills in an area where we’re lacking. Part of the discomfort derives from learning something we anticipate will be difficult. We have no idea how to do it, or we think it requires abilities we don’t have or have in meager amounts.

ProfHacker

Find Open Access Articles Faster with UnPayWall: Have you heard of Unpaywall? It is a free Chrome/Firefox extension that helps you quickly find open access versions of articles you’re searching for.

Which of these is your favorite? Do you have blogs that you would suggest? We’d love to hear from you!

Reminder: 2nd Annual Disruptive Innovation Mentoring Conference

If you haven't already, check out what Everett Community College is planning with their annual Mentoring Conference!

The Conference will be held April 7, 2017. Details can be found at the above link.

Don't forget; Session Proposals are due next Monday, February 13th, 2017!

Questions? Email fivestarcolleges@gmail.com

Growth Mindset and Unlimited Learning Potential

Today’s blog post is courtesy of Betsy Stam, Faculty in the Medical Transcription Department. She wrote this for one of her classes in Medical Transcription 170 this quarter. 


Last week, I had a student talk to me about exercising their mind and learning again – this is so, so timely and relevant.  Just as I was enthusiastic about sharing Emilie Wapnick’s concept of being a multipotentialite, I’m even more excited about sharing Carol Dweck and the concept of a growth mindset.  As she says: “My work bridges developmental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology, and examines the self-conceptions (or mindsets) people use to structure the self and guide their behavior. My research looks at the origins of these mindsets, their role in motivation and self-regulation, and their impact on achievement and interpersonal processes."

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

I want to share more.  How Mindset Affects Success  has a great quote, “Benjamin Barber, an eminent sociologist, once said, ‘I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.’”

The fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on judging: “This means I’m a loser.” “This means I’m a better person than they are.” “This means I’m a bad husband.” “This means my partner is selfish.”

People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly they’re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this? How can I improve?

This article, Independent School Magazine:  You Can Grow Your Intelligence, points out that new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle — it changes and gets stronger when you use it. And scientists have been able to show just how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn.  Reading about this in Mindset changed how I thought about learning.  You are NOT LIMITED IN WHAT YOU ARE ABLE TO LEARN!!!! While some of the growth mindset literature feels to me as though it’s written for a younger audience and for teaching at lower levels, the concept is basic and applies to us all.

The physics department here at EvCC posted a single handout (with the content of that article) about growth mindset and asked students to read it and reflect on the concept that their ability to learn is not limited, no matter how difficult the material studied.  Just with that idea in the background, scores were markedly improved (with data to document this) over the course of the quarter.  They now include this every quarter.
I want you all to go forward as you start to learn content that will be challenging that it’s okay that this does not come easily – you’ve got this.  It will be hard work, but with the ongoing conversation that we recognize this is hard but you can learn this, you will be in a position to really embrace your potential to continually expand your knowledge and your skills.

Here is one of the more dynamic videos I found about growth mindset:
The Power of Belief - Mindset and Success: Eduardo Briceno at TEDxManhattanBeach