What Would You Do Wednesday: Scenario 1

Each week we will bring you a short scenario to address issues that you, your colleagues and students might face. How would you respond to these scenarios? Would you file a report, or do something different? Talk to your colleagues about these situations - the classroom should be a safe learning environment for students AND instructors!

SCENARIO #1

A female student who you had in class last quarter has just told you that she has been receiving unwanted and unwelcomed text messages and emails on Canvas of a sexual nature from a male student in her current class. She has told him to stop, but he is continuing and she is very uncomfortable. What would you do to help your former student? What should you say? Should you go to the current teacher? Or should you go directly to the male student? Ultimately will you go to the Dean? To Security?

Post your comments below!

If you'd like someone from the 5 Star Consortium to follow up with you regarding this scenario, please email fivestarcolleges@gmail.com

Evolution of My Syllabus

by Natasa Kesler, Director of the Teaching and Learning Academy at Cascadia College

A month or so ago, when our Deans suggested we organize a faculty workshop devoted to syllabus, my first thought was, “No one is coming to THAT!” My thinking quickly changed into an entrepreneurial, “How are we going to make that workshop attractive?” The preparation for the workshop made me think more deeply about my own syllabi over the years, and the story they told about my teaching. I soon determined there were three different stages of my syllabus evolution.

The first stage coincides with the beginning of my teaching career. As an inexperienced Biology instructor, I was grateful for those kind and generous colleagues who offered me their syllabi. Nothing sounded better than “Feel free to copy and paste anything you like!” That is exactly what I did - copied and pasted the whole thing, proudly remembering to insert my own name, email and phone number under “contact information." As a new instructor, my tendency was to worry not to “mess anything up” so I copy/pasted the offered syllabi and followed their lead.

Can you recollect the first syllabus you ever wrote? Did you have a better way of approaching your course materials when you were brand new to teaching?

As I continued teaching, these initial syllabi improved a bit each quarter; I added, subtracted, elaborated and corrected bits and pieces.

Once a tenure track faculty at Cascadia College, I entered my second stage of syllabus evolution. This time around I started from scratch and ended up with a syllabus that contained three parts: “must-haves”–  dictated by the institution, “could-haves” – generally recommended for the syllabus, and “junk”- stuff I believed I needed to make my syllabus stand out.

The “must-haves” are easily located at each institution. They range from course descriptions to syllabus learning agreements and usually contain very standardized language. I still copy/paste these.

Are you familiar with your school requirements regarding the syllabus?

The “could-haves” make up the majority of my syllabus and are the ones I spend considerable time creating. The most important parts of “could-haves” are probably:

• What to expect in the classroom from your instructor
• What your instructor expects from you

My promises and expectations change with different courses, student populations, and also change over time to reflect significant cultural trends, technology innovations, and so on...  What remains constant is my intent to make the list of promises to students very similar in length to the list of expectations I have from them.

Other examples that are definite “could-haves” are

• Helpful tips and strategies
• More detailed description of major assignments 
• Grading policy and Course schedule

I find it advantageous to work out the detailed schedule for every class and lab session and to give elaborate and clear grading criteria.  Departing students often have to offer excellent syllabus improvement advice, making them an invaluable resources for keeping the “could-haves” section current.

What would you classify as “could-haves” in your syllabus? Do you have a strategy for changing /improving this section? Do you consider established best practices for syllabi?

You probably could not even imagine how cute, adorable, attractive, charming, simply irresistible (!) my early syllabi were! I had gorgeous figures and graphics depicting students, lab work, in addition to the most magnificent images of anatomical structures, dancing skeletons, Olympic athletes…did I mention it was all very colorful?!? I hoped that all of this fantastic imagery would evoke enthusiasm for my teaching and infuse excitement into traditionally very difficult subject.  Well, you can imagine my disappointment when I went to a workshop titled “How to make your syllabus accessible” and realized that my syllabus was 100% inaccessible! This is how I have come to the third stage of my syllabus evolution – the accessible syllabus!

For me, Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning is where most of the work remains, but changing my syllabus recently to make it more accessible has given me a good start, and prompted me to continue on this path of improvement.

Have you thought about issues of accessibility? Do you have a plan for making you syllabus/course accessible?

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

Why Do We Need a Mentor?

By Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean for Teaching & Learning at EvCC 

Many of you reading this post will know that the term mentor comes from the ancient Greek story of Mentor, a friend of Odysseus, who was asked to be in charge of his son Telemachus when Odysseus left for the Trojan War. It seems the definition has not changed much – Dictionary.com defines a mentor as a “wise and trusted counselor or teacher.” Sounds just like what Odysseus was looking for regarding his son.
In my career I have had several mentors – both formal and informal, mentors who challenged me, motivated me, and encouraged me. The mentors that I have had over a long period of time have acted as a coach and in some cases a counselor. Today I want to say thank you to all those amazing people, to let them know that without them, my path would have been significantly different.

Here at Everett Community College, we want to highlight the work of all mentors. On April 7, 2017, we will be hosting our second annual Mentoring Conference. We believe that mentoring focuses on the future; the more successful our mentoring programs are, the more successful we will be as an institution.

Dr. Brandy Brown

This year our plenary speaker will be Dr. Brandy Brown from the University of Arizona South, a Hispanic-serving institution. Dr. Brown is an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist and assistant professor in Organizational Leadership. Through courses like Leadership in Diverse Environments and the undergraduate research lab that she co-created with Dr. Laura Lunsford, The Mentoring and Leadership Collaboratory, she demonstrates the value of mentoring as a tool to empower non-traditional and marginalized students and studies leadership education as well.

Presentation titles this year include: Reflective Practices in Mentor/Mentee Relationships, Engaging the Reluctant Mentee, Mentoring Inspired Supervision: A Model of Connected Experiential Learning, and many others.

Are you interested in learning more about our conference? Check out our webpage, and consider making a presentation on any of the mentoring themes for the conference. We hope to see you there!

Seeking Student Feedback

Seeking Student Feedback
by Peg Balachowski

I’ve been thinking a lot about student feedback lately, mostly because in Winter Quarter 2017, a cohort of 17 faculty at EvCC are using a new online tool called Instant Feedback to collect data on student learning. The questions all address an instructor’s pedagogy. Students are asked to describe the frequency of the instructors teaching practices in these areas:

•    Displayed a personal interest in you and your learning
•    Found ways to help you answer your own questions
•    Demonstrated the importance of the subject matter
•    Made it clear how each topic fit into the course
•    Explained course material clearly and concisely
•    Introduced stimulating ideas about the subject.

Each time the instructor uses the feedback session (4 times throughout the quarter) they will focus their attention on the area in which they scored the lowest. Faculty will then review white papers that address this area and describe why this topic is important and how to apply this technique in the classroom. After this they plan how to incorporate these new techniques in their class. The most important part of their work is to let students know that they heard what the students said, then tell them what will change based on their feedback. The hope is that whichever area the faculty member address they will see improvement in the next feedback session.

Why do this? Often we as faculty assume we know what students are thinking. This is especially true if we’ve been teaching for a while. I remember in a class thinking I knew what a student was asking before they even asked it! So why ask for honest feedback when it could be scary?

We know that by asking students how things are going in a class they begin to feel valued, and this results in more student engagement. They know their voice has been heard! As this engagement develops, you will likely have fewer classroom management issues.

And remember, this falls under the umbrella of formative assessment. Summative assessment, including exams and quizzes, doesn’t tell the whole story of a student’s progress. Based on the results of formative assessment, you can adjust your classroom practices to maximize student learning.

If you created a short survey to use as a formative assessment for student feedback, what are some good questions you might ask? Post your answers in the comments below, or 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

Making Your Classroom New Year’s Resolutions

Fall Quarter is over and done. Maybe it was a good one, or maybe it wasn’t so pretty. But it’s over. Time to reflect on the quarter and make some resolutions about what you’ll do in your classes in 2017. To help you get started, I’ll share some of my resolutions for 2017.

Resolution #1 – Listening with Intention

This is one of my resolutions that crosses over both my professional and personal life. Just before sitting down to write this blog post I had a meeting with a colleague. We decided to get away from our offices so agreed to meet at a nearby coffee shop. It was quite noisy (you know that sound that an espresso machine makes? It seemed to be amplified today!) which made it hard to listen carefully. But here’s an even bigger problem for me -I don’t know about you, but when I am having a conversation I tend to be thinking about my response even before the other person is finished talking. I’m sure I miss a lot of what the person is really trying to say, so I am going to practice looking at the person and focusing on them rather than my own responses. I have time to practice with family over the holiday, so I hope to come back to campus having sharpened this skill.

Can you see how this would be a good habit to work on in the classroom? I don’t think our students necessarily expect us to have an immediate answer to every question, so why not start a response with, “I like that question. Let’s unpack that some more.” That gives you a bit of “stall” time to formulate a response or to ask a clarifying question. Can’t tell you how many times I said to myself, “Oh, I’ve heard this question before” and my response was totally automatic. But sometimes I missed what the student was really asking so we had to start over again. Practicing listening with intention will be my homework over break.

Resolution #2 - Reflection

I think that building a practice of reflection is critical to good teaching and every aspect of my job. But how much time do I spend doing it, and how well do I do it? I bought myself a small notebook, and my second resolution is to make a note every day before I go home about something that happened that day. In fact, I am going to put this on my calendar so that I get a little reminder to do it!

What do I think the benefits will be and why do I think this is important? Terry Heick, founder and director of teachthought says that “reflection is a fundamental tenet of learning…to reflect means to look back at how something ‘went’ in all of its available parts and patterns.” What are those patterns? Strengths and weaknesses, comparisons and contrasts, and cause and effects among others.  Reflection will allow me to think about planning for the future (even if the future is as close as the next day) by reviewing the past. So my little black book will have a special place on my desk next quarter, and I am committing to writing every day about how at least one thing went.

Reflection #3 – Revision

I have been in my role as the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning for 2 full years now. Most of you know that there is a steep learning curve when you start a new job, and because this is a newly created position, it seems like there is always more stuff that gets added to my position description. As it is, there are lots of moving parts, and as I begin every quarter it (almost) feels like a new job. But there are some activities or parts of my job that I feel like I have a good handle on now. So, do I just continue doing them in the same way for another year when things seem to be going well? I’m thinking about ways I can infuse some innovative practices into my work.

If you have been teaching the same class for a while, maybe it’s time to do some revision. While I do not recommend completely revising a class (especially only weeks from the beginning of a quarter), why not try a new assignment? Or introducing students to transparent rubrics if you have not been using them? Start small, and then measure the effects. If you use an assignment but create a new rubric, are you seeing an improvement in student grades and understanding of the material? Remember that revisions should not be taken lightly. They require substantial planning – even for something as “small” as a new assignment or rubric.

So if things don’t go well, reflect on what happened (see Resolution #2). Actually, even if things did go well, reflect on it! It could be that the assignment was a great one, but the directions were not clear. Ask students for feedback (using formative assessments) to help improve your work. And take a look back at September’s blog post, “What to do if you’re having an off day.” Learning from failure is an important task to master!

I hope that you had a great fall quarter, and are looking forward to the New Year, new classes, and new students. There is nothing more satisfying than the look on a student’s face when they begin to comprehend the material. I hope you have that experience many times in 2017!

- Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning