Upcoming sessions and summaries of past sessions.
Course Hero Virtual Education Summit 2021
Wed 7/28/2021 to Fri 7/30/2021
This is more than a virtual event. It is a community reconvening—so we can take on the new semester confident, prepared, and eager for what’s ahead
You still have time to register here
Thank goodness it (will be) May when the CTEI has its last planned session for the academic year on Tuesday, May 4 from 1 to 2 PM. This is a great chance for you to vent and socialize about the past year. It is also a great chance to let the CTEI co-directors know what programming you would like for the 2021-2022 Academic Year.
The above topics are obviously just a starting point for the many ideas you might have. Drop by and let us know! We promise not to interrupt any rants you may need to have.
This is not the greatest post for any lurkers from outside the College as the resources require HFC logins.
The CTEI with the support and encouragement of the Instructional Technology Committee offered two sessions on making Zoom more interactive. One session coming up this Friday has limited seats and might not be at a convenient time for you.
However, we did record our March 25 session where we worked with Microsoft Forms, Mentimeter, Socrative, Zoom’s internal quizzing, and Google sheets. If yo uare looking for a tool to informally assess what your students think of the class this is a great session to help you decide on what tool to use.
At the CTEI Mentors HFC Online site (login required) you can find links to the software used.
At the College’s Microsoft Stream site you can find a video (login required).
We are using our CTEI Mentoring Moodle shell whenever we have session summaries. This keeps the material on an internal to HFC server and allows us to easily password protect things. This can be important when we have an external speaker willing to allow us to record, but not willing to let us post publically.
We have some other information there as well. Please join me on a 90 second tour of the most popular features.
The Discussion Group on Assessment has set the theme of the next Brown Bag Session on February 28. We will look at technology products for informal assessment. For instance presenters will model Plickers, Kahoot!, Quizlet, and Quizizz. If you use such a product for assessment or just want to learn more join us in N-001 at 1 PM on February 28.
The discussion last Friday also covered rubrics, emotional aspects of grading (for students and teachers!), revisions of work, and more. Watch for sessions on some of these topics in March and April.
What impact does technology have on student emotion, motivation and academic success?Formed last winter, the Technology Faculty Learning Community (FLC) collects student data and research to investigate those questions. The group (comprised of six full-time ELI/ESL faculty) meets three to four times each semester for lunch to share information and encourage use of educational technology with ELI and ESL students. Group members will also participate in UM Dearborn’s Digital Education Day on Friday, March 20 sharing information about the blended learning space all ELI and ESL students experience with HFC Online, collaborative digital literacy student project, online student newspaper and Padlet as a collaborative student resource.Preliminary data analysis and ELI /ESL enrollment trends suggest that blended learning (learning that makes use of technology both inside and outside of the classroom) increases student motivation, builds positive emotion and boosts student success.
This Winter’s Brown Bag series will focus on grading and assessment. Please attend on January 31 from 1-2 PM in N-001 to learn how your colleagues grade and assess. You can bring an example of how you grade or an interesting assessment or just listen to other teachers describe their system.
At the end of the session we will set more specific themes for the last two sessions- still related to grading and assessment. So, you can help us set themes that will most benefit you and other teachers in your area.
The CTEI is hosting discussion groups for Dr. Paul Hernandez’s Pedagogy of Real Talk. Based on responses to an email invitation it appears that we will have at least a Friday book group.
On January 31 from 3:10 to 4:30 teachers will meet to discuss the first two chapters of the book. (Jeff will email possible discussion questions to participants who have emailed him about a week before). The group will also set 2-4 additional meeting times to discuss the book. It is expected that these will be at or around the same time on Fridays as this is the time the original group could attend.
If you are interested please purchase the book and read the first two Chapters before January 31. Then join us. If you email Jeff beforehand then we can better plan snacks and get you the questions ahead of time. The CTEI has a limited number of books for part-time and temporary full-time teachers to borrow. Tenured and tenure-track teachers can use the Professional Improvement Fund to be reimbursed for the cost of the book in August.
Jolie Stepaniak presented today on how to teach STEM to first generation college students. Jolie did indicate that while some of the specifics in the presentation were just about the sciences, the strategies presented could generalize to any discipline. The talk could have been titled “How to Teach [Insert Discipline] to first generation college students,” she quipped. Her presentation was based on the similarly titled book by Gail Horowitz.
Only 10% of first generation college students complete a bachelors degree withing 6 years of starting their higher education. While many of the reasons for this are beyond the control of a classroom teacher acting alone there is one effective set of interventions a classroom teacher can use. They can help students learn to study using skills appropriate to that discipline. Rather than have a College 101-like course, have teachers give appropriate learning strategies in the discipline. A metaphor given was that if you needed to read a knitting diagram you would more likely ask a knitter than a reading teacher.
A series of over 20 specific strategies followed. For instance teachers could tell students how to study in a particular course. Diagramming relationships between biological systems might be a better strategy in one class, while using flashcards to learn names of parts might be a better strategy in some lab classes. Teachers could explicitly tell students which topics are most important in the field and for subsequent courses. Teachers should give students frequent feedback and give opportunities for low stakes participation. Dr. Stepaniak noted that we probably all did most of this. I think that all of us probably could find something new in the list.
A core takeaway from this is that the Horowitz book is worth reading. Full-time teachers who purchase the book would be able to receive reimbursement through the Professional Improvement Fund at the end of the academic year. The PowerPoint from today’s session is attached.
March 20, 2020 is Digital Education Day. Faculty from several campuses will learn why some myths about digital education are not true. Among the myths to be busted are that
Also, presenters will explore myths about OER materials.
Digital Education Day will include three sets of break out sessions. Presenters will include HFC’s Technology Faculty Learning Community. In addition to the break out sessions Robin DeRosa will present a keynote session. The sessions will run from 9 AM to 2:30.
CTEI Happenings 