As online instruction continues to evolve, more emphasis has been placed on synchronous instructions. Synchronous instruction simply means that students are engaged in learning at the same time. Typically held over the live virtual video, synchronous instruction provides a high-touch option for online students. Still, it can be a struggle for students to engage during live virtual sessions.
This 20-Minute Mentor offers strategies to help instructors promote engagement in synchronous contexts. You’ll receive tips to help overcome this engage- ment challenge before, during, and after.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Develop a clear strategy for increasing engagement during virtual video synchronous sessions
• Create learning goals that emphasize effective synchronous pedagogy
• Learn strategies for online teaching to increase student engagement
A well-crafted syllabus invites you to think more intentionally about pedagogy. It allows you to center one of the course’s most important orienting experiences around your students and their learning. Rather than just a form of policies and procedures, a syllabus can be beautiful and a learning tool for your teaching.
This 20-Minute Mentor provides plenty of aha moments to punch up your syllabi. Learn how to transform them from long, boring, and text-laden documents to something elegant and engaging that your students will want to read.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Identify the purpose of the syllabus for learners and instructors
• Recognize the role of the syllabus as a powerful course-learning tool within the course design process
• Craft a syllabus that establishes pedagogical intent
• Incorporate font, layout, and graphic choices to elegantly display necessary course elements and communicate those with the student
Though it may be hard to believe, we will already be a quarter of the way through the semester – and halfway to spring break – by the end of this week. With that in mind, hopefully, your courses have settled into a nice rhythm, and you are establishing some great connections with your students. Meanwhile, this week’s Digest is jampacked with information and opportunities you will find interesting.
First, this week’s Monday Morning Mentor explores the question, “How Can I Structure Class Discussions to Maximize Student Engagement?” As usual, this video will be available through midnight this Sunday, February 5, and you will find the link and password below.
Next, please remember that our first Teamwork Tuesday of the semester will happen tomorrow at 3 p.m. Again, this session will be facilitated by our very own Chelsea Lonsdale and will focus on strategies for designing successful writing assignments for your classes along with the services available to both you and your students through HFC’s Writing Center. Please refer to the details provided below to join us for this valuable virtual discussion.
Tomorrow is a busy day for professional development because, if you recall, The Chronicle of Higher Education will also be hosting the virtual forum “AI Tools for Student Engagement.” Fortunately, this event begins at 2 p.m. and does not conflict with our Teamwork Tuesday session since it will take place an hour earlier. Accordingly, if you are interested in both, you can attend both. While no advanced registration is necessary for the Teamwork Tuesday meeting, specifics on how to sign up for the AI forum are spelled out below.
Meanwhile, as the first of several semester-long opportunities to follow up on our PIC discussion, next Tuesday, February 7, The Chronicle of Higher Education – with support from Timely MD – will hold another virtual forum on a wholly different subject, titled “A Holistic Approach to Campus Mental Health.” This online event will be hosted by staff reporter Kate Hildalgo Bellows and begins at 2 p.m. Advanced registration is required with more information on this all supplied below.
Shifting gears a bit, while you may have already seen her college-wide message last Friday, Ruth Ann Schmitt, Chair of the Library Committee, has asked me to reiterate here that her committee is now accepting applications for the Library Book Improvement Fund. Essentially, this involves simply filling out an application for any materials you would like added to our campus’ holdings and e-mailing it to Ruth Ann and/or Tessa Betts, but further explanation is offered below.
Next, Scott Corp, project coordinator for the Michigan, College, University, Partnership (MiCUP) at Lawrence Technological University, has asked Rosemary and I to promote several upcoming immersive in-person sessions for instructors, which will examine how students are learning through authentic scientific experiments in the classroom. The first of these will take place on February 24. All of them will be held on HFC’s campus in room J-110, and Scott has provided a flyer for these events, which can now be found on the CTEI Moodle hub and here through this link.
Finally, as we are entering February, please remember that we have two major events ahead as this month unfolds, Digital Education Days – a multi-day forum that we are co-hosting with U of M – Dearborn and Flint along with Mott Community College – and the Liberal Arts Network for Development (LAND) Conference. More information for both is provided below, but please pay particularly close attention to the LAND details, since we have finally obtained updates on the restructured format and revised program and dates for this conference.
In closing, Rosemary and I thank you for your continued support and participation in these programs while we welcome your recommendations and feedback. Please always feel free to e-mail either or both of us with any questions or suggestions.
Upcoming Events
Event
Description
Time/Date
Link
Monday Morning Mentor
How Can I Structure Class Discussions to Maximize Student Engagement?
What things can teachers do to become more effective in the classroom?
For faculty who are interested in becoming a better teacher, this 20-Minute Mentor shares the best teaching advice collected from outstanding research professors. Some of their suggestions may be a surprise!
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Acquire motivation and helpful advice to improve your teaching
Consider new techniques to improve your effectiveness as a teacher
Recognize the obligation you have to your students to be the very best teacher you can be
I hope and trust that you enjoyed a pleasant long weekend, culminating in a thoughtful, reflective, and possibly service-focused Martin Luther King Day. As we begin this shortened work week, we offer you this relatively brief – but still information-packed –edition of the Digest to help get things rolling.
First, Intel, H.P., and Red Rocks Community College have teamed up to offer a webinar titled “Enabling Effective Teaching and Learning Experiences in an Evolving Hy-Flex World.” Attendance for this event, which takes place later this month, is free, and you will find more information about it below.
Next, if you recall, in last week’s Digest, I touched upon the recent evolution in artificial intelligence tools and how they may impact higher education moving forward. Last week, Rosemary – or maybe not coincidentally in all actuality – discovered a virtual forum on this hot-button topic sponsored by The Chronicle of Higher Education. It is titled “A.I. Tools for Student Engagement” and will take place later this month. Please see below for further details on this event, which is also free to attend.
Meanwhile, please remember that Digital Education Days and the LAND conference are taking place next month, which will be here before we know it. While the specifics for D.E.D. remain the same, please note the recent changes in dates and structure for the LAND conference, which are spelled out below, with more details soon to be forthcoming.
Finally, as usual, you will find these and a few other upcoming offerings in the schedule-at-a-glance calendar below, and as always, we welcome your suggestions and input. Please just e-mail us with any recommendations or questions.
Upcoming Events
Event
Description
Time/Date
Link
Partner Activity: “Enabling Effective Teaching and Learning Experiences in an Evolving Hy-Flex World”**
Intel, HP and Red Rocks Community College Present This Free Webinar on Hy-Flex Teaching and Learning
*Denotes a sponsored CTEI event that qualifies for AFO reimbursement.
**Denotes a partner activity that may qualify for AFO reimbursement.Please see your area representative for further information.
Partner Activity: “Enabling Effective Teaching and Learning Experiences in an Evolving Hy-Flex World”
From the conference registration page:
As teaching and learning practices have evolved with the increase of hybrid and hy-flex learning, it is more important than ever to ensure that the technologies employed and deployed support the community college mission to drive meaningful engagement for faculty, teachers, and students.
As colleges look to strengthen engagement, focus on practices across the following three areas will become of critical importance:
Importance of standardization across in-person and hy-flex learning modalities
Tools and frameworks for creating, standardizing, and scaling traditional and hy-flex learning modalities across the institution
Recommendations for meeting a threshold for sustainability, security, and resiliency
Join HP and Red Rocks Community College to unpack best practices that can translate into key takeaways for your community college.
This virtual event takes place at 2 pm on Tuesday, January 21, and you can register for free right here.
Partner Activity: “A.I. Tools for Student Engagement”
This event is sponsored by The Chronicle of Higher Education. It will feature hosts Ian Wilhelm, Assistant Managing Editor, and Bridget Burns, Chief Executive Officer University Innovation Alliance, along with several expert panelists. As the forum promotional materials explain:
Artificial Intelligence already has many uses, including self-driving cars, intelligent assistants, and marketing chatbots. But as it progresses into higher education, how can it be used as a student-centered tool?
There is no longer a question on whether or not colleges and universities will adopt AI. The concern now is how to ethically and efficiently implement AI to improve the student experience.
In the upcoming Virtual Forum, hosted by The Chronicle and University Innovation Alliance, a panel of education, research, and technology experts will discuss how higher ed institutions can benefit from AI.
Sign up to meet the speakers and attend this forum on Tuesday, January 31, at 2 pm by registering online here.
Sponsored Event: Digital Education Days
The Digital Education Days virtual conference will be held on three days in February 2023: Friday the 10th, Wednesday the 15th, and Tuesday the 21st. This year the conference is loosely organized around the theme “Rising and Revising: Rethinking the Future of Digital Education.” The conference brings together faculty from UM-Dearborn, UM-Flint, Henry Ford College and Mott Community College for the first time to share best practices and explore new opportunities that enhance teaching and learning in the digital realm. More information about the conference, including online registration forms, can be found here.
Partner Event: Liberal Arts Network for Development (LAND) Conference
As you may recall from our Faculty Organization Meeting earlier this month, this year’s LAND Conference is undergoing some last-minute reorganizing and restructuring. The following is the latest information on this conference, which I obtained from HFC’s institutional liaison to LAND, Dr. Peter Kim, last week:
LAND did decide to change the dates to Feb. 22-24, 2023. The conference program has yet to be updated, so please disregard the program. (Note: The website manager stepped down, and the steering committee is still looking for someone to fill that role. The LAND President has been doing it in the interim. Additional note: There was a dearth of proposals and registrants, so the hope is the extra time might lead to more proposals/participation.)
In addition, the LAND steering committee decided to change the conference to fully virtual and free to encourage more participation; those who paid the registration will have it refunded.
At Peter’s suggestion, I have reached out to Dr. Becky Roberts at Jackson College, the current LAND President, to obtain further updated details. I am hopeful that I will have more to share on registering and possibly even submitting presentation proposals for this year’s LAND Conference as of next week’s Digest. Please “stay tuned.”
Partner Event: MCSS/ATD Roundtable Discussion Series
MCSS is partnering with ATD to present “Equity-Minded Teaching Practices for Gateway Courses,” a series of roundtable discussions for faculty teaching foundational courses. The topic for December will be “Equitizing Your Syllabi.” Participants should plan to have a syllabus available for a course they are either teaching or preparing to teach. Please see the MCCA Events Page for registration for all dates.
The HyFlex Learning Community team has been partnering with colleagues from AATLAS (Academy for the Advancement of Teaching, Leadership, and Schools) in the School of Education, University at Albany (part of the S.U.N.Y. system) and at Hunter College, New York (part of the CUNY system) to plan the first-ever HyFlex-focused conference for June 2023. The result? A collaborative one-day event that brings together both higher education and K12 educators to share what they have learned about supporting hybrid and flexible learning over the past few years and to shape plans for research, resources, and faculty preparation across the spectrum of education.
Please visit the conference website for general information, a Call for Proposals for presentations, sponsorship opportunities, and registration for the June 26 event, which will be offered both onsite in Albany, NY, and online.
Partner Event: ACUE’s Online Microcredentialing
As the Association of College and University Educator’s website indicates: “ACUE’s open enrollment courses are designed for all higher education faculty — tenured faculty, adjunct instructors, and even graduate students. Through our unique learning design, each micro credential allows faculty to gain foundational knowledge, implement evidence-based practices, reflect on your implementation, and refine practice based on feedback. Faculty who complete all micro-credentials earn the full ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction, endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE).”
ACUE’s site also specifies that these open-enrollment micro-courses are:
Delivered fully online
Offered throughout the year
Short courses that build to an ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction
Endorsed by the American Council on Education
Delivered through a facilitated faculty learning community
Designed for all types of faculty
Suited for an online or classroom learning environment
You can find more information on this partner resource here.
Partner Event: NISOD Online Professional Development Events
Throughout the fall semester, N.I.S.O.D. will offer online professional development opportunities ranging from webinars to workshops to conferences touching upon topics broadly varying from Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice to Teaching Critical Thinking and Rationality in Science and Math Courses. You will find more information on how to participate in these virtual events here.
As always, you can remain up-to-date with all the C.T.E.I.’s latest events by visiting our blog through this link or by scanning the QR code below.
CTEI Moodle Hub: Resources for You
Please remember that this valuable resource is still always available to you too. This hub is accessible through your HFC Online/Moodle dashboard and contains helpful information on topics as varied as SAFE@HFC to accessibility issues to tech mentors in each school and department. If you have an instructional question or are curious about support services at HFC, the CTEI Moodle Hub may very well have the answer.
Happy new year, and welcome back, friends and colleagues,
Here’s hoping that your semester is getting off to a wonderful start. Meanwhile, Rosemary and I are excited to share a variety of professional development and support opportunities with you in our first Digest of 2023.
First, let’s begin with one more expression of gratitude to our Professional Issues Conference Committee for facilitating such an excellent program this year: “Where Are We Now? An Assessment on Mental Health.” Given the importance of this subject matter, the PIC committee approached us here in the CTEI last semester with the suggestion that we should endeavor to keep this conversation going after the conference, all throughout the winter term – and we fully agreed. To that end, please scroll down to see how we will follow up and follow through with activities and resources to perpetuate this dialogue in the coming weeks and months.
Meanwhile, though the Monday Morning Mentor will not return for a few weeks, please refer to the at-a-glance schedule below for several other fine upcoming partner activities. There you will find a few ongoing programs from last semester and some new options that have just been added. These new offerings include a virtual workshop focusing on metacognition for STEM (but applicable to all) students, the summer Hyflex Collaborative Conference, and February’s Digital Education Days – a multi-day, virtual event jointly sponsored by HFC, University of Michigan – Dearborn, and Flint, and Mott Community College.
Finally, if you’re anything like me, your conversations with friends, family, and colleagues have recently been replete with discussion of the latest AI technology, ChatGPT. In case you haven’t heard about this new online interface, it can produce writing that can actually pass as human-generated on just about any topic. This brief New York Times piece discusses ChatGPT further while also linking to an Ezra Klein podcast featuring Gary Marcus, “an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at N.Y.U.” Though Dr. Marcus, “has become one of the leading voices of A.I. skepticism,” he is not at all “anti-AI” but has, instead, actually invested in this involving technology himself. Nonetheless, despite all of the potential benefits that AI may hold for humankind, this technology has drastic and immediate implications for educators due to its tremendous potential for illicit use by students. With this in mind, you might also want to take a few moments to review this recent Faculty Focus article: What Are We Doing About AI Essays?
In closing, we hope that you will find at least one or two of the offerings presented here to be of interest, and as always, we welcome your suggestions and input. Please just e-mail us with any recommendations or questions. In the meantime, again, best wishes for a strong start to the term!
Upcoming Events
CTEI Event
Description
Time/Date
Link
Partner Activity: Teach STEM Students How to Learn: Metacognition Is the Key!**
Saundra McGuire, Ph.D. Presentation Sponsored by ReBUILDetroit and College of Health Professions & McAuley School of Nursing Professional Development
*Denotes a sponsored CTEI event that qualifies for AFO reimbursement.
**Denotes a partner activity that may qualify for AFO reimbursement.Please see your area representative for further information.
Professional Issues Conference: Follow-Up Resources and Activities
On the CTEI Moodle Hub, you will now find follow-up materials related to this year’s conference theme: “Where Are We Now? An Assessment on Mental Health.” Currently, these include (a) links to videos, readings, and presentations pertaining to the conference, (b) a Wellness Wheel self-assessment instrument, (c) information on student support offered through the SAFE@HFC committee/initiative, and (d) a discussion board on which we invite staff and faculty to continue this dialogue virtually and indefinitely. In the coming weeks, we invite you to post to this board thoughts and observations occurring to you as a result of the conference and/or if you work in an area of the College for which you would like to further promote mental well-being resources for students, please reach out to us, and we will be happy to grow this repository by sharing your materials there.
Meanwhile, although the Wellness Wheel activity is one designed to be completed individually if you are interested in following up on this assessment tool and further exploring the topic of mental health in general with a group, the CTEI will be organizing a discussion or two later this semester with one of our very own mental health professionals. Stay tuned – more information will follow soon.
Partner Activity: Teach STEM Students How to Learn: Metacognition Is the Key!
Presenter Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire is the Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success and retired Assistant Vice Chancellor and Professor of Chemistry at LSU. Before joining LSU, she spent eleven years at Cornell University, where she received the coveted Clark Distinguished Teaching Award. She has delivered keynote addresses or presented workshops at over 400 institutions in 46 states and ten countries.
All students admitted to an institution can succeed in STEM courses. However, most do not have adequate learning strategies and resort to memorizing information just before tests. This interactive workshop will introduce faculty to cognitive science research-based learning strategies that will help all students experience meaningful, transferable learning. The session will focus on ways to teach STEM students simple yet powerful learning strategies to ensure success in STEM courses.
These techniques can be used within any content area, so please do not hesitate to attend – even if you are not in a STEM field. If interested, please register here by January 31. Questions? Please contact Dr. Jahzara D. E. Mayes, otoojm@udmercy.edu.
Sponsored Event: Digital Education Days
The Digital Education Days virtual conference will be held on three days in February 2023: Friday the 10th, Wednesday the 15th, and Tuesday the 21st. This year the conference is loosely organized around the theme “Rising and Revising: Rethinking the Future of Digital Education.” For the first time, the conference brings together faculty from UM-Dearborn, UM-Flint, Henry Ford College, and Mott Community College to share best practices and explore new opportunities that enhance teaching and learning in the digital realm. More information about the conference, including online registration forms, can be found here.
Partner Event: MCSS/ATD Roundtable Discussion Series
MCSS is partnering with ATD to present “Equity-Minded Teaching Practices for Gateway Courses,” a series of roundtable discussions for faculty teaching foundational courses. The topic for December will be “Equitizing Your Syllabi.” Participants should plan to have a syllabus available for a course they are either teaching or preparing to teach. Please see the MCCA Events Page for registration for all dates.
The HyFlex Learning Community team has been partnering with colleagues from AATLAS (Academy for the Advancement of Teaching, Leadership, and Schools) in the School of Education, University at Albany (part of the SUNY system) and at Hunter College, New York (part of the CUNY system) to plan the first-ever HyFlex-focused conference for June 2023. The result? A collaborative one-day event that brings together both higher education and K12 educators to share what they have learned about supporting hybrid and flexible learning over the past few years and to shape plans for research, resources, and faculty preparation across the education spectrum.
Please visit the conference website for general information, a Call for Proposals for presentations, sponsorship opportunities, and registration for the June 26 event, which will be offered both onsite Albany, NY and online.
Partner Event: ACUE’s Online Microcredentialing
As the Association of College and University Educator’s website indicates: “ACUE’s open enrollment courses are designed for all higher education faculty — tenured faculty, adjunct instructors, and even graduate students. Through our unique learning design, each microcredential allows faculty to gain foundational knowledge, implement evidence-based practices, reflect on your implementation, and refine your practice based on feedback. Faculty who complete all microcredentials earn the full ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction, endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE).”
ACUE’s site also specifies that these open-enrollment micro-courses are:
Delivered fully online
Offered throughout the year
Short courses that build to an ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction
Endorsed by the American Council on Education
Delivered through a facilitated faculty learning community
Designed for all types of faculty
Suited for an online or classroom learning environment
You can find more information on this partner resource here.
Partner Event: NISOD Online Professional Development Events
Throughout the fall semester, NISOD will offer online professional development opportunities ranging from webinars to workshops to conferences touching upon topics broadly varying from Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Justice to Teaching Critical Thinking and Rationality in Science and Math Courses. You will find more information on how to participate in these virtual events here.
It’s no secret that faculty work encompasses much of every day, to the point where it just doesn’t seem like there is any available time for anything else. Add
in grading, meetings, and responding to messages? No wonder it seems never-ending!
Fortunately, there are much-needed, time-saving solutions available. This 20-Minute Mentor provides three simple calendar hacks to help faculty create a daily structure to manage time and reduce stress. Faculty regain control of their schedules by using their calendar to battle burnout.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Understand why it is helpful to actively use your calendar
Identify three things you can do to actively use your calendar
Plan and execute a Term Planning Day to anticipate and alleviate stressors
Sometimes, faculty don’t have the support of an instructional designer to help plan their courses. In fact, many faculty never have any help from an instructional designer. So, where do they start?
This 20-Minute Mentor will identify the elements faculty should consider when planning a higher-education course and provide a step-by-step process to follow, resulting in a course plan that is ready to build.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Articulate course objectives and use these objectives to plan assessments, interactions, instructional strategies, and other content
Use course objectives to evaluate existing course content and identify areas of need and improvement.
Create a course plan that can be used to build an online or face-to-face course
CTEI Happenings 