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Faculty Resource Bulletins

Faculty Resource Bulletin

Highlights of this week’s Bulletin include:

From Your Colleagues

IHCC English faculty member Nick Nownes is creating an open educational resource with the help of students in his English 1130: Writing and Research for the Professions class. Read about his OER and process in Faculty Success Stories.

Teaching Tip: The Jigsaw Classroom

If you participated in the Criterion 3 breakout session during DCTC’s in-service last week, then you got a basic introduction to using a jigsaw exercise in the classroom. This teaching technique has been around for a while, and is very effective for managing class discussions of longer reading assignments or larger sections of course content.

The Jigsaw Classroom website provides ten steps that can be applied to your lesson plans. From the The Jigsaw Classroom website:

The jigsaw classroom is a research-based cooperative learning technique invented and developed in the early 1970s by Elliot Aronson and his students at the University of Texas and the University of California. Since 1971, thousands of classrooms have used jigsaw with great success. Just as in a jigsaw puzzle, each piece — each student’s part — is essential for the completion and full understanding of the final product.

Learn more at https://www.jigsaw.org.

DCTC Call for Peer Reviewers

What is peer review?

Peer review is a new faculty development opportunity that will facilitate faculty review of online courses. DCTC’s Faculty Development Committee and Center for Teaching and Learning are coordinating this new program, which will provide confidential collaboration among faculty to ensure that course designs are easily navigable, user-friendly, and align with the course goals. Our goal is to provide meaningful, actionable feedback that helps faculty improve their course in a non-judgmental way. Peer review is available to all faculty on a purely voluntary basis, and will in no way be tied to faculty evaluation.

Who will be doing the reviews?

Your fellow DCTC faculty will complete the reviews. Faculty interested in being peer reviewers will be asked to complete a short training that will expose them to the faculty-developed peer review rubric. Training will also be provided to give meaningful, positive, and constructive feedback to fellow faculty. Course reviews are designed for reviewer flexibility, and will typically be completed within three weeks, and stipend will be provided for those who choose to participate as a peer reviewer.

What this means to you:

We’ve already heard from faculty who would like their online courses reviewed by their colleagues. Before we make this program available, we need to establish a pool of reviewers. If you have experience teaching online, we could use your help as a faculty reviewer. If you’re interested in providing meaningful, constructive feedback, please contact Martin Springborg at martin.springborg@dctc.edu.

On behalf of the Faculty Development Committee, thank you in advance for considering this opportunity. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Academic Technology Innovation Funds Available

This funding opportunity was paused temporarily due to new technology requests being routed through CARES. Instructional Technology Services, the Teaching and Technology Committee at IHCC and Faculty Development Committee at DCTC are pleased to continue to support faculty innovation in the use of technology in teaching and learning contexts.

If you have a new idea for classroom technology, please send requests for funding to ttc@inverhills.edu (IHCC) martin.springborg@dctc.edu (DCTC). Please note the technology you hope to purchase as well as courses that will benefit from it.

WeTeach

Online

February 1-April 2 & May 31-July 15

WeTeach is an interactive, collaborative course intended for instructors who teach online or blended courses. Instructors will become an online student in the course to develop their own online teaching and design skills. WeTeach is for instructors looking to expand their skills, explore new ways to engage students and use technology more effectively, and is great for instructors who are new to online teaching. Quality Matters standards, technology tools, D2L training, best practices, and research will be integrated throughout all modules.

COST: $400.00

Course Format: This eight-week course consists of eight online modules with 1-hour weekly virtual meetings. Expect to spend up to four to seven additional hours per week reviewing lectures/readings and completing assignments to strengthen your online teaching and design skills. You will also start to develop components for your own online/blended course.

More information and registration at https://www.winona.edu/adult-learners/ce-training/weteach.asp.

Funding for up to 10 faculty is being provided through the Title III grant. Interested faculty should contact Monica Ibarra prior to registration.

Teach Together Minnesota!

Online

May 18, 2021, 9:00-3:45

Teach Together Minnesota! is a day-long virtual event that will focus on culturally responsive online teaching and learning, and will provide opportunities to:

  • Join breakout sessions based on discipline. Each discipline community will be able to share and receive files, keep a collective notebook, and use a chat feature for immediate and ongoing communication among attendees.
  • Hear student voices during a student panel session over the lunch hour.
  • Join lightning sessions and webinars about innovating through COVID with an equity lens.

More information and registration at https://asanewsletter.org/event/teach-together-mn-2021.

Equity and Inclusion Free Virtual Training Series

Online

Various dates

At Dakota County Technical College and Inver Hills Community College, we believe equity and inclusion improve all aspects of our communities and we strive for an environment that encourages excellence and innovation. Successfully building inclusive campuses and workplaces relies on the fundamental principle that human diversity is our strength and these trainings are directly connected to this success.

More information and registration at https://mnscu.rschooltoday.com/public/getclass/category_id/500/program_id/5/subcategory_id/5982.

More Events and Development Opportunities

Additional Campus Programs and Services

Faculty Teaching Online Group

These sessions will run without agendas. We’ll simply talk about whatever faculty bring to the meetings. Several members of the Faculty Development Committee will participate on a rotating basis. Join us any or every Thursday from 3:30-4:30 pm. Registration is not required. Come as often or as infrequently as you need. See the Zoom invitation from Martin Springborg in your campus email to join.

CTL Open Lab

The agenda for CTL’s Open Lab, scheduled from 12:00-1:00 every Tuesday, is always open. Bring any topic related to teaching online – whether it is a question, a success, or even a failure. CTL staff and your faculty colleagues are here to help and share. See the Zoom invitation from Martin Springborg in your campus email to join.

CTL Teaching Consultations

The Center for Teaching and Learning continues to offer teaching consultations designed to meet the needs of faculty members who prefer to work one-on-one with staff. Whether you need just-in-time training or advice in the application of a specific teaching tool, or are planning for next semester or next year, our staff are available to offer support.

Examples of topics addressed through consultation services include, but are not limited to:

  • Course design
  • Academic technology, including D2L Brightspace
  • Implementing a change in your course(s)
  • Applying student or other formative feedback to course redesign
  • Preparation for course review

For staff information and scheduling, visit Teaching Consultations page and use the Bookings feature to arrange a consultation time.

CTL Calendar

Visit and subscribe to updates from the CTL Events Calendar to view all professional development opportunities mentioned in this Bulletin.

From Minnesota State

See https://asanewsletter.org/events for a full list of upcoming webinars and other opportunities! Also see resources on the NED Resource Site focused on course design, assessment, and instructional strategies.

In addition, the Minnesota State Educational Innovations Office maintains a page of resources for students at www.asanewsletter.org/academic-continuity-students.

The Minnesota State Learning Technologies Team offers a variety of faculty resources (opens in new window) on their SharePoint site, including:

Navigate to the IMS opens in new window SharePoint site (https://mnscu.sharepoint.com/sites/IMS), and use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.  View the PDF for how to login instructions opens in new window.

National and Vendor-Sponsored

D2L

Do you have a fun idea or unique learning experience that you’ve created? We want to hear about it! We’re accepting proposals for 2021 D2L event presentations until Friday, March 19, 2021.

D2L is committed to providing various presentation opportunities to our customers. Presenting at events like D2L Fusion 2021, Affinity Networks, and D2L webinars provides you with a chance to share your story and make sure your voice is heard.

Each accepted presenter will have the opportunity to:

  • Share ideas, new industry trends, pedagogical practices, or noteworthy projects
  • Earn recognition as a subject matter expert
  • Join peers and other speakers in leading conversations about transforming learning

Visit the Call for Proposals (CFP) Website for more details!

VoiceThread Workshops

Upcoming workshops include:

These workshops are completely free. The sessions are led by our instructional designer and online educator George Haines. George will share his expertise to help you get the most from VoiceThread.

See more details and register.

Respondus Instructor Training Series

Join Respondus trainers for a free webinar and learn how to use LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor to address the integrity of final exams. Or see how Respondus 4.0 and StudyMate Campus allow you to easily create online tests, flash cards, or learning games.

Register for individual sessions here: https://web.respondus.com/webinars/

Quality Matters

Bridge to Quality: A QM Online Course Design Guide

If you’re looking for a way forward from Emergency Remote Instruction that is rooted in QM Standards and focused on the learning experience, this guide is just what you need. This web-based guide provides a step-by-step approach to complete the hands-on, iterative work that is central to creating a quality course. This includes:

  • Alignment of foundational course elements
  • Promoting engaged, active learning
  • Creative work and organization to develop the course within a digital learning environment (LMS)

Online Learning Consortium

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime. OLC inspires innovation and quality through an extensive set of resources, including best-practice publications, quality benchmarking, leading-edge instruction, community-driven conferences, practitioner-based and empirical research, and expert guidance. The growing OLC community includes faculty members, administrators, trainers, instructional designers, and other learning professionals, as well as educational institutions, professional societies, and corporate enterprises.

OLC resources are available to all Minnesota State faculty. Learn more here.

Turnitin

Whether you’re a new user or need a refresh, join our training sessions to learn how to get started with Feedback Studio and Originality Check Plus, or how to enable remote learning and assessment with Gradescope. We have expanded our training calendar to provide recurring training throughout the rest of the academic year.

More information and registration at https://www.turnitin.com/resources/training-webinars.

 

 

The Faculty Resource Bulletin is one of many steps we’re taking to improve communication about local and statewide faculty professional development information and opportunities. Please visit our Faculty Resources sites (see links in the header of this blog) for more information and resources to support teaching and learning!

 

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