Highlights of this week’s Bulletin include:
- CTL Events and Calendar: Upcoming Trainings
- Mentoring Groups and Faculty Support
- TILT Community of Practice
- Conversations with Colleagues: Guiding Difficult Conversations
- Minnesota State Spring Educational Development
- More Events and Development Opportunities
- Minnesota State highlight: Discipline-Specific Faculty Learning Communities
- Vendor highlight: LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor | multiple dates
CTL Events and Calendar
Our events calendar is updated for fall semester! Visit and subscribe to our online calendar to see information and get updates on all our fall trainings on D2L and academic technology, as well as CTL Open Lab and DCTC Faculty Teaching Online times.
Upcoming training sessions include:
- October 18: Respondus Tools: LockDown Browser and Monitor
- October 20: D2L Brightspace Course Navigation
- October 25: D2L Intelligent Agents
- October 27: Microsoft OneNote
Mentoring Groups and Faculty Support
Center for Teaching and Learning staff are always committed to offering support, and are especially committed to that mission now. Here are a few ways we can help and hopefully be flexible to your schedule:
- Mentoring Groups are comprised of a novice and two or more faculty experts who have agreed to serve as mentors on a specific topic. We will be continuing mentoring groups this year, especially for faculty who need assistance with academic technology or teaching online, hybrid, or HyFlex courses. Mentoring groups are organized through the CTL and participants receive a modest stipend. Contact Martin Springborg via email if you are interested in participating or learning more.
- CTL Open Lab sessions are open to DCTC and IHCC faculty. These sessions run without agendas; we simply talk about whatever topics you bring. Join us from 12:30-1:30 pm any Tuesday. Come as often or as infrequently as you need.
- Consultations are designed to meet the needs of faculty who prefer to work one-on-one with CTL 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. Visit the CTL Bookings page to schedule time with any of our staff.
- You can always reach CTL staff (Martin Springborg, Jamie Lewis, and Chad Anderson) via Teams. We usually respond to Teams messages within minutes.
TILT Community of Practice
This community of practice, on Transparency in Learning and Teaching, is in its third year at both DCTC and IHCC. Faculty who have redesigned assignments in the TILT framework, and with input from their colleagues in this community, report positive impacts on student success in their courses.
In this collaborative community, you’ll meet with fellow faculty to discuss the book Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership, review the findings and educational research behind the concept of transparent teaching and learning, and apply transparent design to your teaching practice.
Faculty participants in this Community of Practice (limited to 10 per semester) will receive a copy of Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership. Meetings will begin in late September, take place approximately every three weeks, and will be arranged by participant consensus. Contact Martin Springborg to sign up for this community of practice.
TILT not your thing? Visit the Faculty Resources site for information on other communities of practice, including:
- Faculty Teaching Online
- Community-Based Learning
- Prison/Correctional Education
Conversations with Colleagues: Guiding Difficult Conversations
Online
October 19 12:00 – 1:00
Teaching controversial topics and concepts is part of many courses and disciplines. Topics like race, culture, gender, and/or sexual orientation are inherent discussions in many fields, and any course dealing with current events presents an opportunity for socially-challenging topics to arise purposely and spontaneously in class discussions. Guiding those discussions can impact the usefulness these conversations to learning. This session of Conversations with Colleagues will allow us to review and practice a process for guiding difficult conversations.
Guest Speaker Dr. Kristen Cvancara, Professor of Communication Studies, Minnesota State University, Mankato.
RSVP required at https://asanewsletter.org/event/conversations-with-colleagues-october-2021
Minnesota State Spring Educational Development
The Network for Educational Development (NED) is pleased to offer a series of short courses and faculty learning communities on the NED events calendar for the spring 2022 term.
These opportunities are designed by Minnesota State faculty and staff for Minnesota State faculty and staff and help build awareness, develop knowledge, skills, and abilities, and provide space for reflecting and revising.
Review and register for spring 2022 opportunities to plan your educational development for spring. Registration for each course will close the Friday before the course start date. Space is limited!
More Events and Development Opportunities
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. 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.
National and Vendor-Sponsored
VoiceThread Workshops
Upcoming workshop: Using VoiceThread in D2L/Brightspace
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.
Access VoiceThread’s full workshop archive.
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
Elements of Quality Matters: Deliver on Your Online Promise — discover QM’s tools and resources in this one-hour, self-paced course
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!