Call for PD Grant Proposals

The calls for Service-Learning, Student Research Success Grants, Online/Hybrid Course Development Grants, Travel Grants, and Mini-Sabbaticals have gone out via email, and are available here on the Blog under the “PD Grants” tab at the top of the site.

BCC Faculty Survey – Prelim Results

Here are some preliminary results of the Fall 09 faculty survey, more details to come. Thanks to all who contributed!

Total respondents: 64 (Full time: 33; Part time: 31) = 33% sample

Length of service (Over 10 years: 35; 2-10 years: 21; under 2 years: 9)

• Over the past five years, what have you found to be the most effective TEACHING & LEARNING METHODS?

Top Three: Class discussion, Group work, Presentations/demos (lecture was #4)

• Over the past five years, what have you found to be the most effective ASSESSMENT METHODS?

Top Three: Essays, Exams, Research papers

• Over the past five years, which TECHNOLOGIES have you found to be the most effective?

Top Three: Powerpoint, Video/DVDs, Blackboard

Professional Day Sep 09 Evaluation

This evaluation showed quite an interesting mixture of opinions.

• Most attendees liked the presentations by colleagues, but a significant minority would have preferred an outside speaker.
• Many noted the small turnout, which may have been due to a variety of factors: timing, topic, other?
• There was general agreement that holding the morning session in K111 was helpful and more comfortable.

The full report is here: profdaysep09eval, comments are always welcome!

“Opening Up Education” Remix Version

Opening Up Education, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar, has been reproduced on the Academic Commons site. This is well worth scanning and picking out articles of interest:

http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/opening-education

Summer Institute starts today!

Soon 28 BCC Faculty and Staff will arrive shortly for Learning Outside the Classroom & Learning 2.0 – will report on the outcomes later today…

Call for Proposals ISSOTL

The Intl Society of SOTL has a call for proposals for papers, roundtables, posters, or panels for their next meeting, Oct 22-25, 2009 at Univ of Indiana, Bloomington. Proposals should relate to three broad themes (they are really very broad), and indicate the literatures, methods, evidence, and conclusions in play. Deadline for proposals is June 1, and full information is at: http://issotl09.indiana.edu/call.html

“Segunda Vida” Digital Storytelling project

BCC Professor of Foreign Languages Lois Cooper shows the Segunda Vida project using role-play and social networking to support cultural information and identity

Open Source Stats textbook being piloted

Math instructor Ed Crosson will be piloting a downloadable, modular statistics textbook from the Connexions website. The Connexions project is from Rice University and funded by the Hewlett foundation. All materials on the site are published under the Collective Commons copyright, and can be used freely by faculty and students. Stay tuned for the results – and kudos to Ed for venturing into this new world of open ed resources!

Teaching & Learning Conference

Berkshire Community College faculty staff made a strong showing at the Teaching, Learning & Student Development Conference at STCC last week. Below are some BCC presenters as they prepared to share their work with community college professionals from across the state:

Using Smartboard in the Math Classroom

On February 12th, 2009, Math faculty member Nancy Zuber shared with a group of faculty and staff some of the methods she’s developed for teaching Math using Smartboard. These methods included class notes, reusable math theorems that can be dragged and dropped onto the Smartboard, saving and posting class materials to Blackboard, and the use of color and fonts that highlight key concepts. What prompted Nancy to develop class notes was the fact that she viewed student notes and found that students were writing down inaccurate steps and concepts, and therefore reinforcing incorrect information. While Nancy did not find significant grade differences based on her sample of just 1-2 classes so far, students did self-report that the class notes and use of the smartboard in general was useful to them and helped them learn the material. See below for a short video of Nancy’s workshop: