WCU's Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence

March 2017

Greetings,

Spring has sprung in beautiful Cullowhee.  You've made it halfway through the semester and now it's time to start thinking about whether or not you are achieving the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that you established at the beginning of your course.  The staff at the Coulter Faculty Commons are here to assist you with the initial creation of clear, concise outcomes and the revision of existing ones.  We would love to work with you to construct assessment questions that relate directly to your outcomes.  Remember, by creating achievable SLOs, combined with assessment and feedback, you will improve overall student learning and retention.  Please don't hesitate to give us a call or drop by .  We are here to help!

Martha Diede, PhD
Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

P.S.: Please excuse our mess - the CFC is currently experiencing renovations and have temporarily relocated to HL156 and HL166.  If you get a chance, stop by and visit with us!

Upcoming Events:

May 16, 17, & 18, 2017 (9am - 4pm each day)

It's time to mark your calendar and register for the New and Improved Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning (SITL) which will be held at NCCAT this year!  We have redesigned this seminar to give faculty more of what they want and need to be successful in the classroom.  The theme for this year's SITL is "Take Your Teaching to the Next Level."  There will be an all day Quality Matters workshop, followed by two days with four distinct and exciting mini sessions each day.  Each session is geared towards helping faculty to improve, enhance, and innovate their teaching techniques.  Lunch, snacks, and drinks will also be provided each day.  Remember, if you want to Step Up your teaching, please join us for SITL 2017!  For more information contact Michele Hawes at 227-2927 or check out the CFC's Web Page or our Faculty Resources Web Page.  The SITL Agenda is also available here. 

To register for one or all sessions, please click here.

Topics to be covered:

In addition to the specific sessions listed below, we will be offering General Course Improvement with 1-on-1 assistance all day on Day 2 and Day 3 for any Blackboard, Panopto, Collaborate, Course Design, Pedagogy, or any other area that faculty would like assistance with.

Day One (May 16, 2017) Applying the Quality Matters Rubric to Your Online Course: This will be a day-long workshop where you will learn about some best practices of course design based on Quality Matters guidelines.

Day Two (May 17, 2017) Mini Sessions will be: Student Learning Outcomes, Online Teaching, Research-Based Teaching Practices, and Teaching with Technology

Day Three (May 18, 2017) Mini Sessions will be: Student Learning Outcomes - Assessments, Universal Design (UDL), Applying Research-Based Teaching Practices, and Writing for Research

Other Events:

Technology Exposition

On March 16 from 5:00-7:30pm in Killian 102, several regional public school teachers from Buncombe, Clay, and Transylvania Counties, along with faculty and WCU interns will be doing demonstrations of innovative uses of technology in the classroom.   In addition to great demonstrations, they will have refreshments along with the opportunity to mingle, talk with, and ask questions of the individuals conducting the demonstrations.  The Expo will start in Killian 102 and have demonstrations in several classrooms.  Each demonstration will be repeated three times to give multiple opportunities to see them all.   If you can’t come for the whole Expo, please come for as much as you can.   Topics include specific programs such as Goose Chase and Educreations,  adaptive technology for students with disabilities, fitness tracking for youth, virtual reality, and so much more covering a wide range of technological applications in the classroom.     

While no registration is required, please email either Lisa Bloom or Kimberly Smith to let them know an approximate number of students you might bring with you. They want to make sure they have enough refreshments for all!  Hope to see you at the Expo!

Research and Scholarship Celebration (RASC)

The Research and Scholarship Celebration (RASC) will be held March 29 & 30, 2017. Please join the Office of the Provost in celebrating undergraduate and graduate scholarship and creative activities at this annual celebration.  A keynote speaker and WCU faculty panel will headline the event just prior to the poster session at the Ramsey Center on Wednesday, March 29th. Please check here for updates and times. Registration information for the RASC Graduate Research Symposium can be found by clicking here.

Symposium for Part-time, Adjunct, and Contingent Educators

Symposium for Part-time, Adjunct, and Contingent Educators (SPACE) aims to spotlight part-time and contingent faculty contributions to scholarship and teaching.  SPACE is a one-day conference which will be held this year in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 10, 2017.  The Call for Proposals Deadline is Tuesday, April 4, 2017.  Early registration is now open, it is $95 per individual, and will increase to $120 after April 1, 2017.  For more information about SPACE and the possibility of having your registration fee paid for by the Provost if you are chosen to present, please click here.

Important Information for Faculty:

Guidelines for Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

Rules of Thumb
• Avoid use of verbs such as, “demonstrate”, “know”, “recognize”, “value”, “appreciate”, etc.
• Use only a single action verb per SLO. (Use Bloom’s taxonomy for verb selection.)
• Three to five (3 – 5) outcomes for a normal 3-credit hour course.
• Freshman and sophomore classes should have some higher order level outcomes.
• Junior and Senior level should have mostly higher order level outcomes.

For more information on SLOs, please contact Stephen LeBeau at 227-3456, or click here.

Strategies for Successful Research

Have you ever starting looking at your survey data and realized: "Whoops, I wish I would have done that differently?"  I have certainly been there and sadly I have worked with many faculty who have experienced that moment.  Together let’s take this moment to identify 4 common things we WISH we thought about BEFORE releasing a survey: IRBs; Identifiers; Consent; and Reverse Design.  All of these could be about the exact same interaction, but different measures.  Remember, the worse feeling is realizing that the questions that everyone answered are not answering the research question you wanted to answer in the first place.  For more information on these research tips or others, please contact Stephen LeBeau at 227-3456, or check out our Faculty Resources Web Page.

Capturing Course Data

Capturing course data for accreditation or for research is a request that the Blackboard Team at the CFC is hearing about more frequently each year. The data in Blackboard courses is retained and is retrievable for five years. However, requests need to be made at least two weeks in advance to ensure that there is enough time to re-enable the student accounts so that the student submissions are visible and can be extracted. As a best practice, it is recommended that the course data be extracted at the end of each semester so that it is available to faculty for their research or accreditation needs.  If you have any questions about this process, please do not hesitate to contact the Blackboard Team at 227-2930 or via email.

More Resources:

Blackboard Online Help
As the Learning Management System utilized here at WCU, Blackboard enhances the quality of online and face-to-face instruction and is used to monitor, document, and manage online and classroom events and assignments.  The LMS Team at the CFC has put together a handy list of resources for Blackboard, tailored to meet the needs of the WCU Community.

Blackboard Supported OS and Browsers
We all know that technology is changing more rapidly than most of us can keep up. With that said, the link above shows the operating systems and browsers that are currently supported in our version of Blackboard here at WCU. As always, please make sure you have stable Internet connection and that your computer is free of malware.

Highlighted Learning Videos on WCU's Panopto Features Page
We've customized the first entry landing page on the Panopto home page.  We'll be putting up-to-date focused videos in this space and changing them monthly, so make sure to take a look and to suggest more content.

Provost's List of Faculty Resources
There is a considerable amount of helpful information on this web page provided by the Office of the Provost. Information concerning faculty awards and recognition, support and development, to forums, gender equity, and policy and procedures is available on this site.

CFC Resources Online
The CFC works to keep our main web page updated.  We'd love to have you click in for a visit.  We also have a Faculty Resources Blog where we post additional resources and announcements as we get them.

IT Training Opportunities
The Division of  IT continues to provide training opportunities on Microsoft products for faculty and staff.

Educational Technology Weekly
The CFC's Senior Educational Technologist, Jonathan Wade, curates a weekly newsletter highlighting the big stories in the media-sphere about Educational Technology.  Don't forget to subscribe if you want to get weekly updates.

CFC Suggestion Box
We would greatly appreciate any feedback you could give us about how we can improve or add to our services.  We regularly monitor this suggestion box, located on our main web page, and try to respond to suggestions as quickly as possible. We thank you for taking the time to provide us with your constructive and formative feedback!