WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence

Looking Ahead

The Monday after the time change in the spring always seems more difficult than any ordinary Monday. Despite preparations, it’s harder to get ready for the new day, the new week, and this year, the second half of the semester.

Today at WCU, everywhere we turn, we seem to be getting ready for something we know—a class, a presentation—and for something we don’t—NC Promise, a new chancellor. Although we cannot predict what will/won’t happen even in the classes we’ve prepared and the presentations we know by heart, as educators we stand ready for opportunities as they present themselves. As we move toward the end of the Spring semester and into the summer, that’s our theme. Let’s get ready. Get ready to make challenges into opportunities. Get ready to be better at teaching. Get ready to encourage our learners more. 

Part of getting ready is letting go of those things that hold us back. What are we doing that is unnecessary? What doesn’t have to be done today? Is there a task that we could accomplish more quickly by email? By phone call? Where would a partnership help us all to win? How can those partnerships help us to get ready for the opportunities coming our way? Let’s get ready together by focusing on the most valuable, the most important, the activities with the best return on the investments of our time and energy.

The CFC offers opportunities for reviewing your readiness and for preparing you to be able to withstand and thrive in change.  We've made significant changes to the structure of our Summer Learning Institute with an eye toward giving faculty at all levels more immediately valuable knowledge and skills as they ready themselves for the known and the unknown.  We can also spend time with you in individual consultations thinking through the ways to streamline your processes so that you can maintain quality without overwhelming your capabilities.  We hope that you'll take advantage of some of the opportunities we offer.

As always, we stand beside you facing the known and the unknown,

Martha Diede, PhD
Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Coulter Faculty Commons at 828-227-2930 or email us at LMSsupport@wcu.edu.

Remember to block May 22-24, 2018 for the Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning.  

Register as soon as your schedule is settled because there are a limited number of seats.

Take a Look at Our Summer Offerings and Register Using the Button Below

Academic Integrity
This presentation will suggest some course design and instructional strategies that would enable instructors to design learning activities and assessments to minimize academic dishonesty in their online courses.

Change the Way You Think About Teaching and Learning
As you think about students progressing through your classes, you may find that there are certain points where students get stopped every time.  Some researchers call these “thresholds” – points that students must master before progressing to the next idea or to approach the next concept.  Working around and through these thresholds can be advantageous for both students and instructors.  Find new ways to help your students succeed!

Competency Based Education and Western Carolina
No matter what our opinions are of competency-based education, it is gaining more traction in policy, funding, and accreditation circles. In this cooperative session planned by your faculty peers in the Health Educators Academy and members of a WCU exploratory task-force on competency-based education, we will present a primer on the most current concepts, models, and policies driving the conversation and an exploration of the possibilities and challenges ahead for Western if we consider other models for credit and funding.

Improving Your Online Course (IYOC) - 3 Parts - All Three Required for Certification
The “Improving Your Online Course” workshop explores the QM Rubric and provides a framework to improve the quality of online courses. Participants use the QM Rubric to review their own online courses and develop a course improvement plan.

The content is based on the 21 “essential” Specific Review Standards of the Quality Matters Rubric. Participants come away with a plan for course improvement. Enrolling in the workshop with a pre-developed online course is required.

Making Learning Stick
This session will discuss how sticky learning techniques can be implemented using both no-tech and low-tech methods to foster stronger student learning practices.

Mindful Teaching Moments
Interspersed with the other sessions, these focused sessions will offer opportunities to focus one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a relaxation/focusing technique. Come early; stay late; when you aren't conversing and planning, take the opportunity and accept the encouragement to be mindful.

Quality Teaching at Scale
WCU is growing.  Thus far our growth has exhibited itself in ways that echo the call of the President of the UNC system that education in North Carolina has to meet or exceed current standards of quality while expanding the reach of educational value to a larger pool of students.  How might that be possible without losing our mooring as educators?  How do we scale our effect without overtaxing our resources?  In this session, we’ll examine some models, practices, and efforts that have been successful at keeping or increasing quality while reaching a wider and more diverse audience.

Teaching the New Generation of Students
Every group of students has essential human similarities to the students of the past, but the technology and cultural influences that shape each generation have an impact on the way they observe, learn, attend to tasks, and communicate.  If you are interested in fully connecting with your students and helping them to succeed, you’ll find this session to be interesting and valuable.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
This session provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone - not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.

We Have Automated the Involvement Letters!

Here is how you can get your involvement letters to use in your AFE and TPR documents

It is time for the Coulter Faculty Commons to send out Involvement Letters to the faculty who have participated in CFC events or have come to visit us in the Coulter Faculty Commons for assistance. In an effort to help our faculty gain access to their letters when they need them, we have automated this process. Please go to the following URL and take a look at the instructions, pick the dates that are appropriate, and run your report.

https://go.wcu.edu/cfc-involvement-letter

There are two important points:

1. If you are doing this from home or off campus, you will need to log into the VPN to gain access.
2. You will need to use Firefox or Internet Explorer as your browser to run the report. (Google Chrome will not work.)

If you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement for this process and the letters, please let us know.

If you have any questions or need assistance, do not hesitate to ask.

Sue Grider

Coordinator of Technology
Coulter Faculty Commons
Western Carolina University
172 Hunter Library
Cullowhee, NC 28723
828.227.2258

Quality Matters Training - IYOC
(Improving Your Online Course) First Cohort Completed on March 1, 2018

Interested members of our faculty came together on the day before Spring Break to improve the learning experience of our students by focusing on course design.  The faculty members focused on the 21 "essential" specific review standards of the Quality Matters rubric, and applied those standards for implementation in a future course. We applaud our faculty for their dedication to quality and to improving student learning outcomes. The next offering of this course will be during the Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning.

Measuring Your Interest in Course Design Days

Are you interested in the CFC sponsoring more "Launch" events at the beginning of a cycle to provide a space and structured time for you to work on designing or redesigning your courses for the next semester?

We've offered a one-day structured event before the beginning of the Fall semester.  We've made the following quick survey in Microsoft Forms for you to let us know anonymously .

Taking Risks…Encouraging the Inner Child

In my first year in college, Robert Bly’s Iron John: A Book About Men, was written. The book challenged notions of masculinity in ways that spoke to me, and to many others.

Now, 28 years later, I continue to think about how I might develop my inner child…the 12 -year old that read Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and all the other Sunday comics…

So I draw stories…in that rare moment when I have time. It’s my version of risk-taking. It means I’m vulnerable—because as we all know, cartoons are ultimately shared, and they may fall flat. But I enjoy the creative, iterative process.

Here is a cartoon I drew years ago. And in this space, I’ll continue to offer cartoons, as they come to me, and as I have time to draw them. I hope you enjoy.

- Terry

The CFC Facebook Page - And Breaking News in the World of Higher Education

The CFC is in a constant state of trying to review and improve our online communications in ways that will be most beneficial to the faculty.  We're looking at a broad restructure of our webpage to be more consistent and user friendly.  We're also working to use our Facebook presence as a way of sharing what we are reading online.

If you are a Facebook user and haven't been following our page, you may be missing some opportunities or some news.  For those of you who are regular readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have seen President Spellings's defense of higher education in recent online postings.  If not, you might have found it on our Facebook page.

If you are interested, we try to do a daily post on issues that would be of interest to faculty. If you want to follow our page, follow this link.

Teaching, Learning, and Research Support

By Terry Pollard

For help with research planning and development contact Terry Pollard (twpollard@email.wcu.edu  828-227-7196).

For help with data analysis contact our faculty research support specialist CK (kchen@wcu.edu  828-227-3456).

Changes and Quality Matters - A Perspective from Another Implementation

The California State System faculty were polled about Quality Matters and a summary of the results are in the graphic below.  We'd love to know what your thoughts are on the same questions if you'd like to share informally.

Blackboard Updates

Talk with the LMS Team About Using Gradebook in Blackboard to Help with 5th and 8th Week Grade Reports

We are very thankful for the attention that our faculty pays to ensuring student success.  We applaud the Faculty Senate for their recent resolution in support of 8th Week grade reporting for students needing extra encouragement.  Blackboard's gradebook can be one of the tools to help you know that a student is struggling.  Talk to our Blackboard team about setting up the gradebook properly and managing your alerts and reports so that you can efficiently and effectively intervene to improve student retention and learning.

Online Blackboard Help

Creating a manual for Blackboard at WCU has been a challenge for the LMS Team. The regular updates have made it nearly impossible to keep training materials current. Fortunately, Blackboard does have a well-developed support site that you can search on topics of interest. Below are the URLs for the Instructor site and the Student site. Of course, for faculty, the LMS Team is only a phone call or email away.

Instructor Blackboard Site: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor

Student Blackboard Site: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Student

Blackboard Collaborate Help Site

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Hunter Library Releases New Mobile App

 Forgot your Cat Card to check out library materials? Need articles for research on the go?  Download Hunter Library’s new mobile application for easy access to online resources and services.  In addition to providing a digital library card, the application allows users to check library hours, search databases, browse the catalog to request materials, and manage their account by reviewing due dates or renewing library items.

 The application works for smartphones and tablets and can be found under “WCU Hunter Library” through the App Store for iOS devices or Google Play for Android devices.

 Contact the library circulation desk at 828-227-7485 with any questions or feedback about the service.

Thanks!

 Elizabeth A. Marcus
Undergraduate Experience Librarian
Hunter Library, Western Carolina University
Phone: 828-227-3398

Email: emarcus@email.wcu.edu

More Resources:

CFC Automated Appointments
Quality customer service is our goal at the Coulter Faculty Commons (CFC).  So, in order to serve our faculty better, we have created a new form to request an appointment with any member of our team.  Please click here to request an appointment.

The Educational Horizon
One part of the charge of the CFC is to remain ready to assist in times of change.  To do so, we are constantly keeping track of new, re-surfacing and emerging issues in teaching and learning.  If you want a regular digest of what we are reading to be sent via email, feel free to subscribe on the page.  We usually post when we've collected about 20 relevant links.

Blackboard Online Help
As the Learning Management System used 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.

Provost's List of Faculty Resources
The Office of the Provost provides a considerable amount of helpful information on this web page. 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.  

CFC Feedback
We would greatly appreciate any feedback you could give us about how we can improve or add to our services.  We regularly monitor all inputs 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!