Categories for Teaching and Learning

Promotional flier for workshops

Back-to-School Workshops

MCC’s CTL will offer several workshops to support faculty and staff with best practices for instruction and work routines. Topics include Foundations of Course Design, Canvas tools (beginner and intermediate), and Change in Practice with Google applications. This fall the CTL will also offer accessibility training for all faculty. Departments have been designated two training dates in a given week for all residential and adjunct faculty to attend one training. Techniques from this training should be applied to all instructional design and will be useful during the Canvas course audit for accessibility. Workshop details are available on the CTL calendar.

Join us for Lunch & Learn: Spanish on Mondays and Thursdays this semester starting on August 29th in AS191. This informal workshop is offered to all MCC faculty and staff. Drop-in anytime and bring a sack lunch to learn and practice conversational Spanish.

Spring Training Banner

MCC Spring Training Workshops

Register TODAY! MCC’s CTL will offer workshops as part of the MCCCD Spring Trainings Series. Collect tickets, trade cards and take souvenirs for teaching and learning back to your classroom. Workshop details are available on the CTL calendar. The CTL is featuring the OER Ideation Circle during the spring semester. Participate on the main campus and MCC-RDM CTL as scheduled on Mondays. Afternoon sessions available on Tuesdays. Ideation Circles provide space to collectively explore educational topics.

CTL Postcard Spr16 Workshops

MCLI Sum16 Project Applications DUE

The deadline for submitting MCLI Summer Project applications is next week, Thursday February 11th by noon.

Applications must be emailed to facultyprofessionalgrowth@domail.maricopa.edu

Three documents that will help you apply for a Summer Project: the summer project application, the application guide and the rubric used to score applications.

The maximum dollar amount for 2016 Summer Projects is $2,500.00. Please note Summer Projects can begin May 14, 2016 and must be completed by June 30, 2016.

 

Geographic shape-like flower with light bulb in the center

OER Ideation Circle

The CTL will be featuring an OER Ideation Circle during the Spring semester. Ideation Circles require a small group of faculty or staff from any area of the college who come together for at least a semester to discuss a teaching and learning topic that they can delve deeply into during group discussions. Annapurna Ganesh and other Education Studies faculty have formed an ideation circle on the topic of Open Educational Resources (OERs).

You are invited to explore and learn about OERs. The group intends to meet regularly (twice a month) in the CTL to exchange and share ideas. The same ideation circle will be offered at two different times Mon 10:15 – 11 and Tues 4:30 – 5:15, you are welcome to choose either time to participate.

See the CTL calendar for the dates of the OER Featured Ideation Circle. The first session will be offered on February 8 or 9. Bring your questions, resources and ideas as we discover OERs together. We will be meeting in the CTL lobby at the Southern & Dobson campus. MCC-RDM faculty will be meeting in the CTL spot located in the PV instructional support room (adjunct office area).

 

Canvas and Turnitin.com logo

Turnitin Originality Checking and Canvas Integration

Faculty who use Canvas have had the option of running their students online composition assignments against Turnitin.com right within the Canvas assignment since we first adopted Canvas in 2012.

Beginning Spring 2016, Turnitin.com is changing the way that Learning Management Systems such as Canvas integrate with their services. This will require a few simple steps to re-configure any existing assignments faculty wish to re-use from a previous semester.

Please click this link for instructions to the new way of  configuring NEW assignments.

For help with configuring existing assignments click here.

There will be a workshop presented in the CTL workshop room (AS175) on Thursday Jan 14 at 11:00am with finer details/training on how to work with this new integration of Turnitin for Canvas.

If you are a faculty member needing help/assistance with these techology tools, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at 480-461-7331 or email: ctl@mesacc.edu

Congratulations to MCC’s 2013 Excellence Award Recipients!

The League for Innovation in the Community Colleges annual John and Suanne Roueche Excellence Award honors faculty and staff in the community college for their outstanding leadership and contributions to the community college. This year MCC is proud to announce the two recipients of this years awards:

Join us in congratulating them both for their outstanding contributions to student success.

Join the CTL Community Online!

Join the community+ as we explore teaching and learning at MCC!

About the community: The CTL@MCC Google+ Community strives to bring together educators in higher ed to collaborate, share, learn, and innovate so that together we can improve student success and college completion.  Join the conversation and help us celebrate excellence!

The CTL@MCC Google+ Community

Author Visit: Brian Fagan

Brian FaganHow to Teach Broad Concepts Across Different Disciplines

Dr. Brian Fagan
Professor-Emeritus
University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Date: Tuesday November 22nd
Time:  1:30-3:00pm
Location: LB 145
Register at: http://tinyurl.com/iamattending (Open to all MCCCD Faculty and Staff)

Dr. Brian Fagan will be visiting MCC on November 21st and 22nd.  This Tuesday afternoon event is for faculty and staff.  Watch your e-mail for events open to the broader community and encourage your students to attend!

Dr. Brian Fagan is a strong advocate of multidisciplinary approaches to such issues as climate change in the past. His approach is a melding of different theoretical approaches which focuses on the broad issues of human prehistory and the past. He is a strong advocate of multidisciplinary approaches to such issues as climate change in the past.
Fagan’s most recent books include:
  • Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind
  • The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
  • Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of North America
  • Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

http://www.brianfagan.com/

Moving into the 21st Century!

WebCT is a Dinosaur!

Calling all faculty! The “some day when we leave WebCT” is drawing near! It is finally time to leave the Jurassic Era that is WebCT and move into the 21st Century – enter, Canvas!

In September the governing board approved the RFP award for the new Learning Management System to a company called Instructure with their LMS, Canvas. MCC has been selected as the first Maricopa school to move to this new system. As part of the migration from WebCT to Canvas the CTL will run two different programs in an effort to work collaboratively with the college and  the unique needs of each department and hopefully, ease the migration process for everyone. Currently we anticipate that all faculty will be using the Canvas system beginning Summer I, 2012.

Canvas Pioneer Program
Summary: The Canvas Pioneer Program is a voluntary program with no stipend given. Faculty that are teaching a late-start spring course beginning no earlier than March of 2012 may apply to this program. The 25-30 faculty that are selected will receive early training and access to the production system and will be the first faculty teaching within the new Canvas LMS. They will be asked to share feedback on their migration / transition to Canvas, they will be asked to complete a survey about the training, migration, and teaching process, and they will be asked to deliver a survey to their students asking for feedback.

Selection will be based on uniqueness, discipline/department, technologies, and teaching and learning techniques so that we may fully test as many aspects of the new system as possible. A variety of departments is desired so that we can ensure we test the system early with your departments unique online teaching and learning needs.

Canvas Pioneer Application for Late-Start Spring 2012: http://tinyurl.com/canvaspioneer
Applications will be accepted until November 17th, 2011 at 5pm.

Canvas Faculty Mentoring Program
Summary: The Canvas Faculty Mentoring Program is a program for residential faculty with a maximum stipend of $2000.  The selected “faculty mentors” would be given training and access to the Canvas system first so that they could help support other faculty during the migration process. These mentors will be used to staff Canvas open labs and to be liasions within your departments to ensure that all faculty have the support they need during this transition. Currently we anticipate that all faculty will be using the Canvas system beginning Summer I, 2012.

Faculty Mentor responsibilities include:

  • Completing Canvas and/or Quality Matters training sessions,
  • Staffing 3 open labs a month from March 2012 through September 2012 (inclusive of summer)
  • Communicating Canvas updates to their assigned departments/chairs.

Selection will be based on location/department/discipline, availability during the summer months, experience in the current LMS, and experience with the Quality Matters rubric.

Canvas Faculty Mentoring Application: http://tinyurl.com/canvasmentor
Applications will be accepted until November 17th, 2011 at 5pm.

Questions? Concerns? Please contact the CTL: ctl@mesacc.edu or 480-461-7331.

Our Most Important Roles

I’ve been reading Bob Cringely’s column ever since I discovered he was the person behind one of my favorite PBS documentaries, “Triumph of the Nerds” which is a history of personal computing. Last week he posted an article about how the later generations of our students who are beginning to perceive that there was no life prior to computers, perhaps much in the same way my generation perceives television. What will our children’s children be experiencing in their learning opportunities?

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