Mark your calendars! On Thursday, January 13 from 8:00AM-10:40AM colleagues will share High Impact Practices that are making a difference in their work with students. In these brief, 30-minute sessions, MCC employees will share what they are doing, describe the impact to teaching and learning, and invite feedback from peers. Virtual and in-person sessions will be available.
There is a body of research published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) that offers a roadmap to evidence-based high impact practices that elevate academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, and a supportive campus environment. These practices include:
First-Year Seminars and Experiences
Common Intellectual Experiences
Learning Communities
Writing and Inquiry-Intensive Courses
Collaborative Assignemnts and Projects
Undergraduate Research
Diversity/Global Learning
Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
Internships
Capstone Courses and Projects
ePortfolios
Accelerated Developmental Education
Tutoring
Orientation
And, according to the AACU (2017):
Student participation in one or more of the 10 original HIPs is associated with a range of positive outcomes, especially for those historically underrepresented in postsecondary education.
HIPs are developmentally powerful because they require applied, hands-on, integrative, and often collaborative learning experiences.
Sadly, HIPs participation is inequitable, with first generation, transfer students, and African-American and Latino students least likely to have such experiences.
Among the challenges to institutionalizing HIPs are demonstrating the fiscal benefit of increased graduation rates, changing academic reward systems to support faculty and staff involvement in HIPs, and acknowledging HIPs in the institutional data system.
However, “simply offering and labeling an activity an HIP does not necessarily guarantee that students who participate in it will benefit in the ways much of the extant literature claims” (Inside Higher Ed, 2018). The quality, scale, and intensity by which we enact high impact practices at will have a significant impact on the student expreience and student outcomes which are quantified by our wildly important college goals.
The MCC instance of WebEx is being consolidated to the District instance. What that means is the @MCC version will no longer be available after this semester. Most everyone is already in the Maricopa instance but if you are not, you will need to convert your log in to the @Maricopa log in and reschedule future (winter intersession or spring semester) so they are on the Maricopa instance. ALSO, its important to note, that if you have recordings on the @MCC instance you will need to download those to your computer. Beginning December 18 at 5:00 pm you will not be able to access them any longer.
Uncertain which one you are on? Open up your gmail or google calendar, click the WebEx icon on the right side of the screen and check the “Webex site” location – it should read: maricopa.webex.com and your account should be meid@maricopa.edu. If it does not say maricopa.webex.com and instead it says mesacc.webex.com you will need to change the site. To do that follow these instructions.
Now that Fall Semester 2020 is over, you may have some questions about how the Canvas Grade Book is organized. Importing assignments and adding new assignments ad hoc may have you and your students scratching their heads on what grade they are going to be awarded in their transcripts. Let the CTL experts show you how to organize everything for the optimal student experience. There will be a total of 4 sessions on these dates and times:
Monday Dec 7, 2020 at 10:30am Monday Dec 7, 2020 at 2:30pm
Wednesday Dec 9, 2020 at 10:30am Wednesday Dec 9, 2020 at 2:30pm
Hosted by James Bowles and Jeffrey Anderson
All sessions will be conducted via Webex via this link: https://maricopa.webex.com/meet/jbowles1. Just pick a session from those listed above and click on the Webex link to join.
The Center for Teaching and Learning invites you to join us as we discuss and interact with the book Courageous Conversations About Race, a field guide, to explore topics of race and uncover our personal passion for equity work at MCC. This introductory session sets the stage for an ongoing series throughout the semester.
Join the first conversations of the semester: January 9 9-11 AS175 S&D January 10 1-3 S280 RM
What’s an Unconference? Conferences are about presentations but an Unconference is about conversation…conversations around topics you choose. So, we won’t create the schedule – you will! Tell us what you want to talk about and we’ll find someone to facilitate that conversation OR better yet – tell us what topic you are willing to facilitate a conversation around. We are all busy getting ready for this upcoming year and all faced with many of the same challenges…we have much we can share and discuss so let’s get together and talk! What do you want to talk about? Tell us! Then join the conversation on Wednesday August 14, 2019 in the CTL.
MCC Faculty will be interested in knowing that there are some significant features in Canvas LMS as they prepare for Fall 2019 semester courses. Here is a brief rundown for each new feature:
Course Card Images
For several years Canvas has allowed course instructors and designers to add an image to their course card so it shows up in the Canvas dashboard, but forever has been in a state not allowed for use at MCCCD. If you don’t have time to design a course card image yourself, the feature integrates an image search. This allows you to spruce up your course design in less than 5 minutes.
New Grade Book
Canvas has had a new grade book design in the works for several semesters as an institutional opt-in feature for several years. Their new Grade Book is finally ready for prime time use in preparation for a final switch over in January 2020 as the ONLY way to keep an online grade book in Canvas. We are encouraging faculty to begin using the new grade book as soon as possible. In order to use it you need to go to your course settings and opt-in via the Features tab. Check the CTL Calendar for in-person workshops/tutorials on how to use the new grade book, or contact a CTL Staff Member for an in-person consultation.
New Quizzes Feature
Canvas has had a new quizzing engine in the works for several semesters as an institutional opt-in feature for several years. The new quiz tool features many improvements to building and delivering quizzes in Canvas over the quiz feature that MCC faculty have been used to from the time Canvas was adopted in Fall 2012. Instructure has not determined 100% when this new quizzing engine will become the default, but is allowing instructors to opt-in if there’s a feature that makes it compelling to try out in your course offering.
What you should know before you use New Quizzes:
It is recommended that you work closely with a CTL staff member to determine if using new Canvas quiz tool is right for you. It is not up to feature parity with the existing quiz tool, and there are a number of known issues.
If you are interested in trying to use the tool, please contact a member of the CTL staff first.
Quiz Log Auditing
Canvas has an opt-in feature for logging student interactions with Canvas quizzes (in the existing quizzing engine) that we expect to become always on at some point in the future. For now, in order to use it you need to go to your course settings and opt-in via the Features tab.
Quiz Log Auditing Option In Course Settings Set to the On State
Mastery Paths
This feature option has at its heart the idea of adaptive learning. Mastery Paths lets you design course content that will direct students to content that can serve as a remedial or for review before progressing to other content. In other words, students have to master a certain aspect of course content in order to have access to other course content. In order to use it you need to go to your course settings and opt-in via the Features tab.
Did you know that Canvas updates on a regular schedule? If you do or do not, you should take note that the release schedule has been updated to become more predicable. New features are released on the 3rd Saturday of each month with smaller changes like bug fixes are relegated to updates called Deploys. Check out this Instructure blog post for details.
Turnitin is MCCCDs official Plagiarism review platform. In the past, Canvas has been able to integrate with Turnitin in a variety of ways, with the latest being called the Plagiarism Framework option. At some point in time MCCCD will switch off the existing integration, but for now we are beginning to migrate our existing faculty users to this new framework. Some of the highlights of this new integration option are as follows:
The setup is easier to discover from the Online assignment type. It’s just a box you check
You can use existing Canvas rubrics that are visible to your students…with the previous integration the Canvas rubrics aren’t visible to students until they receive their feedback in Speedgrader
Assignments that may not make it to the Turnitin service can be pushed through manually by instructors
An Unconference is the “anti conference” – its about conversation NOT about presentation. We each have wisdom in our field based on experience and what better way to learn from each other by engaging in conversation about the many topics us that impact our work as educators. Join the conversation!
Grant proposals are now being accepted for OER Development Grants. For more information regarding the OER Development Grant program, please visit our website .
Proposalsare due by 5pm Wednesday, November 9th, 2016.
OER (Open Educational Resources) hold great promise for reducing costs and increasing access to required course materials. Community colleges around the country (Washington, California, Virginia) have joined in with national efforts to increase the production and use of OER materials. Washington’s OER project saved students over $1.25 million in just the 2011-12 academic year, and over $5.5 million since 2011.
The main goal of the Maricopa Millions Open Education Resources (OER) Project is to reduce educational costs for students. Spending less money on textbooks and materials will foster greater access to materials for students, which may enable them to stay on track with completing their courses.
The Maricopa Millions OER Project includes developing a strategic, sustainable OER infrastructure that would include: awareness, professional development, OER development and technical support, marketing and technical structure. In order for OER to be successful at MCCCD, we have established an OER strategic planning and implementation team to establish and oversee specific OER outcomes over the next 5 years.
The driving objective for the project is to save MCCCD students $5 Million Dollars over the next five years through the use of OER materials. And we’ve already reached our goal in 2 1/2 years, but we’re not stopping there.
This Maricopa Millions OER project, through an internal grant process, supports the adoption, adaptation, and development of complete OER course materials for high enrollment courses in the MCCCD. The final product will be OER course materials that can be easily adopted and modified by other faculty (including adjuncts) teaching that course. Phase 1-3 targeted high enrollment courses. In Phase 4-6 we welcomed all courses to be submitted for the grant.
In Phase 7 we continue to welcome all courses to be submitted for the grant with emphasis on courses that meet degree completion requirements for CS, Oral Communication, Critical Reading, H or G. Keep in mind, most math courses and the following courses (ENG091, ENG101, ENG102, RDG091, CHM130LL, GBS151, PSY101, PSY230, BIO156,BIO160, CHM130, CHM150/151/152, HES100, SPA101 and SWU292) are not eligible, as they have already been funded and/or developed.
Proposals are due by 5pmon Wednesday, November 9, 2016. Group proposals will be accepted and are encouraged.For more information regarding the OER Development Grant program, please visit our website.
This program is open to residential and adjunct faculty teaching at the MCCCD and will be open to all courses in Phase 7 of the grant program.
