Volume XXXIX, No. 16 | May 4, 2017 Teaching Community College Students the Soft Skills Demanded by Employers Many of us in community colleges work with employers and students. Therefore, we seek to understand what employers need in future employees, then we prepare students to fill those roles. This process is relatively straight [...]
Volume XL, No. 15| April 26, 2018 Nurturing Classroom Engagement A student’s involvement in classroom discussions is largely based on his or her experiences during the first class of the semester. It is during this crucial period that a classroom’s culture begins to develop. Students analyze verbal and nonverbal cues from their [...]
Volume XL, No. 14| April 19, 2018 The Retention Divide: Building New Cultural Bridges Do you find it challenging to connect with students? If so, you are not alone. As an instructor, I have grappled with the same challenge. The sea of faces in our courses can quickly become a melting pot [...]
Volume XL, No. 13| April 12, 2018 To Go Over a Test or Not to Go Over a Test? Testing is primarily used for assessment purposes. It is a way for a teacher to determine if students have mastered the required material. After exams are graded, they are often returned to students [...]
Volume XL, No. 12| April 5, 2018 Low-Stakes Exams: Example of Strategy Assessment Student engagement and retention go hand in hand. Administrators often make faculty aware of retention statistics and emphasize how faculty must do their part to help students graduate. Faculty are also frequently informed about the correlation between student engagement [...]
Volume XL, No. 11| March 29, 2018 Learning Through Engagement As the division chair for arts, social sciences, and public services at Randolph Community College (RCC), I have the opportunity to work with and observe individuals who teach a variety of disciplines. Our division houses Early Childhood Education, Criminal Justice Technology, Human [...]
Volume XL, No. 10| March 22, 2018 Dual Credit, 20 Years Later When I reported on the dual credit process in 1998, it was a new idea, at least at my institution, Ivy Tech Community College. As the title of my 1998 Innovation Abstracts, “A New Twist on Articulation” suggested, dual credit [...]
Volume XL, No. 9| March 15, 2018 So, You Want to Bring OER to Your Institution: Lessons Learned From the Texas Consortium What Is OER? Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that can be freely downloaded, edited, and shared to better serve students. OER differ from copyrighted materials in [...]
Volume XL, No. 8 | March 8, 2018 Removing Neutral: Using Student Experiences to Gather Meaningful Data in a Survey-Heavy World “Please complete this survey.” These dreaded four words fill up our students’ inboxes after almost every experience they have in college. As a doctoral student, I’m asked to respond to a [...]
Volume XL, No. 7 | March 1, 2018 Creating Socially, Emotionally, and Culturally Responsive Environments to Improve Conditions for Learning Colleges and universities are becoming more diverse, making the need to be inclusive and socially skilled increasingly important. When it comes to communication, respect and professionalism are key to being productive and [...]