Higher Ed Teaching Effectiveness

Setting the stage: The first day of class

Fortunately, we're a long way off from school starting again, but many of us think about teaching so often and it won't be that long before we're finalizing syllabi and getting set for a new year. I've written before about the importance of the first day of class. The way a class begins (building a culture) and the way it ends (evaluating the learning achievements) are the two most important aspects of being an effective teacher.

Mary Bart wrote some excellent tips for creative ways to set the stage on your first day of class for Faculty Focus. I especially like her recommendation to have a 'staging area' at the front of the room where students become accustomed to picking up any materials needed for that day of class (and in my case, that's when/where they sign in). Writing on the board what is to be accomplished for the session is a good way of focusing the students and our focus as faculty.

An example of why Flickr.com just works

My Dad has really gotten into photography these days. You can check out his work on Flickr.com, as an example of what a gifted photographer can do.  

I haven't been as disciplined about loading my own photos on Flickr. Once you've done so, though - you'll be able to showcase your photographs many different places (on your blog, your Moodle courses (using RSS feeds), and on your website). I was able to easily create the slide show above using www.slideflickr.com and customize which of my pictures showed up, as well as the background color, size, etc. From there, I just copied the embed code and pasted it in the edit HTML box and I was set.

Book Review: The Academic Portfolio

I'm getting prepared to apply for promotion and tenure in the fall. Jobs in higher education are wonderful, but also nutty. It is the only job I know of that says, "Hey! Welcome to the University! You're set to be fired in X number of years, unless of course, you prove why you shouldn't be..."

Fortunately, one of my mentors, Prof. Carol Winters, got me thinking about the process very early and I've been saving evidence throughout these past five years. Another great resource for me is going to be The Academic Portfolio by Seldin and Miller. They do a superb job of helping you think about how to organize your documentation of teaching, research and service in such a way as to be compelling for any promotion and tenure committee. There are also ample examples of academic portfolios from various disciplines.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is in the same boat as me, preparing to demonstrate why you shouldn't be fired. Eat your heart out, Donald Trump.

Review of the Pulse SmartPen (by LiveScribe)

review-pulse_smartpen
brought to you by Livescribe

 

Five smart ways to manage your money

You can't watch the news today without some mention of the economic crisis. You may be experiencing financial troubles of your own. Here are five smart ways to manage your money, instead of letting it manage you.

1. Know where you are. The easiest way to assess where you are is to use technology to help you track your money. We recently switched to the free online service www.mint.com and can't recommend it enough. How do they make their money? By recommending financial products that you would benefit from, based on your current situation (such as offering a credit card with a lower interest rate than what you're paying).
   

2. Think about the future. Now that you know where you are, contemplate where you want to be... What are your long-term goals and how much money will it take to get there? CNN has a number of online calculators to help you figure out what it will take to achieve your long-term goals.

3. Plan for the unexpected. It sounds like an oxymoron. How do you plan for things you aren't expecting? While we don't know whether our emergency will be a car accident, or a leaky toilet, there are always bound to be things that come up that we haven't budgeted for. Experts recommend six to nine months of liquid assets designated for emergencies. If you don't have any emergency funds, start today by putting a little aside at a time and you'll be surprised how quickly it will add up.

4. Give [up] a little. If you add up how much your daily Starbucks costs, or your lunches out, you'll see that the little things quickly wind up as big expenses. Prioritize your spending and give up a few little things and reap the rewards of savings. Your coffee habit may be costing upwards of $2,000 a year that you could be putting toward meeting your long-term goals.

5. Re-think what is important. When birthdays and special occassions come along, consider writing a heartfelt letter instead of purchasing a gift. Your words will be much more meaningful than whatever the gift you would buy might symbolize and you can start having deeper relationships that are based on more than traditional exchanges. I've started writing a list of things I'm thankful for about a particular person when it is his or her birthday. My list is as long as the number of years they've been on the earth.

If you only have time for one of the five, get started with www.mint.com. After that, you can come back and tackle two through five, based on what is most relevant to you and your current financial condition.

Let us know what other personal finance tips you have in the comments.

Five ways to remain a lifelong learner

 

I know many of you who graduated this past weekend. It was a time for celebration, but also a time of fear and anxiety. There are your concerns over what to choose as a career and what life will be like after college. The good news is that you could have very well written your last academic paper (unless you elect to attend graduate school). The bad news is that it will take more work now to maintain a posture of lifelong learning.

 

Here are five ways to ensure that learning never stops, even after graduation day:

 

Listen to podcasts in the car during your commute. I’m still amazed at how much new knowledge can be acquired during the drive to and from work. My favorites are APM’s Marketplace (business news) and Marketplace Money (financial literacy), Slate’s Daily Podcast (political gabfest, cultural gabfest, and the green lantern’s environmental stories), and Tony Campolo’s Podcast (sermons, talks and radio programs from the author, professor and speaker). I also listen to Creating a Family (talk about adoption and infertility) and just subscribed to The Chronicle of Higher Education's podcasts.

 

Get to know your local public library. I remember loving the library as a kid and making good use of Chapman’s library while I was there in the early 90s. Somehow I forgot how wonderful the library is as an adult. I rediscovered it a couple years back and love the opportunity to explore all that our local libraries have to offer. If you live in South Orange County and haven't visited the Mission Viejo Library, you're missing out on a wonderful part of our community. Your public library likely has the following all for free: DVDs, audio books you can listen to on your iPod, CD player or computer, magazines, newspapers, movie nights, author visits, and even a used bookstore to either donate to or support.

 

Find a mentor. We can sit back to wait until we find a person who gives us good advice, or we can be proactive and set up a mentoring relationship ourselves. Ask someone to mentor you and then set up regular times to get together to discuss your goals and challenges. Take the next step from there and set up a personal board of directors, where you have someone who you can ask questions about your personal finances (your CFO), another who you can talk to about branding yourself (your VP of marketing), and an individual who you consult when it comes time to negotiate salary at your new job (your VP of sales).

 

Set up RSS feeds for customized news updates. RSS stands for really simple syndication. Instead of having to read every industry publication or website, you can customize the news you receive and discipline yourself to spend a little time every day staying up to speed with what is going on in the world, in your industry, and in your area of expertise. Common Craft can get you up and running with RSS feeds in no time.

Friend learning organizations on Twitter. While Twitter is becoming widely known as the place to catch up with the latest on John Mayer or Ashton Kutcher, it is also a great place to keep up with learning.  The Wall Street Journal has a bunch of useful topics including: WSJWallet (personal finance), WSJBusiness, WSJManagement, WSJCareers, and WSJ. Subscribe to our Innovate Learning Twitter feed and we’ll sift through the masses and bring you the best in leadership and personal effectiveness.

Let us know how you remain a lifelong learner in the comments.

Five favorite iPhone apps for professors

 

As busy as we faculty all are, it is wonderful having an iPhone to simplify our vocations somewhat. The following five iPhone applications have paid off in spades in terms of time saved and effectiveness gained.

 

Remember the Milk: This easy-to-use to do program can be accessed on the internet, on your iPhone application (it syncs), and it integrates with other services you may use such as Twitter and Jott. Start easy with entering tasks and entering due dates. As your skills grow, you can add tags to each task that associate it with specific classes and activity types (such as grading, meetings, and preparing). You can also set it up to text message your iPhone as far in advance of a task being due as you desire. COST: the application is free, but the $25 annual PRO membership is required. Well worth the expense.

 

Attendance: I discovered this application by reading about it in PC World. My hopes got quite high, as I thought about keeping attendance in real-time and not letting my sign-in sheets stack up quite so tall on my desk. This application has a slow learning curve and in no time, you’ll have your classes set up and can take roll with ease. I still use a sign-in sheet for the students, but immediately after the class can mark the entire roster as present and then one-by-one change the status of those students who were absent/late. COST: $3. No brainer in terms of time saved.

 

WorldCat: Type in an author, title, or category and find library resources nearby. The application uses your current location and when you type in what resource you’re searching for, it lets you know the closest libraries to you that have the item. COST: Free

 

Quick Checklists: This application is similar to Remember the Milk in that it tracks things, but it is better used for steps you go through on a frequent basis. Packing for a trip? Getting ready to speak at a conference? Have all the steps you’ll need to take or the things you’ll need to bring stored in a template and check the items off as you complete them. I create checklists for my first class (things I don’t want to forget to mention), as well as for the first day of school (until I’m back in the swing of things and remember the materials I’ll need for teaching). COST: $1

 

Evernote:This application can be accessed on your computer, on the web, and on your iPhone. It is a note-taking application that allows you to set up different notebooks and to have tags for each note you enter. Tags are similar to putting things in folders, only you can have the same item in multiple folders (if only we could do this with manila file folders without killing trees and taking up more space). My favorite feature on Evernote is the ability to take a picture of a whiteboard drawing that I’ve done. Evernote recognizes the text in photos and makes that content searchable, in addition to the content you’ve typed in. I prefer skipping meeting minutes for more informal meetings and storing the record of our conversations in Evernote. If I ever need to look back for when we discussed a particular issue, I can just type in the search box and it will search my white board verbiage, in addition to the rest of my notes. I don’t even have that good of penmanship and it does a superb job of recognizing the text. COST: Free

 

Let us know what other applications you have found useful as a college professor in the comments.

iPhone App perfect for faculty - take attendance with ease

I'm getting ready for the new iPhone to be announced in June, but before then... not a day goes by that I don't think about the current iPhone's usefulness.

Check out the Attendance application for the iPhone, which for $2.99 will make your attendance tracking much more streamlined. I still plan on having my students sign in (calling roll seems silly at their age and I teach classes of 45-50 most of the time). After each class, I can quickly update the information electronically and have it accessible on my iPhone anywhere and anytime.

Attendance also lets you email the information to yourself, making it that much easier to get the information into Excel for further number crunching. Each student can have a photo associated with their record, making learning names that much easier.

Enjoy getting more efficient with the Attendance application. Let us know what other iPhone apps are helping you get more done.

Extreme Moodle Makeover: Creating Compelling Visuals in Moodle

I was inspired by a Moodle course built by my friend and colleague, Professor Ann-Caryn Cleveland at Vanguard University. Take just eight minutes and learn to transform the look and feel of your Moodle courses with three simple techniques:

1. Add graphics to weekly or topical summaries
2. Use color to build your visual design
3. Subscribe to continually updating photos via RSS feeds

This Moodle tutorial has both elements of a good makeover: the before and the after

Please let us know what Moodle makeover ideas you have in the comments.

Five Keys to an Effective Syllabus

As I create this upcoming semester's syllabi, I'm looking back at some of the ones I created my first year of teaching. Talk about an indicator of progress... There have been plenty of lessons since then and I offer the following recommendations.

1. Begin with the end in mind. Stephen Covey reminds us that it is crucial in setting out to do anything to "begin with the end in mind." As you develop or revise your syllabus, think about the three most important things the students should walk away with after investing months in your course. Consider not just the factual information they will absorb, but the skills they will gain as well.
   
2. Don't start over unless you must. All accredited universities are bound to have done some work defining their learning objectives to their governing body. While professors who live up to the stereotypes have their strengths, working in a collaborative fashion is not typically one of them. Often times, they'll forget to give you what has already been developed to help you steer the direction of your course. If you haven't already been provided this information, ask the chair or dean what documentation is available that was used to evaluate your program for your accrediting body, so that you can align your course objectives with the broader goals.
   
3. Get samples and then make the course your own. Universities can be divided into two broad categories, when it comes to syllabi: those who have pre-prescribed syllabi for the majority of their classes with little room for the instructor to customize the document and those who stress the importance of what each professor brings to a course. If you're teaching from a standard syllabus, get as much of a sense as you can of how they arrived at their conclusions of what the learning objectives should be and focus your attention on facilitating that learning. Those  who are expected to develop your own syllabus should note that most academics consider their syllabi to be like a journal article they spent years researching and crafting. You can use them as samples to then build your own, but even a recommended reading list can be considered proprietary by a faculty member, so tread cautiously and ask before using someone else's work.
   
4. Set expectations in advance by using rubrics. Probably my greatest discovery as a new professor was a short book called Introduction to Rubrics. I'll spend more time on rubrics in a future post, but suffice to say that they make your ability to facilitate learning far greater, your grading more fair, and help students know where they need to be to meet the expectations. I no longer assign anything in a course without having a rubric that shows in advance how the students will be graded.
   
5. Leverage technology. Many professors no longer distribute their syllabi in a hard copy format, but instead post it on the university's course management system or their personal website. This not only saves trees, but allows you to take full advantage of the ability to use links both within a Word document (from one section to an appendix, for example), but also to link outside the document (such as to a collection of links for your class posted to a bookmark sharing tool, such as www.delicious.com). I also use an auto-created table of contents, so the learner can easily navigate to various sections of the syllabus as needed. Consider only distributing your syllabus in PDF format, so it is most likely to remain in its original format and be most widely read by different computers/systems.

Wishing you a successful start to your teaching year,