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Sunday, January 9, 2011

Inside Higher Ed: Moving Beyond Venting

January 7, 2011
LOS ANGELES -- Thursday was a day for tough questions as literary and language scholars gathered here for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Amid budget cuts, program eliminations and a terrible job market for new Ph.D.s, many scholars were engaged in some soul-searching.

"Who cares about the Gilded Age? Who can afford the time to read a 900-page novel about people who move from the drawing room to the dining room?" asked Stephanie Foote, an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who in fact specializes in the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When students are taking too many courses (so they can finish their degrees) and working too many hours at jobs (to pay for college), how can they relate? And if they don't, what happens to literature? she asked.

Foote spoke on a panel on "Teaching American Literature in an Age of Scarcity," one of a series of sessions here today on the theme of "The Academy in Hard Times." And she was among a number of speakers who talked frankly about having to rethink the way they promote scholarly subjects that are dear to them -- and how to protect programs and teaching lines that might once have been unassailable. A decade ago, Foote said, she never worried that someone who signed up for one of her courses wouldn't be interested in the subject matter. Now, she said, students ask, "Why does this matter?"

To Foote and others here, literature does matter. But her point that the "scarcity" of her panel's title needs to be applied to student time and not just departmental budgets was striking. Many here were arguing that it was time for such questions as "Why does this matter?" and for some self-scrutiny.

To be sure, there was no shortage of venting -- there were plenty of hallway conversations and session barbs about miserly legislators, ignorant Tea Partiers and narrow-minded college presidents. The Radical Caucus was circulating a handout noting the need for its "forthright critique of capitalism." And it seems that everyone here knows of a great program on the chopping block, a talented adjunct who lost all his sections and the promising grad student who isn't here because she didn't get any interviews.

But many of the sessions moved quickly beyond the venting or at least mixed in with the applause lines discussions of what a future might look like in which budgets aren't restored anytime soon -- but in which the humanities might still be valued.

In Foote's session, a paper by one of her colleagues at Illinois, Dale Bauer (who couldn't make the meeting and had her paper read), also talked about the way the economy and other trends have changed what she teaches. "We are told to keep students in the seats of our classes," she said, and yet students have so many demands on their time. That means shorter novels are assigned, that the syllabus features the novel she has taught successfully in the past but not the more challenging work that she would like to try.

Bauer discussed her work on the university committee that reviews tenure and promotion decisions -- and noted that the fundamental requirements (such as the key requirement of having written two books) haven't changed, even as faculty members don't have as much time or research support as they did in the past. Is it time, she asked, to focus more on teaching and less on research?

Foote asked why the creation of a syllabus for an exciting new course shouldn't be seen as "an intellectual research project" and count in the way that only traditional publishing does now.

Making Writing Central
If Americanists were considering whether they need to pay more attention to teaching, writing program directors (already focused on teaching) were talking about "recession-proofing" their programs, in the words of Randall McClure, chair of writing and linguistics at Georgia Southern University.

McClure (while admitting that he is a "glass half full" kind of person) said that the creation of independent writing programs and the recent popularity of undergraduate writing majors need to be seen as advantages. Unlike more tradition-bound programs, writing programs can change quickly -- and thereby strengthen themselves. Take first-year writing courses, which are seen by many faculty members as something to be avoided. Writing programs should put the first-year curriculum front and center, and build excitement about them. He said programs should be teaching writing in residence halls, sponsoring student writing contests, and creating new sections linking writing to different academic majors or student interests.

"Being more visible," and doing so with gusto, will help programs, attract more students, and identify writing as central, not just a "service course" that someone needs to teach.

Likewise, he said, it's important to remember that even amid the terrible budget cuts of the past two years, colleges are still getting new money for priority areas, such as online or hybrid instruction or new certificate programs. Writing programs should be looking at these priorities and making proposals to be part of them, he said.

Picking Your Battles
A session on "Why Can't We Teach What We Are Trained to Teach? Program Consolidation, Elimination, Realignment," featured several stories about successful campaigns to save threatened programs, such as a noted University of Toronto comparative literature program that was slated for consolidation but that has survived. At the same time, speakers talked about deciding which battles to fight, and which arguments are the most effective.

Caroline D. Eckhardt, head of comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University, discussed the evolution of that institution's School of Languages and Literatures, which includes comp lit, Asian studies, French and Francophone studies, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The larger school was created out of those departments -- with shared facilities and support staff, but continued departmental independence on curricular matters.

Among other things, that means that "there is no longer a departmental staff assistant for comparative literature," as was once the case, Eckhardt said. But there is also more talk of collaboration in academics -- for instance looking for ways to combine some of the small, graduate courses or perhaps to create one-credit courses that might help several of the language departments. But comp lit and the language departments have been able to preserve their own values, she said.

The way departments respond to such consolidation proposals will be watched by administrators, she said. "If you feel that what you value the most is having your own departmental staff assistant, that's not going to be seen as important by other people, but a certain part of your curriculum might be."

Keeping programs healthy, she said, may require ending "some familiar ways of doing things," she said.

The issue of program consolidation was much discussed not only at this session, but in lots of caucusing here among those who teach European foreign languages other than Spanish. Many French, Russian, German and Italian programs have been threatened or killed off in the last year (or had graduate programs eliminated while a small undergraduate program survives). And several talked about how administrators have emphasized small graduating classes to justify closures -- and that this may mean language programs benefit from counting their graduates together rather than separately. (Others argued that it was more important to shift the discussion away from a metric of number of degrees, and to find better ways of recognizing how languages contribute to a range of graduate programs in all kinds of disciplines that rely on students becoming fluent. But here too, several said that from a strategic perspective, languages may fare better together.)

How English Professors Think and Talk
Teresa Mangum, associate professor of English at the University of Iowa, said that in considering the vulnerability of language programs, it was important to think about "the possible obligations of the English department."

She noted a new, controversial post in Dissent called "Are English Departments Killing the Humanities?" In the article, Feisal G. Mohamed (an associate professor of English at Illinois) argues that "the English department currently labors under a deep paradox: it devotes much of its intellectual energy to declaring the limits of Anglo-American culture while being structurally wedded to that culture in a way that necessarily privileges it." And he goes on to say that at his institution and others, "English is larger than departments of philosophy, religion, classics, and art history combined. That relationship is quite typical. And its disproportionate size has come at the expense of other disciplines."

Mangum didn't endorse the article and also noted that when English departments embrace the study of other cultures and languages, the reaction from other departments isn't always welcoming, as such additions in English can seem like intrusions elsewhere.

Stepping back, Mangum said that while English professors are quick to say that they value "the humanities" and not just their own field, she said she wasn't always sure that faculty "live that collectivity."

And Mangum said that humanities faculty members may also need to rethink how they talk about the crises of funding not only in higher education but in society. “I don’t want to blame the victim, but again and again I see faculty members in the humanities speak on campus and in public in ways that belittle the larger public and sometimes the sciences and other disciplines," she said.

Mangum said she understood that these comments are made "in frustration" over cut after cut and a feeling of not being understood or appreciated. But she said that the attitude is problematic. Right now in Iowa, she said, there are families "lining up at food banks."

“I don’t want to debate the meaning of class relations in a novel without knowing that the food bank in my community is running out of food," Mangum said. "We need to register more powerfully what our role is in this larger culture, what our values are as people teaching in the humanities." The knowledge and perspective gained from the humanities, she said, "can be the place where we learn compassion."

Like Mangum, many here who were raising questions about how English and language faculty members talk about their work did so out of the conviction that it does matter -- and deserves more support.

Foote, the professor who noted that she now has to answer students' question about why the 19th-century novel matters, said that professors and students benefit from the faculty members admitting that their assumptions can't be taken for granted. "We talk about globalization but many of our students don't know half the countries on the globe," she said. That doesn't mean to stop talking about globalization, but to start explaining it better, she said.

Yes, she said, it's frustrating to be in a world where one has to explain why great novels matter. "But maybe that's something we stopped thinking about and we shouldn't have," she said. "We have to return ... to where our students are coming from."

— Scott Jaschik

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Faculty Focus: Surviving a Distance Ed Accreditation Review

Live Online Seminar
Date: Tues., Feb. 1, 2011
Time: 12:00 p.m. Central
Length: 75 minutes
Cost: $239
($264 after 01/25/11)

The fee for this seminar is per site, not per person. Invite your colleagues to join you and it won't cost a penny more.

Plus, the seminar comes with a no-risk guarantee. If you're not satisfied, for any reason, we'll gladly refund your payment

The accreditation process for a distance education program can be an imposing series of tasks. It can also be the means to improving your program and conveying its overall value to your school.

It all depends on how you approach the accreditation process. In the upcoming online seminar How to Survive a Distance Education Accreditation Review, you’ll learn the strategic and tactical elements essential for not only surviving the process, but thriving as a result.

Led by Dr. Terry Norris, director of eLearning at the College of Southern Nevada, this seminar will help you:
Learn why the accreditation process improves a distance education program.
Use the process to define the value of your program to the rest of the school.
Discover what you’ll need to do to become fully prepared for the accreditation process.
The accreditation review process may never be stress-free, but with proper preparation you can at least minimize the stress that so often accompanies it. This seminar will show you how.

Can’t make the live event? If you are unable to attend the live seminar, simply order the recording on CD. As an added bonus, all CD orders now include the complete seminar transcript. That’s a $99 value for just $20 more than the cost of attending the seminar live.

---------------------------------------------

About the Presenter:
Dr. Terry Norris is director of eLearning at the College of Southern Nevada (CSN), where he plays a lead role in the development, implementation and management of the CSN Online Campus. Dr. Norris has been instrumental in adding a number of student and faculty support components to CSN’s online campus. In addition, he has served on the steering committee for WCET, whose mission is to promote and advance the effective use of technology in higher education. He also chairs the Nevada Distance Education Committee.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Week in Review
Monday, January 3

Copyright and Fair Use Issues in Online Education
There are three main legal issues that can cause trouble in online educational programs: ownership issues, copyright issues, and issues of harassment and defamation. Each of these issues also pertains to the face-to-face classroom setting but requires a fresh perspective when applied to distance education.

Tuesday, January 4
Teaching and Learning Award Nominations Sought
Magna Publications and The Teaching Professor are seeking nominations for the Maryellen Weimer Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award. Now in its third year, the award recognizes outstanding scholarly contributions that advance college-level teaching and learning.

Wednesday, January 5
The Benefits of Blended Learning Explained
Blended learning can be a tremendous boon for a university. It can help the institution enhance under-enrolled programs, complete faculty teaching loads, and improve cost effectiveness. However, convincing the institution’s constituents that a blended course or program is a good idea may take some work.

Thursday, January 6
How to Create Effective Activities for Online Teaching
We’ve all used them, activities meant to highlight or explain some aspect of the subject we are teaching. Too often, not much thought or effort is given to these activities, resulting in outdated and unsuccessful activities. With the right approaches, online instructors can create activities that are dynamic, effective, and interesting. Here’s how …

Friday, January 7
How Students Read Textbooks: Sink or Skim Approaches Defined
In The Teaching Professor Blog’s first post on Faculty Focus, author Maryellen Weimer takes on a topic that’s likely near and dear to your heart: how students read textbooks. The post discusses a qualitative study of students’ reading habits, cleverly dubbed as “sink or skim.”
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Online Education: Online education just got easier for instructors!

Magna Online Seminar Live Event
Event Date: 2/23/2011
Time: 12:00 pm Central

Three ways to order:
1. Online
2. Mail/Fax in form
3. Phone: 800-433-0499 ext. 2

How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload
The world of distance education is experiencing red-hot growth. But without a learner-centered approach, both teachers and students may soon give online learning the cold shoulder.

Why the need for an altered approach to online education? Distance education has tremendous potential, but increasingly, students and instructors are experiencing frustration on a number of fronts:

•Instructors’ workloads are increasing. The need to respond individually to students can be all-consuming and exhausting, and instructors are finding their workloads are becoming difficult to maintain.
•Students miss a sense of community. A classroom fosters a community, and students often feel isolated without this connection, which may negatively impact student learning.
The problems are real, but they’re not insurmountable. The solution lies in creating a learner-centered community that encourages students to assume more of the learning responsibility while reducing the instructor’s workload.

You can learn how to make this happen in the Magna audio online seminar How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload. Led by two experienced online educators, Professors Tammy Stuart Peery and Samantha Streamer-Veneruso, the audio online seminar will help you:

•Identify and implement strategies for establishing an instructor presence while decreasing teacher workload.
•Combine learner-centered, interactive instructional activities with targeted instructor feedback to enhance student achievement and retention.
•Establish an “invisible” presence in your courses.
Distance education is changing the paradigm of education, so it’s only natural that you must adapt your own personal skills to meet this new dynamic. This seminar will provide tangible, working solutions that you can use to modify your approach and create active learning. You’ll learn how to:

•Create an environment that’s welcoming to students, yet compels to them to work and think individually.
•Develop assignments and grading strategies to increase student interaction.
•Avoid feeling overwhelmed by the perceived 24x7 nature of student participation in asynchronous online courses.
•Connect students to other members of their class, thereby reducing their reliance on instructors.
By the end of the course, you’ll have the blueprint for a new approach to distance education. You’ll discover a more fulfilling, less stressful teaching methodology. Your students will enjoy a much more fulfilling educational experience, and your course evaluations will reflect it.

Who Should Attend
Any educator from a two- or four-year college or university will benefit from the seminar.

The seminar will appeal to the following positions:

•Faculty (full and part-time)
•Department Chairs
•Instructional Designers
Come One, Come All
Because our registration fee is priced per connection, you can invite as many people as you’d like to the seminar. Participants often fill up a classroom or an auditorium with staff. The unique pricing not only provides you with tremendous value, it’s also a great way to build your own learning community.

About the Presenters
Tammy Stuart Peery has been teaching online for over a decade. An Assistant Professor and English Department Chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Maryland, she has been the faculty chair of the college’s Distance Learning Task Group for five years.

Professor Peery has earned Master Course Reviewer certification from Quality Matters. She was a member of the design team for Montgomery College’s online EN102 common course template, and in 2010, she was recognized as the MDLA Distance Educator of the Year.

Samantha Streamer-Veneruso has been a faculty member at Montgomery College for over 8 years and is the English Department Chair at the Rockville Campus. Currently in the English Department, she has over 10 years of online teaching experience. She was the lead designer for two of Montgomery College’s online common course templates, which are fully-designed, ready-to-teach online courses.

Now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Description Price
Event Registration $249
Event Registration and Seminar CD $518 $384
Seminar CD only $269
Seminar CD w/ Campus Access License $469
Event Registration and Seminar CD w/ Campus Access License $718 $584
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AI Higher Ed Impact: Weekly News & Key Upcoming Conferences Takeaways December 31, 2010 - January 6, 2011

Building a Culture of Student Philanthropy
February 1 - 3, 2011
San Diego, CA

Systematizing Assessment Efforts across Student Affairs
January 31 - February 2, 2011
Atlanta, GA

Financing Campus Facilities Through Public/Private Partnerships
February 2 - 3, 2011
San Diego, CA

Getting Started in International Student Recruitment
February 9 - 10, 2011
San Diego, CA

Academic Library Planning and Revitalization
March 7 - 9, 2011
Columbus, OH

Faculty Development in Blended and Online Learning
March 7 - 9, 2011
Atlanta, GA

Social Media for Advancement and Admissions: Moving from Tactics to Strategy
March 21 -23, 2011
San Antonio, TX

Using Assessment to Improve and Account for Student Learning
March 24 - 25, 2011
San Antonio, TX

Optimizing Space Use: Moving Your Campus to Action
March 28 - 30, 2011
San Diego, CA

Rethinking Major Giving to Meet Today's Donor Demands
March 28 - 39, 2011
New Orleans, LA

Integrated Strategic Planning and Resource Allocation
May 24 - 26, 2011
San Diego, CA

View All Conferences

Upcoming Webcasts
Using Facebook Ads in the Admissions Process
January 11, 2011

Designing a Sophomore Living-Learning Program
January 12, 2011

Accurately Reporting Your Alumni Participation Numbers to US News
January 13, 2011

Rethinking Phonathon: Using Callers as Student Development Officers
January 19, 2011

New Approaches to Peer Mentor Training
January 20, 2011

Outcomes-Based Academic Assessment Reporting
January 21, 2011

Ensuring Clery Act Compliance
January 26, 2011

Universal Design and Online Education: Ensuring Access and Engagement for All Students
January 28, 2011

Prospect Research: A Do-it-Yourself Approach for Fundraisers
January 31, 2011

Facebook and Advancement: Using Ads to Increase Engagement and Giving
February 1, 2011

New Approaches to Veteran Orientation Programs
February 2, 2011

Putting FERPA Regulations into Practice
February 8, 2011

Meeting the Challenges of FERPA in Advancement
February 9, 2011

Growing Campus Store Sales through Customer Loyalty Programs
February 15, 2011

Using LinkedIn to Reach Adult Prospects and Applicants
February 16, 2011

Recruiting First-Generation Students: Proven Techniques for Increasing Applications and Yield
February 18, 2011
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Distance Education Report: Online Faculty Management: 10 Ways You Can Improve Your Practices

10 Ways to Support Adjunct Faculty in Small Online Programs

Date:
Tuesday, 02/15/11
Time:
12:00-1:15 PM CST
Cost:
$279 ($304 after 02/08/11)

Featured Higher Education Presenter: Jeanne Widen, Ph.D.

These days, when you’re managing something, like the ever-expanding pool of online adjunct faculty, extra insight can help you keep pace with the changes even when resources are tight.

10 Ways to Support Adjunct Faculty in Small Online Programs, a 75-minute audio online seminar presented by Dr. Jeanne Widen, has the information you need to help your online faculty become better teachers – without maxing out your resources.

Dr. Widen’s unique approach concentrates on adapting existing structures and systems. It’s based on her extensive experience as a distance education administrator and faculty member, so it takes the realities of smaller colleges and universities into account.

How this seminar will help you
10 Ways to Support Adjunct Faculty in Small Online Programs offers practical guidance on how to help your online adjunct faculty improve their teaching skills. Here’s some of what you’ll learn:
• How to promote academic accountability, institutional values and a consistent educational approach
• How to promote professional development through your performance review process
• How to provide guidance through faculty mentors and department chairs
• How to integrate online adjunct faculty with the rest of your campus through recognition programs, webcasts and direct involvement in curriculum review and revision.

Valuable Supplemental Materials
Dr. Widen has created a package of supplemental tools that can help you implement her suggestions, including: examples of feedback, performance reviews guidelines and rubric, and a sample faculty senate constitution. These materials in themselves are worth the price of the online seminar.

This seminar is about helping you
Dr. Widen will offer polling questions during the live seminar to give you an opportunity to include your input. She'll want to know which administrative structures you have in place for online adjunct faculty, and she'll offer advice on how to use your existing structure to make improvements in how your campus supports online adjuncts. During the Q & A section, you can seek answers to your specific online faculty management questions.

This seminar is designed for…
Anyone working with online adjunct faculty will benefit from this seminar, but people in the following jobs will see particular benefits:
• Academic Deans
• Academic Quality Specialists
• Deans of Faculty
• Department Chairs
• Directors of Centers for Teaching Excellence/Teaching and Learning
• Directors of Instruction
• Faculty Mentors
• Presidents/VPs of Faculty Senate
• VPs for Academic Affairs

Don’t delay, register today
Magna Online Seminar fees are charged on a per site – not a per person – basis. For just $279, you and your colleagues in distance education administration can access the information you need to take your online programming to the next level. If you can’t make the scheduled seminar date, consider purchasing the seminar CD, which includes the full presentation and bonus material, such as a transcript of the seminar and the Facilitator’s Discussion Guide.
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