Diverse Blog: Styling at HBCUs is Most Appropriate

Dr. James Ewers
September 14, 2010


http://diverseeducation.com/blogpost/299/styling-at-hbcus-is-most-appropriate.html

When I was a student at an HBCU in the South, I don't remember there being a dress requirement. However I do recall receiving a letter from the school telling me what to bring. Among other things, they told me to bring a suit, a tie and a shirt. When I read this along with my dad, I did not think it was strange or unreasonable to bring these items. After all, I had a lot of previous experiences wearing this kind of wardrobe. In my neighborhood in Winston-Salem, N.C., we simply called this wardrobe, "church clothes."


Back in the day, we wore suits, shirts and ties to church. We didn't complain about it. That was simply the way it was. When I arrived on campus, I saw all of the other guys with the same kind of garb on so I felt right at home. There were a lot of special programs that we had to wear our dress clothes to in order to get in the door. We had no choice as we had to attend. Put another way, it was wise and prudent that we attended these programs. I really don't know how they took attendance or better yet how they knew I was present, but my name was always on the list marked "present." I felt just a bit cool wearing a suit because invariably some teacher would say, "you look sharp." Receiving this kind of praise from a college teacher was pretty special.


Upon graduating from college and entering graduate school, I had many more chances to wear a suit, so much so that I increased my wardrobe. I felt very comfortable with my graduate colleagues who were from around the country. In addition to high academic acumens, we also shared similar dress and social customs. I give my undergraduate school, Johnson C. Smith University, all the credit for preparing me academically and socially. They got me ready for the "real world." Yes, I received my bachelor's degree, but I also received so much more. They gave me a four-year course in etiquette training. They coupled that training with a daily dose of you can achieve and you can distinguish yourself in this world. My story isn't unique because if you went to an HBCU during my generation you have a similar story. There was something unique about being on an HBCU campus during the sixties and the seventies. You couldn't quite explain it, yet you felt the transformation happening to you. I can remember coming home for the summer, being there for about a month and being ready to get back to college. Being a college student during this time was, well, priceless!


So we fast forward to today, and we find an interesting mix of students at HBCUs. Many of these schools were established around the same time so their histories are rich. Students come to HBCUs because of their mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. Their brothers or sisters attend, their friends attend, so they attend. It is a legacy filled with promise and potential.


While I may get some pushback from this statement, let us continue to encourage our students to dress for success. I still think they need to bring a suit, a shirt and a tie to college. Of course young women should have some dresses and pantsuits in their closet. Edward Waters College, an HBCU located in Jacksonville, Fla., and founded in 1866, actually has a professional dress day, so on Wednesdays students put on their "church clothes." I am now one of the people saying to students, "you look sharp." Let us continue to guide our students so that they will not be strangers to appropriate dress that will be their calling card for employment when they graduate. The marketplace demands that students interview a certain way and look a certain way. While some may not agree, these are time-honored traditions, and I don't see them going away.


Students, I believe, want our instruction, and they want to know that we care about their well-being. It is my strong belief that we have a responsibility to keep our students on the expressway of hope and opportunity.


It is a joy and a privilege that we have to shape and mold the minds and habits of the next generation of leaders. Instilling in them a dress-for-success mindset will give them a good foundation for the future.

Diverse Blog: Styling at HBCUs is Most Appropriate

Inside Higher ED: A Truly Bookless Library

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/17/libraries

September 17, 2010
The difference between the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Applied Engineering and Technology Library and other science-focused libraries is not that its on-site collection is also available electronically.


It is that its on-site collection is only available electronically.


The idea of a libraries with no bound books has been a recurring theme in conversations about the future of academe for a long time, and it has become common practice for academic libraries to store rarely used volumes in off-campus facilities. But there are few, if any, examples of libraries that actually have zero bound books in them.


Some libraries, such as the main one at the University of California at Merced, and the engineering library at Stanford University, have drastically reduced the number of print volumes they keep in the actual library building, choosing to focus on beefing up their electronic resources. In fact, some overenthusiastic headline writers at one point dubbed Stanford’s library “bookless.” But that is “a vision statement, not a point of fact,” says Andrew Herkovic, the director of communications for Stanford’s libraries.



San Antonio says it now has the first actual bookless library. Students who stretch out in the library’s ample study spaces — which dominate the floor plan of the new building — and log on to its resource network using their laptops or the library’s 10 public computers will be able to access 425,000 e-books and 18,000 electronic journal articles. Librarians will have offices there and will be available for consultations.


Students used to get their engineering and technology books from a collection at the campus’s main library. That collection is still there, and books from it are available upon request. But at the new library dedicated to that specialty, the only dead trees are in the beams and furniture.


The fact that San Antonio has actually built a literal version of what many in the industry hold up as symbol of the inevitability of electronic as the prevailing medium in academe may be commendable, but it is not “earth-moving,” says Roger Schonfeld, the managing director of Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit that promotes innovation in libraries and elsewhere. Many libraries, especially science and engineering ones, have started moving their print volumes out of the building and into remote storage.


Lisa Hinchliffe, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, says that her institution, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and several others have embedded librarians in various department buildings. Their offices in those buildings, it could be argued, constitute bookless libraries inasmuch as they are places where students and professors go to learn about how to use campus collections that can be accessed from anywhere.


More interesting than the fact that San Antonio’s newest library has no printed books in it is the fact that more and more libraries are devoting less space to printed books, and are thus reimagining the physical space of the library, Hinchliffe says. Whether the building houses half of its former print collection or none of it, the evolution of the library as a physical hub is something nearly every library is dealing with.


As a shared space for discovery, socializing, and studying, the library is still very much relevant and in demand, says Krisellen Maloney, dean of libraries at San Antonio. That is why the university invested a new library space instead of just putting librarians in offices around campus, Maloney says. “You study and work in the library,” she says. “That’s how libraries have always been. When people come to the library with books, they’re not necessarily using the books. They’re also there for the services — to consult, get instruction, find content, and use the content.” (This paragraph has been updated since publication to correct an error.)


For the latest technology news from Inside Higher Ed, follow IHEtech on Twitter.
— Steve Kolowich

Inside Higher ED: A Truly Bookless Library

Faculty Focus: How to Design Effective Online Group Work Activities

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/how-to-design-effective-online-group-work-activities/?c=FF&t=F100920a

By Mary Bart
There are many reasons why students don’t like group work, and in the online classroom the list of reasons grows even longer as the asynchronous nature of online courses not only makes collaboration more difficult but almost counterintuitive.


In addition, there may be another issue at play that you haven’t even thought about, and it has to do with how group work is designed in the first place.


“Too often we give students an activity and call it group work when in reality it’s something they could do on their own,” says Jean Mandernach, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Grand Canyon University. “Then we get frustrated when they don’t work together and just do the work on their own.”


In the recent online seminar Online Group Work: Making It Meaningful and Manageable, Mandernach provided tips for adapting proven face-to-face group work strategies to the online environment. The key is to design tasks that are truly collaborative, meaning the students will benefit more from doing the activity as a group than doing it alone.


Effective online group activities often fall into one of three categories:
1. There’s no right answer, such as debates, or research on controversial issues.
2. There are multiple perspectives, such as analyzing current events, cultural comparisons, or case studies.
3. There are too many resources for one person to evaluate, so a jigsaw puzzle approach is needed with each student responsible for one part.

Online collaboration tools

While Skype and other real-time collaboration tools make it easier for dispersed students to “get together,” Mandernach cautions against overusing synchronous tools. Instead, she says, you should encourage your students to take advantage of the many asynchronous collaborative tools inside your course management system or some of the new Web 2.0 tools. Some of her favorite Web 2.0 tools include: Tokbox, VoiceThread, Creately, Google Docs, and Teambox.


These tools are relatively easy to use and help build a sense of community in the online classroom. They’re also another way to get students to buy into group work activities and using them makes the students more marketable upon graduation.


“If you can use the collaborative environment to really bring them into your classroom and get connected to you and connected to their peers you’re going to see a lot of benefits besides increased test scores,” Mandernach says. “Many employers and graduate schools really view online learning as learning in isolation, and I think it’s important for students to show that they are capable of collaborative work — that they can work independently and with others.”


Online group work checklist
As part of the seminar, Mandernach provided the following checklist for creating and implementing online group projects:


Preparation
• Students understand the value of both the process and product of the collaboration.
• Students have guidance concerning how to work in an asynchronous team.
• Group size is small enough to allow for full participation of all members.
• Course provides numerous opportunities for community building prior to group projects.


Assignment
• Assignment is an authentic measure of student learning.
• Assignment will benefit from collaborative work.
• Students have clear guidelines of the expected outcome of the collaborative assignment.
• Assignment creates a structure of positive interdependence in which individuals perceive that they will succeed when the group succeeds.
• Assignment is scheduled to allow adequate time for preparation and communication.
• Assignment is designed in a manner to allow students a level of personal control.


Technology
• Students are provided with tools and instructions to facilitate online communication.
• Each group has a collaborative workspace within the online course.
• Students have technology skills relevant for asynchronous communication.
• Back-up procedures are in place to deal with technology failure.


Evaluation
• Grading and/or evaluation strategies differentiate between the process and the product.
• Strategies are in place to monitor interaction processes.
• Clear grading rubrics are provided at the start of the assignment to guide student work.


Self and peer evaluations are included in the process to monitor individual involvement and accountability.

Faculty Focus: How to Design Effective Online Group Work Activities

YouTube: Teaching In the 21st Century!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmskHM0V2Ig&feature=related

YouTube: Teaching In the 21st Century!

Moodlerooms/EDUCAUSE 2010 - October 12th-15th

Moodlerooms is coming to EDUCAUSE 2010!
www.moodlerooms.com/EDUCAUSE 

At this annual conference for higher education IT professionals Moodlerooms will be presenting and demonstrating its new developments in addition to hosting exploratory, hands-on workshops in conjunction with trusted partner, Dell.


We’re also pleased to have special guest, Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Developer of Moodle, exhibit with Moodlerooms, field inquiries about the benefits of Moodle 2.0 and participate in a joint presentation with Moodlerooms President, Lou Pugliese, that will explore the future of online learning systems


EDUCAUSE 2010 will take place October 12-15 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Moodlerooms will exhibit in booth #2001 for the duration of the conference. Martin Dougiamas and Lou Pugliese’s presentation will take place Tuesday, October 12 at 5 p.m. and Wednesday, October 13 at 4 p.m.


For more information on Moodlerooms’ participation in EDUCAUSE 2010, visit www.moodlerooms.com/EDUCAUSE


Featured Presenters and Guests:
Martin Dougiamas
Moodle Founder, Lead Developer


Lou Pugliese
Moodlerooms President


Mark Leuba
Moodlerooms, Chief Technology Officer


More Information
View our theatre presentation schedule and workshop schedule, or reserve some one-on-one time with a Moodlerooms sales representative at the conference!

Moodlerooms/EDUCAUSE 2010 - October 12th-15th

The Teaching Professor Conference May 20-22, 2011 ♦ The Sheraton Atlanta Hotel ♦ Atlanta, GA

http://www.teachingprofessor.com/conference?utm_source=MagnetMail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ccharles@dillard.edu&utm_content=9/8/10%20-%20Promo%20Email%201&utm_campaign=Free%20teaching%20conference%20preview%21 

The Teaching Professor Conference May 20-22, 2011 ♦ The Sheraton Atlanta Hotel ♦ Atlanta, GA

Faculty Focus: Five Techniques for Dealing with Problem Students and Other Classroom Challenges

By Mary Bart

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/five-techniques-for-dealing-with-problem-students-and-other-classroom-challenges/?c=FF&t=F100913a  

James is a first-year student who is enjoying the freedoms of being out from underneath his parents’ rules. He’s an average student academically, but is often a distraction in class. He is perpetually texting or surfing the web, and gentle reminders from the professor to pay attention fail to keep him on task for long. His behavior is having a negative effect on other students in the class and the professor is reaching his breaking point. The final straw came when the professor noticed James was wearing headphones while taking an exam.


If you were in this professor’s shoes (and maybe that’s not too hard to imagine) how would you handle a student like James?


During the recent online video seminar Classroom Management 102: Working with Difficult Students, Brian Van Brunt, EdD and Perry Francis EdD used role playing to demonstrate both effective and ineffective responses to students like James. Some of the ineffective approaches include ignoring the behavior and hoping it improves, embarrassing the student in front of the class, and enforcing a new, no technology rule for everyone in the class.


But there’s a better way, of course, and it centers on setting clear expectations upfront and communicating those expectations to the students. It also means being willing to share a little bit of yourself so your students can see you as a real person. In the case of a student like James, you could, for example, let him know that you’re addicted to your Blackberry or iPod, but when you’re in class you shut it off out of respect for the class. And while you can sympathize that it’s sometimes hard to pay attention in a class that fulfills a requirement, but is not part of one’s major, you also need to be firm in communicating your expectations for classroom behavior, and the consequences for ignoring class rules.




“One of the things that I’ve discovered in the time I’ve taught is if we don’t address things appropriately they have a tendency to fester and not just impact that particular student, but impact the entire classroom and make it less than it could be,” says Francis, a professor of counseling at Eastern Michigan University.


The scenario with James was just one of four scenarios played out during the seminar. Others involved a veteran struggling to adapt to civilian life, an extremely shy student, and an ultra-competitive student who participates in class to the point of distraction. In working with each of these student types, Van Brunt encourages the use of what is known in the counseling field as motivational interviewing, which includes the following five techniques.


Express Empathy
• Avoid communications that imply a superior/inferior relationship.
• Respect the student’s freedom of choice and self-direction.
• Attitude change attempts are gentle, subtle and change is up to the student.


Develop Discrepancy
• Change occurs when a student perceives a discrepancy between where they are and where they want to be.
• Help student develop a discrepancy by raising their awareness of the adverse academic consequences of their choices.


Avoid Argumentation
• Don’t argue, it tends to evoke resistance.
• Show the consequences of their behavior.
• Help devalue perceived positive aspects of their negative choices.


Roll with Resistance
• Invite new ways of thinking.
• View ambivalence as normal.
• Evoke solutions from the student.


Support Self-Efficacy
• Persuade student that it is possible to change his or her own behavior and thereby reduce overall problems.

Faculty Focus: Five Techniques for Dealing with Problem Students and Other Classroom Challenges

The 2010 Global Education Conference - November 15-19, 2010

http://www.globaleducationconference.com/ 

http://learningonlineinfo.org/2010/09/19/2010-global-education-conference/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LearningOnlineInfo+%28Learning+Online+Info%29 

Bienvenue! Welcome! 歡迎! Willkommen! Benvenuto! 반갑습니다! Seja bem-vindo(a)! Bienvenido!


The 2010 Global Education Conference will be held November 15 - 19, 2010, online and free. Sessions will be held in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days. We are now accepting proposals for presentations.


The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives. (To clarify, this is a worldwide conference on globally-connected education, not a "global conference on general education"). All sessions will be held in the Elluminate platform, will be broadcast live, and will be available in recorded formats afterwards.


There is no formal registration required for the conference, as all the sessions will be open and public. The session schedule will be posted here starting in early November. You are encouraged to consider presenting, and should use the "Call for Presentations" tab above.


Thank you for your interest,
Steve Hargadon
Co-Chair
steve@hargadon.com
www.stevehargadon.com


Lucy Gray
Co-Chair
elemenous@gmail.com
elemenous.typepad.com  
http://globaleducation.ning.com

The 2010 Global Education Conference - November 15-19, 2010

Diverse Issues in Higher Education: SAT Takers Grow More Diverse, Scores Stagnate

http://diverseeducation.com/article/14124/

September 14, 2010 by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
More students from diverse backgrounds are taking the SAT, a College Board report released Monday shows, but critics warn that their performance on the college entrance exam raises concerns about the current national policy and quality of K-12 education.


Among SAT takers in the high school class of 2010, the report states, 41.5 percent were minority students, a 3.75 percent jump over the 40 percent who took the test the previous year and a dramatic rise over the 28.6 percent who took the college entrance exam in 2000. The College Board reported that more college-bound students in the class of 2010, nearly 1.6 million students, took the SAT than in any other high school graduating class in history.


However, mean scores generally held steady but also approached historic lows in some measures.


“That’s a good thing that more kids, particularly those from historically disenfranchised groups, are thinking about going to college,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, an organization that advocates for fairness in standardized assessments.


“But it doesn’t help if they’re less well prepared,” Schaeffer said of the fact that the SAT scores of low-income and minority students generally lagged behind those of Whites.


Schaeffer blames the lagging scores among minority groups on an inferior K-12 education they receive under No Child Left Behind.


Asked whether he blamed the law itself or other factors, Schaeffer said: “We’re saying that No Child Left Behind promised to narrow the racial test score gap and improve overall achievement. That’s not what happened by any measure.”


According to the newly released College Board report—titled 2010 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report—SAT scores pretty much held steady from the previous year. However, on a more detailed level, reading scores are near an all-time low at 501, and math scores are near an all-time high at 516, while writing scores are at an all-time low at 492 for the five years since the writing component was added to the SAT. SAT takers in the high school class of 2009 had mean scores of 501 in reading, 515 in math, and 493 in writing.


Lisa Sohmer, a former board member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and director of College Counseling at Garden School in Jackson Heights, N.Y., said the downward trend in SAT test scores partially reflects the fact that more students from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds are taking the SAT.


Indeed, SAT scores generally rise with two things: the income and education levels of their parents—a fact borne out in the 2010 College Board profile report.


For instance, the average reading, math and writing scores for students from families that earned $40,000 to $60,000 were 490, 500, and 478, respectively, out of a possible 800, whereas just one income bracket lower, in the $20,000 to $40,000 range, the scores were 464, 475, and 453, respectively.


Similar patterns emerged in the area of parental education. For instance, children of high school graduates scored 464, 475, and 453, respectively, on reading, math, and writing portions of the SAT, whereas children of parents who had earned a bachelor’s degree scored 521, 536, and 512 on the same parts of the test, respectively.


“If you look back into the earlier days of the SAT, there was a certain amount of self-selection among students and also schools deciding who should take the SAT or not,” Sohmer said. “When you make the population broader, I don’t think it’s surprising to see something of a decline in overall numbers,” she said, referring to SAT scores.


“The college application landscape is very different than it was in 1972,” Sohmer said. “Generally speaking, that’s a good thing.”


However, some unsettling statistics continue to haunt minority students, although, to the extent that family income and parental education levels are predictors of success on the SAT, that is largely because family income and parental education levels are generally lower in these groups.


The bottom line is that the achievement gap at the K-12 level is largely reflected in SAT scores. More specifically, based on the profile report, the scores of Black, Latino and Native American students trailed significantly behind the scores of Whites.


White students, for instance, scored an average of 530, 555, and 508 on reading, math, and writing portions of the SAT, whereas Black students scored 426, 436, and 408; Mexican or Mexican American students scored 451, 451, and 451; Hispanic, Other Hispanic, Latino or Latin American students scored 449, 446, and 449; and American Indian or Alaska Natives scored 484, 479, and 474, respectively.


Schaeffer, of FairTest, blamed a variety of factors, including a “fixation” on preparing students from low-performing schools to perform well on standardized tests that takes time and energy away from doing other things that make for a quality education.


“Instead of reading books, writing essays, doing science projects, thinking and learning,” Schaeffer said, “they’re doing test practice because those are the schools that are threatened with punishment under No Child Left Behind and feel that they have to boost their scores anyway they can.”

Diverse Issues in Higher Education: SAT Takers Grow More Diverse, Scores Stagnate