Smashing Magazine: Mastering Photoshop Techniques: Layer Styles
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Innovative Educators Webinar: Best Practices In College Teaching: Designing Effective Rubrics
Thursday, October 13 ~ 1:00-2:30pm EDT
Webinar Description
Assigning grades to student essays, presentations, and projects can be a difficult task, especially when it appears that the many of the students did not understand the task assigned. Well written rubrics help students understand what they are expected to accomplish in an assignment or a course of study. Join us and learn how to develop rubrics to assist in making the evaluation and feedback process more effective, more objective, and more likely to result in deeper student learning. Participants will receive a Quick Guide to rubrics and a rubric template.
ObjectivesBy the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• describe characteristics of a rubric.
• distinguish between analytic and holistic rubrics.
• design a rubric.
• articulate how rubrics can be useful.
Who is the Speaker?
Debra Runshe is an Instructional Design Consultant for the Center for Teaching and Learning at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. She works with faculty on instructional issues such as course design, online course development, learning objectives, classroom management, active learning, learning theory, and assessment methods.
Her dedication to quality teaching has led to her involvement in many national endeavors. Debra was a member of the Carnegie Foundation's CASTL Program: Scholarly Inquiry about Active Pedagogies. As a member of this cluster group she explored active learning pedagogies in universities across the nation and presented the findings nationally. She was also a member of the core team for the FIPSE grant: Promoting Strategic Teaching to Enhance Academic Competencies of Student in Transition Courses, which resulted in a professional development program for university instructors. She has presented the results of this grant in a number of venues.
UB Web Seminar: Going Digital with your Publications
Going digital with your publications
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 2pm, ET
Colleges and universities are increasingly moving to digital publications to save money, reach wider audiences, and breathe new life and interactivity into their brochures, viewbooks, catalogs, and magazines. Digital publications open doors between the intended audience and the school through multimedia, surveys and links to social media. This web seminar will offer a micro and macro view of publishing materials digitally for the education field, from a case study on Messiah College's alumni magazine and an industry perspective by a well-traveled editor.
Speakers will address the following topics:
• How digital publications can save money and increase circulation.
• How adding interactive features and relevant multimedia affects your publications.
• What the process is for moving to a digital publication.
• What to expect in feedback from readers.
Who will benefit:
Presidents, publication directors, advancement and alumni relations officers, admissions directors. Anyone may attend.
Speakers:
Anna Seip - Editor, The Bridge Alumni Magazine, Messiah College.
Sherri Miles - Senior Editor, education industry.
2 Upcoming Tegrity Webinars: Blackboard, Successful Impementations and More
9/22 Cloud-based Lecture Capture Makes Immediate Impact at Arkansas Tech University
In 2010, the school successfully deployed Tegrity’s cloud-based lecture capture solution, enabling the institution to enhance its face-to-face courses as well as launch a new distance learning program.
Speakers: Ken Wester, Director of Technology Center/Virtual Learning, Arkansas Tech University; Loretta Cochran, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Management, Arkansas Tech University, College of Business
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9/27 Streamlined and Scalable Implementation of Lecture Capture within the Blackboard Learn Platform
Shoreline Community College's use of Tegrity lecture capture with AAIRS™ technology provides real-time Blackboard integration to completely automate the lecture capture workflow and eliminate strain on IT.
Speaker: Ann Garnsey-Harter, Ph.D., Director of eLearning, Shoreline Community College
We hope you find these webinars helpful and informative. If you have any questions, or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact us by email at salesusa@tegrity.com
eSchool News: Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator
Readers say key skills include foresight, lifelong learning, and the ability to evaluate new technologies
By Meris Stansbury, Online Editor
Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Opens in Washington
September 20, 2011
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The role that HBCUs will be expected to play in the Obama administration’s “2020 Goal” is on the map — a new Google map, to be precise.
As the 2011 HBCU Week kicked off Monday, Dr. John S. Wilson, Jr., executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, introduced one of the latest Internet-based tools from Google, one of the conference’s sponsors.
Similar to how other Google Maps features work, this one not only enables users to see precisely where all HBCUs are, but how many degrees each institution produces each year, as well as how many more degrees each institution will need to produce each year in order to help reach the Obama administration’s goal of restoring the United States to its former spot as the nation with the highest percentage of college degree-holders in the world.
While the website elicited some oohs and ahs, a few among the 1,000 or so conference attendees said financial resources will prove more crucial to meeting the 2020 goal than the latest Internet gadgetry.
Still, the mere existence of the website serves to reinforce a message that Wilson said HBCU leaders must continue to send about the interconnectedness between their vitality and America’s future.
“A lot of people need a new message about HBCUs,” Wilson said during the conference’s opening plenary session.
Wilson related that federal agency funding to HBCUs has increased under the Obama administration, from $783 million in 2009 to $853 million in 2010. Anticipating some incredulity over the practical relevance of the claim, Wilson told the audience: “If you hear me say funding is up in these ways, and you are less aware of it than you think you should be (and) you really don’t feel it on campus, engage with us more.”
White House Senior Advisor Valerie B. Jarrett used the plenary platform to tout President Obama’s proposed American Jobs bill, which she portrayed as a panacea for the economic problems that plague America in general and African-Americans in particular.
For the unemployed, Jarrett said, the American Jobs bill “will be the difference between finding a job and not.”
“For those who are employed, it will put more money in their pockets, remove barriers to growth and create new demand in the marketplace,” Jarrett said, adding that the proposed plan also would extend unemployment insurance and give companies incentives to hire the long-term unemployed.
Jarrett also touted various initiatives the Obama administration had taken that benefit HBCUs directly, as in the case of Recovery Act funds for HBCUs, or indirectly, as in the case of increasing Pell grants and maintaining them despite efforts to scale them back.
Afterward, participants attended a number of breakout sessions. One of the well-attended focused on “Black Male Initiatives” at HBCUs.
Ronald Mason Jr., president of Southern University System, said the need for such initiatives stems from America’s history of receiving free labor from enslaved Africans, who at the time of America’s founding were counted as three-fifths of a human being.
Mason spoke of a new “Five-Fifths Agenda for America” — a new demonstration project at SUNO that seeks to “make America whole” as it relates to African-Americans.
“The problem is not Black men and boys. The problem is America,” Mason said. “If you really do understand the statistics at play and how disproportionate they are in relationship to what’s happening to Black men in America, you can only come to one of two conclusions.
“Either Black folks are born with something innately wrong with them, or there’s something wrong with America. There’s no science to support the former contention, so the latter must be the truth. If something is wrong with America, the question is how do you fix it?”
For panelist Dr. Bryant T. Marks, Assistant Professor and Director of the Morehouse Male Initiative at Morehouse College, or MMI, programs such as the Morehouse initiative are an important part of the answer.
Among other things, the MMI seeks to give Black male students an opportunity to explore and relate their personal identities and what they think they were called to do.
“Get to know them from a pedagogical perspective,” Marks said. “If you can’t reach them, you can’t teach them. You can’t grow them if you don’t know them.”
Marks showed a video in which students taught a lesson on the nature of bases and acids in two different manners — the first in a more traditional stand-and-deliver mode and the other through creating raps, including this line: “Check the stoichiometry, this mole is an anomaly, this base is looking weaker than the U.S. economy.”
“Look at the energy when doing it their way,” Marks said. “I’m not saying we all need to be rappers,” he continued. But there is a need, he said, to engage Black male students in different ways.
eLearners.com: Time Management for Online Learners
Use Time Management Techniques to Enhance How Efficiently and Effectively You Learn Online
AACU: What Adult Learners Can Teach Us about All Learners: A Conversation with L. Lee Knefelkamp
By Laura Donnelly-Smith, staff writer and associate editor, Association of American Colleges and Universities
L. Lee Knefelkamp is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a senior scholar at AAC&U. Her career has included research and teaching about intellectual, ethical, identity, and intercultural development; curriculum transformation; issues of race, ethnicity, and gender; campus climate assessment; and the psychology of organizational change. Knefelkamp is currently codirector of the Eisenhower Leader Development Program, a master’s program for Army officers conducted jointly by Teachers College and the United States Military Academy at West Point, and she also helped develop Teachers College’s new Executive Master’s Degree Program in Change Leadership, a program for midcareer adult learners.
Here, Knefelkamp talks about how working with adult students can inform our interactions with students of all ages, what tradeoffs come with new educational technology, and why K. Patricia Cross’s research on adult learners from the 1980s is still extraordinarily relevant today. MORE
CUR Institutes: Beginning a Research Program in the Natural Sciences at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution
Next Offering: November 18-20, 2011, Hope College, Holland, MI
Application Deadline: October 10, 2011 (Applications reviewed on a rolling basis)
http://cur.networkats.com/members_online/submissions/substart.asp?action=welcome&cid=98
Starting a successful research program and doing scholarly work at a predominantly undergraduate institution poses unique challenges for a beginning faculty member. A goal of the institute is to give pre-tenured faculty the opportunity to learn from and discuss with experienced faculty how to establish and manage a research program with undergraduates. While at the institute, participants will also prepare plans for starting and/or advancing their individual research programs at their respective campuses. A range of topics will be covered during the institute, and the specific goals include ways to achieve career success in undergraduate research by learning how to:
• select undergraduate researchers
• mentor student researchers and develop and use their research skills
• time management - balancing teaching, research and service activities
• develop and select research projects appropriate for undergraduates
• adapt to an undergraduate research environment vs. that in graduate school
• link research to the classroom and
• develop grantsmanship skills related to gaining external and institutional research support
A $50.00 application fee is due at the time of application. Should you be accepted to attend the Institute, your application fee will be applied to your tuition fees. In the event that CUR does not accept your application, the $50.00 application fee will be refunded. Should you withdraw your application or elect not to participate in the Institute, the $50.00 application fee will be forfeited. Should your institution send a team, an application fee must be paid for each individual on the team. In the event that team members are changed, the application fee may be transferred. Should a team member drop out, the application fee will be forfeited.
Upon notification of acceptance, CUR will invoice your institution for the amount of $625 per accepted participant (CUR Institutional Members) or $750 (Non-CUR Institutional Members). If you are not sure whether your school is an institutional member please refer to the list of institutional members by clicking here or contact CUR's Director of Membership. A $50.00 credit will appear on your invoice for any application fees received. The registration fee includes all sessions, materials, and meals (Friday evening through Sunday noon). Transportation to the hotel from an airport or train station is the responsibility of the registrant
All tuition and housing fees are due thirty calendar days prior to the start of the event. To guarantee that a place is held, payment for the institute must be received in the National Office by this date, unless prior arrangements are made with the National Office. Participants that have not paid may be dropped from registration, unless payment arrangements have been made with the National Office. In the event that a participant is dropped from registration, the application fee will not be refunded.
Should your team need to cancel or any individual member of the team cancel, the National Office must receive written notice of the cancellation thirty calendar days prior to the Institute. In the event of a cancellation application fees will not be refunded. Cancellations received before the cancellation date will not be held responsible for registration fees, however the application fee will not be refunded. Participants canceling after this date will be responsible for the full fee. Institutions may not substitute one participant for another without prior approval of the National Office.
CUR always suggests that their registrants purchase low-cost travel insurance when booking their air reservations. Not only will this insurance cover your airfare in the event of cancellation but will also cover the registration cost for the meeting you were to attend. Ask your travel agent about it.
Before you apply, please review the following information about your Narrative Statement, which must be provided at the time of application.
Narrative Statement:
As a part of the Institute application, please provide a one paragraph narrative statement in which you describe what you see as the future of undergraduate research at your institution and what outcomes you hope to realize through participation in the CUR Institute.
In addition to the paragraph, please pose 3 questions that you hope will be discussed during the Institute. If you wish, you may choose questions from the following list.
1) What should be my research expectations for undergraduates?
2) When should I submit my first grant proposal and why?
3) I find myself in a department in which research is expected but not yet valued. What strategies can I use to overcome the notion seemingly held by some of the faculty that classroom teaching is much more important than supervised research and that research detracts from a teacher's classroom performance?
4) In addition to learning about the research process, independent thinking, use of research instruments, etc., what else should students gain from doing a research experience?
5) How do I establish rules (e.g. lab safety rules) and ensure that students obey them?
6) How do I use my department's curriculum and my particular classes to attract students to do long-term research projects in my lab?
7) How do I establish continuity between students coming into and leaving my research group so that I can keep the research program going nearly continuously?
8) How do I introduce research into my classroom?
9) My institution does not have a grants and contracts office. How do I find the time to find appropriate funding agencies and prepare and submit research grant proposals?
10) What institutional and departmental policies and practices should I expect that will encourage or support my research with undergraduates.
Information for Accepted Participants:
Keep in touch with other past-participants in this institute by subscribing to the list-serve.
If you are interested in being part of the listserv, please visit http://www.cur.org/brpsubscribe.html to subscribe.
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