Now that most of the team is back from the Faculty Learning Communities institute, I wanted to mention one other participant that we connected with and forgot to acknowledge in previous posts. Duane Coltharp of Trinity University in San Antonio is now part of our expanding network of resources. It is amusing that we had to go to California to meet but I guess that just illustrates the vastness of Texas. Franci Washburn's opinion piece on the correct use of the ellipsis is very entertaining. The point made is not really about the correct use of the ellipsis (or is it) but the attention to detail that it requires in its proper use. The brief piece is a nice commentary on teaching critical thinking skills. The message from a conference focused on the topic of Latino men is that they are "vanishing" from the higher-education pipeline, a trend that could spell serious trouble given current demographic trends. The speakers offered several explanations for the decline, including a sense of "machismo" that prevents male students from seeking help and a gender-equity movement that has focused attention on educational opportunities for women over the past three decades. Blackboard Inc. is apparently in talks with a buyer. Who knows what this may mean in terms of changes to the software now in heavy use at LU? Anthony P. Carnevale, with the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, released a report claiming that the United States needs 20 million more college-educated workers by 2025. There is an interesting article in the NY Times about the state of higher education reform in Texas.

Your LU team has been hard at work learning how to create and facilitate faculty learning communities (FLCs). In the process, we have made a number of great contacts. Not only will this network help us as we move forward but we are hoping that we develop friendships that will benefit us for years to come. People like the team from Greenville Technical College in South Carolina, including Sara Catoe, Susan Couch, and Chuck Shaw, have engaged with us about a number of topics that will help us to continue to improve the CT+LE. Our neighbor to the North, Tara Newman of Stephen F. Austin State University, spent some quality time with us discussing QEP strategies. We also enjoyed hearing about the unique programs that are occurring at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. The team, including Joanne Brown, Lisa Christy, Vernie Clement, Tom Dickinson, Ginny Ratsoy, and Shane Rollans, even included us in their dinner plans this evening which allowed us to talk shop a little longer. The "home" team at my table included Sara Catoe (GTC), Lisa Christy (TRU), Alfred Mbah (USF), June Millovich (Saddleback College), and Michael Willard (CSU-Los Angeles) and their insight and advice have been extremely beneficial throughout this terrific institute. As we put the final touches on our penultimate presentation for tomorrow, it became very apparent that we have been greatly enriched and are determined to create FLCs that will allow LU to continue to improve and to meet the needs of our students. Looking forward to returning home to Texas tomorrow. Hopefully the flight situation will go smoothly.

What an adventurous trip we had getting to Pomona, California for the Faculty Learning Community workshop. We were so happy for the rain in Texas but apparently it caused some major problems for Southwest Airlines and our 9:00 a.m. flight did not occur until 2:00 p.m. putting us in Pomona around 7:00 p.m. We have recovered nicely and are now fully involved in the workshop. Milton Cox, who is director of the Center for Enhancement of Learning, Teaching, and University Assessment at Miami (Ohio) University, has been a leader in the development of Faculty Learning Communities for many years. We hope to soak up as much information as we can and introduce this innovative and effective concept to the LU community this fall. Best quote form the opening session this morning, "Sage on the stage is dead and has been replaced by the expert facilitator." It really drives home the point that college students need to take ownership of their learning and we must do everything we can to facilitate that experience. The program for the Faculty Development Fall 2011 Blastoff is shapely up nicely. One of the session being offered will have a panel of experts who have either served as a journal editor, reviewer or have published extensively. This session promises to be very informative for those looking to create a solid path to having their scholarly work published. You can view more information at the CT+LE website and we will be adding more here as it develops. Remember to save the morning of Tuesday, August 16 to attend this annual event.

A faculty learning community (FLC) is a group of interdisciplinary faculty, graduate students and/or professional staff groups ranging in sizes of 6-15 or more (8 to 12 is the recommended size) engaged in an active, collaborative, year-long program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning and with frequent seminars and activities that provide learning, development, interdisciplinarity, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community building. According to the literature, FLCs evolved out of student learning communities. FLC participants may select a focus course or project to pilot innovations, assess the resulting student learning, and then present the results to their colleagues in various formats. The evidence shows that FLCs increase faculty interest in teaching and learning and provide support for faculty to investigate, attempt, assess, and adopt new learning methods. FLCs have been shown to build community as well. For all of these reasons and more, a team from your CT+LE will be participating in a FLC Developers' and Facilitators' Institute later this week. Melissa Hudler, Randy Smith and Todd Pourciau will be joining over 50 other participants in an interactive, hands-on summer institute focused on helping us create a FLC program at LU. Check back later this week for on-site updates from Pomona, California. Dr. Milton D. Cox, who is co-directing the summer institute, wrote an informative article that describes the benefits of FLCs in detail. Cox concludes that FLCs provide "careful reflection on the appropriateness of actions with respect to outcomes and social structures, also called double-loop learning." As you begin to build or update your course syllabi for the fall semester, we wanted to offer you a tip on the course description section. This section should really be designed to capture the student's attention. It should describe how your course will enhance the student's skill set for life. James M. Land, in his book On Course (MJGL# LB 2331 L245) suggests that "one means of helping students to see the importance of the course topic can be to frame the course as a whole with a meta-question; a broad and important question which the content of the course will help them understand more deeply, and which ultimately will enable them to construct their own answer by the end of the term." He provides as an example for an American literature and history class the question "What is an American?"

The good news is we have landed in our newly renovated space on the 6th floor of the Mary and John Gray Library (MJGL). The question now is are we operational? The answer is a qualified yes. We should be able to handle most of your needs but it will take a little longer to be the CT+LE you truly deserve. If you have some free time, please come and visit us. Thanks to Cruse Melvin and Mike Hogan for all of their hard work. The space is truly wonderful and will make us so much more effective. As we previously announced, there will a special track at the Faculty Development Fall 2011 Blastoff designed for department chairs. The exciting news on that front is we have added a session from Dr. Vicky Farrow who most recently completed a stint as the chair of the Department of Professional Pedagogy and was recently promoted to the position of Executive Director of Assessment and Planning. She will be providing a "real-world" presentation on what it takes to be the leader of an academic department. Are you looking to design an inquiry-based course? If so, you might want to read an article by Christopher Justice, James Rice, Wayne Warry, Sue Inglis, Stefania Miller and Sheila Sammon. After conducting a five year study, they concluded that inquiry is a potent pedagogical tool in higher education, encouraging students to become self-directed and engaged learners. W. Robert Connor adds to the debate on salary potential based on academic discipline. In his opinion piece, Connor asks, "what if one asked whether majors make differing contributions to students’ cognitive development?"

The Center for Teaching+Learning Enhancement will be moving to our new location on the 6th floor of the Mary and John Gray Library tomorrow. If you send us an email or call, please be aware that we may not be able to respond immediately. If you do not hear back from us by Friday, please contact us again. Thank you for your patience. The move to the renovated space will allow us to serve you much more effectively. Please stop by and visit next week.

The Summer Session passes by so quickly, which is why it is very important to focus on how we use each minute of our classes. If you have not done so already, I encourage you to provide some sort of formative assessment for your students. The first two weeks are the best time to provide a low-stress assignment that is graded but perhaps not counted in the final tally. This activity allows your students to understand your grading process and your expectations without the penalty of receiving a low grade and digging themselves into a deep hole. Ken Bain, in his book What the Best College Teachers Do (Gray Library LB2331 .B34), says, "Without an adequate assessment, neither teachers nor students can comprehend the progress the learners are making, and instructors can little understand whether their efforts are best suited to their students and objectives." I also want to remind you to ask questions in your class. As we move from lecture-only to active learning methods, the underlying principle is to have each student take ownership of their own progress towards receiving a diploma. We must empower our students to become the excellent learner they are capable of becoming. Changing the way teaching normally happens in higher education is a movement that is well underway. CT+LE is here to help you access the most appropriate and useful resources so that you can join the movement. Contact us at your convenience. L. Dee Fink, in his book Creating Significant Learning Experiences (Gray Library LB2331 .F495), says, "We can continue to follow traditional ways of teaching, repeating the same practices that we and others in our disciplines have used for years. Or we can dare to dream about doing something different, something special in our courses that would significantly improve the quality of student learning." Nate Kreuter has a really nice column about respecting departmental staff that we should all read. Here is a teaser, "In recent years, as university budgets have been slashed, the responsibilities of individual staffers have increased, while some of their colleagues have, even worse, been laid off. In short, right now the departmental staffers you work with are likely to be shouldering the biggest work loads of their careers."

Arriving in the upper-ninety degree heat of Texas from the lower-fifties of Leadville, Colorado was certainly jarring. My experience at the U.S. Air Force Academy's course design workshop was very enlightening. I certainly picked up a few new ideas. It was also validating to realize that the programming at your CT+LE is focused on the right topics. We can always improve and we are always waiting to hear your suggestions. I want to encourage you to spend some of your time off during the summer thinking about the students who are enrolled in your fall classes. As you prepare your learning experiences, be very aware of the students you will actually teach rather than the students you think you will have or want to have. That can be difficult because it typically may be the first time you are working with the students but I encourage you to be reflective about the time you have taught your course before. Focus on the assumptions you had about your students and how your attitude changed as your student's persona was revealed to you. Did you make adjustments to compliment your student's learning styles? Did you revise your learning experiences to accommodate the gaps that you discovered? Another process that can be beneficial to you if you are unsure of the student factors you will encounter is to think about the knowledge that your students will need to possess in order to succeed in your class. How will you garner this information about them? Do you have an instrument that you use on the first day of class? Once you uncover their knowledge level, how will you close the gap between what you expect and what they possess? Richard Lavoie says in his book The Motivation Breakthrough (Gray Library LB 1065 L356), "Instructors must be willing and prepared to modify and adjust expectations in response to the individual and unique needs of their students." Should the United States adopt a goal of college for all? That is the topic discussed in a recent report released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The biggest job growth between 2008 and 2018 is expected to come in occupations requiring high levels of education according to Peter Sacks, who released the report Minding the Campus. Jobs requiring a master’s degree will see the greatest growth (21.2 percent), followed by jobs requiring a doctoral degree (20.5 percent), a professional degree (19.6 percent), and a bachelor’s degree (14.2 percent). By contrast, jobs requiring a high-school degree plus on-the-job vocational training are forecast to grow less than 10 percent. The program is taking shape for the Faculty Development Fall Blastoff. There will be sessions dealing with alleviating the fear that many students have of writing, self reflection for faculty members, and using your student evaluations effectively in addition to a special track designed just for our department chairs. Remember to save the morning of August 16 for this annual event.

Tuesday we woke to some of the most beautiful blue skies I have ever seen. Apparently on Monday, Colorado was receiving some of the haze from the forest fires in Arizona. It reminded me of the hardships that many of our fellow Texans are experiencing as well. There has been a number of very interesting discussions at the workshop about alignment. Many times our learning experiences do not align with the proficiencies we expect from our students. Taking the time to develop learning experiences (which some of us call lesson plans) that foster the development of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that we hope to foster in our students is very important. Providing the proper assessment, both formative and summative, is equally important. Students rely on us to let them know if they are moving in the right direction to attain new proficiencies. Having all of this remain consistent and be fully integrated as we develop our courses can be difficult. However, making the effort at the front-end will provide us with a much more satisfying class at the back-end. Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross note "The quality of student learning is directly, although not exclusively, related to the quality of teaching. Therefore, one of the most promising ways to improve learning is to improve teaching." Drs. Ken Sagendorf and Steve Jones, who work in the Center for Education Excellence at the U.S. Air Force Academy, have done a terrific job with this workshop. The experience so far has allowed me to measure some of our initiatives, like the ACES Fellow program, with new eyes. My toolkit is filling up with lots of ideas that we will begin to implement during the summer months.

Many of you will remember the visit of Dr. Bob Noyd during the Spring 2011 semester. He presented three outstanding workshops that were very well attended by you. Bob invited me to participate in the U.S. Air Force Academy's course design workshop and that is where I am this week. The workshop is held about three hours from the USAFA campus. We are in Leadville, Colorado which is over 10,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The location is picture perfect although it makes breathing a little difficult. Yesterday was the kickoff of the workshop. There are a little less than 20 faculty who proposed and were selected to participate. The first day of work was focused on understanding student factors. The overarching message was remembering to design your course for the students you actually have rather than for the students you think you have. We had a great discussion about each of the faculty's dream ideas about their impact on their students. This workshop is very focused on learning-centered course goals. I even got to see Bob's ropes exercise again and it still is very effective. Today we are focusing on summative assessment techniques. Alignment with the course objectives seems to be the key and is often the point that faculty forget as they design their course.We will be bringing this all back to Beaumont so get ready for a busy fall semester.