Spring 2015 Faculty Development Day

Thursday, January 15, is our Spring Faculty Development Day, the day we welcome all MCC faculty members back to campus before classes start.

We frequently organize the day with break-out sessions for smaller groups of faculty to focus on something that interests them and that can help them in the classroom. But while planning for this spring, we decided to shake up that way of approaching faculty development and let faculty members define their own goals and identify what projects they felt would be most important to work on. All we needed to do was give them the freedom and time to work.

The idea came to use through Laura Middaugh, one of the terrific members of our Faculty Development Team. She showed us this video and had us pay special attention to the discussion about Atlassian Software that begins around minute 5:30:

We loved it, checked in with department chairs across campus, and they loved it, too.

We explained the idea to our entire faculty membership in October and gave them a few weeks to brainstorm and then let us know what types of projects they'd be working on. Faculty members could work on whatever they wanted, with whomever they wanted, however they wanted. Their only guidelines were that at the end of the day they needed to submit a report-out form and then get together for a dinner with colleagues to chat about their projects and celebrate the day's innovation.

In November we got some excellent teasers for projects like mental health awareness, applied technologies adjunct orientation, occupational therapy assistant (OTA) simulation exercises, and political economy across disciplines. And now we've got the entire list of projects, from ACEN Accreditation to Windows 8 and Server 2012.

The full program for our Spring 2015 Faculty Development Day

Now that I know how terrific everyone's projects will be, I might call on them to present at a later workshop or write a guests post here, so keep your eyes peeled!

February is Re-Run Season at MCC

We had a variety of great workshops to offer on Faculty Development Day in January. But there were a half dozen workshops and only one of you! So if you had a hard time deciding between a couple workshops, don't worry--you've got another chance this semester.

Here's the list of workshops from FD Day that we're re-running in February:

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And look ahead on the Professional Development calendar for more workshops scheduled for March and April!

A Successful Faculty Development Day

Kathy Hayhurst and Susan Sieber at the Welcome Table

Thank you, everyone, who participated in and helped to plan this Spring 2014 Faculty Development Day. We were so happy to present the great workshops in the morning and afternoon breakout sessions, and we're doubly pleased that the workshop presenters have made themselves available this semester to lead the workshops again in case you couldn't make one that you wanted to attend.
Here is the list of when each of the workshops will be presented:

• Comments and Rubrics: Canvas’s Speed-Grading Gift with Gabriel Decio, 2/4, 1 – 2:30 p.m.
  Bringing Sexy Back to Assessment with Robert McCord, 2/11, 1 – 2 p.m.
  Classroom Management with Gerry Braasch and Talia Koronkiewicz, 2/18, 1 – 2 p.m.
  
• Creating Your Faculty Web Page with Laura Power, 2/26, 2 – 3 p.m. 
  
• Building a Sustainable Curriculum with Kim Hankins, 2/26, 3 – 4 p.m.
• New School or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Emerging Technologies with Timothy Linehan, 4/9, 4 – 5 p.m.

You can register for these clock-hour workshops in the Professional Development auto-registration system.

We also asked each Faculty Development Day workshop leader to complete an Excellence in Teaching workshop curriculum map, and here they are:

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Check your mchenry.edu e-mail for an evaluation of the day, and check back here next week for some brand new posts.

Have a great first week of the semester!

Spring 2014 Faculty Development Day

Happy New Year, faculty!

Although we've had a relaxing winter break, we're looking forward to getting back to work next week for the Spring 2014 Faculty Development Day. Take a look at the program of workshops we have lined up!

Tips on using the Prezi--click on the "Full Screen" button in the lower-right hand corner, and use your mouse to click and drag to somewhere new in the presentation, or scroll in and out for zooming in on text.

Ignite Your Passion and Your Presentations!

When was the last time you were asked to do a short presentation to a group of people (students, colleagues, conference attendees...) and you didn't want to show them the same old thing--the same old PowerPoint, the same old podium speech?

Well, why not use an Ignite Talk? It's a five minute presentation format that's generating some buzz at conferences (I saw my first Ignite talk at last Fall's Chicago Writer's Conference), and it's an excellent way to demonstrate your excitement about a focused topic using tightly rehearsed points and twenty hand-picked images.

The basics:

• It's a five minute presentation
• Your topic is specific & focused
• As you talk, your slideshow automatically scrolls through slides/images (20 total slides scroll every 15 seconds for 5 total minutes)
• Your quick, well rehearsed presentation ignites enthusiasm in your audience members!

If you're interested, follow these five easy steps to put your presentation together (I'll give you my Spring '13 Faculty Development Day presentation as an example):

1. Identify a specific and focused topic (Ex.: Why I Love Teaching at MCC)
2. Organize your presentation into three or four main points (Ex.: My students, my colleagues, and the community college mission)
3. Brainstorm one or two short narratives for each of your points (Narratives are easier for you to remember, which helps because you won't have any notes!)
4. Choose images to show off your points, your stories, and your enthusiasm (Ex.: pictures of my students in class and on Alternative Spring Break, pictures of my colleagues at MCC, a goofy picture of my high school cheerleading squad...)
5. Rehearse! (and then rehearse some more--you want to make sure what you're saying coincides with the slides that are moving behind you)

And that's it!

If you need help with images, ask OMPR--they have a terrific library of images from MCC events. You can also use the Internet to snag appropriate images, take your own pictures, or use the Media Center (A210) to scan in your old photos.

Interested in seeing a few more Ignite talks before giving your own? Check out the Ignite website or attend the group Ignite talk at MCC on March 12 that will be honoring Women's History Month by highlighting some of our terrific women at MCC.

And let us know when you give your own Ignite presentation so we can come cheer you on!

Spring Faculty Development Day Re-cap

Our apologies for such a belated re-cap of the Spring Faculty Development Day--after January 10th  and the following mini-conference on the 11th, we all got a little swept away in the start of the new semester. We're sure you all got swept away, too, but we hope you're floating on nicely now and have had a chance to catch your breath.

From our perspective, January 10th went along quite well! From the morning "Outside the Classroom" sessions...

Peter Ponzio talks Charles Dickens

John Peters talks family history

Dawn Valdes-Wagner talks Arab Emirates

Jim Gould talks family obstacles

Kate Midday talks princesses (or not...)

David White talks teaching abroad

...and the "Inside the Classroom Sessions" that were all mapped back to our four Excellence in Teaching tenants (Subject Matter, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Professionalism)...

iClickers in the Classroom

MOOCs: Friend or Foe?

ConnectMath

Smart Board Technology and Practice

The new Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas

 

Assessment

Teaching Outside the Lines

The Socratic Method

...to the College Update and Colleague Connectivity "Beyond the Classroom" sessions:

Dr. Vicky Smith

Dr. Tony Miksa

We also had five terrific sessions for anyone who could stay past dinner, although I didn't get any pictures because I was leading a session on "Reaching the Modern Student" for a terrific audience of part time and full time faculty members. We also had re-run Smart Board, ConnectMath, and LMS/Canvas sessions, and an Adjunct 101 session for our brand new adjunct faculty members.

The Adjunct 101, led by Robin Deak and Christina Swanson, is consistently popular and consistently useful. If you're an adjunct faculty member and interested in learning more about our Adjunct Orientation (which will be Monday evenings this Spring!), then contact Robin for more information.

Our Friday mini-conference--the first of its kind--drew just a handful of faculty members, but the sessions went very well and we'll continue to offer this the Friday after workshop days so that interested faculty can get in a bit of development before the semester begins.

Check back here later in the week for more posts on using skits and performance to reinforce concepts, and our classrooms outside of campus!

To see the What's New in Faculty Development presentation that we didn't have time for on January 10, please click here!

It's Almost Time!

Thursday, January 10 is Spring Faculty Development Day, and we hope you're ready to get down and developed!

Check out the program below, and don't forget to fill out your evaluation when the e-mail comes on Friday; we'd love to hear your thoughts on the day!

Spring Faculty Workshop Day

We had a smooth day last Thursday for our bi-annual faculty workshop day, regardless of the snow falling outside. And although the snow made it tough traveling for everyone coming to and from campus, it sure was pretty.

The day started with an inspirational welcome from Kate Midday, one of our three 2011 NISOD Award of Excellence winners (other 2011 winners are Don Curfman and Ted Erski), and ended with a smorgasbord of excellent break-out sessions led both by our adjunct and full time faculty as well as one of our administrators. In between we had sessions led by seasoned MCC faculty, brand spanking new MCC faculty, and visiting faculty Jeff Clark from Sommerset Community College in Kentucky; and we hosted our first "Colleague Connectivity" poster session. If you weren't able to make it, we hope to see you at our next faculty workshop day in August (though you don't have to wait until then to check out what great faculty development opportunities are on this semester's calendar--visit InsideMCC and click the "got training?" button at the bottom of the page under Professional Development).

And to all of you, have a great first day of the Spring 2012 semester!

Morning Breakout Session "Veterans in the Classroom"

Don Curfman (far left), Jeff Clark (far right), and two MCC student veterans, Mike and Craig

"Colleague Connectivity" poster session in the MCC Commons

Joe Baumann of Institutional Research and nursing faculty Angela Sass show off their tables