Thursday, September 19, 2013

Customize Your Professional Development

Contributed by Janet Scott, Reference Librarian

A new concept in professional development was suggested recently by English instructor Robert McCord with the blessings of Faculty Development and Professional Development.

Robert’s idea was to allow classroom faculty to earn one clock hour advanced placement credit for spending an hour or so one-on-one with a librarian to collaborate and/or learn something information-literacy related.
This resulted in the librarians creating a workshop titled Librarian/Instructor Consultation, the description of which is:

A one-on-one workshop/consultation to discuss information literacy in your course(s), including such topics as integrating and assessing this general education objective in your discipline, discussing available resources on a class topic, designing research assignments and any needed scaffolding, etc.

Each of these “workshops” will be custom-designed to meet the instructor’s needs. So if you want to collaborate with a librarian on a project, create or revise a research assignment, learn more about resources in a particular topic area, integrate information literacy into your curriculum/course, learn a new research skill, or if you have another information literacy-related idea, pitch it to Janet or Cynthia and we’ll go from there.

Contact Janet or Cynthia for a one-on-one information literacy collaboration!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Service Learning: Five Easy Steps to Get Started

Contributed by Lisa Jensen, Coordinator of Service Learning

Lisa Jensen, Coordinator of Service Learning
MCC defines service learning as "a teaching strategy that combines meaningful community service with course reflection and instruction."

If you're interested in implementing service learning into your curriculum--either as a required or an optional component of the class--here are the five quick and easy steps to begin engaging students in a context rich and meaningful way:
  1. Identify what you would like students to gain from Service Learning experience
  2. Meet with Lisa, Coordinator of Service Learning
    • Discuss service options
    • Go over timeline
    • Work on syllabus
  3. Invite Lisa and organization representative to class to discuss Service Learning and the history, vision, and goals of organization
  4. Start service and reflection {enjoy the process}
  5. Meet with Lisa to discuss positive outcomes as well as challenge
It's that easy!

You can get a few ideas from this presentation Lisa put together...



But for more information, visit MCC's Service Learning web page and contact Lisa!