After a round of self-introduction, they quickly reviewed what is available at faculty eServices. They then got to see our new and improved dept. website, where two new features are expected to contribute to the site being more useful and dynamic. One is the new "Student Showcase" section that provides links to student work and projects. The other, the "Staff Only" area, serves to be a one-stop shop for faculty and staff, who will no longer need to remember multiple URLs in order to access this weblog, the dept. meeting minutes, the dept. chair's office hours, coordinators' pages, and individual faculty pages.
The participants discussed such issues and concerns as the college's disaster preparedness and the dept.'s proposed early warning system to intervene in the case of an unsuccessful student. Several good suggestions were made regarding the implementation of the early warning system.
The teachers also got to experience a couple new teaching tools. The clickers were not unlike those used by the audience in the "Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire" TV show. Used in a smart classroom setting, the clickers allow students to anonymously vote in their answers to a multiple-choice question, for example, that is shown on a projector screen. The college's AT dept. has two bags of 32 clickers for checkout.
"English on a Roll" dices, on the other hand, enable students and teachers to manipulate word order in a low-tech but fun way. Our dept. has five sets of these dices. Interested teachers can check them out from Yolanda in A-19.
Other teaching resources talked about included the college's "Blackboard" classroom management software that is now available for every single course offered by Palomar. The gradebook feature alone would be worth exploring and trying if nothing else gets used.
Upon reviewing the single most important principle for undergraduate education and hearing the findings from a couple studies, all present realized and agreed that it is extremely important to make a personal connection with our students. This kind of engagement leads to student retention, student success, and student fans. Ways to connect with students were offered--
- making sure to have a conversation with each student
- greeting and saying goodbye to each student
- having a sense of humor
- showing and teaching respect
- polling students for feedback often
Having heard such great advice from each other and learned the new resources, the participants felt the three hours were well spent and the meeting was a useful one.
No comments:
Post a Comment