Connect and recharge with professional learning.
Our goal is to connect you with the resources that you need at Nashville State Community College to recharge your teaching and your motivation for this fall semester. Just like we charge our devices, we must recharge ourselves and our teaching approaches to be able to be better student-centered professionals. Through the professional learning activities offered over this next week, we will help you connect with other colleagues, connect with leaders, connect culturally responsive teaching practices to your courses, and connect to our student-centered focus.
Workshops have been coded to show connection to Nashville State’s Core Values – Nashville State LEADS and to show which qualify for CRTP credit.
L – Learning
E – Equity Driven
A – Accountability
D – Data-Informed
S – Student-Centered
CRTP – Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices
NSCC employees who engage in 10 professional learning sessions presented by the Teaching Center and Office of Online Learning between August 11 and August 19 will earn the Connect Fall 2022 digital badge.
Professional Learning Schedule
Thursday, August 11
8:30 am – 8:50 am
Kick-off of CONNECT Fall 2022
Join The Teaching Center as we kick-off CONNECT Fall 2022.
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 11
9 – 9:30 am Guided Tour for Beginners on Scheduling Apps (L, S)
Join us for a step-by-step beginners’ guide to Calendly. During the session, you can follow along to set-up your Calendly account with a Q&A session at the end of the session. Would you like a head start? Try this self-help guide. https://nscc.libguides.com/advising/faculty_comm
Presenter: Jessica Rabb
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 11
9:45 – 10:45 am Best Practices for 7-Week Terms (L, E, D, S)
Join the Office of Online Learning and The Teaching Center to explore best practices for 7-week terms and resources available to you as you develop and teach courses in 7-week terms.
Presenters: Anna Everett, Online Learning, Jamie Edwards, Online Learning, and Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 11
11 am – 12 pm Tenure and Promotion Updates and Q & A
Join us to learn about the promotion and tenure processes at Nashville State Community College. Even if you aren’t pursuing promotion or tenure this year, come to this session to learn and ask questions to know what you need to do now to be ready for the future.
Presenters: Dr. Sarah Roberts and Dr. Eli Nettles
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 11
12:15 – 12:45 pm Advanced Session – Using Scheduling Apps (L, S)
If you have been using a scheduling app, join us to learn how to make it work better for you and students with Q&A.
Presenter: Jessica Rabb
Zoom Link
Friday, August 12
9 am – 10 am NSCC TILT Survey Results Analysis and Discussion (L, E, A, D, S, CRTP)
Join your colleagues who are TILTing in their classes to discuss the impact of TILTing on their students and on their teaching and to consider ways to improve our TILTing for future students. Results from the NSCC Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 TILT pilot survey will be shared.
Presenters: Neely Ann Sheucraft, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Fellow, The Teaching Center, and Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Friday, August 12
10:10 am – 11:10 am Applying the Master Syllabus Template
Prepare your syllabus for the upcoming semester discussion what information and expectations you should consider presenting to your students.
Presenter: Jamie Edwards, Director of Online Learning
Zoom Link
Friday, August 12
11:20 am – 12:20 pm New Adjunct Faculty Workshop (L, E) – Zoom
Adjunct faculty are essential at Nashville State Community College, and The Teaching Center thanks you for being a part of our faculty family at NSCC. Please join The Teaching CENTER for a virtual orientation to teaching at Nashville State Community College. We are looking forward to meeting you.
Presenters: Neely Ann Sheucraft, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Fellow, The Teaching Center, and Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/WE5aaEuWH9rmkMCs9
Friday, August 12
1 pm – 2 pm ACUE 2022-2023 Cohort Kick-off (L, E, A, D, S, CRTP)
Moderators: Amy Bryant, Tammy Ruff, and Neely Ann Sheucraft
Location: Zoom
Event is limited to ACUE 2022-2023 Cohort participants. ACUE 2022-2023 Cohort participants, please check your email and Outlook Calendar invitation for the Zoom meeting information.
Friday, August 12
1 pm – 2 pm
Ready, Set, GO!: Tips and Tricks for Fall Semester Prep Online
Start the Fall semester off strong! This workshop will provide you with tips and tricks for maximizing your fall term prep in D2L. Topics will include:
- Copying or importing existing course components
- Updating your course content for the current term
- Welcoming “Getting Started” content and introductory activities for online
- Establishing course expectations and communication routines
Workshop Organizer: Dr. Anna Everett, Online Learning
Zoom Link
Monday, August 15
9 am – 10 am Learning from Watermark Survey Results (L, E, A, D, S)
Every fall and spring, students complete the Watermark Survey about our classes. Individual faculty have access to their individual reports, but we don’t know how our own results are compared with the college as a whole. Join The Teaching Center as we analyze our NSCC college-wide Watermark survey report. We will use the college-wide report to allow us to see a big-picture perspective of the Watermark survey results for faculty to use the college-wide results and own individual results for planning for the upcoming semesters. Join us for a data-informed conversation about Watermark by spending time analyzing college-wide results and using these results to inform their planning for future courses. Note: The workshop will focus on college-wide results, only. No individual’s results will be shared.
Presenter: Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Monday, August 15
10:10 am – 11:10 am Specification grading in STEM courses (S, CRTP)
In the traditional grading system, there is a variation in students’ grades depending on who is teaching the class. A student may earn a lower grade in one section for the same amount of effort than in another. In a way, there is a gap between the desired learning level to the success level. This perceived gap is also not measurable. In a traditional grading system often, it is assumed that a teacher fails or passes students.
Contrary to the traditional grading system, students will have ownership of their grades in specifications grading. Students will have clarity about their desired grade, where they stand, and what action they can take to reach the goal. In this presentation, I like to discuss how we can measure student success in a new way that hopes to motivate and encourage students to work for their desired grades.
Presenter: Jesmin Akther
Zoom Link
Monday, August 15
11:20 am – 12:20 pm HIPs – The What, Why, When, and How (L, E, D, S, CRTP)
Join us as we explore what high impact practices (HIPs) are, why high impact practices are emphasized, when to implement, and how to implement in our courses.
Presenter: Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Monday, August 15
12:30 – 1:30 pm “Maslow” before “Bloom:” Why and how to incorporate Social Emotional Learning (SEL) (L, E, S, CRTP)
Please bring an open mind 🙂
Presenter: Kurstin Bush, Education Instructor and Coordinator, and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Monday, August 15
1:40 pm – 2:40 pm Lights, Camera, Learning!: Course Videos Made Easy
Want to make your online course more interactive and engaging, but not sure where to start? Fear not. This workshop will show you just how easy it is to create fun, interesting videos that can draw students into your course and reinforce learning. No fancy recording studio required.
We will go over:
- Basic tools and techniques for recording video,
- Using Kaltura to caption videos,
- Tips for integrating assessments into videos,
- Finding and adding YouTube videos to your course.
Workshop Organizer: Dr. Anna Everett, Online Learning
Tuesday, August 16
9 am – 10 am What I Learned About Teaching From Being a Student (L, S, CRTP)
In this session, I will share some insights I gained about teaching and applying best practices from studying chess via YouTube instruction. You do NOT need to play chess to benefit; in fact, you might benefit more if you don’t play chess.
Presenter: Harlan Pease, Associate Professor of Communications and English and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Tuesday, August 16
10:10 am – 11:10 am Building Better Communication from Committee to College (L, A)
Do you represent your colleagues on a committee? Are you represented by a colleague on a committee? Join us for a discussion about representation and how we can better communicate with each other about what is occurring in our committees, how to solicit voices from your colleagues to help your decision-making, and how to engage actively with those who represent you. We will collaborate to build some guiding principles for representation and communication to help build better communication from our committees to our colleagues.
Presenters: Jay Chambers, Assistant Professor/Clinical Coordinator, and Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Tuesday, August 16
11:20 am – 12:20 pm Make Your Course “Smart”: Save Time and Engage Your Students Using Automation Tools in D2L
Do you wish you had more time? Or that your students read your emails? This workshop will introduce Intelligent Agents, a powerful tool inside D2L that can both save you time and personalize course communications for your students. Intelligent Agents can automatically identify students who meet certain criteria in your course and send them a message tailored to their current learning needs in the course. For instance, you can set an IA to identify students who scored below a particular threshold on an assignment. It will then automatically send a message with helpful resources or reminders about course grading policies to students who meet those criteria. You can even set up IAs to send messages of praise for a job well done! While writing each of these emails on your own would normally take hours, IAs allow you to add a greater sense of personal care and connection to your online course, with minimal time invested.
Join us to learn how to:
- Set up Intelligent Agents,
- Script Intelligent Agent messages, to improve student motivation and engagement,
- Streamline or automate other course communications.
Workshop Organizer: Dr. Anna Everett, Online Learning
Tuesday, August 16
1 pm – 2 pm STEM, TILT, and Rubrics, Oh My! (L, S, CRTP)
This session will focus on using TILT and Rubrics principles and applying them to STEM assignments and activities.
Presenters: Gracie King, Associate Professor, STEM, and Maria Smith, Associate Professor, STEM and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Wednesday, August 17
9 am – 10 am Introduction to TILT (L, E, A, D, S, CRTP)
Back by faculty request! If you have never attended a TILT workshop, join The Teaching Center for the Introduction to TILT workshop. Research indicates that transparent assignment design significantly enhances students’ success, with even greater gains for historically underserved students. This presentation will cover the key principles underlying the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework and provide evidence for its efficacy.
Presenters: Neely Ann Sheucraft, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Fellow, The Teaching Center, and Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Wednesday, August 17
9 am – 10 am Student Communication – A Faculty Panel (L, S)
Join fellow faculty as we share what is working and what we’ve learned from what didn’t work as well to help us continuously improve communication with students.
Moderator: Scott McRoberts, Senate Chair
Zoom Link
Wednesday, August 17
10:10 am – 11:10 am A Conversation about 21st Century Skills (L, E, S, CRTP)
Let’s talk! What skills do students need to have in the Information Age? Are we assessing those skills in our courses? Are we teaching the way we were taught, i.e. using 20th century skills for a 21st century student?
Presenter: Kurstin Bush, Education Instructor and Coordinator, and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Wednesday, August 17
11:20 am – 12:20 pm Bring Your Own Gradebook: Open Workshop for Gradebook Set Up and Troubleshooting
Is your gradebook giving you a headache? Bring it to us! Online Learning staff will be available to assist with individual gradebook issues and questions in this open workshop.
There is no presentation scheduled for this session, but if you are looking for a general overview of the basics of D2L Gradebook set up, please see our recorded Online Learning Gradebook Workshop video (linked here).
Workshop Organizer: Dr. Anna Everett, Online Learning
Wednesday, August 17
1 pm – 2 pm Work-Life Balance and Boundaries at Work (L, A, S, CRTP)
Presenter: Audrey Cross
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 18
9 am – 10 am Thinking about Grades as Conflict (L, S, CRTP)
We may feel conflicted about the grades we give, but unless a grade appeal occurs, we often don’t see giving a grade as a conflict. In this session, we will examine how students may perceive grades as sources of conflict, and we will look at conflict styles and conflict management strategies to see how we can turn these conflicts into positive, learning-focused, opportunities.
Presenter: Harlan Pease, Associate Professor of Communications and English and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 18
10:10 am – 11:10 am Building Community in Your Class Starting Today (L, E, S, CRTP)
Building a classroom community is a culturally responsive teaching practice, but how can we build this community starting today? We will share strategies and processes to start building community with our students now before the semester starts, as the semester begins, throughout the semester, and beyond.
Presenter: Amy Bryant, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, and Director of The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Thursday, August 18
11:20 am – 12:20 pm Online Learning Open Office Hours
Feel free to jump into Online Learning’s Virtual Office Hours to ask questions related to D2L, supported learning technologies, or general help setting up your courses.
Thursday, August 18
1 pm – 2 pm Online Learning Open Office Hours
Feel free to jump into Online Learning’s Virtual Office Hours to ask questions related to D2L, supported learning technologies, or general help setting up your courses.
Friday, August 19
9 am – 10 am The Active Learning Cycle: what it is and why you should consider using it. (L, S)
This session will explore what the Active Learning Cycle is, look at some evidence for its efficacy, provide some examples of it at work, and finally workshop some strategies for implementing it in your classes.
Presenter: Harlan Pease, Associate Professor of Communications and English and Fellow, The Teaching Center
Zoom Link
Friday, August 19
10:10 am – 11:10 am Living freely in a haiku: Adventures in turning curriculum order on its head and what I learned about the human body and education at this year’s National Human Anatomy and Physiology Conference (L, E, S, CRTP)
Do you feel like it’s hard to be creative in your classroom due to an increasing number of rules and regulations regarding curriculum? Would you like to learn more about how to use kinetic movement of your students’ bodies to help them learn concepts in your classes, no matter the subject area? Have you ever wanted to know how to make a reel or TikTok video to give a mini lesson to your students on a difficult concept using classroom materials, your phone, and your imagination?
If so, come to this in service with an open mind curiosity and the patience to listen to the speaker discuss these topics and also talk about all the really cool things about the human body that she learned this year at her favorite conference. 🙂 And yes, we will also discuss haiku’s and their increasing relevance to modern life.
Presenter: Gracie King, Associate Professor, STEM
Zoom Link
Friday, August 19
11:20 am – 12:20 pm Online Learning Open Office Hours
Feel free to jump into Online Learning’s Virtual Office Hours to ask questions related to D2L, supported learning technologies, or general help setting up your courses.