This week I will be the conference blogger. It will be very difficult to follow Bev Aronowitz, who kept us informed and smiling with her witty and informative observations.


For part of this week, I will be attending the League for Innovations Conference 2010 in Baltimore. So some of my blogging early in the week will be about the Innovations Conference and my experiences in Baltimore.

When I arrived in Baltimore on Saturday, my first stop after checking in and picking up conference material was Lexington Market – an invigorating five block walk for those with good knees. My mission – to get a genuine Maryland crab cake. Mission was quickly accomplished with crab cakes from a vendor who for year years has achieved the distinction of having the best crab cakes in Baltimore. Wow!

The sessions that I  attended on Sunday were inspiring, informative, and affirming.

I started the day by attending this session: Professors Are From Mars, Students Are From Snickers: Humor and Multimedia as Teaching Tools by Ronald Berk, Professor of Biostatistics and Measurements, John Hopkins University.

This session’s focus was how to teach the students we have today. The lecture style through which most of us received instruction is not effective, actually is not well received by many of today’s college students. To be more effective we should match teaching strategies to student characteristics. Students have high interest in media (music, videos, movies, YouTube), they are image oriented, like teamwork, prefer kinesthetic/experiential learning, have multiple intelligences. Teaching strategies for this population of students could include incorporating media to introduce topics and in content presentations; using videos, TV, movies, and class demonstrations; planning cooperative learning activities, games, and improvisations; developing hands-on exercises; and tapping 4 -6 intelligences in class activities/presentations.

Ronald Berk’s descriptions and prescriptions matched many of those we discussed with Amanada Hartman in the synchronous Adobe Connect session on teaching Millenials. The presenter shared many examples of ways to use contemporary humor and media to get students’ attention and to get them engaged with the subject. This session, punctuated by frequent chuckles and some outright laughter, was a great way to start the conference day.

Three of the great benefits I get from attending conferences are the opportunities to learn new things, the chance to see how others are handling problems/goals similar to those we have at JSRCC, and the affirming experience of hearing that other colleges are using similar strategies to address some of the goals (and to find out that we are sometimes ahead of the pack and are doing it better). While attending sessions on the values of course redesign, developing online courses for use across the college, and engaging adjunct faculty, I found that JSRCC is on track and sometimes leading in the way as we are actively addressing these issues. I was particularly pleased at the way we are moving to actualize the vision of a dynamic, easily accessible resource for adjunct faculty. This was a theme in at least two conference sessions and one of the smaller campuses of St. Louis Community College presented their Virtual Center for Teaching and Learning - designed specifically for their adjunct faculty- that was developed using a model much like what we are moving to implement at JSRCC this fall.

Now to the Virtual Conference 2010.

a. If you feel tied to the standard objective assessments as the most efficient way to evaluate students’ work, join Evaluation Rubrics and learn more about how using rubrics can help you offer richer learning activities to your students without overloading you with grading papers.

b. Join the conversation Around the Water Cooler : Double Digit Growth in Enrollment in Online Classes and the “Creep to the Outer Limits on Class Size”.

c. At 2:00 p.m. or at 3:30 p.m. join a synchronous presentation featuring MyReadingLab and MyPsychLab technology. Even though your teaching area may not be Reading or Psychology, we encourage you to join one of these sessions to see what publishers are now offering. There is a critical question that textbook selection committees need to consider: Are the supplemental materials and interactive delivery actually worth the additional cost to the students?

Also join Eric to talk about Publishers’ Websites – Do they make students think or block thinking?
Back to Baltimore: The recommendation for the day is Mo’s Crab and Pasta Factory.

Enjoy the day!