This week, practicing inclusive teaching by leveling the playing field for nontraditional students, and the results of ACE’s 2017 survey of higher ed presidents.

At Colleges, Demographic Changes Everywhere but the Top
Among other trends, ACE’s latest survey of college and university presidents shows that there are increasing opportunities for women and other minorities to lead higher education institutions. (The New York Times)

Educators Must Accept Tech Methods, Higher Ed Leaders Say
Finding ways to incorporate digital tools in the classroom, such as using Google Docs for peer editing, helps prepare students to use the technology they will need in their careers. (Converge)

Inclusive Teaching with A. T. Miller
In this podcast, a leader of academic diversity initiatives explains how instructors can level the playing field for non-traditional students by using approaches like rotating roles in group projects and checking in with students outside of class. (Teach Better)

Student Evaluations of Professors That Might Help
Some colleges are implementing pedagogy-focused partnerships in which an instructor works with a student not enrolled in his or her class who observes and offers feedback on the instructor’s course and teaching style. (Inside Higher Ed)

Community College Tries Fixing Roadblocks to Completion
As part of Mt. San Antonio’s strategy to improve retention and completion rates, the community college is offering compressed classes, which pack three semesters-worth of material into a single semester, to fast-track graduation. (Marketplace)

Sometimes Their Gripe Is Legit
Reflecting on his own experience with a student’s complaint, David Gooblar suggests that instructors examine their approaches and consider how they might be more open and transparent in their teaching when students offer criticism. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Let’s Plan Some Difficult Campus Conversations About Race
Colleges need to be more proactive in facilitating productive conversations about race and difference with diverse students, Natasha Warikoo writes. (The Hechinger Report)

Partner News

ACE: American College President Study 2017 (ACE)

Northern Arizona University: NAU partners with ACUE to Improve Student Success Through Instructional Excellence (NAU News)

West Virginia University: West Virginia University President Gordon Gee Seeks to Make West Virginia “Cool” (The Intelligencer)

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation: Final Kauffman Scholars Class Eager to Leave a Legacy (The Kansas City Star)

How do you know if your students are actually learning? Nothing is as important, but it’s still hard to tell, explains Elizabeth Barkley in this month’s Expert Series interview.

“Sometimes we forget that students need clear feedback on how they are learning,” says Barkley, a professor of music at Foothill College, a subject matter expert for ACUE’s Course, and coauthor of Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. “If we lose sight of this, their efforts to learn are haphazard and can be extremely inefficient, ineffective, and very frustrating.”

Essential to checking for student understanding is effective questioning, and Barkley shares how she designs questions to quickly assess which students are understanding the lesson. Read the interview, and share your thoughts or questions in the comments!

In Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, you write that the ability to provide evidence of what and how students are learning is increasingly important to stakeholders both inside and outside of the classroom. What do you mean by that?

EB: One of the biggest challenges for teachers is that they haven’t been trained to gather, analyze, and report on the kind of evidence required to document student learning or their own effectiveness in ways that are critical to different stakeholders. So we wrote this book to help faculty—including ourselves—understand how to design an assessment process that is efficient, effective, and seamlessly integrated with their teaching.

Perhaps the number one stakeholder is the student. Sometimes we forget that students need clear feedback on how they are learning. If we lose sight of this, their efforts to learn are haphazard and can be extremely inefficient, ineffective, and very frustrating.

Finally, as educators at the college and university level, we’re part of larger systems with other stakeholders who are interested in knowing how well students are progressing toward learning goals. For example, we can use the information we collect to provide evidence in our professional dossiers, to our institution’s assessment efforts, to external accrediting agencies, and even to the scholarship of teaching and learning. If we can share this information and build upon each others’ experience and knowledge, I find it can be much more productive than attempting to solve these problems alone.

What checking-for-understanding techniques do you prefer to use in your teaching?

EB: I’m a great fan of what we call snapshots. A snapshot is our term for when the instructor presents questions and possible answers during class, and students choose the answer that they believe is correct. As a teacher, you can make a quick visual assessment of class results and then modify accordingly.

Many of us think that we need clickers for this kind of technique, but you can also do it very effectively without technology. I’ve seen instructors have students point to different corners of the room to indicate their opinions and perspectives on a discussion topic. It provides great visual feedback in the moment, and it allows the instructor and the students to adjust course within the moment.

Video: Asking questions the right way is key to checking for student understanding

What is one learning assessment technique that you implement with your students?

EB: One of my favorites is to have students keep a “contemporary issues” journal. In that kind of an activity, students look for recent real-world events that are related to their coursework. Sometimes, it can be difficult for students to see the relevance of what they are learning in our classrooms, and this is a great way to challenge them to connect what they are doing in my course to the world around them.

What practices have you used to check for understanding? Let us know in the comments!

On the heels of a successful spring rollout, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system and ACUE presented their work to the state’s Board of Regents for Higher Education last week.

ACUE and the CSCU system partnered this year to prepare and credential faculty across four CSCU campuses: Eastern Connecticut State University, Housatonic Community College, Naugatuck Valley Community College, and Southern Connecticut State University. At Thursday’s meeting, Jane McBride Gates, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs of CSCU, and Penny MacCormack, Chief Academic Officer of ACUE, shared the results and provided their vision for how stronger instruction system-wide can help more students succeed.

Faculty who participated in the program improved their ability to implement a range of evidence-based practices across the course’s 25 modules. They reported that the content was relevant to their teaching and said they would recommend the course to other faculty. Students also noticed a positive difference in their learning experience.

“We know from decades of research that evidence-based teaching practices improve retention and graduation rates and narrow achievement gaps,” Gates said. “After seeing the results and hearing the enthusiastic response from educators this spring, we believe this has the potential to deliver unprecedented support to our faculty and be a key driver of improved student outcomes for the entire system.”

Attendees also got to hear directly from a faculty member who completed the course and one of her students. In videos, Housatonic Community College Professor Laura Turiano and Loretta Lloyd-Ebron explained how the class “came alive” with the implementation of a teaching technique that Turiano learned in ACUE’s course. Watch the videos below and read our earlier blog post on Housatonic here.

Video: Professor Laura Turiano on how the “jigsaw technique” increased student engagement

Video: Loretta Lloyd-Ebron describes her experience in Professor Turiano’s class

Faculty and students weren’t the only ones who had a positive experience. Campus leaders celebrated the accomplishments of their faculty through news releases and media coverage.

“I believe that the quality of teaching across CSCU’s campuses is the core of our work for preparing more of Connecticut’s citizens to thrive in the state’s global economy,” said Matt Fleury, Chairman of the Board of Regents for Higher Education. “Investments that support faculty and students are critical to our mission, and we are encouraged to see that our partnership with ACUE is already improving the teaching and learning experience.”

“It is an honor to present to Connecticut’s Board of Regents for Higher Education and share the exciting results from this past semester,” said MacCormack. “The passion and commitment that these educators show for their students is inspiring, and we look forward to continuing this work next semester.”

This week, resources and advice for working with diverse students, including first-generation and parent learners.

Building Family-Friendly Campuses
As the percentage of college students who are raising children climbs, colleges must collect data on age and parental status of students and take steps to ensure that they are meeting the needs of student parents, Melanie Kruvelis writes. (Higher Education Today)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Bonni Stachowiak provides a list of intriguing podcasts that delve into the growing research on teaching and learning in higher education. (Teaching in Higher Ed)

Flipping the Classroom as an Educational Tool
In this video, a former punk rocker and current professor describes how flipping the classroom—posting lectures online so students can watch them on their own time—is a way of bringing education to the students and giving them flexibility and choice in their learning. (Higher Ed Jobs)

Don’t Do It for Me: Encouraging Student Agency and Power
In describing how she reaches out to students who miss deadlines or blow off classes, Cathryn Bailey clarifies that she is not sending these reminders to solicit apologies, but to remind students that they have control of and are responsible for their own learning. (The Virtual Pedagogue)

Champion for Adult Students: Colleges Must Change How They Teach
Marie Cini describes ways instructors and institutions are rethinking their approach to higher education through such strategies as using Open Education Resources instead of more expensive textbooks to meet the needs of adult students. (EdSurge)

With Innovation, Colleges Fill the Skills Gap
Many colleges are developing programs to meet the needs of employers, including Miami Dade College, which offers a “stackable” approach to a data analytics degree, where students accumulate credentials as they move along the path to their eventual career. (The New York Times)

Paying It Forward to Graduation
Faculty should lend more support to first-generation college students by sharing resources and asking students to do the same, celebrating students’ strengths, and understanding that the definition of success may vary from student to student, Judith White writes. (Inside Higher Ed)

Partner News

Kansas City Scholars: ACUE and KC Scholars Kick Off Collaboration to Advance Great College Teaching (The Q Blog)

ACE: Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses (ACE)

California State University: The California State University Joins Coalition to Maintain U.S. Leadership on Climate Change (News Wise)

Housatonic Community College: Fairfield Community Foundation Hosts Community College Symposium (Bridgeport Patch)

Higher education leaders from across Kansas and Missouri convened in Kansas City last week for the launch of a new collaboration between ACUE and Kansas City Scholars that will promote student success through effective instruction. As part of the program initiative, ACUE has been engaged to prepare and credential over 300 faculty at KC Scholars network institutions for the upcoming academic year.

The kickoff meeting took place at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation headquarters and brought together provosts, deans, and other senior administrators committed to student success on their respective campuses. KC Scholars Executive Director Beth Tankersley-Bankhead helped facilitate a discussion about the role that effective college teaching must play in improving postsecondary attainment, and presented details about how KC Scholar members can participate.

KC Scholars has invited institutions to submit proposals that demonstrate how a partnership with ACUE will strengthen instruction and support institutional student success strategies. Selected institutions will prepare and credential faculty through ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, with financial support from the Kauffman Foundation.

“We are delighted to collaborate with KC Scholars and the Kauffman Foundation to strengthen instructional quality and provide unprecedented support to faculty at colleges and universities across Kansas and Missouri,” said ACUE Senior Advisor Benno Schmidt, who also presented at the meeting. “This initiative is a national model of collaboration among higher education, philanthropy, and ACUE, and we believe this sets the stage for a renaissance in great college teaching that will promote student success throughout the region.”

The Kauffman Foundation launched KC Scholars last year in collaboration with more than 70 community partners to expand its impact by further improving the educational attainment, economic independence, and quality of the workforce. In May, KC Scholars named its first scholarship recipients, which will grow to include than 600 students and adult learners. At scale, the program will support 2,000 college students every year.

ACUE’s online Course is aligned with the latest research in cognition and adult learning, and exceeds online learning standards as recognized by Quality Matters. Educators who satisfy Course requirements earn a credential endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE).

Colleges and universities in Kansas and Missouri played a critical role in helping ACUE build a program that was scalable, research-based, comprehensive, and of the highest quality. Faculty at the University of Missouri–Kansas City were among 500 educators from colleges and universities across the country to pilot ACUE’s Course. At Kansas State University, award-winning instructors welcomed ACUE’s film cameras into their classroom to capture exemplary instruction that is now featured throughout the Course.

This week, a Nobel Prize-winning professor advises institutions to implement research-based teaching methods and measure their impact on students’ learning, and instructors suggest that their peers use student evaluations to improve their teaching.

Teaching Lessons From the Road 
Penny MacCormack describes how faculty across the country, including John Pollard, Tara Lineweaver, José Bowen, Kristina Ruiz-Mesa, and others, helped her shape ACUE’s Course. (The Q Blog)

Hey Higher Ed, Why Not Focus on Teaching?
Undergraduate programs need to do more to measure the impact of teaching and use research-based methods in the classroom, Nobel Prize-winning Professor Carl Wieman says. (nprEd)

Reflective Teaching Three Ways
Anna Guarnera suggests that instructors reflect on their teaching successes and failures at the end of the semester and offers several methods for recording succinct observations about what went well and reminders about what to do differently in the future. (GradHacker)

No, Student Evaluations Aren’t “Worthless”
While acknowledging that student evaluations are an imperfect tool, David Gooblar points to ways instructors can use them to learn about the impact of their teaching and offers strategies for using the feedback to hone teaching methods. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Seeking Patterns and Making Meaning
Encouraging students to turn a critical eye to their own behavior through exercises like noticing patterns in their social media commentary can help them think more deeply about their actions and motivations, Sherri Spelic writes. (Hybrid Pedagogy)

Five Things Colleges Need to Do to Help Black and Latino Students
Strategies for improving the rate of college completion for black and Latino students—who have a lower rate of success than white and Asian students—include changing the faculty mindset so they have high expectations for minority students. (The Hechinger Report)

Knowledge Creation, Professional Development, and Conferences
Joshua Kim suggests that faculty consider attending conferences that provide opportunities for collaborating with others in the creation of something new rather than simply consuming existing information. (Technology and Learning)

Partner News

ACE: The Interrelatedness of Instructional Quality, Student Outcomes, and Institutional Finances (ACE)

University of Southern Mississippi: A Badge Will Give a Faculty Member a Boost (University Business)

Naugatuck Valley Community College: Naugatuck Valley Community College Honored with Major Grants to Support Collaboration with Waterbury High Schools (NVCC)

Miami Dade College: Miami Dade College Professor Creates STEM Workshop for Minority Girls in Homestead (MDC News)

When California State University, Los Angeles added a civic learning dimension to its general education curriculum last year, Elizabeth Crossman knew this would be an opportunity for her first-year students to become more engaged on their campus. Helping these students persist past their first year is at the heart of her work as an instructor and she knew that civic learning is a high-impact practice that teaches students to develop lifelong critical thinking skills.

A question remained. How would Crossman and her colleagues—campus wide—be prepared to embed civic learning projects into their courses, regardless of discipline?

Cal State LA’s Elizabeth Crossman

That question will take center stage on Friday at this year’s Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement Meeting in Baltimore. In the concurrent session, “Creating Assignments That Matter: How Cal State LA and ACUE Are Helping Faculty Develop Students’ Civic Values,” participants will learn how Cal State LA’s Center for Engagement, Service, and the Public Good, in partnership with ACUE, is preparing more faculty to incorporate civic learning assignments into their courses through a custom-designed online learning module. The interactive session will also allow attendees to experience the module.

As a featured speaker, Crossman will share how she learned to design and incorporate civic learning projects into her course, and the impact these projects have had on her students. We spoke with Crossman last week to hear about her teaching at Cal State LA and to get a preview of the session.

For those attending the conference, the session will take place on Friday, June 9 in Grand Ballroom Salon IV | 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. You can also join the conversation online by following the #CLDE17 hashtag.

How is civic learning a high-impact teaching practice that is particularly beneficial to first-year students?

EC: The classroom is really where we can best help students identify problems, think critically about these problems, and work together to come up with solutions. These are the skills that will prepare them to be involved and productive members in their communities and society as a whole.

And we should start teaching these skills early on, from the moment students step foot on campus. Our new freshmen need to get off to a good start, and studies show that if they don’t feel a connection to their campus community and faculty, then they are a lot more likely to drop out.

How did the civic learning module prepare you to integrate service learning projects into your teaching?

EC: A requirement at Cal State LA for all incoming freshmen is to take a life-long learning course. Starting last fall 2016, civic learning became a required component to these courses. This brought a big change to my course, Introduction to Higher Education. I definitely wasn’t that familiar with civic learning assignments, or how they could be effectively incorporated into the classroom. So taking ACUE’s civic learning module gave me the structure and tools I needed to create these assignments and implement them into my course. It gave me the foundation I needed, and it also brought me together with professors from other departments to learn how they were implementing civic learning into their courses.

How do you integrate service learning projects into your course?

EC: I start the course with exercises where the students get to know each other in the context of problem-solving activities. We start to brainstorm problems, then form into groups of three or four. Once they are in their groups, they have to identify a campus-based problem and create storyboards to visually map out all parts of the project. They have to break it up into an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Then they brainstorm what can be done to solve the problem, and I push them to provide actual substantial solutions. Why is this kind of solution needed? Is it sustainable? Is it feasible? They need to present realistic ideas that can have an impact. For instance, a lot of students identify parking on campus as a major problem, because there are a lot more people than there are spots. But their solution can’t simply be the construction of a major new parking lot facility. Where our campus is located in Los Angeles, there just isn’t enough space.

I also have them attend a town hall event held by the Center for Engagement, Service, and the Public Good. Attending this event counts toward their participation grades and it gives them an idea of how students in different majors are thinking about these projects.

Can you share an example of how students have been impacted by completing civic engagement projects?

EC: Last fall, a group of students came to me and said they wanted to do a short animated film about a problem. They completed a two-minute comedic strip that illustrated the frustrations that they, and other students, have had in dealing with different offices, like financial aid and the registrar. They showed students in long lines, students getting the run-around and bouncing from one office to the next. I know that for a lot of freshmen, this process is overwhelming. It can take forever, and the process can feel never-ending. The video captures this frustration in a creative and clear way.

Our administration values student feedback, especially from first-year students. Some students will say, “it’s not for me,” but we are working to identify problems and improve the experience to make sure they stay and complete their degree.