By Caleb Fowler, Folsom Lake College professor of computer information science
I was one of the original guinea pigs of the first 50, and now I’m a facilitator. Like many of you, I’ve been doing this for a long time. And when I first started, I did what everyone did: I followed my instructors.
It’s interesting today we talk about changing mindsets, because that’s exactly what I did. The tools I learned from this course allowed me to do two things: One, take a step back and pay attention to the objectives I was trying to accomplish. If you’re worried about the next slide, you’re not focused on the SLO. And, second, it gave me a bunch of tools I can put in my toolbox.
The attitude change was I stopped thinking of myself as the expert and started thinking of myself as a DJ. I pull in the PowerPoints like discs and I trade them in and out and see how my students respond and then adjust.
The good news is that it seems to be working in my classes. That slide you saw with the outcomes, I saw that. The students who will get As and Bs will likely always get As and Bs. But it’s the students at the other end of the spectrum I saw the biggest change with.
ACUE has been transformative—I can say that. It has completely changed the way I think. I evangelize whenever I can because I believe it’s what we need for the future. With all the changes happening in the community college system, it’s what we need in order to keep delivering on our promise.