The Center for Teaching & Learning

Hello and welcome to the new year! Although 2021 is off to a rough start, I am hopeful that it will still be far superior to 2020 for a myriad of reasons. Speaking of which, despite the panoply of stressors 2020 brought, WE DID IT! Hood’s faculty did not just survive what many have called the strangest, most challenging semester on record, but we also managed to create a robust learning experience for our students amidst a global pandemic—an experience that will continue to evolve and reshape how we engage our students with valuable content both in and out of the classroom. As part of those “new frontiers in student engagement,” I hope you’ll join your colleagues this Friday from 1-4 PM for a pre-semester CTL workshop: Operation Engagement. This live/virtual event has been planned based on faculty feedback from fall teaching. Whether you classify yourself as an experienced educator or feel like a novice in this pandemic setting, there will be something for you this Friday. See more workshop details in our SCHEDULED section below. In addition, please join us for the CTL Book-Club Break every Tuesday in January starting tomorrow (January 12 @ noon)—pull up a chair, bring your lunch and engage with your faculty colleagues on strategies discussed in Make It Stick. I hope to see you at ALL of these wonderful CTL opportunities—designed by and for Hood faculty!

Dr. Henry earned a B.S. in Biology, an M.S. in Public Health, and most recently her doctorate in public health from from Morgan State University. She has been teaching and working in the field of public health for more than ten years and brings a wealth of experience to our program. Dr. Henry has conducted multiple community-based research projects in public health in underserved regions of Maryland and has provided these valuable high-impact learning experiences to her students. Dr. Henry is well-positioned to lead our new public health degree program! Outside of work, Dr. Henry enjoys traveling (while not in the pandemic), leisurely reading, spending time with family, and learning through new experiences. Drop a #HoodHello to Sherita at henrys@hood.edu.

Daniel Sierra-Sosa was born in Medellin, Colombia and earned his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Science, School of Physics at National University of La Plata, Argentina. His research interests are focused on Data Analytics, Applied Machine Learning Techniques and Quantum Computing. He is an active researcher in the field of Quantum Computing, medical imaging and data analysis. In the medical imaging field, his research has been done on topics such as recognition and segmentation using both image analysis and Deep Learning techniques. In data analytics, he has been researching on the assessment and outcome prediction from patients in healthcare facilities. His research results have been published in well-known journals. Dr. Sierra-Sosa is an Instructor in the IBM Skills Academy in the topics Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing. Drop a welcome note to Daniel at sierra-sosa@hood.edu.

"Online learning has helped rescue higher education from the pandemic and from natural disasters, wars and untold disasters. Will it now inject higher ed into the fourth industrial revolution?" Read the full article here.

by Kaitlyn May, Interlibrary Loan Manager

The Beneficial-Hodson Library and Learning Commons is still supporting our students, staff, and faculty through a wide variety of virtual services. The library continues to be adaptive and flexible with new innovations in learning and research; the pandemic has highlighted the importance of the shifts we’ve made in our services! While traditional print course reserves are not currently a viable option, new and existing digital resources are available, such as curated, discipline-focused streaming media from databases like AVON and QwestTV. We’ve been able to provide streaming media through Panopto for films owned by the library in DVD format and last semester we added Swank Digital Campus which enables us to build a catalog of 25 films that can be used for classes only. We continue to offer the same interlibrary loan services we always have, borrowing from over 54,000 libraries around the world. Our staff remains at your service, answering questions and scheduling research consultations through an even greater number of modalities: email, telephone, online chat, and video conferencing. For all the ways to reach us, visit our website at www.hood.edu/library.

"Students who use emojis in their emails and write “heeeeelp!” in the subject line do not necessarily know better. Paul Corrigan and Cameron Hunt McNabb present a way for professors to help such students." Read the full essay here.

"Higher education as a system seems to be a bystander to the assault on democracy, argues William G. Tierney. Ultimately, democracy is about providing hope and enabling a better tomorrow. The heart of enabling hope is higher education, through fact, argumentation and preparation for participation in civic -- and civil -- dialogue." Read the full article here.

"The pandemic has forced institutions to reckon finally with the fundamental issues of the true value of higher education from a student's perspective."

Read the full article here.

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) condemns all forms of systemic racism, bias, and aggression against Black people, indigenous peoples, people of color, and those of marginalized genders, as well as discrimination based on socioeconomic status. We understand that excellence in teaching, by definition, must reflect our shared humanity and promote inclusive practices such as:

• being conscious of biases, racial abuse, micro-aggressions, and those who are minimized or left out;
• understanding and supporting those underrepresented in our Hood community; and
• promoting ways to actively foster equity, diversity and inclusion in our classrooms, research, and publications.

The CTL is determined to raise awareness of all those who have been systematically oppressed and call upon Hood faculty to join us in this commitment to create a more inclusive world. As members of the CTL Advisory Board, we stand united and affirm that Black Lives Matter.

Careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are one of the fastest-growing areas of work in the United States, yet racial and gender disparities remain in STEM occupations. A recent study examining reasons for such disparities shows the overall racial climate on a college campus -- informed by experiences of racial microaggressions -- is a contributing factor in the lack of representation of students of color in STEM education programs." Read the full article here.

"In The Chicana/o/x Dream: Hope, Resistance and Educational Success (Harvard Education Press), students are center stage. Interviews with them are the basis for the authors' suggestions about community colleges and four-year institutions. The authors discuss the new book." Read the full article here.

Here's a list of great resources on online, hybrid, and bimodal teaching to consult as you’re thinking about your spring syllabi! It's easy to feel overwhelmed by all the advice out there, so I've tried to collate the resources that offer the best advice. Have a question? Just email me and I’m happy to discuss!

Happy New Year, colleagues! I am part of a group called Motivation in Higher Education: Resources, Strategies and Tips for Motivating Learners in Higher Education. As part of that group, I want to share a recent article as you prepare for spring courses:

Tip 1: Adopt the term "physical distancing"

Researchers, scientists, and policymakers around the globe all agree that physical distance is necessary to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But being physically apart does not have to mean being socially disconnected. While it is common for people to withdraw or turn inward in times of stress, isolation from support networks and communities can be damaging to our overall well-being. The World Health Organization has now suggested that we use the term "physical distancing" rather than "social distancing." We know from research on eyewitness testimony that the words and labels we choose matter greatly. By simply changing "social" to "physical," we can change the way we think and feel. And, in this case, we, as educators, can use this teachable moment as a quick opportunity to reach out to our students to promote their sense of belonging.

Tip 2: Affirm social inclusion with acts of kindness

During this pandemic, the daily stressors we all experience can take on added weight, which can significantly impact whether or not we feel like we belong. As humans, we are constantly on the search for cues of kindness that affirm our inclusion. So how can you send cues of kindness? One suggestion is to take the time to say (or write or text) 3 nice things per day. Not only do these small kindnesses remind others that they are still a part of your community, but they also benefit your own health. Some ways to send messages of inclusion include:

• Email or call a student to check in and let them know that you miss them, particularly if they haven't been coming to class. Check out these email templates and communication guidelines to help you reach out to your students.
  
• Text a colleague following their Zoom webinar to tell them what went well.
• Demonstrate social support and empathy by asking about someone's day and then practice active listening.

Five ways to conserve and optimize Hood’s limited cloud storage space on Blackboard:

The Pandemic has offered many technical challenges to our world and this year we have seen an exponential increase in the use of Blackboard and the consumption of storage space on that system. To help Faculty make more efficient use of Hood’s limited Blackboard storage space for course sites. The CTL would like to offer a few ways that we feel will help save space, optimize current course content items, make your content easier to manage over time and place that content in the most optimized system for it to be viewed and accessed by students. Please consider these five important strategies and click here for a brief overview of this topic from Blackboard Support:

1. Put your audio and video files on the Panopto Video Content Management System:
   IT has purchased new technologies like Panopto for the specific management of audio and video content. Panopto offers Hood faculty unlimited storage for Zoom recordings, recorded screen capture and presentations with narration and pre-recorded videos or available video content that can be uploaded. All these different video and audio resource examples are optimized inside of the Panopto system, where a simple video file upload to Blackboard consumes a tremendous amount of space typically and is not delivered in a manner that is optimized for viewers. To learn more about how you can leverage Panopto for audio and video file storage and delivery, click here.
   
   
2. Determine the current size of your Blackboard course site:
   Blackboard sites do not have unlimited storage space to be clear. The maximum amount of storage per site is currently 2 GB. Typically, course sites will use from 50 MB to 500 MB on average in most terms per course site. To determine the current course site storage quota consumption, faculty can look at this number in the course Content Collection area. To learn more about how you can review your Blackboard course site quota and size, click here.
   
   
3. Audit your Blackboard course site content:
   Most faculty are unaware of the fact that behind the links to attached and uploaded course site content in areas like “Course Documents.” If you have not looked at the Content Collection area in your course site, please do so. You may have duplicate files and other old files from previous course copies such as old syllabi or documents and presentations that you are not aware of. Faculty may not know that, when they remove a link to attached or uploaded content like an announcement or a link in Course Documents, the link is removed, but not the content. If faculty do see duplicate or deleted files associated with old links, that the newest file typically has a “(1)” at the end of the file to indicate the new copy. Also, Blackboard has a safeguard measure to prevent you from removing linked content in your course site if you accidentally select it for deletion. You will have to confirm that you want to remove that content before you can delete it. This area also lets you sort by file size to see if you have files that are very large (greater than 100 MB) that could be either uploaded to Panopto (Audio or Video files) or PowerPoint files that could be stored and managed in an Office 365 OneDrive folder. To learn more about how you can review and audit your Blackboard Course Content Collection, click here.
   
   
4. Use Office 365 OneDrive Folders and File links on Blackboard:
   IT wants to encourage the expanded use of the Office 365 OneDrive in conjunction with Blackboard. OneDrive unlike Blackboard’s Course Content Collection storage has two advantages. The first advantage is that content linked to from Blackboard on OneDrive does not take up space in our limited Blackboard cloud storage. The second advantage is that content linked to OneDrive does not require faculty to replace a file that needed a correction or update with a new one on Blackboard. Once the link to a folder or an item is established one time, that makes it very easy to dynamically edit this content by a faculty member. OneDrive unlike Blackboard’s Course Content Collection also provides the ability to have students and faculty work in real-time on a shared document if editing permissions to the OneDrive item is authorized. To learn more about how you can link to content on your OneDrive from Blackboard, click here.
   
   
5. Update old Microsoft Office file types with new ones and compress embedded media files to remove unneeded large files from your Blackboard course site storage:
   Many faculty have been using the same .doc Word file or the same .ppt PowerPoint slides for many years. These files get edited for new dates, revised content, and other typical reasons from use case to use case. What faculty may not realize is that these old files are taking up twice as much space or more versus their modern equivalents like a .docx Word file or a .pptx PowerPoint file. Saving these old file formats to new ones allows for additional features and sometimes significant file size reductions. Additionally, these old file formats do not provide for easy compression of embedded media like audio narrations and video clips. Programs like Word and PowerPoint now have excellent compression tools that allow faculty to compress and convert old media types to new media types. This allows for significant file size reduction if your 500 MB PowerPoint .ppt file with embedded video clips can be reduced to a 200 MB or less .pptx file without losing video quality. This is an exercise worth exploring to help reduce your content storage footprint on Blackboard. To learn more about how you can upgrade files to newer versions and compress embedded media, click here.

Do you have a question about technology or teaching? Send an email to CTL@hood.edu, and on every Friday, we'll answer the question most broadly applicable across departments. When you email your question, let us know if you'd like to remain anonymous, use a fun sign-off moniker of your choosing (akin to the Dear Abby column), or list your name. All questions welcomed!

Email: ctl@hood.edu
Website: www.hood.edu/CTL
Location: Hood College, Rosemont Avenue, Frederick, MD, USA
Phone: (301) 663-3131