Effective Teaching and Classroom Management

Classroom management is influenced by demeanor, voice, and delivery by faculty. This helps to encourage voluntary compliance and good educational exchange. It is important for faculty to consider audience, the classroom surroundings, and the goals, backgrounds, and development influences from past educational experiences.

Classrooms are not natural settings. They are placed together, and it is important to influence this artificial environment and foster a sense of connectivity between faculty and students. Students focus on faculty expectations and associated boundaries. Transparency by faculty along the lines of syllabi, rubrics, and expectations are critical. Expectations should be rigorous, yet realistic. Students learn at different paces and have different motivations. They tend to have both academic and non-academic needs. Faculty are challenged to balance cookie-cutter assessments and pedagogy versus modifications that are tailored to needs and environment of students. This where teacher is more of an art as opposed to to a science. The best laid plans can often malfunction from term to term due to variables that are difficult to identify and subsequently adjust. Professional presence and appearance, credibility, rule setting, clear expectations, and appropriate interactions are critical. Instructors should understand that in the classroom they are the face of the organization--especially because faculty have the greatest frequency of contact with students.

The learning environment should be structured, but it should be loose enough to allow for adjustments based on student feedback and need. Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT's) can help to inform both. Instructional design should consider student typologies, achievement levels (high v. low), and student behavior manifestations on assessments and classroom behaviors. Faculty should consider lesson plans that will motivate students and incorporate their perspectives into the class. In design, faculty should think from the perspective of the student versus their perspective as the expert. Translation--how can I communicate rigorous material in laymen's terms that will facilitate deep understanding. Typical student typologies: high achievers, know it alls, johnny come lately, Zzzzzzz, chatty cathy, willy wonka (always carries food), text messaging accomplished, hygienically-challenged, the playboy, lady gaga (dresses provocatively), the perennial (show up on occasion), quiet, and quiet-confrontational.

Within this dynamic, faculty should maintain professionalism, manage self, diffuse and neutralize, and be respectful. Be aware that students are clients--treat them as such. Students want faculty to drop the book, stop being boring, be human/smile, be expressive, and use board/powerpoint sparingly. Grade papers efficiently and return in a timely fashion. When students are late, decenter self. Recognize motivation may be due to responsibilities or situations beyond their control. When students are withdrawn, recognize that the classroom environment may be intimidating to them.
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Effective classroom management and teaching strategies focus on students' strengths. All students want to succeed--but where they want to succeed varies. Major causes of disruptive behavior include anger, boredom, frustration. confusion/miscommunication, unrealistic expectations, and poor classroom management.

Faculty mindsets are important. They should view each semester as one of renewal, where they flush out the prior term and look forward to the possibilities rather than focus on the failures. Re-establish the goal that all students will learn and be retained. Faculty should view themselves as facilitators rather than teachers. This will shift the focus to learning rather than teaching. View students as allies, gems in the rough, and they are uninformed rather than malicious. In moments of challenge, use the available support structures that exist.

Faculty behavior is important. Be accessible and approachable. Learn the students' names and modify classroom setup to facilitate sharing. Avoid rows; use circles or group-based seating arrangements. Model the behaviors expected from students. Create a sense of community so students feel comfortable sharing. Consider distribution of Gardner's multiple intelligences. (See http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html) Try to structure class meetings with mini-lectures that take up a few moments. Emphasize class discussion and work to include all students. Try to provide personal anecdotes that relate to the lesson.

Faculty can build student self-confidence in various ways. Let them know they will likely earn the grade they are determined to achieve if they do the work (self-fulfilling prophecy). Provide the option for students to resubmit work. Use techniques that can help students visualize success. Preventative strategies include the communication of high, reasonable goals with due dates along with rationales. Commit essential information to writing. Define the consequences for violations.

Faculty can encourage student involvement through controlled shared ownership opportunities of class. For instance, allow students to deliver lessons, create and run instructional games, create assignment scoring rubrics, and create exams based on Bloom's Taxonomy.

Fosterind Deep Rooted Learning Through Technology

Research indicates blended courses lead to better student outccoes. Research on student expectations illustrate they desire and want increased level of digital integration. While many faculty embrace new technology, there are wide variances in faculty and student comfort with digital solutions. Even in the case of students who use technology to tweet, blog, or text, there is no guarantee that they feel comfortable with educational technology like LMS's. Research indicates that students tend to complete their homework most often from 8 pm to 11 pm. When students do not understand their assignments, it becomes problematic for them to get help. E-learning applications and online tutoring can help students when faculty and campus resources are not available. Smarthinking data shows greatest usage between 9pm and 1am.

Transitioning from Industry to the Classroom: Building Faculty to Become Better Teachers and Learners

There are a multitude of transitional challenges as faculty enter higher ed., especially a proprietary institution such as Bryant & Stratton College. These include assessment, ensuring pedagogy focuses on active versus passive, lecture-based classrooms, and acculturation into career education. Challenges also include the high-paced environment, the spectrum of student needs and academic preparedness, negotiating the generational gaps and associated differences in teaching and learning needs, and the ability to tie back learning to the real world career environment students aspire towards. Faculty members cite various motivations for this transition to higher education. Most cite a love of learning and an interest in teaching students who will contribute to the careers of tomorrow.

Strategies exist to help new faculty transition, though. These include enculturating the faculty into the college culture, its mission, and its values. Provide instruction on how faculty can develop habits of highly effective teachers, and offer guidance on effective strategies to use technology and other techniques that enhance teaching and learning. Industry experience is important, yet higher education requires teaching rather than presenting. Content expertise must be balanced with effective strategies that involve students actively in the class. Teaching methodologies and classroom management techniques that faculty learn must be research-based. There should be a balance between theoretical underpinnings of the technique as well as practical methodologies that faculty can use to incorporate these techniques.

Many colleges require faculty to attend new faculty orientations and faculty development workshops. New faculty must attend orientations within first few terms of employment. They must also attend continuing faculty development initiatives to continue calibrating them towards effective teaching strategies. Also, new faculty transition more efficiently when the college provides best practice syllabi, assessments, and lesson plans. Assessment should be summative and formative, and feedback opportunities through assessment should occur frequently and should begin early in the term. They should complete assessments throughout the term that vary in form and scope. New faculty feedback requests longer training sessions (three hours) and follow up opportunities that provide more granular faculty development workshops about teaching strategies and assessment.

Mentors are also critical to faculty development. Bozeman and Freely argue this is awesome an informal activity that transmits knowledge, social capital, and psychosocial support. Communication events are usually face-to-face and occur in sustained periods of time. The mentor has significant relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience and a protege who is perceived to have less (2007, p.731). When mentors establish a good relationship, classroom observations by the mentor become a more comfortable experience.

It is important for faculty to view observations and performance reviews as an opportunity to learn--both by the faculty member and the observer. When feedback is grounded in theory, principles, and best practices, both parties learn and improve their teaching effectiveness. It is about helping faculty rather than catching faculty. During the feedback process, faculty should understand their effectiveness impacts the Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) and therefore the college's ability to meet the vision and strategic plan of the college.

Suggested Teaching Methodologies Workshop Topics

• Characteristics of highly effective teachers
• Building Connections with students
• Establishing a Culture for Learning in the First Weeks
• Techniques for Monitoring Understanding
• Increase Student Participation
• Means to Organize Effective Instruction
  

Optimizing Teaching, Learning, and Service

What defines student success in career education?

1) Graduation
a. Associate
i. SUNY 2 year grad rate: 12.7%; 3 year grad rate: 24.9%
ii. CUNY 2 year grad rate: 2.3%; 3 year grad rate: 10.8% (15,000 students for both rates)
iii. Independent rate: 2 year grad rate: 31.4%; 3 year grad rate: 38.9%
b. Proprietary: 2 year grad rate: 22.2%; 3 year grad rate: 27.4%b. Baccalaureate
i. SUNY 4 year rate:61.2%; 6 year rate: 65%
ii. CUNY 4 year rate: 49.6%; 6 year rate: 57.6%
iii. Independent: 4 year rate: 62.4%; 6 year rate 68.6%
iv. Proprietary: 4 year rate 56.5%; 6 year rate 60.8%
2) Employment and further education
3) Low student loan default rates
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What defines the students who currently attend college?
Baby Boomers
Post War boom and abundance
Value money over benefits
Created the sixty-hour work week
Have a strong connection to self
Seek challenges that cement status
First generation who had to work harder to be economically better off than their parents
Generation X
Latch key kids marked by freedom and independence
Very independent since both parents work
View freedom as ultimate reward
Prioritize work and family life—seek shorter work days
Value interesting work and self development

Millennials
Everyone is a winner
Accustomed to collaboration
Play by own rules
Socially conscious
Want to know why and how work has meaning to them
Want to know the meaning of their work
“One should be able to do what he/she wants if he/she believes there are no consequences to anyone.”
Academic manifestations:
Lateness
Ignore syllabus and school rules
Expect rules to be waived or rewritten for them as well as accommodations
Means to Best Engage Millennials
Greater need for interaction
Higher expectation for services (counseling, ADA accommodations, tutoring, walk-in services, and a “now” versus “later” mentality)
Illustrate how assignments and courses relate to student, career, and the greater world
Want flexibility in their lives (class, work, internships, final exams). Need to explain how desired flexibility may burden others, why things are done in a certain way, and listen to their reasons.
Provide feedback that is appropriate. Understand that negative feedback is not known to Millennials. Even wrong answers are right. Provide feedback about what is right and what is wrong and why.
Understand some students are outliers who resemble depression-era traditional students due to low socioeconomic roots. Parents have high expectations, are career and money driven, and have strong family connections. Tend to be community oriented. These students tend not to use students—often because they are unaware of them and how these resources can help. Challenge in classroom is integrating outliers with millennials.
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Teaching and Learning
Differentiated learning: paradigm where teachers make pedagogical and methodological accommodations to meet the needs of students in order to build upon their strengths and remedy academic skills gaps.
Consider adjustment to classroom dynamics that place students into groups to decenter the instructor and focus learning emphasis on students. Make classroom as interactive and technologically appropriate as possible.
Consider incorporation of technology into lessons that traditionally considered disruptive (i.e., cellphones). How can these be used as classroom resources?
Instructional Mantra: All students can learn.

Harris N. Miller keynote: Ensuring Student Success through Quality and Service

Photo by Jeff Tredo

Focus of career education on quality and service. 70 to 80 million people do not have college degrees; yet a majority of career opportunities requires a college degree. Evidence suggests a significant lack in the near future of well-prepared college graduates eligible for positions in the workforce. Higher education requires a balanced influence of research institutions, career colleges, liberal arts colleges, and universities. Knowledge is an important resource, more so than capital, to economic growth. Therefore, it is of critical importance that resources exist to educate what is an increasingly diversified student population from a demographic perspective and socioeconomic perspective. More adults are in higher education thanks to higher workforce demands that require additional skills. This means more content. With more students, there is a greater demand for schools and alternative delivery modes within higher education. Career Colleges have developed significantly because they fill needs associated with working adults, flexible schedules, and practical, career-based training not available via traditional higher education institutions. For additional information, see this article: http://chronicle.com/article/Number-of-Workers-With-College/65948/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
In 2010, 1 in 4 students are taking at least one online course. Total online enrollment is in the millions. While the U.S. spends most per capita in higher education, we are falling behind our European and Asian counterparts. Foreign countries that have made similar investments have seen their GDP grow by 20-30 times that before such education. Due to globalization, higher skill sets are needed in the U.S. workforce. Manufacturing jobs continue to decline while knowledge workers thrive. Middle class jobs require higher education. Today’s unemployment rates reflect recession, but globalization, skills deficits, and structural changes drive these rates as well. Government forecasts 8 of the 20 fastest growing jobs require less than a four-degree. Growth of technology and associated globalization requires a trained workforce; otherwise, those positions will end up outsourced to other nations. In some instances, technologies exist but it cannot be optimized due to a lack of skilled labor. Career Colleges have a track record of an ability to adapt to market demands more quickly. Career Colleges have better graduation rates than community colleges and serve students who have chosen their career path. Now represent 9% of higher education population; 75% work while attending college. Critics question the value of career education, the debt load for vulnerable students, aggressive recruitment practices, and the amount of federal student aid spent on career education. Additional criticisms involve rigor and effectiveness of oversight, preparedness of students for college work, and the motivations of for-profit enterprises in higher education: is there the right balance between profit and education? The Department of Education wants to establish a gainful employment definition and associated metric, a new metric for quality, and an appropriate debt to earning metric. These proposals put 300,000 students at risk nationwide. It would disproportionately affect the law enforcement and health fields, as well as minorities and women.
Given these increasing challenges, it is critical to focus on student learning outcomes, measure successes via qualitative and quantitative data, and use this evidence to change external perceptions. It is important to rely on credible, independent research, and advanced sector self-regulation. Also, the career college sector should entice the voice of alums to testify to the quality of career education and their successes, as well as employers who hire these graduates to validate the quality of education these students receive. There are benefits to more prescriptive approaches to education, its benefits to students and employers, and promote pedagogical innovations. Communicate the need for lifelong learning given the rapidly changing workforce dynamics. “Learning to learn” is a critical skill for students to possess along with the programs they choose to study. It is important to place emphasis on retention, graduation, and placement rates, as well as curriculums that create a culture of excellence that empower students. If we position career education correctly, career colleges can become a critical generator towards America’s return to the most educated country in the world.

We made it!!!

Well, after a beautiful ride through Western and Central New York State, we sit in the Otesaga Hotel. The view and the hotel are beautiful. We're sitting in the ballroom in the main lobby awaiting a presentation Harris Miller, who is the President and CEO of the Career College Association. Stay tuned... I'll give you a blog afterward with information and impressions. I'll post so photos later as well.

Association of Proprietary Colleges (APC) Conference in Cooperstown, NY

Greetings, colleagues. Check back here frequently to check information as I blog from the APC Conference, whose general focus will be on student success and effective teaching. I hope to share a ton of new strategies that I learn throughout throughout the conference.