Tag: grading oasis

Fall 2018 Grading Oasis

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Another Tuesday Tip coming a day early to help…

Starting today, MLIB 459 will have free hot coffee, decaf, hot tea, snacks and fresh fruit for faculty (including T/TT and lecturers) from 8am-5pm Monday-Friday. Drop in at your leisure to grade, read, write, or do whatever you need to get done. We’ve updated the space with some new décor and the amazing view is always refreshing. Our student assistant, Ariana, may be available to assist with some grading as long as student names are not visible.

Best wishes to you for a smooth finish to the semester!

For more information, visit www.csuchico.edu/fdev.

Embrace the Crescendo

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The stress of a 16-week semester resembles a musical crescendo and can feel like this . We begin the term feeling excited and open to new challenges. By week 8, we’re feeling intellectually agile and in sync with students. By week 16, we’re revving up to peak volume knowing that a holiday rest is looming. Such is the rhythm of academic life. It can be miserable or it can be magnificent depending on how we choose to view it. Fortunately, we get to decide which perspective to view. One positive perspective is that a busy final exam week can be an opportunity to role model time management and self-care techniques for students who are also experiencing significant anxiety this week. What self-care techniques do you use during finals week…petting dogs, playing with your kids, meditation, eating good food, walking, writing in a gratitude journal, watching cats chase laser pointers on YouTube? Whatever you do to experience joy and fulfillment during this busy week, consider sharing your techniques with students. They’ll likely do better on exams and learn to positively embrace the challenge.

2 reminders…

  • The grading oasis (MLIB 459) with coffee, snacks, and grading assistance is open 8-5 all week.
  • Blackboard will be down Dec 22-25

Get it Done!

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Many of us will do anything to avoid grading. If you have a to-do list you need to get through and avoiding grading is that push you need to clean the gutters, finish your shopping, or clean the grout in your bathroom please disregard this email. If you are someone who actually wants to get your grading done read on!

The Faculty Grading Oasis is open and we want to help you finish your grading. Here is what we have to offer.

grading-oasis

  1. Fresh coffee, creamer, tea, and snacks.
  2. Space away from your office where no one will knock on your door, and you can get grading done.
  3. Help from our student staff Monday-Thursday 8-5. They can alphabetize exams, grade exams with direction (as long as the student name is hidden), and help with clerical tasks.
  4. Accountability from each other and from admin extraordinaire Michelle Wysocki, who comes in to MLIB 459 to peer at you with her judging eyes if you are off task.

Dr. Sara Cooper has provided additional Book in Common Material. Check out this section of the CELT page for regular synopsis updates, discussion questions, and other resources.

Got feedback on this tip? Got an idea for a tip? Send it along. Check out our new and improved wordpress site here.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Caffeinated Cats podcast! Our third episode of the Fall is out now! Mary, Tracy, and I explore athletics at Chico and beyond in the aptly titled “locker room talk.” Link to it on soundcloud, itunes, overcast, or follow the podcast on facebook.

Use this one weird trick to finish all your grading in one day!

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Today’s tip is a three-parter, and while I lack the magic solution you may have craved when you opened this email, there is a lesson to be learned; keep reading to find out!

Part One: Audience analysis, perspective taking, teaching empathy—these are all variations on similar teaching practices that cut across all disciplines. In a recent Teaching in Higher Ed podcast about this topic I was struck by one particular example. One of the guests who teaches Android application development dramatically improved his class by incorporating perspective taking and directing his students to start from the consumer perspective and design the application around their needs rather than starting with the technology. It was a powerful example because it illustrated to me the extreme utility of perspective taking, regardless of discipline. In this forum I have often urged you to think about things from the perspective of your students; this is a little different as we are trying to get our students to engage in that same practice. This practice is powerful because it is practical and personally transformative. In a world increasingly customized to our own perspectives and tastes it is easy to assume other people will adjust to us, when in reality we have to start by understanding them.

Part Two: Friday is the deadline for our Spring Programming including Faculty Learning Communities for: Write your article in 12 weeks, We are a Hispanic Serving Institution, Now What?, Improve Your Teaching Practice, Quality Online Learning and Teaching, and the Leadership Initiative. Make Spring a great semester, and get involved with a rewarding community.

Part Three: The Faculty Grading Oasis is as close to “one weird trick” as you are going to get and we will be in full effect during finals week. See the flyer below for details.

grading-oasis-fall-2016-6

Dr. Sara Cooper has provided additional Book in Common Material. Check out this section of the CELT page for regular synopsis updates, discussion questions, and other resources.

Got feedback on this tip? Got an idea for a tip? Send it along. Check out our new and improved wordpress site here.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Caffeinated Cats podcast! Our third episode of the Fall is out now! Mary, Tracy, and I explore athletics at Chico and beyond in the aptly titled “locker room talk.” Link to it on soundcloud, itunes, overcast, or follow the podcast on facebook.

Get by with a little help from your friends

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Get by with a little help from your friends at Faculty Development this week. Maybe you don’t consider us friends, “colleagues” maybe? How about “acquaintances with snacks”?

This week we are running the Faculty Grading Oasis in MLIB 458 and we would love to see you in the office. We offer fresh coffee, snacks, a place outside your normal office, and students to assist you with grading/clerical tasks. Our schedule this week is:

Tuesday Open 8-12, 1-5, Student help 1-5

Wednesday Open 8-5, Student help 8-10:30, 11-5

Thursday Open 8-2, Student help 8-2

Friday Open 8-11:30, Student help 8-11 (we are working on the afternoon schedule)

Without further procrastination, your top 10 reasons for visiting the faculty grading oasis (revised from Fall).

  1. Students studying on the 4th floor are more stressed than you are, feel better by proxy.
  2. No one knocks on our door asking to redo an assignment from early February.
  3. Student workers to help with basic tasks like alphabetizing (remember to be FERPA compliant).
  4. We have dedicated dual monitor workstations you can use and print from. They are probably newer than the post-war ENIAC surplus machine you are reading this on.
  5. Get away from that judgy colleague who already has all their grading done.
  6. Experience one of the only offices on campus where control of the thermostat is possible.
  7. Our office has windows, you know the magical devices that allow light to come in.
  8. We are closer to Common Grounds than where you normally work.
  9. Our office is now is now 173 4 days since our last Chupacabra attack. You will probably possibly be safe.
  10. Have you ever seen the library vaccum Zamboni machine? Need I say more?

Got feedback on this tip? Leave a comment or email it to us. Got an idea for a tip? Send it along.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Caffeinated Cats podcast! The newest episode is on the strike that wasn’t. Link to it on soundcloud, itunes, overcast, or follow the podcast on facebook. 

Take the long view

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This is not the time in the semester when we usually think about planning ahead. We are usually pushing through those last few portfolios, finalizing our cumulative exam, or wondering how much coffee the human body can consume during 24 hours and still function normally. I want to encourage you to take 15 minutes to take a longer view of your work at Chico.

I want you to think about teaching and learning in relation to three events/deadlines this week and invest in yourself by taking advantage of them.

  1. How many great student ideas find their final destination on your desk or in gradebook and never see the light of day? One solution that helps showcase student ideas while also helping us with assessment and content management are ePortfolios. The ePortfolio assessment team is bringing vendors to campus on Wednesday and there will be examples of current ePortfolio work on campus. These platforms can be powerful in promoting teaching and learning, they can also help students transition to the workforce. Find out more about the event here. If you are unable to attend, but want more information visit http://www.csuchico.edu/eportfolios/.
  1. One of our most popular programs in Faculty Development is the article in 12 weeks faculty learning community. Chris Fosen leads interdisciplinary groups through encouragement and mutual accountability toward publication. This program is popular because it works. The participants in the past three semesters have almost all met their goals and some have utilized the lessons learned to publish multiple articles. The deadline for Fall 2016 participation is this Friday (5/13).The application process is straight forward and brief. Writing can be a real challenge during the semester, take advantage of this proven program to get the work done.
  2. The CELT conference submission deadline has been extended to 5/13 at 5pm. The conference is a great opportunity to share your own innovations and learn from others. There is no cost to participants and the audience numbers (we averaged 14 per session in 2015) are solid. We welcome submissions from faculty, students, and staff. Take a few minutes to submit an abstract or coordinate with colleagues on a topic, it will be worth your time.

One last reminder, the Faculty Grading Oasis will be available to you again this semester. We will have fresh coffee, snacks, and our student staff will be available to you to help with grading as long as schedules and FERPA guidelines permit. Come see us in MLIB 458 next week and get some help!

Got feedback on this tip? Leave a comment or email it to us. Got an idea for a tip? Send it along.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Caffeinated Cats podcast! The newest episode is on the strike that wasn’t. Link to it on soundcloud, itunes, overcast, or follow the podcast on facebook.

 

End of the year

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Here we are: Not much left but the emergency extra credit requests. I hope it has been a gratifying year, whether you teach one class, have just started on the tenure track, or have been here long enough to have known some of those new colleagues when they were your students.

Just two reminders today:

  • As it was last semester, MLIB 458 will be open as a Faculty Grading Oasis next week for your grading and refueling pleasure. Coffee, tea, and snacks (healthy and otherwise—I’m not your mother) are on us, and we’ll have student assistants available to help with alphabetizing, grade recording, objective scoring, and other clerical tasks. Drop in Monday through Thursday 8 to 4, and Friday 8 to 12.
  • Remember to complete the Campus Climate Survey. It’s been a long year, and there are important matters on which to be heard. The faculty survey can be found here: https://classclimate.csuchico.edu/classclimate/online.php?p=FACULTY.  The deadline for responses is 11 PM on May 15.

It’s been my pleasure to act as Interim Director of Faculty Development this year, not least because I got a good view of the incredibly varied and innovative work of my colleagues across campus. We have too few opportunities for literary scholars to work with management experts, volcanologists with political scientists, education theorists with engineers. It’s been rewarding to see this happen in CELT workshops and conference sessions, Article-Writing FLCs, Women’s Leadership Roundtables, Academy e-Learning cohort meetings, and in the many informal conversations I get to listen in on here in MLIB 458. Watch for more opportunities for this kind of connection-making next year, when I look forward to rejoining you as a full-time member of the faculty.

*  Authored by Dr. Katherine McCarthy.