Tag: workshop

Celebrate the Earth

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Compiled by Rebecca Nelson, Admin Analyst/Specialist (ranelson@csuchico.edu)

Join us in celebrating Earth Day on 4/22 and Earth Month throughout April, along with continuing efforts throughout the year to support environmental sustainability and resiliency. In Faculty Development, we are passionate about this work and have been proud sponsors of the Teaching Climate Change Resilience FLC series. These events are enrichment opportunities for ourselves and our students. We hope you find something here that resonates with you and what you teach.

Earth Day is an internationally recognized holiday to raise awareness, inspire change, and foster a deeper connection with nature. The Associated Students (AS) will be hosting an Earth Day Festival on Monday, April 22nd from 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. at Trinity Commons. Visit the AS Sustainability program webpage for more information.

Extend your Earth Day celebrations into the weekend by signing up to volunteer at the 2024 Chico Spring Clean Day on Saturday, April 20th from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. at Hooker Oak Park and attending the Butte Environmental Council’s Endangered Species Faire on Saturday, April 20th from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Attend a public talk on Thursday, April 25th from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at the Recital Hall as we welcome Dr. Sarah Ray (Cal Poly Humboldt) and Dr. Jennifer Atkinson (University of Washington Bothell) for a distinguished visiting professor public lecture to discuss the pre-release of their book, The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World, an easy-to-use field guide for teaching on climate injustice and building resilience in your students—and yourself—in an age of crisis. Their talk will be followed by a book signing and reception.

Watch The Climate Baby Dilemma, a film written, directed, and produced by award-winning filmmaker Victoria Lean. We were honored to host the international university film premiere of The Climate Baby Dilemma in March and have purchased digital access to the full film for Chico State through the Meriam Library.

Explore the Butte Resilience Collaborative vision for a resilient community through collaboration, communication, and connectedness throughout the year.

Visit the Teaching Climate Change and Resilience (TCCR) webpage for additional information and resources.

Upcoming events and announcements:

Zach Justus     
Director of Faculty Development
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Google Voice/Text: 530-487-4150

Workshop and Workload

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Ever wish you could get some preliminary help grading? Tired of drafting your own slide decks and visuals? Do you daydream about endless question sets to diversify your Canvas quizzes? Trying to prioritize your research, but having trouble putting resources and timelines together? We have a workshop for you! Join us today, March 12th from 12-1:30 p.m. in Selvesters and on Zoom for an AI workshop about tools to help with your workflow. Visit the FDEV website for full details. This is an investment of time, but it will be worth it. You will get this time back in weeks, if not days, with improvements to workflow and the ability to offload certain tasks to AI tools.

If you are concerned about workload, but currently not interested in AI tools, I have another recommendation. Check out this interesting essay from Inside Higher Ed from a few weeks ago about “selfish” teaching and scholarship. I was struck by this one excerpt that resonates with my teaching: “we should resist the temptation to teach every chapter of the textbook and instead zoom in on those content areas that best allow us to communicate the processes we want students to understand.”

Zach Justus
Director of Faculty Development
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Google Voice/Text: 530-487-4150

SoTL Grants and Workshops!

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This is a reminder that FDEV is offering support for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The application is not tedious, but it is due tonight at 11:59 p.m. One question we have received a lot has to do with the approved travel request. Ideally, you have something approved or in process already, but if you do not please apply anyway. We will evaluate all applications we receive. Full details are in the tip from last week and the application is here.

On Friday we are offering a workshop to faculty and staff on an introduction to AI. We brought in Dr. Brett Christie for this work, he has been a national leader in this space and we are fortunate to have him. The workshop is on Friday, March 8th from 12-1:30 p.m. in MLIB 045 and on Zoom. On Tuesday, March 12th we are offering another AI workshop about tools to help with your workflow. Full details are here.

Zach Justus
Director of Faculty Development
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Google Voice/Text: 530-487-4150

FDEV Program Resources

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Dear faculty,

As the semester winds down, I want to take this opportunity to share some resources that were developed this year within programs we offered in Faculty Development. Our hope was to collect all resources in one place to facilitate access and navigation and to allow for easy sharing even after the programs end. For each program listed below we created a webpage and, even more importantly, we built a “one-stop-shop” schedule where all information and resources associated to each workshop are posted. As you can tell if you explore these links, we also tried to diversify the formats of the resources to satisfy different learning and engagement preferences.

UDL Faculty Learning Community: schedule

EDI Teaching Series: webpage and schedule

HSI Professional Development Initiative: webpage and schedule

I hope you will take some time, possibly after finals, to check out these resources, because there are a lot of tools, templates, and tips for best practices that you can apply to your courses, even if you ddi not have a chance to complete these programs.

Chiara Ferrari, Ph.D.

Faculty Development Director

Faculty Development and Antiracism

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Dear faculty, 

I heard about some racist zoom bombing episodes and other racist incidents that have happened recently to Chico State faculty. 

I have been tempted, in writing this email, to use the phrase “ needless to say” to introduce a number of paragraphs. “Needless to say” we condemn these attacks, “needless to say” in Faculty Development we promote inclusion and diversity, “needless to say” our university does not tolerate these actions. 

But then it occurred to me that it DOES need to be said, clearly, that Faculty Development is a place where we actively promote antiracism.  

  • It is not enough for Faculty Development to be inclusive: FDEV must ensure that all faculty have a chance to belong. 
  • It is not enough for Faculty Development to promote diversity of opinions and perspectives: FDEV must provide a safe space for all voices to be heard. 
  • It is not enough for Faculty Development to condemn these acts: FDEV must dismantle systemic racism, including the one happening in academia at large.  

This is the main reason why I so strongly believed in creating the READI hub and centering EDI work in what we offer.  

In case you want to access programs that promote these values, I recommend visiting the READI workshops page. We offer series that in various ways and from different perspectives share resources on how to approach these conversations in your classes, but also among your colleagues.  

When we first began planning to launch READI, I had not fully envisioned how we could approach EDI work in Faculty Development. Working with equity fellows like Samara Anarbaeva, Lesa Johnson, and Pablo Ochoa Bailey helped me immensely in framing the kind of values the Office of Faculty Development should commit to when embarking in this work. And one thing was clear: there cannot be equity diversity and inclusion unless there is also a commitment to actively pursuing an antiracist agenda. 

The A in READI stands for antiracism, and in light of these events, I want to renew my and FDEV’s commitment to offering a space where we not only condemn racism, but we actively fight against it. 

Chiara Ferrari, Ph.D.
Faculty Development Director

Supporting Justice-Impacted Students

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Sent on behalf of Dr. Gabby Medina Falzone, as a follow-up to her workshop “Decarcerating the Classroom and Supporting Justice-Impacted Students”

Justice-impacted students, i.e. those who are incarcerated, have been incarcerated, and/or who have/had loved ones incarcerated, are often left out of equity education conversations. All across California, a loose coalition for justice-impacted students, faculty, staff, and allies are developing pathways for those who are justice-impacted to graduate from college.

If you want to learn more about the work being done to support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated college students across California, here are some resources

If you want to learn more about how you personally can support justice-impacted students here are some tips and resources:

  • Use humanizing language and avoid deficit-based or stigmatizing stereotypes. Check out the UC Berkeley Underground Scholars Language Guide and the workshop slides to learn more.
  • Share resources with justice-impacted students in your classes as well as formerly incarcerated potential Chico State students. Here are a few:
    • Root and Rebound “My Education, My Freedom” Toolkit (you can download it here)
    • The California Community Colleges Rising Scholar Network, which provides supports for justice-impacted students at the community college level. 
    • Chico State Rebound Scholars which is a new student org for and by Chico State justice Impacted students and allies. Currently we are meeting Fridays at 5:30pm in Ayres Hall (AYRS) 106. Have your students contact Dr. Gabby Medina Falzone (gfalzone@csuchico.edu) to find out when we will meet next semester.
  • Support Rebound Scholars’ first event. The organization is happy to welcome Shelley Winner, who with share about her journey from incarceration to professional employment, on April 25 at 6pm in BMU 203 (see flyer)
  • Help create a Project Rebound chapter here at Chico State. Currently 14 CSU campuses have a chapter. Chico State is not one of them. Contact Dr. Gabby Medina Falzone gfalzone@csuchico.edu if you are interested. 

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

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Dear faculty,

Last year, the Office of Faculty Development committed to sponsoring and promoting programs and events that would support the implementation of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the classroom. This commitment was in line with the University’s strategic priorities and was supported by GI2025 student success funding that we were able to roll over from 2019-2020. Some of the best aspects of these efforts included the ability to create collaborations across divisions, the opportunity to challenge ourselves and our pedagogical practices, the possibility to extend these conversations across most disciplines and Colleges, and the chance to give voice to a number of faculty that truly are advocates and activists for the implementation of equity on campus.

Rebecca Nelson and I also participated in the third Middle Leadership Academy cohort last year, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that we learned a great deal of information and practices that we are committed to bringing to faculty development, including a number of resources about faculty’s role in this work.

This year we are excited to sponsor a second Teaching Racial & Social Justice (TRSJ) Series and I want to take this opportunity to invite you to our first workshop, Confronting the Traditional Learning Space: Anchoring Your course in an Antiracist, Inclusive, and Culturally Sustaining Framework, which will be held on Wednesday, October 13th from 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. in Zoom. This workshop will explore and unpack an evaluation tool that is grounded in the Anti-Racist Quality Learning and Teaching (AR-QLT) framework, developed by Dr. Daniel Soodjinda and used as a guide by a faculty learning community at CSU Stanislaus.  The AR-QLT framework contains a set of 11 Antiracist, Inclusive, and Culturally Sustaining objectives, and faculty can use the AR-QLT instrument to assess their courses, learn where there are equity gaps, and take the steps necessary to meaningfully support their diverse classrooms.

Our next workshop, Throwing Out the Syllabus: Responding to Crisis in Real Time will be offered on October 27th from 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. in Zoom and will be led by Dr. Claudia Sofía Garriga-López.

We hope that you will join us for these important conversations.

Use BOX to Make Your Life Easier!

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Over the past year, departments at Chico State have transitioned their file storage from Bay to Box (in the cloud). This transition provides greater security, easier accessibility, and a wider range of collaboration tools for you. As part of this transition, every faculty member now has an unlimited amount of storage space on Box (in the cloud) to store files. Here are the top five ways Box can improve your life…

  1. You can access all of your files anytime, anywhere, including from home, office, any mobile device, and in any classroom with a computer and Internet access. No need to ever use (or lose) a flash drive again.
  2. You can access your files from the Box website as if they were on your computer and changes are automatically stored in the cloud (imagine updating a lecture slide from your phone at the airport).
  3. You can easily share course materials with your students (they don’t need Box accounts to access).
  4. You control access to your materials by sharing folders and files of content with your students or colleagues while keeping other folders and files private.
  5. Links you share to your course content are always up-to-date. You never need to upload new versions of files, update links, or worry about being stuck in class with an outdated version of your content.

If you’d like to learn how you can leverage Box in your courses to make your files more accessible and secure, we will be hosting a 45-minute workshop inColusa 100B on Wednesday, 3/28 from 1:15-2pm and on Thursday, 3/29 from 9-9:45am (same workshop – just on different days to accommodate faculty schedules). The workshop will be led by Tony Dunn, Lecturer in the Business Department and Project Manager for Information Technology Client Services. RSVP for the workshop.

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Forget I ever said that…

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Image result for orange coast college

A flurry of national stories has highlighted the topic of recording classroom discussions. Earlier this year at Orange Coast College a student was suspended for recording his professor’s views about President Trump and then publishing them. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference a workshop encouraged students to do that exact thing. Have you had a student record you? Without your knowledge? How would you know?

These are all complicated questions, so I did some reading and research.

  • FindLaw has an excellent article on the legal dynamics at work in these situations. California is a “two-party consent” state when it comes to recording. While this is typically in reference to wiretaps, they argue the same principles apply in the classroom.
  • Student Judicial Affairs provided some guidance: “Unlike other campuses we do not have a campus policy on classroom recording except: 1) Title 5 governing student conduct does state, in part, the “Grounds for Student Discipline include “unauthorized recording, dissemination, or publication of academic presentations (including handwritten notes) for commercial purpose.” 2) ARC has a specific policy on “Audio Recording Lectures” which states that students are eligible for audio-recording accommodations if their disability impairs access to classroom lectures. (see ARC for the process for requests).”

My strong recommendation is that if this if you are concerned about this you should create an explicit policy for the syllabus. Students often have legitimate reasons for wanting to record class, and their peers may have good reasons for not wanting a discussion recorded. Having a policy requiring consultation prior to recording is consistent with the law and gives you an opportunity to consider the interests of all your students.

Finally, a few reminders.

Join us for an open forum on Community Based Scholarship hosted by Faculty Development and Civic Engagement. Selvester’s 100 3/10 1-3pm.

Faculty Development is searching for the next director!

We held a popular workshop on Dossier Prep for Lecturers earlier this semester. Find the video archive and handouts here.

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 newest episode is out now! Mary, Tracy, and I discuss the past, present, and future of alcohol at CSU, Chico with CADEC staff member Morgan Rosen. Link to it on soundcloud, itunes, overcast, or follow the podcast on facebook.

 

It’s week 8, and the Scantrons are flying

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exams Multiple choice tests don’t get a lot of respect. But in addition to helping overworked instructors save time, they can, when done well, also be effective measurements both of basic understanding and precise discrimination.  Too often, though, they are simply a measure of how well students take tests.  Here’s an article from Faculty Focus on “7 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Multiple Choice Questions.” (Note: This is not an endorsement of the webinar promoted in the article.)

Other suggestions for writing good multiple choice questions include these from McKeachie’s Teaching Tips (available in MLIB 458 if you want to read more):

  • “The item as a whole should present a problem of significance in the subject-matter field” (78).
  • “Emphasizing in the multiple-choice test introduction that the students should choose the best answer may help prevent lengthy discussion with the student who can dream up a remote instance in which the correct alternative might be wrong” (81).

Even the discussions that follow that persistent student’s defense of her answer, though, are instructive, and should be used to refine future versions of the test.  (Another argument for reviewing tests in class.) My colleagues and I also often swap tests before administering them to weed out items that are unclear or exploitable by the test-savvy. This also allows us to show off our cleverness to each other.

Really good multiple choice questions are hard to write, but developing a bank of them for a course you teach frequently can be a good investment of your time.

This tip was:

  1. helpful
  2. a waste of time
  3. meh

Using Video to Enhance Learning and Teaching: A Hands-On Workshop.

Wednesday, October 22, 12:00-1:30 PM

MLIB 002 TLP Training Lab

Description: The current generation coming through Chico State are visual learners, used to turning to YouTube videos and Video Blogs for entertainment, personal edification, and self-expression. Come and hear how one faculty member has successfully incorporated video introductions as well as video assignments into her class, then start learning how to use our free tools to enhance your own courses with video.

*Authored by Dr. Katherine McCarthy.