Ballroom       
Accessing Academic Excellence: What Colleges Can Do to Promote Student Success

The First-Generation College Student: The First Year Experience
Dr. Corinne R. Merritt, Emmanuel College

This workshop will present the latest research on the strengths and needs of first-generation college students and how colleges and universities can meet those needs, leading not only to retention but also successful graduation of these students.  The presenter will share two programs currently used at Emmanuel College for promoting success for first-generation college students.  Participants will be encouraged to discuss what their institutions do to assist first-generation students, as well as systems for evaluating such programs.

Engaging Millennial Students with Web 2.0 Tools
Mark Frydenberg, Bentley College

Today’s students “grew up” on the Internet, sharing their stories on Facebook, voicing opinions on blogs, and turning to Wikipedia as the source of knowledge.  The web has become a platform for applications that promote sharing, collaboration, and communication.  This session will present several Web 2.0 applications and technologies, and suggest ways for teachers to incorporate them in classes across the curriculum in order to encourage students to take charge of their own learning.

In Loco Parentis: Helicopter U?

Ellen J. Goldberger. Mount Ida College

Oh, those pesky “helicopter parents:” over-involved, over-protective, afraid to let their child fail, obsessively structuring the child's activities, and unwittingly hindering the child's ability to think independently and develop self-reliance. Now substitute the word “student” for “child” and “faculty/staff” for “parents.” Is it possible that our colleges have become an extension of the hovering, millennial parents we criticize?  This interactive workshop will identify and analyze the Black Hawk behaviors on our campuses that pick up where the helicopter parents left off. How do we truly foster student success? When does our help start to hurt our students? 

Pedagogies of Engagement: Classroom-Based Practices
Laura K.M. Donorfio, University of Connecticut

How to engage and motivate students in the classroom is a question as old as the study of education itself.  Engaging and motivating students is a daunting task, but there are ways to get them involved in their learning.  This workshop will focus on classroom-based pedagogies of engagement, specifically active and collaborative-based learning. Participants will be asked to help construct a continuum of strategies and activities that range from low to high risk for both the teachers and students.  Best practices will also be discussed that encourage active student participation in the learning process. 

Access,Standards and Support:The Public Higher Education Dilemma
Ronald Weisberger and Sally Gabb Bristol Community College

This workshop addresses the dilemma of expanded access to higher education while at the same time a too high attrition rate at many public institutions. Utilizing both current research and their own experience, the presenters argue for the importance of learning communities with college success courses as a way to support students in their initial semester and to combat student attrition.   

Professional Development Program for Adjunct Educators

Laurel S. Messina and Maureen O'Neill, North Shore Community College

Professional Development Program (PDP)designed for adjunct educators. Workshop will take the audience through the steps in developing and implementing this type of blended PDP learning model, including the mentoring component, a adjunct questionnaire survey and research findings, and the components of the PDP, using a blended on-line and in-service workshop instruction. Research and antidotal information gathered from adjuncts after completing this program suggest that it greatly helps adjuncts feel less isolated and more connected to the college community, learn different student centered and classroom strategies and has helps to create a community of diverse learners. The workshop will be interactive; will use technology and will show how this type of blended model works to build a stronger and more creative adjunct faculty team, develops collegial relationships, and a better understanding of the college as a community.

Tips for Designing a Wiki Assignment Supporting Group Research

Pamela Sherer, Providence College and Timothy Shea, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Wikis can be used to improve the individual and collaborative research skills of undergraduate students. In this session, targeted for faculty and faculty developers, participants will gain practical understanding of how to design and implement wikis into a class research assignment. The session will include a quick review of Web 2.0 and wikis, an overview of two research projects (from different business disciplines), and a description of the assignments. The session will end with a question and answer session along with a discussion by participants of their experience with wikis for learning. 

Teaching a Laboratory Course to Multiple Campuses through Distance Education
Karyn M. Sullivan, Linda M. Spooner, and Abir O. Kanaan, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Distance education configuration presents many challenges to course coordinators.  This is especially true for laboratory courses that require the instruction and student assessment of hands-on skills.  Student concerns with traditional teaching models have included a lack of standardization and different teaching styles for faculty facilitating sessions in multiple classrooms and campuses.  This session will describe the use of standardized digital recording with simultaneous broadcast to facilitate the delivery of a laboratory course in a distance education environment.  This method ensures that all students are exposed to the same instruction and technique.  Sample digital recordings and laboratory worksheets will be presented.

Developmental Writing:  Retention not Attrition
Helen M. Packey and Kimberly A. Donovan, Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract_of_Session: Beal and Noel (as cited in Congos & Schoeps, 1997) note that “it costs more to recruit a student than it does to retain one, not to mention the cost of lower self-esteem, blocked access to certain careers, and limits to standards of living.”  Challenged by a diverse and underprepared population, particularly in writing, post-secondary institutions have restructured curriculum to ensure students’ academic success by providing developmental writing courses, courses that act as a gateway rather than a gatekeeper to further study.  Session participants will learn firsthand how SNHU’s developmental writing course fosters academic access and success across the disciplines.

NextGen Course Design Rubric
Marc Boots-Ebenfield, Dan Mulcare, and Anurag Jain, Salem State College

Many faculty members are discovering that the students they are teaching today have little resemblance to students they taught in the beginning of their career or archetypical university students they imagined they would be teaching. A Faculty Learning Community at Salem State College explored the phenomenon of "Ne(x)tGen Learners" (Generation Y, Millennials) and what it means to teach them. We will present a NextGen Course Design Rubric and explain how to implement it with examples and results from our own courses. We will also present guidelines for implementing course activities to ensure that faculty members and students are comfortable with new technologies and active learning techniques.  Participants will rate their own courses and create an outline of course design changes to enhance student engagement.

Using Textbooks/Readers Effectively (and getting students to read them)
Rob Schadt, Boston University School of Public Health

Perhaps you can imagine a school where faculty motivate students to use their textbooks and readers simply by putting statements such as “this text is required” and “exam 1 will cover the first three chapters” in their syllabi. Upon being dismissed from the first class meeting, the students go over)immediately to the bookstore, where they gladly spend the money they had allotted for Red Sox tickets on the required text, and begin reading chapters 1 through 3 as they are walking back to their apartment. For those of us who don’t work at this institution, creative strategies and careful consideration of course design are required to motivate students to use these resources most effectively.

The Interactive Class Experience: Principles & Best Practices to Transform Higher Education Learning

Constance Cranos,  Quinnipiac University

This session will focus on how new technology can be leveraged to enhance the learning experience.  Best practices and examples will be presented to benefit teachers of all disciplines seeking to increase their impact and harness the full potential of technology.  The presenter, Constance Cranos, spent 20 years in advertising, media and technology, working with Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement new technology-based solutions. She led virtual teams - working across continents and cultures - to develop new consumer products and services, many involving web and wireless technologies.   This session will demonstrate a unique pedagogy and offer step-by-step approaches for implementation.

The Integral Art: Assessment Of/As Learning

Brian Donohue-Lynch, Mark Szantyr, and Brian Kaufman, Quinebaug Valley Community College

Student learning assessment, to be consistent and meaningful to the learning process, calls for the art of culture change within educational institutions.  As these institutions have shifted focus in the late 20th Century from teaching to learning, they have nonetheless continued to use assessment systems, measures, and tools fit for the 18th and 19th century.  This workshop will explore a model of learning and assessment instead that calls for culture change; this change is toward assessment as integral to the learning process, with approaches and tools that bring actual student learning to the forefront of both personal and institutional self-reflection. 

Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Key to Student Success

Terry Novak Johnson & Wales University

What happens when a first-year student becomes part of a learning community that combines major courses, general education courses, community service learning obligations, information literacy, and faculty-driven residential life programs?  Let faculty members of the Collaborative Learning Program at Johnson & Wales University show you how all of these components help to actively engage the student in university life and work to make the student feel a vital part of the learning community, leading to an increase in student success. Tips on translating these methods to your program will be generously shared!

Creating Effective Lesson Plans with Templates

Karen Costa Mount Wachusett Community College

This session will provide tips to create effective lesson plans by using a lesson plan template.  This template allows faculty to link their instructional methods to the learning objectives for the course.  Participants will leave this class with copies of a lesson plan template, completed example templates, an FYE 101 syllabus, and class activities.  These techniques are used in the FYE 101: First Year Experience course, but are easily applied to a variety of other subjects.

Group Project Peer Evaluation:  Making it Real and Effective
Irene T. Houle Assumption College

Many of us have used the standard percentage allocation peer evaluation when assigning group projects.  A more complex. far richer rubric is created when students are given actual behaviors such as Listening, Communicating, Completing Tasks, and Preparation and asked to rate themselves and each other on these specific areas.  We will discuss which behaviors are best included and create a rating scale using a range of observable behaviors.  A sample of this scale already in use will be presented along with a sample of the student feedback form.

Grading and Responding to Unskilled Writers
Barbara E. Walvoord, University of Notre Dame

Promoting students’ success means dealing with students’ writing skills.  This session offers practical suggestions for guiding, grading, and responding to student writing, even when students are having trouble meeting the demands of academic writing.  How can faculty members genuinely help student writers without becoming grammar teachers or perishing under the paperload?

Utilizing Technology for Classroom learning Assessment to Foster Student Success
Abir Kanaan, Jennifer Donovan, and Matt Silva, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

This session will utilize technology as a method for assessing and evaluating students’ learning in a classroom setting.  Interactive response systems (IRS) provide near instantaneous feedback allowing for immediate redirection and reassessment of learning.  When using IRS, students are anticipated to have enhanced participation which may improve satisfaction and self assessment of knowledge. Through the use of role playing, participants will gain a better understanding of assessing methods employed for optimal student success. The concepts illustrated during the session can be applied to a wide variety of courses in different curricula, including the health professions and the arts and sciences.

Changing current concepts of teaching to match today’s students’ styles.
Keith Barker, Laura Donorfio University of Connecticut

Teaching styles have not changed much in our lifetimes. Faculty tend to teach as they were taught which assumes that the style is still effective. However it does not take into account that pedagogy itself has developed, become based on research (the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning) and that, most of all, the students have changed.  This session will illustrate how the Institute for Teaching & Learning at the University of Connecticut is trying to educate graduates and faculty into better ways to interact, motivate, and deal with large classes and, with this, to change the instructional culture.

Keeping Them Engaged
Bobby Brooks, Indiana Wesleyan University

This interactive session will feature practical strategies and ideas for keeping non-traditional students engaged.  Effective use of visual aids, music, video, animation, demonstrations, costumes, interactive discussion and games will be discussed.

Pedagogical Change and Institutional Transformation: Simultaneous Reform in Community Colleges
Johanna Duponte,  Bristol Community College

This study examines how pedagogical innovations emerge at multiple levels, interact and affect the institution as a whole. This collective case study research examines pedagogical change at community colleges, a sector of higher education that enrolls the largest number and most diverse group of post secondary students. This session will demonstrate the importance of college-wide professional development programs, which emerged as important mechanisms for linking innovations and providing sensemaking opportunities for organizational members. Learn how shared values of learning and evidence can serve to unite faculty and administrators to work collaboratively toward the enhancement of student learning.

Sharing Experience, Knowledge and Learning Tips!

Bill Searle and Edwina Trentham, Asnuntuck Community College

In the next 5 - 8 years a huge number of Baby Boom Generation faculty will retire.  With them will go an unprecedented amount of knowledge about teaching and learning.  We cannot afford to let that knowledge just walk away.  This session will engage participants in three different programs that are easy to run, cheap, FUN, and provide maximum opportunities for these senior faculty to share their knowledge.  Participants will experience each activity briefly in a small group, and we will then discuss questions and implementation issues.  Maximum participation with a minimum of lecturing!

Crafting Research Assignments that Maximize Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

Tami Devine Fagan, Kristine Barnett, and Jessyka Scoppetta, Saint Joseph College

The research paper is an integral component of most college course work, and yet many instructors have little training in developing assignment criteria that yield evidence of critical thinking, responsible scholarship, and student investment.  As there is a proven relationship between the merit of students’ written work and the quality of the assessment design, this presentation will provide practical techniques for faculty across the disciplines who seek to craft research assignments that maximize critical thinking.  Participants will come away from the session with practical tips, suggestions, and sample research assignments to use in their classrooms.

Learning About Learning:Backing Up  In Order To Move Forward
Sandra McElroy Pine Manor College

Have your students lost (or never had) a love for reading?  Using the many genres of Children's Literature may inspire your college students to once again appreciate print, a turn of phrase, sentence structure, and the pictures that words create. A course studying picture books may empower your reluctant readers to safely re-visit skills they had not mastered, forgotten, never learned, or wished that they had known.  Participants will be provided examples of books that inspire, remediate and teach students to once again love reading.