Over the past year I have transitioned all of my US history courses to either Achieve or Achieve Read & Practice. This week I've created a short (5 minute) video to show how easy it is to get started creating a course. In subsequent posts I will share some of my favorite Achieve-based content to use in history courses.   ... View more

Historian and professor Vaughn Scribner explains Achieve in his own words and why it's changed his classroom for the better. ... View more

We’ve had the good fortune this calendar year of welcoming two new faculty to our department, both of whom are newly-minted PhDs. Having fresh f aces to interact with has added energy to our department while also making us all a bit more aware of how important it is to “check in” on one another.    As we met in our opening-day department meeting I reflected on my first faculty meeting as an assistant professor on the tenure track in 2007. Diversity in hiring has been a priority of my community college for some time now. On that day in 2007, however, I was one of only two female faculty in a department of 15. Sixteen years later our department of 18 full-time faculty includes seven women and six people of color. We are the most diverse department on campus and our students notice. Increasingly they see themselves reflected in their teachers and that is meaningful. So many of our students are first-generation college students and seeing a diverse faculty provides them with examples of who they could become. They look to us as examples for their professional careers and to share with us the challenges they are facing as students and human beings.    I sent texts to our new faculty members a few days into the school year just to “check in”: how is it so far? What challenges are you facing? One commented that they were having trouble asking for assistance from our wonderfully helpful administrative assistant because in their head they were “still a graduate student.” We chatted about this transition from student to faculty, which gave me an opportunity to think about my own experiences so many years ago.   As we start this new semester, check in on your colleagues – young and old, new and seasoned. Yesterday one of our younger faculty members stopped by my office to ask how my semester is going. The “ask” gave me an opportunity to vent about a frustrating interaction with a student and I felt noticeably lighter when the conversation ended.    So this year, as always, whether it’s online in the Macmillan Community or in our brick and mortar offices, we as faculty can be amazing allies and support for each other. Keep your doors open and remember to keep checking in. ... View more

In previous blogs I’ve mentioned that I use inclusive access in all of my on-campus and online classes. Some faculty are not familiar with this practice and have asked me to share some observations of this (relatively) new academic tool. Contained in this blog are my personal views with the caveat that some colleges/faculty have not adopted inclusive access for a number of reasons. My intent is not to debate the practice but to share the overwhelmingly positive experience I’ve had using inclusive access during the last three academic years.     Prior to the Pandemic our college had a traditional bookstore with both physical books and access codes available for students to purchase. As someone who has long used a publisher-based learning management system in conjunction with the one that my college provides to all students, I found the first couple weeks of class challenging. Students would need to purchase an access code and then connect to the publisher’s materials to get started with our course assignments. Although theoretically this task should be rather simple, it was unnecessarily difficult for a number  of reasons. The main stumbling point for my students was the use of financial aid at the bookstore. Many students did not adequately understand the financial aid process as it relates to book purchases and as a result missed key deadlines for getting course materials. These same students then missed assignments at the start of the semester.    In addition, some students struggled with the use of access codes. Again, we might see this as a non-issue in the 21st-century student’s life but the reality was something different. I had students lose codes, mis-type codes, choose the wrong text to which to match their code … all simple errors that resulted in a delay in the start of their participation in the course.   For me, the single greatest asset of inclusive access is having the course materials already loaded into our college’s learning management system on day one. My students, in fact, do not need to visit the bookstore for any of our course materials. Example: for US History I and II I use The American Promise with Achieve. I work with my Macmillan sales representative about two weeks before the start of classes to make the relevant connections (I’ll discuss these in a future blog) and when my students log in to our LMS they are already connected to needed materials. For those classes that meet in person I am able to show the students at our first meeting exactly where everything is. For online classes I provide an instructional video to show them where/how to find what they need.   This summer I am teaching a six week intensive US History I. Our IT department provided my students with laptops for our first meeting and they were able to immediately get working with course materials. No trip to the bookstore. No financial aid questions. The cost of the course materials is billed directly to the students with their tuition, which means no additional financial aid concerns/deadlines. Having no delay between the start of class and access to course materials meant that the very first week of class my students were able to read two chapters in the eBook and complete course assignments for both. This instant access has been extremely valuable this summer as we strive to complete an entire semester in six weeks.   I’d love to hear from those of you who have not yet tried inclusive access: what are your concerns? And those who have used it, what are your experiences? Please share. ... View more

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on a previous blog to share their use of Discussion Boards in online and on-campus classes. I particularly loved the suggestions for using the tool as an ungraded community center for online classes. The suggestions I received made me rethink how I will use the board in my summer and fall classes. Please continue to share your perspectives: Talk to Me About Discussion Board    This week I’m struggling with the challenge of the disappearing student. It’s the last week of classes and attendance is dwindling. While this is not atypical in my experience, this semester the problem seems particularly distressing. The students who are no longer coming to class are some of the stronger ones academically. These are students who did well on the midterm exam and consistently turned in assignments … until two weeks ago when everything seemed to stop.   Our college uses a retention tool called Starfish, which has been fabulous for keeping track of attendance and “flagging” students who are having academic or personal difficulties. I’ve been able to successfully connect several students to academic support this semester by referring them to our college Success Center through Starfish and the students seem to appreciate the ease at which they can schedule appointments with me through the same tool.   As a last ditch effort, this week I sent emails to students in which I pleaded with them to finish the course in which they have been doing so well. While I know full well that the students need to take ownership of their education, I truly hate to see any student give up so close to the end. I found myself offering extensions, extra help … anything to get the students across the proverbial finish line.   As the COVID-19 Pandemic is coming to an end I’m wondering if this student fatigue is fallout from the months and months of online learning many of my current first year college students experienced in high school. Some, for example, have complained that returning to in-person classes has reintroduced social pressures that were eased during the Pandemic.  Or, perhaps the argument for a quarter system (versus our current two-semester academic year) has some validity with the mindset of today’s students.    Thoughts? Suggestions?    ... View more

Watch this short video and see how Achieve's built-in map quizzing tool can benefit your history course Achieve is a fully mobile, accessible, flexible system to help you deploy and manage all your tools for pre-class learning, in-class engagement, and post-class assessment—(and integrate it within your LMS if preferred), while gathering insights on student comprehension and engagement—all in a single simple and powerful interface.   ... View more

Using Digital Tools to Encourage Human Connection With online homework, hybrid classrooms, and virtual lessons it can be a challenge to feel connected to your students. But technology doesn't have to divide you! Join this webinar to hear from history professor, Suzanne McCormack, and a panel of faculty advocates, on how to use digital tools to better connect with students REGISTER FOR SESSION NOW! ... View more

As the semester and calendar year draw to an end it’s a good time to reflect on the obstacles faced this academic year thus far and our hopes for the spring semester.    I’ll start with some not-so-fun observations: students are still struggling to reacclimate to in-person learning. In online educational forums there has been a lot of discussion about “learning loss.” For my community college students, the biggest disconnect has been deadlines, as in they don’t want them! During the pandemic pivot to all online learning our college faculty loosened deadlines and increased flexibility to account for student access to WiFi and other technology-related issues. Now that we are back on campus, I find myself having to explain to students why I need deadlines to help both them and me and stay on track throughout the semester. Recently I had to explain that it would be impossible for me – and a disservice to my students – to grade every assignment in the last week before final grades are due. I can’t remember ever having such a conversation in the pre-pandemic days. “Learning loss” in my experience has been less about content and more about the obligations of the student-teacher relationship: deadlines, expectations of regular attendance, and the encouragement of student note taking have required more of my attention than ever before.    On a positive note, however, the students that showed up this fall were especially engaged. In my US History I sections, for example, I had many eager learners who forged connections between what we were discussing in class and what is happening in the nation as a whole. The topic of post-Civil War Reconstruction, for example, was never better received than this semester as students recognized that there is a direct connection between the forms of racism and segregation that grew in the wake of abolition and the systemic problems we face as a nation today. Driven by student interest this semester I spent twice as much time examining Reconstruction as I did the Civil War, which is usually the topic of greatest interest in this course. Students engaged in discussion about the shortcomings of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the reactionary politics of white southerners as black men assumed leadership positions in the early stages of Reconstruction. They imagined how our society might have been different without the terror campaigns of the KKK and the exponential growth of white citizens councils in the former Confederate States. And, they offered ideas about what federal authorities might have done differently to prevent the restoration of white supremacist state governments. As the semester was ending, I found myself researching additional Reconstruction-related materials to share with future classes … more to come in a future blog.   In the coming year I would love to hear more from the Macmillan Community about both the successes and challenges faced in our history classrooms. Are there topics that you would like to discuss with fellow faculty? Books that you’ve found particularly meaningful either to read with students or to use for course preparation? If so, please share! ... View more

Yesterday, with only three weeks of classes left before finals, a student asked me for help in another class. My “Do you need help?” – directed at the history research project we were working on – prompted him to unload the stress he was feeling about an asynchronous online science course for which he had never purchased the textbook because of a problem with his financial aid. My heart sank. I knew there was likely nothing that this student could do to salvage his grade in the course. When our class ended, we walked to the Advising Center to find someone who could provide appropriate advice. A short time later the student appeared at my office to say thank you. “I don’t ask for help,” he told me, “Because it feels as though I’m bothering people.”   I do not think this student is alone in his fear of asking for help. I belong to a Facebook group for parents of first-year students at the college that my son attends and there are regularly posts asking how to find tutors and advisors or where to locate electronic forms for add/drop. All of these, it goes without saying, are parents posting on behalf of their children. Perhaps they are being stereotypical “helicopter” parents, or maybe they are responding to the stress their children are emitting as they seek to navigate college, like my student, without asking the right people for help.   I’ve recently come to the rather cynical conclusion that if a student cannot find a quick answer on the College’s web site, they stop looking. In my experience since our post-pandemic (if that’s a thing) return to mostly in-person classes I see lots of staff throughout campus eagerly waiting to help students, and few students actively seeking out that help that they need. Case in point: Enrollment. Right now, we have several advisors stationed at a kiosk in the main part of our campus to assist students with spring course selection. And yet yesterday I overheard two students in my class complaining that they have no idea what to take or how to finalize their spring enrollment. Somewhere there is a communication disconnect.   Perhaps a side-effect of the pandemic is an over-reliance on the internet when a conversation between two humans could quickly and effectively address questions. In the case of my student, for example, he told me that he “could not find” his professor’s office hours listed online so he assumed she did not offer any. We talked through other steps he could have taken: review the syllabus, check the course learning management system for general information, and, of course, write an email to the professor.    This experience emphasized to me how important it is to have direct communication with our students, even if we never meet in person. A weekly email to asynchronous online students, for example, can be a simple way to subconsciously remind them how to contact their instructor. Last night I double-checked my own learning management system pages to make sure that students can find me easily if they are stressed. A page with key links – tutoring/writing center, library, mental health resources, etc – should also be a standard component of any online course materials.    What is your post-pandemic experience with student-teacher communication? Have you found any particularly helpful, low-stress ways to keep your students in regular contact? Please share. ... View more

This week I had the privilege of being peer evaluated. Although I’m a tenured professor my college requires faculty to continue to follow an evaluation schedule after promotion. Every three years I complete a formal self-evaluation in addition to having a written evaluation by my department chair, and a classroom visit by a colleague. Students evaluate my courses nearly every semester.   While some faculty bristle at the idea of peer evaluation, our department has embraced it as a practice over the last ten years. We voted to include peer evaluation as part of our process because we initially saw it as valuable to new faculty as they adjusted to our institution. It’s not uncommon for faculty to join our department fresh from graduate school. Having a colleague review a new teacher’s syllabi and observe their classroom practices can be illuminating to both parties. The same has proven to be true for our long-serving faculty.    In my case the colleague evaluating me has been at the college for only three years and teaches in a different discipline (political science). Prior to her visit I shared with her the syllabus and discussed the experiences I’ve had with the students in this course. In this course I’ve struggled with enrollment being low – a widespread challenge at our college as we have returned from the all-remote delivery of the pandemic. This particular course was not offered on campus prior to COVID and likely will return to being an online-only offering in the future. As a result, this semester’s delivery has often been experimental.   I spent a few minutes in the class meeting prior to my colleague’s visit preparing the students for us to have an observer. I decided to include them in the planning process for the observation and asked the students for feedback about what form of content delivery had been most successful so far in the course. Together we settled on a plan for how the class would proceed that day and decided that we should ask my evaluator to come prepared to be part of class discussion. While I did not want to burden my colleague with extra work, I provided her with copies of the assigned readings.   After more than twenty years of college-level teaching I nonetheless found myself nervous when my colleague arrived to observe. Rather than have her sit in the back like a stranger, I introduced her to my students and asked them to introduce themselves and their research topics – the class being small allowed for this to happen quickly. Since peer evaluation in our department is viewed as collegial and intentionally not intimidating, the nervous tension quickly evaporated. My colleague blended easily into our class discussion as a participant-observer.   Peer evaluation offers even seasoned faculty the opportunity to evaluate what happens in their classroom day to day. Engaging the students in planning for the visit provided me with the chance to learn what they think is working (or not) long before formal student evaluations are available at semester’s end.    What are your experiences with peer evaluation? Tips for making it less stressful and more rewarding? Please share.  ... View more

Recently my Macmillan Community colleague Symphonie asked members to share insights into how they deal with the “noise” present in our students’ lives. How do we, as educators, get through to our students in spite of all the distractions they are juggling?   I’ve been thinking a lot about Symphonie’s question as I’ve struggled to get my students off to a strong start in the new school year. For the first time since March 2020 I am teaching the majority of my students in person, and they do seem generally distracted. Just this week I wondered to a colleague whether we as a society have lost the ability to function as members of a group as a result of the long period of near isolation many of us experienced during the recent pandemic. During a recent class meeting, for example, a student put in earbuds and started watching a video on their cell phone as a classmate explained the central points of the homework reading. As class ended, I reminded the distracted student about my “no phones in class” policy. The response was shocking: the student felt it was fine to turn their attention elsewhere because a classmate was speaking and not me, the professor.    Later that same day I broke a class up into small groups for discussion. I was bewildered to watch as students sat with their backs towards one another for group work. It was not until I made a general announcement that members should sit facing each other that some of the students repositioned themselves so they could see and hear their classmates. I jokingly asked how they intended to do group work with their backs to one another. No response.   Now that we are back on campus en masse, therefore, we as faculty need to make a concerted effort to get students to engage with each other. A colleague in Student Affairs lamented recently that getting students to attend informational meetings for clubs and activities has never been more difficult.    To answer Symphonie’s question, I don’t think there is one simple way to cut through the noise but I do believe we have to be direct with our students and tell them what we are trying to accomplish. Yesterday, for example, as my students struggled to get started with their group work I took a moment to tell them how meaningful I believe it is that we are back in a shared learning space. Rather than me lecturing for the entire class I want them to make eye contact, to listen to each other’s voices, and to experience the value of learning collectively. I asked them to introduce their group mates to the rest of the class and to make an effort to know something about each other before they began to dissect our primary sources.    I’m happy to report that the students responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner to my plea for interaction. Taking that moment to remind them of the value of a learning community truly seemed to make a difference.    Please share your ideas here or with your fellow Macmillan Community members under Symphonie's blog linked in my first paragraph. ... View more

For the past several years – long before the COVID-19 pandemic began – I have taught Black History as an asynchronous, online course. Our department found that demand for the course was strongest among undergraduates from other colleges who were seeking to take the course at a time when it was not available at their own institutions. As a result, we typically filled two to three online sections every semester as well as during summer sessions. As we work to rebuild our on-campus community post-COVID we are offering one section of this traditionally online course on campus this fall. As of now, a week before we begin, this course has 11 enrolled students.    As I evaluate what I have prepared from previous semesters I realize that the short (20 minute) recorded lectures that worked so well in an online course now must be modified for in-person delivery. I need to think about when/how students will participate within the course. And I need to consider additional preparation in advance of student questions. Let’s face it: the recorded lecture provides us with the luxury of insulation from on-the-spot queries. I am reminded in this process that teaching online is not easier or more difficult than teaching in person, it is simply different.   Perhaps most daunting to me is the enrollment of the course. Is it just me or do other professors feel awkward lecturing to small groups of students? I’m used to lecturing to 25 to 30 students at a time. I feel compelled with this class to emphasize the importance of class discussion – human interaction and debate, including recognizing one’s own role in fostering positive discussion. After a spring semester of “quiet” classes, I’m concerned that students have grown so accustomed to asynchronous learning that they are increasingly reluctant to engage. I’m combing the internet for suggestions about student engagement, especially small groups, and seeking ways that other faculty have worked with their students to overcome their isolated COVID-period educational experiences.   Help wanted!  ... View more

One of the best parts of summer for me is that I have time to catch up on reading. Oftentimes the choices I make in the summer months are works that I hope to share with my students in some way during the academic year. I try to revisit at least one work of fiction that I truly love. As I’ve blogged about before, consistently my first choice is Pat Barker’s Regeneration (1991), which combines my interest in two areas – the First World War and the history of mental health care. This summer I followed Regeneration with a favorite of mine from high school, The Great Gatsby (1925). My son, an aspiring writer and filmmaker, and I watched the 2013 Baz Luhrmann version and I felt immediately compelled to reverse the screenwriters’ changes to Fitgerald’s masterpiece by re-reading the original text, which never disappoints me.    As much as I’ve worked during my twenty-plus years of teaching American history to add diverse perspectives to my US History II survey, there is something timeless about Fitzgerald’s window into 1920s’ white wealth and privilege that I believe still has lessons for our 21st-century students. For this reason I’m planning to reintroduce the book in my spring 2023 US History II classes after a several year hiatus. I’m hoping that my students will find in Fitzgerald’s 1920s’ society themes to connect to their observations of American life nearly one-hundred years later. The Great Gatsby is now available as a free download through Project Gutenberg making it an even more appealing choice for today’s students.   I’m considering using Fitzgerald’s work in conjunction with the short stories of Anzia Yezierska (Hungry Hearts, 1920), which is also available open access. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, the last few times I’ve taught US History II to do less 19th-century history and more 20th in response to students’ interests in the more modern period. An increased focus on the 1920s feels like a good place to start.   What kinds of content changes are you considering for next academic year? Have you recently used Fitzgerald’s or Yezierska’s work in a history class? How have students responded? Please share!   Happy Summer! ... View more

Admittedly, I have a difficult time talking with students about our Founders’ intentions when they penned the 2nd Amendment.    As a graduate teaching assistant in April 1999 I started paying more attention to gun violence after the massacre at Columbine High School. I knew that gun violence existed before that tragic day in Littleton, Colorado, but in my middle-class upbringing, the random killing of innocents was a topic relegated to “dangerous” urban areas. There was almost no discussion of gun violence in the white suburban community in which I was raised, nor in the town where I lived in 1999. Columbine, however, gave me nightmares. As an educator-in-training, the idea of being a teacher charged with protecting children from the terror of bullets was to me then, and remains today, horrifying. Columbine, sadly, was not an anomaly. According to the Washington Post more than 300,000 children have experienced gun violence at school since 1999.    Students are often curious about the intent of the 2nd Amendment when it was ratified late in the 18th century. In a previous blog I wrote about the challenge of discussing Roe v. Wade with a generation of students undeniably impacted by social media and 24-hour news channels with obvious ideological biases. Discussions of current concerns about gun violence inevitably lead to students expressing divergent opinions about individual rights versus the rights of the government. In recent years the sides have become entrenched. Without a doubt, as an educator this topic is only becoming more difficult for me to address in a bipartisan manner. I shudder at the suggestion of arming teachers, for example, because I know that placing a gun in my panicked hands would do nothing to protect my students from the unthinkable.   I’m quite adept at avoiding discussion of the 2nd Amendment in class. As a social historian, I touch briefly on the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and focus instead on the women and African Americans who were left out of our nation’s early notions of citizenship. I feel ill-equipped to explain the intentions of our Founders so I am constantly searching for web-based discussions of this now controversial amendment to which I can refer students. While I’ve had some meaningful conversations with students about the issue of gun control, I recognize the limits of my ability to remain neutral on this topic. So here are a few resources that might be helpful to those of you, like me, struggling with the horrible fear of school shootings while also believing in our students’ need to form opinions on their own:   National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution is a great starting point for anyone who wants an introduction to both sides of the argument. The site provides a “Common Interpretation” of each amendment, and then offers a brief essay by experts on opposing sides of the debate. The site also posts video aids to share with students, again focusing on the goal of sharing both “sides” of the debate.   Faculty wishing to help students better understand the controversies surrounding this amendment might suggest students check out findlaw.com  This commercial site touts itself as one designed for “legal professionals” but also offers concise explanations, with academic references, of challenging legal questions. The section on the Second Amendment contains helpful information about recent court cases that have fueled public debate over the amendment.   Finally, suggest that students look at new research on the intent of the Second Amendment. In the wake of racial unrest in recent years, historian Carol Anderson’s work examines the amendment’s troubled relationship to the institution of slavery and control of free people of color in the 19th century. NPR interviewed Anderson in 2021 and students interested in the history of race relations and systemic racism will find her arguments particularly interesting given current debates over policing in the United States.    No doubt there are many more resources to help our students wade through the murky waters of understanding the Second Amendment’s historical context. How do you handle this topic with your students? Please share. ... View more

This summer I’m working with a group of faculty at my college to study the assignments we use in courses designated part of our General Education program. This project is part of a grant that allows faculty to evaluate how well our assignments are meeting the College’s “Educated Person outcomes.”  In my case I’m assessing a short (4-5 page) writing and research project that I’ve used for many years in my US History II survey course.    I’ve said in previous posts that one of the best things about blogging about teaching is that I am forced to constantly reassess my own practices. This grant has amplified the benefits of that experience and helped me to focus on the clarity of my instructions to the students, my personal process of assessment, and the creation of a rubric for this specific project.    This project is worth 25% of the students’ course grade. In the past I have found rubrics useful when grading lower-stakes assignments such as Discussion Board posts in online classes because they help students to see how they might improve their future discussion posts while allowing me to grade quickly and (in my view) accurately. I have not previously used a rubric to grade this particular assignment for no other reason than I had not designed an evaluation tool to use. Participating in this grant-funded project has given me the motivation needed to view the project through a new lens and I found the process of writing a rubric instructional in the sense that it forced me to identify exactly what I am looking for in my students’ work and how various degrees of those expectations may be met.   In addition to assessing the students’ submissions using my newly minted rubric, I am using this opportunity to compare student work across different modes of instruction. I will be comparing work submitted by an in-person class that met in a traditional 15-week semester this past spring with that of a fully online course that is part of our summer intensive offerings (6 weeks). I’m interested to see if there are significant differences between the overall quality of work submitted in the two different time frames and modes of instruction.   I’m excited to share my findings in the coming months. What’s on your teaching and learning agenda for the summer months? Please share. ... View more