Tidbit – Trapped in the Quagmire of Digital Recommendation Letters

It’s that time of year. Students are looking for summer opportunities, trying to land that first job, or contemplating graduate school. Yes, recommendation letter writing season is in full swing! A recent Chronicle article bemoans how the digital age has ruined this process.

Never fear! Recall, the Lisska Center has created this video to provide you with suggestions on writing letters of recommendation, including things to focus on and what to ask of students.

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Tech – Let’s get social with social annotation

Social annotation brings the individual experience of marking up a text with highlights, notes and questions to a shared online space where individuals can now share their mark ups and commentary as well as respond to each other’s comments and questions.To learn more about social annotation and how it can kick start a class discussion and allow you to see how students are making sense of a digital text (including images, video and audio files) before class, check out this EdTech Blog post, “Let’s Get Social”.

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Teaching – Course evals on the first day of class? by Yen Loh, English

Like newspapers, which may be read one day over morning coffee and may be used, as my grandmother did, to wrap vegetables the next day, student evaluations have second, subsequent, and multiple lives. In the classroom, student evaluations are usually resurrected at the mid and endpoints of the semester, but discussing prior course evaluations with your current students at the beginning of the semester can also help in telling the course’s story and the argument it’s trying to make through the act of re-seeing course readings and assignments.

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Tidbit – Some Publishing Resources from our Friends at The Lisska Center

The below list of helpful publishing tips was compiled by the Faculty Development Center at Hollins College. 

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Tidbit – From the Archive – Midterm Course Evaluations

As we near the half-way mark, consider getting mid-semester feedback from your students. Mid-semester evaluations:

  1. provide a chance to correct student misconceptions or make changes to the course schedule, activities, etc. if necessary.
  2. give students an opportunity to reflect on their own expectations, efforts, and learning.
  3. let students know you care about their input.

Here are some sample mid-semester evaluations you can use or adapt for your course:

  • This check-off format from Seattle University makes it easy for your students to provide specific feedback, as well as some open-ended questions.

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Tidbit – Plagiarism Education by Rachel Mitton-Fry

As Process Advisor for Academic Integrity, I often see cases involving misuse of source material. Instances include inadequate paraphrasing, quotations missing references, and direct use of entire passages without attribution. Speaking with students, it becomes clear that many of them have a poor understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, despite the integrity statements they see in their syllabi. This short article from Faculty Focus highlights the value of plagiarism education. It

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Teaching – Giving Students a Why

Showing compassion for our students but maintaining expectations is a tricky balancing act. This short Chronicle article, The Power of Telling Students Why, argues that we should explain to students why we have specific policies, rules, or deadlines. If we can’t, then maybe those things should be reconsidered. As noted in the article by one respondent: 

“I think it’s a form of respect for our students,” she continued, “to be able to have a why, and where we don’t have a good one, really then thinking about whether that’s a policy we can do without.”

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Teaching – Want to Bolster Creative Confidence, Improve Team Performance, or Try Something New?

The Red Frame Lab is here to amplify your learning outcomes with tools from design thinking and professional development modules used by RED Corps, Red Frame Consulting, and several of your fellow faculty. Last semester we teamed with Global Commerce, Psychology, Anthropology/Sociology, Data Analytics, and Environmental Studies classes as well as 18 Advising Circles. Ask your colleagues about their experiences.

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