February 5, 2024

In this issue:

New Lab Faculty Spotlight- Suzanne Brooks
REMINDERS: Mid-term Feedback
Vocational Wellness and YOU at CU
Google Spaces Communities coming soon
PA NJ DE Corner

New Lab Faculty Spotlight

Suzanne Brooks

About me:

I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, but I have lived in this area for over 35 years (I still consider myself a midwesterner at heart!)

I am the mother of two amazing children, ages 24 and 26. When my youngest son was diagnosed with Autism, at the age of 4, I became committed to advocating for him and other children with disabilities.

When I am not advocating for children with disabilities and collaborating with other educators, I love to travel. I love beautiful beaches, and I would go every day if I had the opportunity. I also love to visit my family and spend time with my good friends. ☮ In the future, I plan to write a book and perhaps try my hand at acting!

Reminders

Midterm Evaluations & Feedback to Students

We're almost half-way through the course for Spring Session 1 (8 week courses).

If you’re teaching a 16 week course, this same information will apply for Week 8.

Midterm Course Evaluations from Students

In every Session 1 Moodle course at week 4 there should be a "CU Midterm Evaluation (Optional)" link (this is where it links to). If your link isn’t there, please let Lance Eaton know as soon as possible. We'll collect and return that feedback to you by Tuesday of next week to incorporate into the second half of the semester.

Be sure to remind your students to complete the (anonymous) midterm evaluations. We recommend you post an announcement with the link included today or tomorrow to have it done by Sunday. Feel free to use the template announcement below:

Template Announcement About Mid-Course Evaluations

Greetings Students,

Sometime during this week, please complete the CU Midterm Evaluation in Week 4. This is an anonymous survey that allows you to identify things that are working well and things that you may be struggling with. It’s really helpful to me to see where you all are with things as well as for CU to get a clearer picture of how students are doing.

The survey will take about 5 minutes to complete. Let me know if you have any trouble accessing it.

Thank you!

Feedback to Students

As it is the half-way point in your course, you should also be taking time to give feedback to students about how they are doing. You can learn more about this process on the Faculty Site here.

A Note About Gradebooks

Before doing your mid-semester grades, update your gradebook to reflect students’ current standing.

The gradebook only reflects entered grades. If a student has submitted a few assignments (and done well) but missed most of the other assignments; their actual grade will not be reflected in the gradebook until 0s are put in.
To reflect actual grades, faculty do need to put in 0s for missing work. This isn’t ideal but some students think that they are doing much better in a course when 0s are missing.
Our recommended strategy is to put in 0s for absent assignments no later than 2 weeks after the assignment is due for 8 week courses.
In the feedback with the 0, be sure to indicate very clearly if you will accept the assignment late.
Before adding 0s to update the gradebook, also send a message out to students, giving them a heads up with this template announcement:

Greetings Students,

I am about to update the gradebook so that your current standing is accurately reflected in the course. This means that I will need to put in 0s for work that is missing for a week or more.

This doesn’t mean that you have a 0 permanently. This is just a placeholder until you submit the assignment. When you do, I’ll update the grade and provide feedback.

If you have questions or concerns about this, please contact me and we can talk it through.

Thank you!

Updates

Google Spaces Communities Coming

We have been working to offer a virtual space for instructional faculty to share wins, discuss challenges, and exchange ideas.

Towards the end of this week, all instructional faculty will get an invitation to one or more Google Spaces. Google Spaces is a grouping function of Google Chat that allows for asynchronous chat, file sharing, and the like.

We will be creating Google Spaces for faculty who are teaching the same core course or who are teaching courses that overlap in ideas, themes, and content.

See more information and the full announcement here.

CU Faculty Resource Site

We have been working on a CU Faculty Resource Site - a new in-construction hub for Faculty resources. We are doing a soft launch of the site to gather feedback and make it available as we continue to build.

Visit the Faculty Site here.

Vocational Wellness and YOU at CU:

Read the full article here.

We know CU faculty care for our students and our mission “to reinvent the higher education experience for underserved adult learners, using a student-driven model of rigorous and engaged scholarship.” We aim to “model the possibilities of higher education for adults where lifelong learning is valued and enables people to be fuller participants in creating the lives to which they aspire.” We chose you as faculty members because you understand our student population (gender, race, age, socioeconomic backgrounds and more) and value them. We can not be fully effective at our jobs and well unless you as faculty are well, supported, and satisfied in your work here.

We know teaching at CU is much more than an adjunct job. It is a different world than most other higher education institutions and we want you to know the direct impact you are making.

We also want to hear from you. We are working on developing a professional development plan and supports for faculty and we would like to hear from you. What do you need or want from the Lifelong Learning team and CU? What types of professional development support would you like? What would make you feel more whole as a faculty member and better able to serve our students? Please reach out to Sage Morgan-Hubbard at sage.morgan-hubbard@collegeunbound.edu.

Read the full article here.