A weekly newsletter to build community through updates, opportunities, and celebrations | |
February 13, 2025 | Volume 11 | Issue 22 | |
Spotlight on Alyssa Embry | |
|
By Alyssa Embry, Student Belonging and Well-Being Coordinator
A northerner at heart, I come from Dayton, Ohio. I am grateful to find myself closer to the beach and shoveling less snow my first year here in North Carolina. My background is in film/theater design and technology; my homework was making swords, massive wearable puppets, wood carving, and the like. Although I loved the work, I did not come to enjoy the industry! Before my change of heart I worked for film directors, theaters and operas across the country, including Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. I developed a passion for accessible arts and received grants to provide accessibility supplies, interpreters, and more to local theaters and venues and began producing sensory-friendly shows. I also worked in-home providing care for teenagers and adults with disabilities (including a nudist, we don't judge here), before becoming a behavior technician for kids with Autism. I foster cats with my partner, a former hospital clown (don't tell him I told you!), I love my arts & crafts time and enjoy getting out in nature. I've been at DDCC since last October and have absolutely loved my time here and all the lovelies I have met. I am always happy to chat anything cats, theater, or accessibility!
| |
-
Travel: I used to bike with a group in different states for a few summers (up to 100 miles a day! Couldn't be me now), the prettiest state was Minnesota. I also worked in Central City, Colorado, a mountain town so small there was no gas station and you had to drive down the mountain for a full grocery store. If you bought chips and drove back up to town, the bag would often pop from the altitude change! It was a beautiful, beautiful historic town I think about often; look up Madam Lou Bunch Day!
-
Music & Podcasts: If you love wholesome but shocking gossip like me, try the podcast 'Normal Gossip'. I also enjoy the 'History This Week' podcast. I love Indie, Alt Rock, Pop, and I'm getting more into Spanish music; always open to song suggestions!
-
Food: All carbs are fair game! You can always win me over with some pasta, a latte or a sweet treat!
-
Movies & Shows: I've been watching 'Lost' right now and I'm almost done, if you have seen this series PLEASE email me because what in the world is going on! Also taking any thriller movie suggestions, I love Seven and Silence of the Lambs vibes.
-
Dinner with someone? I think dinner with Bob Ross would heal everything wrong with me. I live by his saying, "there are no mistakes, only happy accidents".
| |
|
Professional Learning Events
| | | |
Sharpen Your Asynchronous Instruction Skills | |
|
By: Grant Jolliff
In an October 14 Inside Higher Education article, University of Houston history professor Robert Zaretsky opines about the “absurdity of asynchrony.” I am not familiar with Professor Zaretsky’s background with online course design, but I am uncomfortable with his blanket statement that would imply the bilking of the equivalent of 90,404 FTE North Carolina Community College System who took online courses (many of them asynchronous) in 2023-2024.
Despite Professor Zaretsky’s disparaging comments, there is a way to successfully teach asynchronous courses. And, as in many instances, the community college is at the cutting edge. If you are interested in sharpening your asynchronous instruction skills, please join the NC Teaching and Learning Hubs for the Asynchronous Online Learning Series. These sessions can be done as a series or as stand alone experiences. We hope to see you there!
Click the links to register.
| |
|
By Gretchen Benton
Students have a lot of reading, tests, and assignments to keep up with. Help them navigate your course by using Completion Conditions in Moodle. By tracking completion you can also access a report that gives you a quick snapshot of how your class is progressing through content.
You can also use completion conditions to restrict access, control when additional content will open or become available in your course. Upcoming Storm Report articles will feature more information on using Restrict Access features in Moodle! Stay tuned!
| |
Completion conditions add icons to your course that can tell students what they need to do. See the student view of completion conditions set up for an Assignment in a Moodle course. It adds a bubble indicating To Do and Done items listed in the course menu on the left side of their course. It also provides additional context when you click To Do to the right side of items listed on the main course page. | |
|
International Intrigue
Putting in the Work
By Sarah Wright
Post Super Bowl, I have been thinking a lot about competition. I think about it a lot in other settings too. I have a t-shirt that references rights and how more rights for one does not mean diminished rights for another–that it isn’t pie. I do see rights that way, and I see the quest for excellence in much the same way. My whole life, and this is not a sob story, even if I have been a winner, I haven’t been “the” winner. If I have been smart, I haven’t been the smartest. When I have been good or done something well, I have not been the best. And in most things, being “the best” is not necessary. Because of this mindset, I have rarely been in competition with anyone other than myself. It really has never been that I didn’t want to be the best, but I tried to think about the collateral damage of that quest.
I have been very fortunate that many people in my life have had similar philosophies. We’ve helped each other reach a place of accomplishment, success, or peace with not reaching the place we wanted. We have almost always wanted the best for each other. There is little that is more painful than realizing those closest to you secretly want you to fail. I view where we are with campus internationalization very much the same. Our role as a leader in the state and the nation is to set the pace and keep the standard, but not to be afraid of the success of others, and to do what we can to help others get where we are or have been. We should not fear the rise of others–and let me be clear–I do not. But I will always view both me individually and our program in terms of what we can do to improve and grow. Growth is the only way I can function. Will some program elsewhere do what we do? Sure. Will they do it in our image? Possibly so because we will always share the formula for success, but no program will ever mirror us because we are always going to be evolving. We will always work to unearth more opportunities for our students and community.
If we do not evolve, we could end up throwing the ball from awkward arm angles to receivers a few steps slow and running routes that aren’t crisp, and even worse, we could have some fickle people who were rooting for us before, booing us. I do not expect us to be on the precipice of a proverbial 3-peat and fall short, but no one ever really expects that–that’s why we play the game. Afterall, we do not know the outcome. We only know the effort we put in, and sometimes it is enough and we bask in our victories. We can certainly celebrate our victories, but we must continue to move forward with the same zeal that we began this international education program with so many years ago. I am willing and prepared to put the work in. I hope you are too. Our victory or loss will not be cast on a scoreboard, but it will be evident in the successes of our students.
| | | |
Do You Have a Story to Share? | |
We want to promote faculty and staff stories! Please contact Amy Holmes (amy_holmes@davidsondavie.edu) with ideas or referrals for stories. | |
The Storm Report is brought to you by | | | | |
