Issue 16

Issue 16--Published: Wednesday, May 4th, 2022

Getting to Know the Center:

Almost there–this is the final push! At the Center, we know how exhausting and stressful this final turn can be. The efforts that you are making to help our students are monumental; every course completion puts students one step closer to graduation and positively influences the trajectory of their academic and professional careers. As you support our students, the Center is here to support you. Please do not hesitate to contact us or stop by our downtown location in M201. Our pep talks are free...and we are really good at them! May the forthcoming issue (or May-the-4th-coming issue for Star Wars Fans!) bring you the support and motivation to help power you through to the end of the semester, hopefully in good humor. Let’s finish strong!

Our Work--The Center and You!

FQAS Good News!

The collaborative efforts of the Learn Pillar Integration Committee’s Professional Development Work Team has created an important update to the FQAS renewal process that is reflective of the professional respect that faculty deserve. A new and improved process creates a clear pathway for the approval of professional development programming that is less than 3 hours and falls under item 6 of the FQAS list of Professional Growth Activities. If you recently received a rejection from SumTotal for this type of programming, please resubmit your activity for reconsideration. The Center’s Faculty Development Coordinators are available to help you navigate any part of the FQAS renewal process; please do not hesitate to contact us.

It’s turn-in-your-TAP time!
If you are a Full-Time Post-Probationary faculty, you need to complete one TAP each year. If you haven’t already, it’s time to take the final steps to complete the submission of your TAP:

List any additional actions you’ve taken towards your goals. If the actions are also FQAS activities then submit them into SumTotal as well.
Arrange for your final meeting with your Peer Coach, share your results and get written feedback and a signature from your Coach on your TAP form.
Save the completed form and submit it to SumTotal under “TAP: Teaching Action Plan.”
You are required to submit your completed form every year prior to June 30

If you are a Part-Time Post-Probationary, Part-Time Probationary, or Full-Time Probationary faculty, you only need to complete one TAP each FQAS cycle. Please see the Center’s website for your suggested timeline.

The goals that you set at the beginning of the cycle may have grown and adapted as you started to implement your newly acquired professional development skills into the classroom. The redesigned Teaching Action Plan (TAP) allows you to capture the full process of professional development from skills development and renewal to classroom application, so that you can reflect on what worked well, what didn’t work, what no longer works, and what could work with some adjustments. CTE recognizes that effective teaching involves a quality review process that embraces all of these levels of self-reflection and feedback.

If you are at 100% progress, but your cycle still shows "incomplete" in SumTotal do not be concerned! The Center for Teaching Excellence team will manually mark your cycle as complete after June 30, which will provide you with the opportunity to continue submitting activities that could potentially rollover into your next cycle (up to the maximum hours of 100 in Student Success and Teaching Excellence and 50 in Currency).

The Center provides a safe and welcoming environment for you to receive support at any part of this process. For more information on creating, updating, or submitting your TAP, please see our website or feel free to contact us. We’re here to help!

Syllabus Template Update:

Last year, MATC became one of over 300 colleges to participate in Achieving the Dream, an initiative designed to move teaching, learning, and “faculty leadership, engagement and respect...from the margins to the center of our redesign efforts.” The Center has been an integral part of the college’s work with the ATD network. One of the three goals within our ATD Action Plan included the review of our current syllabus template, with the goal of creating a more student-centered document. To move this work forward, a small-scale implementation group of your English and Math colleagues worked together this spring to gather student input using a survey tool, and then used that feedback to consider improvements in our own template, in addition to providing a toolkit. The Center will be introducing a new syllabus template on June 1. The new student-centered template, and the toolkit we’ve created to go with it, emphasizes relationships between teachers and students and helps faculty foster this important work.

MATC Professional Development Opportunities:

MATC offers a wide-range of professional development courses in a variety of delivery modes and durations as part of our efforts to design meaningful professional development that provides just-in-time training opportunities for you to explore what you need when you need it. All of these courses are free to MATC faculty and eligible for FQAS hours, so that you can plan and develop your own professional development goals and outcomes.

Feeling a little unsure of all the different course modalities MATC offers? The newly developed Modality Matrix provides the definitions of each course modality, including the newest modality called "Real Time." CTE has scheduled Course Modality Information Sessions to take a deeper dive into each course modality. The sessions are for all faculty and staff who would like to learn more about each course modality. Topics will include attendance, technology, scheduling, training, etc., with a focus on quality course delivery for our students.
Join us for a Course Modality Information Session!
May 6, 2022, 10am-11am, Register on Zoom

Achieving the Dream’s “2022 Operationalizing Equity, Social Justice, and Inclusion to Transform Teaching and Learning Webinar Series” and CTE's Chat with Colleagues Series

The Center for Teaching Excellence is excited to enhance Achieving the Dream’s “2022 Operationalizing Equity, Social Justice, and Inclusion to Transform Teaching and Learning Webinar Series” with follow-up sessions for each event. Faculty are encouraged to self-reflect after each webinar, and consider how they might apply the knowledge that was discussed, then come to a facilitated discussion session (virtual meeting) to share out with colleagues their responses, ideas, or questions that were generated based upon the webinar. Register for the Free Achieving the Dream webinar series here.

Chats with Colleagues: Designing Assessments through a Culturally Responsive Lens (New Date!)& Democratizing Learning Environments

Friday, May 6, 2022 · 12:00 – 1:00pm

Join Us!

HyFlex Workshop Update:
If you are considering teaching in the new HyFlex modality in the future, the next HyFlex workshop is June 9, 8:30am-3:30pm at the Milwaukee campus in room M201A. More information can be found on the HyFlex Modality page on the CTE website. Please email John Futterer, CTE's Instructional Designer, to sign-up.

Upcoming Workshops and Events:

The DEI Committee’s Events Calendar has several opportunities for professional development posted for the remainder of the semester. For more information and links to register, please see the DEI Committee’s website.

CTE Collaboration Connection:

Have a great idea? Let LPIC know about it!

When the scope of the project primarily falls within the Learn Pillar, faculty and non-faculty are invited to submit a proposal for Learn Pillar Integration Committee Work Teams. Here are the benefits that LPIC provides:

LPIC was designed to ensure adequate faculty representation through a fair, transparent, and rotational process. This helps us to ensure that the team’s selection is inclusive, diverse, and equitable and reduces faculty project fatigue.
LPIC was designed to ensure that a repetition of projects does not occur. LPIC Charters are shared with the entire MATC community; LPIC houses the repository, so that the project can be referenced in the future and decreases the potential for future as well as current repetition.
LPIC embeds fiscal stewardship; when the college invests in ZANCIL, LPIC provides a structure to promote future returns on the growth of the project.
When LPIC hosts a Work Team, LPIC’s review process ensures that key stakeholders have been collaborated with and eases future implementation of any changes that are made to our current processes.
LPIC was designed to foster collaboration; LPIC work teams deeply collaborate with departments and other projects or initiatives that are in need of, and benefit greatly from, faculty insight and collaboration.
LPIC processes embed a built-in check at the inception of the project to ensure a realistic timeframe of completion.
LPIC routinely facilitates collaboration and communication with departments and individuals outside of the Learn Pillar to support the project.
LPIC’s structure takes a strategic view of project management; this decreases impromptu, pop-up or “panic” projects, which is crucial in decreasing project fatigue.
LPIC holds Student-Centered Shared-Governance as a foundational principle and a lived value

Attention faculty with expertise in reviewing Course Outcome Summaries (COS)!

Part-time and full-time faculty are encouraged to apply for grant-funded ZANCIL load beginning as early as July 2022. The COS Reviewer will review new and revised Course Outcome Summaries (COS) submitted by faculty within Academic Pathways across the district.

Friendly Reminders:

Update from the Career Essentials Taskforce:
Based on the faculty feedback collected by the task force in Spring 2021 and then again in Fall 2021, and as part of the MATC Plan-Do-Check-Adjust quality cycle, the task force identified several changes to the Career Essential process. The first one will take place in Fall 2022.
Career Essentials May 2022 Update
In the next two academic years, we are planning to:

offer comprehensive training and resources to faculty
develop materials about Career Essentials for students
invite faculty to review and revise Career Essential rubrics and indicators, if needed
find a portfolio-based system for collecting Career Essential artifacts and feedback
explore Career Essential digital badges for students

Final Grades for 16, 12 & 2nd 8 week sections are due on Tuesday, May 24. You can submit your final grades using the ILP Integration tool in Blackboard or directly in Self-Service. A video demonstration of the ILP Integration Tool is also available. If you want to double check to see if your grades have been submitted, you can follow these instructions.

Keeping You Posted:

Our goal with CTE Connections is to keep you informed, not only about CTE’s work, but to help you navigate other college-wide initiatives that directly impact faculty.

WIDS Information Sessions Hosted by the Curriculum Department:

These demonstrations are a showcase for the web-based WIDS software. Covered in the session will be common terms, roles and statuses, course outcome summary (COS) creation/modification process, approval process, and a tour of the software itself.
WIDS Drop-In Sessions via Google-Meet: Drop-in sessions provide one-on-one help to individuals already using the web-based WIDS software to work through any problems you are encountering with your course outcome summaries.
Email Curriculum@matc.edu to see which dates and times work best for you. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact Lucila Rodriguez for assistance

The 2022 Spring Commencement Ceremony will be held Sunday, May 22 at the Fiserv Forum (1111 Vel R. Phillips Avenue). If you are able to assist with this memorable occasion for our graduates, or plan to participate in the processional/ceremony, please complete the sign-up form below.

MATC Mequon Campus is participating in the second annual Cedarburg Grafton Rotary Ride -- Cycling to Serve on May 21, 2022 MATC Mequon (please enter team name when registering) invites all participants to join our team for the 10-mile, 25-mile, 45-mile or 65 mile routes. Monies raised at the ride support technical college and university scholarships for high school students! Registration and more information is available at Rotary Ride (Use code 22MATCga-T)
Celebrate the end of the Spring semester and support future students with your participation. Looking forward to seeing everyone on May 21, 2022 at Cedar Creek Park!

Additional Professional Development Opportunities:

WTCS Mini-Grant Opportunity

The 2022 WTCS Learning & Teaching Labs: Equity & Inclusion in the Classroom Series is an opportunity for faculty to engage in sharing resources, collaborating across the system, and creating and enhancing course materials and activities. To continue this work, we are excited to announce funds are available to support faculty in making changes in their instructional practices. We will be granting 8 awards of $500 each. Application Deadline: Friday May 13, 2022.

Free QM Webinar:

“Course Design Considerations for Inclusion and Representation”
Dr. Racheal Brooks and Dr. Siobahn Day Grady of North Carolina Central University examine how course design practices help create safe, inclusive and equitable experiences for all online learners. Highlights include:

Evidence-based best practices for creating and sustaining universally accessible environments online.
Models for developing inclusive course design, including Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Design Thinking.
Research on the importance of incorporating DEI into online course design and the disadvantages many learners experience when they are not present.

Download the white paper for more information.

As a companion to the white paper, join Drs. Brooks and Grady for a free webinar*. During the webinar, participants will discover techniques for uncovering existing disparities faced by online learners, explore evidence-based best practices for equitable e-learning environments, and reimagine inclusive experiences for all learners.

Free Webinar: May 10 — 1:00 p.m. Eastern

WTCS FQAS Courses:

The WTCS office is offering two FQAS courses in May. These are the previous FQAS competency courses. The System Office will continue to provide the previous FQAS Competency Courses while we develop and transition to the new competencies. You can find more information on the full 2021-22 schedule. All syllabi are available on the registration pages.
Summer 2022:
Behavioral Management – May 9 – June 19
Student Success – May 9 – June 19

Inspiration, Research, and Best Practices

Part of CTE’s mission is to keep you informed about current best practices and pedagogical approaches. Each issue of CTE Connections includes links that are meant to be engaging, thought-provoking, and applicable to various classroom environments. For information on MATC's free access to Magna Commons publications, please see CTE's website. Enjoy the rabbit hole!