Volume 2, Issue 7--Published: Wednesday, November 30th, 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, so consider this issue a pep talk that provides the support and motivation to help power you through to the end of the semester. 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. Let’s finish strong!

Our Work--The Center and You!

MATC's 2022 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) results are awesome! CCSSE is a student engagement survey that is administered online every three years to all enrolled students. Between the 2019 and 2022 CCSSE surveys, MATC students reported an improvement in all five benchmarks: Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners. MATC exceeds the rates from other large colleges, and we are starting to approach the Top 10% Colleges rate. This is a direct results of the efforts you are making to engage our students and your ability to embrace and apply the 21st Century Classroom skills. Your hard work is paying off! Keep it up!

 
 
A little goes a long way… let's go all in to encourage student completion 

The Center would like to offer a sense of hope and a reminder of how important and high impact your efforts are at this time of year for our students. In a class of 20, helping one student cross the finish line is a 5% increase in completion; getting 2 students across is a 10% increase. Many of our students may feel like they have fallen down or may not even be aware of how close they are to completing. Collectively, in our final push, we can make a huge difference for our students. We know how challenging this time of year can be, so the Center is providing the following email templates that you can use (or modify) to connect with your students and encourage their completion. 

Update from Community Engagement and Service Learning
Greetings, fellow faculty. Community Engagement and Service Learning (CESL) is thrilled to learn that you are integrating community engagement and / or service learning into your classes and organized club activities.  For accreditation and other reporting purposes, it is essential for the college to be able to document instances of community engagement and/or service learning.  Please take a few moments to complete the following brief survey "MATC Community Engagement Activities Form," for each project or activity you lead. 
 
In addition, CESL would like to remind faculty to find and register for volunteer activities through the following link United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha and United Way of Northern Ozaukee.  We are excited to continue our partnership with United Way and hope you find these sites as easy to use as our previous Community Connection site (Please Note: Community Connection will be discontinued as of 12/31/2022).   Please contact your CESL campus Liaisons (Suzanne Goodrich or Judy Springer) if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for all you do to continue to support our students and our community.

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 our offerings are free to MATC faculty and eligible for FQAS hours, so that you can plan and develop your own professional development goals and outcomes.  

Lunch and Learn: Meet MATC’s Social Worker!

Wendolyn Romo is the social worker at the Student Resource Center (SRC). She has been with MATC for about 6 months. As the social worker in the SRC, her primary role is to provide ongoing case management to students as part of our Holistic Coordinated Care Network. She supports students by connecting them to resources, collaborating with community organizations/agencies, and supporting them in their academic success. The majority of students are referred to her by faculty and staff through EAB Navigate.  Come learn more about what Wendolyn does and how to best use EAB Navigate to support our students . 

Join us from 12 - 1 pm on Thursday, December 1st

Any questions? Feel free to contact her before then at romowt@matc.edu or 414-297-8137

COS Submission Deadline is approaching–COS Reboot Workshop can help!

So many faculty are engaging  in meaningful curricular discussions, and we couldn’t be more proud! Your active engagement creates meaningful conversations and a collaborative community that maintains faculty voice and our crucial role in  the curriculum process. It’s not too late to participate in the suggested COS Best Practices timeline that has been created to help you create this space. Sometimes a one-hour Google Meet is all that is needed to participate!

In an effort to streamline the COS Review Process, the college updated its COS Process SOP  through a shared-governance approach to increase faculty input. As a result, the COS process submission timeline has been modified to align more closely with the faculty nine-month contract period. We hope this schedule modification will be a win-win; faculty will no longer be asked to make COS adjustments during the summer when they are no longer being paid, and the Curriculum Department and COS Reviewers will have a more manageable workload. 

The college needs the help of COS Developers in order to ensure that faculty have access to their curriculum throughout the course of the year (when the COS is not active, faculty do not have access to the course’s curriculum and cannot view the COS!). You can do this by making sure the COSs that you are responsible for are submitted by the deadline for the three-year COS Review cycle  on December 9th, 2022. 

Need COS Help? COS Reboot Workshop is coming up!
Are you a Developer for a Course Outcome Summary (COS) that needs to be reviewed and/or edited? The Curriculum Department is now offering a Course Outcome Summary (COS) Reboot Workshop. This workshop is designed for COS Developers (those who create/edit COSs) who would like a refresher in learning the current requirements of a COS and the most efficient way to create/edit them. It is also designed for newly assigned developers. This workshop is scheduled so you can attend virtually (through Zoom) or in-person at the Center for Teaching Excellence (room M201 of the Downtown Campus).

Faculty, Developers, Department Chairs, and Instructional Chairs involved in the COS development process are highly encouraged to attend this workshop within the next two months. Workshops have been scheduled during a wide variety of days and times each week, and faculty can attend virtually or in-person at the Milwaukee campus, to allow for faculty teaching schedules. Upon completion, the COS Reboot workshop qualifies for 2 FQAS hours in the Student Success/Teaching Excellence category.

21st Century Level 3 Workshop
The next 21st Century Classroom Level 3 Cohort Workshop is now being offered in December. In two interactive sessions (December 2nd & 9th, 10:30am-12pm), faculty will examine and discuss advanced-level best practices that can be implemented in your courses, regardless of modality. FQAS hours apply.

Upcoming Yuja and SmarterProctoring Workshops

Yuja is MATC's video creation and editing tool. It allows users to create video within the software, or import videos. There's a quiz feature to embed questions within your videos. Best of all, it will auto-caption videos saving you time and effort. SmarterProctoring allows you to proctor online exams to reduce the likelihood students may look up answers on exams when taking them through Blackboard at home.

Collaboration Connection:

Part of The Center’s core purpose is to help faculty navigate MATC initiatives from a faculty perspective. A lot of positive changes have occurred at the college, and we want you to not only feel like a part of the process but to also have a sense of accomplishment in knowing that your participation has a high impact on the success of our students.

 

Career Essentials Survey: Professionalism and Effective Problem Solving

As part of the quality improvement cycle, a group of MATC faculty were tasked with reviewing, revising, and improving how we teach and assess Career Essentials. After gathering your feedback and having multiple discussions, the Work Team proposed reducing the number of required Career Essentials (from seven to three or four) while simultaneously improving the quality of teaching and assessing within those that each program keeps. In the new process, all programs will continue to teach and assess Professionalism and Effective Problem Solving Career Essentials. Please take 5 minutes of your time to indicate which indicators of the existing rubric work for your students, your discipline, and your teaching, and which ones you would like to see changed. The due date for this task is December 1, 2022.  Your feedback is very important -- let’s keep this process faculty-driven!

OER Update:
Dec. 15, 2022 is the new deadline for both the $750 Spring 2023 OER Faculty Grant  and MATC OER facilitator position applications. For the grant, the MATC Open Access team asks applicants to replace a course's traditional textbook with an existing open textbook, OER, and/or other materials that are free for students. Part-time MATC faculty are also invited and encouraged to apply for an OER facilitator position. Finally, check out the Open Education Global and CCCOER Webinar: Open Ed As Enabler For Antiracism & Social Justice showcasing how open education promotes inclusive teaching, social justice, and anti-racism pedagogical practices. 

Friendly Reminders:

Volunteer at Commencement! 

Let’s celebrate our students together! We are looking for volunteers for the 2022 Winter Commencement Sunday, December 18, 11 a.m., for:

  • Usher (Assist with seating students on the arena floor - help late arrivals find seats - etc. You will need to have a cap and gown.)
  • ‎Student Check-in (Assist with checking in students when they arrive.)
  • Marshal (Lead student processional - assist with seating - assist with recessional. You will need to have a cap and gown.)  
  • Processional (Participate in processional/recessional - sit with students on arena floor - congratulate students after they cross the stage. You will need to have a cap and gown.)  
  • Roll Caller (Recite student names as they receive their diplomas. You will need a cap and gown.)

If you are able to assist with this memorable occasion for our graduates and would like to participate in the processional or ceremony, please complete the volunteer sign-up form by Friday, December 9.

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.

Collaborate Ultra Recording Annual Deletion coming up in January 2023:

In January 2023, Blackboard Client Support will permanently delete recordings of Collaborate Ultra sessions created before January 3rd, 2022. This means that links to Collaborate Ultra recordings created before January 3rd, 2022 will break and their recordings will not be available for viewing unless you take immediate action NOW to prevent their loss! This annual maintenance helps ensure the Collaborate Ultra platform’s availability per the vendor’s contracted storage limits. 

To preserve recordings eligible for deletion, you have until 5:00 PM CDT on January 3rd, 2023 to move Collaborate Ultra recordings to the YuJa Video Platform!  If you are unsure about the process, see the following videos. Contact onlinelearning@matc.edu if you have any questions about this process.

Downloading a Collaborate Ultra VideoUploading a Video to the YuJa Video Platform

Additional Professional Development Opportunities:

Select from an array of faculty topics to guide your teaching practices and help your students better succeed.

Inspiration, Research, and Best Practices

Part of The Center’s mission is to keep you informed about current best practices and pedagogical approaches. Each issue of Center 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 The Center's website.   Enjoy the rabbit hole!

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