Volume 4, Issue 6--Published: November 14, 2024

The Center and You!

The final turn of the semester is coming up! The Center provides support and motivation to help power you through to the end of the semester. Every course completion puts students one step closer to graduation and positively influences the trajectory of their academic and professional careers. The efforts that you are making to help our students are monumental; as you support our students, the Center is here to support you. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

MATC Professional Learning 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.  

DEI Book Club: College Students’ Sense of Belonging 

Interested in exploring how a sense of belonging influences student success? Join DEI’s fall book club for a dive into Dr. Terrell L. Strayhorn’s book, College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students, on November 21 and December 5, noon-1 p.m. DEI will provide books for the first 15 registrants. Meetings will be held virtually. To support meaningful discussions, please sign up only if you can attend both sessions.

Yuja Workshop
Yuja is MATC's video creation and editing tool. In the Yuja workshop, participants will learn how to import, create, caption, and edit video content. They will apply what they learn by creating, captioning, and editing video during the workshop. This workshop is offered in M201 (Center for Teaching Excellence), and is limited to 12 participants. To attend this session, email John Futterer at futterja@matc.edu.
 
Monday, 11/18/24, 11am-2pm, Face-to-Face Only (M201A Downtown)

Ally Workshop

Ally is a tool integrated with Blackboard Ultra that helps improve the accessibility of documents, images, text, and tables for students. In this session, you will learn how Ally benefits students, practice using Ally to address common file accessibility barriers, and explore Alternative File Download formats, such as speech-to-text MP3 audio, and text translation to over 71 languages. Note: this workshop is limited to 15 participants, so please register at the link below early to reserve a seat if you would like to attend

Thursday, 11/20/24, 12pm-2pm, Virtual or Face-to-Face (M 201A–Downtown)

COS Reboot Workshop

This workshop is intended for those who edit (the Developer) the Course Outcome Summary (COS) in WIDS and would like to learn more about writing Learning Objectives, Course Competencies, and Criteria. The CTE is hosting a workshop to address the proper way to write these. Register through the Zoom link provided. Use that same link to attend virtually, or you can attend in-person at the Milwaukee campus in M201 (CTE).

Friday, 11/22/24, 12pm-2pm, Virtual  or Face-to-Face (M201A-Downtown)

Collaboration Connection:

Faculty who have OER courses are invited to apply for the few remaining $500 state-sponsored OER Maintenance Grants and use winter break to update their courses. Also, on Nov. 19, check out the Wisconsin Open Education Symposium presentation, "Dive into the creative process of customizing and modifying OER to better suit your educational needs and objectives in the LibreVerse." More info here. And on Nov. 20, CCCOER will be presenting "Open Education and Indigenous Knowledge." Learn more about this and other workshops and register here.
 

Friendly Reminders:

Blackboard Downtime Scheduled for November 29, 2024

Blackboard will be temporarily unavailable on Friday, November 29, 2024, from 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM CDT for scheduled maintenance. During this time, you will not be able to log into Blackboard and the login page will show a message that the site is down. This work is needed to improve performance and security. Online Learning will announce when Blackboard is back up and available for logins after maintenance is complete.

Online Campus Faculty Newsletter

Read the November 2024 edition of Online Campus News You Can Use and get advice on important tool updates, tasks and upcoming events to help faculty deliver high-quality online instruction.

Keeping You Posted:

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

Students graduating this December are encouraged to participate in the following competitions:

Deadline to apply is November 15 at 4 p.m. Contact honors@matc.edu for more information.

Additional Professional Learning Opportunities:

2024 WTCS Faculty Summit 

The Wisconsin Technical College System Office is excited to host the second WTCS Faculty Summit. This fully virtual, free event is focused on innovations throughout the system, and is intended for faculty, presented by faculty, with topics that impact faculty!

 Join us for this event to learn about new ideas that have been implemented in the classroom that resulted in positive impacts on students and performance.  The sessions will address the core Faculty Quality Assurance System (FQAS) focuses of:

  • Curriculum & Assessment
  • Diversity,Equity & Inclusion
  • Student Success Teaching Methods

The summit is being held over two days, offering different times to support both full and part time/adjunct faculty:

  • Wednesday, November 13, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
  • Friday, November 15, 9:00am - 12:00 pm

Please join us for this professional learning opportunity to learn from and connect with your colleagues from across the System! This is a great opportunity to support ongoing FQAS professional development requirements! 

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!

If we're to believe the conversations around higher education's proverbial water cooler, our students are coming to us with poorly developed reading skills and are less prepared and willing to tackle college-level reading assignments than perhaps ever before. The Chronicle of Higher Education has...
It's always disheartening to peek at a student's notes after class and discover how far they are from capturing what was covered. This is partly due to students' trying to capture everything said, like a scribe. Students should instead take "deep notes" that summarize the underlying concepts rather...
In an ever-changing academic environment, instructors are constantly seeking innovative ways to engage our students and prepare them for success, both in our courses and beyond. How can we increase the likelihood that our class material translates into skills that students will use later in their...

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