Tag: Video

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You are more than your work: General Education Course Requirements

"Our passion led us here" written on a sidewalk.

I submit that we create a problem for students with the language we use for General Education course requirements in the college arena. We call them Electives. The term Electives gives students the impression that these courses are optional, that they are not important and that these courses do not deserve the same attention as students’ vocational courses. Many faculty reinforce this idea with the way they think and speak about the place electives have in their program.

In the summer of 2016, I got curious about a specific group of students who didn’t graduate. I wondered how many students where in their final semester of a program, who had at least a grade point average of 3.0 out of 4 and were not eligible to graduate. There were more than I expected. And then I looked at why they were not eligible. Electives. The majority had failed, dropped or skipped an elective in their first three semesters and that was what prevented their graduation at the end of their final semester. Many had enrolled in an elective course in the Spring semester but it meant that these students would not be walking across the stage with their class in June. Our college had set targets for increasing retention for the year. Graduating this group of students would have exceeded our targets.

So how do we address this? I have three suggestions:

  1. Let’s stop calling these courses electives. These are General Education REQUIREMENTS – you need these to graduate. An addendum would be to also change other faculty conversations about the importance of these course to students.
  2. Let’s do a systematic check of students as Winter semester ends and suggest Spring semester options for catching up missing courses or a plan for picking up the additional course during the regular semesters.
  3. Let’s talk to students about the benefits of General Education requirements.

Today’s Daily Extend took me to ClassHook, and there I found this clip:

Dead Poet’s Society: What will be your verse

Mr. Keating emphasizes the real-world applicability of words, language, and poetry. He encourages his students to contemplate their life’s purpose. The human race is full of passion- poetry, beauty, romance and life: the things people stay alive for. “The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Let’s ask students about their passions, their life outside of work and the impact they wish to have. Let’s explore the options they have with General Education Courses and show them the possibilities for making their college experience unique. This discussion could come as part of a workshop, at faculty meetings during Orientation, or during one of their core courses in 1st semester.

If we can reframe electives, I believe we could both improve student experience and graduation rates.

Featured image: Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

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One minute video


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The Ontario Extend‘s Daily Extend #oext247 asks us to make an One Minute Video about an aspect of our practice. Mine is a bit more tell than show but I created a one minute video on what to do when you realize that you have a test tomorrow. I love the Emergency Test Preparation Strategy on the Study Guides and Strategies which is based on George Miller’s 1956 The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

The strategy asks students to first scan their notes and materials and create a list of important topics. Then, to choose five and start with writing down everything that they know about the topic. After accessing that prior knowledge, the student then checks their understanding against their notes and update their study sheets. If there is time, the student can add two more for seven topics and if needed two more for nine but is advised to stop there.

I used PowerPoint to create some slides and recorded a voice over. I exported the slide deck and recordings to a video and then uploaded to YouTube. I added some music in the background and YouTube adds automatic closed captioning. I released it under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

If I was do this for a specific purpose for students, I would re-record the audio as it is a bit low but for today’s purpose, I am considering it good enough because it is Saturday and I have other home things to do! This is also my first official post on my new blog here on my own domain!

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Western Film Festival

Film still of John Wayne

Making Sense of Open Education, Day 7 is all about the GLAM: Gallaries, Libraries, Archives and museums. At St. Clair College, we have a General Education Course about Western Film:

WESTERNS: FILM AS A LENS TO THE PRESENT

SSC 183G

This course will explore the film genre of Westerns. Major themes and ideas will be examined via the work of selected films, directors and actors. Subjects to be studied via discussion and reflective assignments include the Origins of the Western, Components of the Western, Landscape and Setting, Indigenous Peoples, Women, Directors, Actors, and Films. The course will conclude with a discussion of the place of the Western in contemporary culture: can it still ‘sit tall in the saddle’?

Here are a few Western Film Selections I would use in this course:

 

Featured photo: Publicity photo of John Wayne for film The Comancheros. Public Domain

 

 

 

 

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I don’t teach

Irene Stewart standing before a class of students.

That’s right, it is confession time. I don’t teach. At least not in the way most think about teaching at the post-secondary level. I have no answer for you when you ask me: So, what do you teach? This will make some of the activities in my professional development project with Ontario Extend a bit challenging as I will need to extend in my own way but I believe that still fits the overarching goals.

So, what do I do? I am a member of the faculty of St. Clair College in Ontario. Faculty at colleges in Ontario are defined by the CAAT collective agreement as professor, counsellor, and librarian. I have been a Retention Coordinator for over 10 years and in that time I have been categorized as a counsellor, then a professor, then a counsellor again. I don’t quite fit in either category. I, along with a 2nd Retention Coordinator, am responsible for Tutoring Services at all three St. Clair campuses. I am responsible for the theory and practical portions of tutor training and for the ongoing observation and guidance of tutors throughout the semester.  I am like their in-class teacher, lab teacher, and placement supervisor all rolled into one and perhaps preceptor is the best term to apply to my role. My partner and I precept 100 tutors across the college during Fall and Winter and about half that through the Spring/Summer.

That is half my job. The other half of my time is spent responding to gaps in services and programs through direct involvement or advising on potential solutions.

Here is an example. In the past few years, we have had an increase in International Student enrollment. Because there was a need, I created and presented a number of different workshops and seminars for International students on writing, APA, study skills, group work, presentation skills, college level reading, academic integrity, etc. I also helped to develop and implement tutoring services to serve International Student needs in ESL including walk in and conversation club services. These workshops are presented outside of class as voluntary activities and in-class upon faculty request. I developed a workshop on college culture in the Fall for a specific program to address issues encountered in and out of class.

It went like this, I was meeting with the Manager of Student Services at the Chatham Campus. A faculty member interrupted to talk about issues their class was having and boom, gap girl is tapped in. Gap girl is me, by the way. I modified some of my existing material, added some new insight and came up with a workshop that would benefit both domestic and International students on college culture. I did the workshop and it helped.

Fast forward to December and I am called into a meeting with managers from Marketing, Student Services and International Student services to present the workshop. I walk them through the workshop as I can’t really present it because the learning activities and discussions don’t work without the students. They love it and ask, can we turn this into a 3 minute video for Orientation. Ummm…. no. I agree to do the workshop, without the learning activities and discussion, before a group of students to be video taped. I can’t strip is down into 10 minutes and I have to tell you, I hated it because it was 27 minutes of me talking. All the fun stuff of interacting with the students and energy that comes with that experience was gone. There was no opportunity to modify the content or delivery on the fly based on the students in front of me. I also had to change the way I dress and go to hair and make up which just made it worse.

After the taping, someone else decided what to cut and what to keep and came up with 10 minutes of video. I think they cut out some of the good stuff. At January orientation, it was shown to the incoming students as a whole group. For the Spring/Summer, it was used in small groups as part of the Faculty sessions with program groups and included opportunities for discussion.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHylmJUKPPw&w=560&h=315]

Please don’t misunderstand. I think the video editing, addition of pictures and other video clips was masterfully done. I hope students and faculty are finding this video helpful. I certainly have had students stop me in the hall since Spring Orientation to say – hey, you are that lady! But this is not what I consider teaching.

I love my job, I have the flexibility to do many interesting things that other faculty are not able to do. And I can fill the gap between what I do and the Extend modules and apply the activities in a way that will help me grow professionally and improve what I do for students and the college. I just hope that some of what I share will be helpful to other in our fabulous ExtendWest cohort.

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