To welcome my students to my online class, I locked them in a room and made them breakout! And, they loved it!

What I am speaking of is the virtual escape room challenge I assigned my students as their syllabus quiz. However, you can use this as a quick check for understanding or reading review, or anything else.

First, I created an invitation to the breakout room using Google Docs. The invitation contained some basic instructions and a clues needed for later. I have written out the basic instructions, and also included a link to a video. The invitation also contains a QR code to access the “lock” (actually a Google form that is set up as a quiz and only accepts one correct combination of numbers to “unlock”).

Students then use a Jamboard to answer questions based on their reading (in this case, the syllabus). The Jamboard utilizes a system of true and false statements from the syllabus; each statement corresponds to a design and a number. The challenge is for students to eliminate false statements and use the combination of correct numbers and designs to crack the code to the virtual lock and escape! For curious minds, a final, essential hint needed to crack the code is hidden in the invitation above!

Students who solved the Jamboard and escaped received a welcome email and video!

Consider a breakout room to increase engagement and problem solving to your next assignment!

I had the pleasure of attending the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA)’s annual conference in Greenville, SC during April 8-10, thanks to travel funding provided by the CTL. This conference is one of several regional conferences associated with the National Communication Association (NCA), which is the professional association for my discipline. This was my first time attending a conference without presenting something myself, so my schedule was wide-open to sit in on interesting research and teaching panels. I also got to reconnect with some old friends, professors, and advisors.

The one thing I’m most excited to share with my DDCC colleagues is a type of interactive panel that all the NCA-associated conferences host. It’s called Great Ideas for Teaching Students, or G.I.F.T.S., for short. In these sessions, presenters sign up to share an innovative lesson, assignment, tool, or assessment, and they come prepared with one-page handouts for all the participants. The session runs like pedagogy speed dating: in a big room full of round tables, one presenter sits at each table. Participants spread out to fill in all the tables, then the first round of presentations begins. For 8-10 minutes, presenters talk about their lesson, assignment, tool, or assessment, and participants have a chance to ask questions and discuss. After 8-10 minutes, all the participants move on to another table, while the presenters remain at their stations. The session lasts as long as it takes for the participants to visit every table. At the end of the session, each participant has a stack of handouts with cool new ideas to take home!

I participated in two G.I.F.T.S. sessions at this conference. While many of the presenters were sharing ideas I’ve heard about or implemented before, they all had some unique take that generated new ideas for my own classes. Some examples of ideas I brought back: live-tweeting public speeches to teach active listening and audience adaptation, bringing back “first day of class BINGO” later in the semester to talk about self-disclosure, and using randomly-generated video clips as a basis for students to create narrative speeches. The benefit to participating in this type of pedagogy round-table at a disciplinary conference is that the teaching ideas can be hyper-specific to the exact kinds of classes I teach, but I think it could be a great model for sharing out more broadly-applicable teaching ideas with our DDCC colleagues at a faculty symposium, too!

Figaro was found by a dumpster 8 years ago, and is one of the reasons we call him our dumpster kitty. The other reason is he eats anything and everything from green beans to lasagna. Now close to 20 pounds and nearly 3ft long from nose to tail (photo 3), he has become my daughter Ophelia's big brother, as she puts it. From the first day she came home he stayed beside her (photo 1). When she would cry, he would run to check on her, and even learned how to climb the playpen gate (photo 4). He is her hero (photo 2).

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If you would like to have your pet featured in the Storm Report, please send a photo and any text you want included to Nathanael_Gough@davidsondavie.edu.

Here are two more of the Lexington Farmers Market Posters made by Jeffrey Pubantz's Digital Media students, Ava Miller and Elizabeth Suira. The winning poster will be used for advertising the Market in and around Lexington in the spring and summer. We will announce the winning poster once we have seen the work of all the finalists.

The Application for Advisory Board Member Google form has been reopened through April 29, 2022! Elections will be reheld by division during the week of May 2 to May 6.

Advisory board members represent their areas of the college to provide a voice in planning and implementation of professional learning opportunities for DDCC faculty. If you would like to know more about the qualifications, responsibilities, and what it’s like to serve on the CTL advisory board, take a look at this Advisory Board Information Sheet.

If you are interested in joining the CTL, please use the Application for Advisory Board Member Google form to apply. If you have any questions, please reach out to the CTL or one of the Advisory Board members listed below.

Take a look at this three-minute Explainer: What is Culturally Responsive Teaching? video from Education Week. For a slightly deeper look, read the article “What Is Culturally Responsive Teaching?” by Madeline Will and Ileana Najarro. One of the texts referenced by the article, Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, is available for check-out in the CTL Lending Library.     

At Large: Michael Liu (michael_liu@davidsondavie.edu) (FT), Arts, Science, Business, and Technology: Grant Jolliff (grant_jolliff@davidsondavie.edu) (FT), Aaron Prillaman (aaron_prillaman@davidsondavie.edu) (PT), Davie: Dee Edwards (dee_edwards@davidsondavie.edu) (FT), Katrena Wells (katrena_wells@davidsondavie.edu) (PT), Health Sciences: Datra Delk-Patrick (datra_delkpatrick@davidsondavie.edu) (FT), Teaching, Learning, and Global Engagement: Nathanael Gough (nathanael_gough@davidsondavie.edu) (FT), Faculty Chair: Gloria Johnson (gloria_johnson@davidsondavie.edu) (FT)

Nathanael Gough (Nathanael_Gough@davidsondavie.edu)

Phil Tietjen (Philip_Tietjen@davidsondavie.edu)

Dori Lloyd (Dori_Lloyd@davidsondavie.edu)

Amy Holmes (Amy_Holmes@davidsondavie.edu)

Image by USA-Reiseblogger on Pixabay