Faculty Retreat: Register Now
All Harper College faculty are invited to attend the Faculty Retreat. This year's retreat, “Toward Community Responsiveness and a Shared Vision”, explores creating meaningful educational experiences for all students, particularly for low-income students of color and immigrant students, who have gained relatively fewer benefits from decades of equality-focused education reform. The keynote speaker, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade draws on research from across a range of disciplines, including neuroscience, social epidemiology, public health, and social work. These examples of community-responsive pedagogy demonstrate how equitable classroom practices can enrich student engagement, enhance trauma responsiveness, and improve educational outcomes. Each segment of the retreat builds-upon these themes, culminating in continued work on identifying our common conceptions and creating a shared vision together as Harper faculty.
|
|
Artificial Intelligence Has Entered the Chat: Potential Reframing & Resources for Faculty
Shared by Stephanie Whalen, Academy Chair, English & Interdisciplinary Studies
With new advancements and applications of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, that can be used by students to generate anything from essays to original art and even solutions to complex math and science problems, there has been a lot of chatter among the faculty about what can be done to ensure students are learning as opposed to AI performing learning activities for them. Although homework services have been available for quite some time that students could contract with along with other platforms students could search and even apps where students could scan problems and find and submit material that was not their own, AI generated work is causing greater concern.
|
|
Blackboard Calendar
Juggling competing responsibilities isn't easy, but by utilizing the calendar tool in Blackboard you can help your students successfully plan for and meet their course requirements. When you create graded items such as tests or assignments in your course and add due dates, the calendar event automatically appears on the course calendar. You are also able to add non-graded events such as reminders to complete next steps in ongoing assignments, dates of when special guest speakers will present, and anything else you wish by manually adding them in the calendar in a matter of seconds. Students can then see the events listed by each course (color-coded for them) and by day, week, or month in a consolidated view. Giving students a visual overview of all their course events and due dates via the Blackboard Calendar tool truly can aid them with managing their time and workload.
Watch this quick video of how to add the calendar tool to your course menu, and how the calendar works and displays.
|
|
Give SGIF a Try this Semester: Sign Up by March 17
Dozens of Harper faculty and hundreds of Harper students have participated in the Small Group Instructional Feedback (SGIF) process since it was introduced at Harper in 2019, with great results. Starting with this semester, SGIF is now available on-demand! Faculty interested in having SGIF conducted in one of their courses can fill out an interest form to request one (deadline to submit form is March 17). Within the form, faculty can also request to be partnered with another faculty to conduct SGIF for one another and earn 0.4 CEUs.
|
|
Blackboard Support: Faculty vs Students
Blackboard Support for Faculty:
Faculty should contact Faculty Blackboard Support in the Academy -
Blackboard Support for Students:
Students need to contact the Student Service Desk in IT -
|
|
Academy Support: How to Get Help
The Academy team is available on campus for drop-in support in Building F, Room F317, as well as available for remote support.
Not sure what to ask or where to start? We’re here for you! Just fill out the Academy Request Form, and an Academy team member will follow-up with you.
|
|
Panopto is a cloud-based video platform that is now available to Harper faculty. Panopto provides an all-in-one solution for recording, editing, captioning, and sharing videos. Panopto is integrated with Blackboard and Webex, which provides easy access and a streamlined workflow for faculty and students. There are three workshops being offered this semester: Introduction to Creating Effective Course Videos, Video Editing & Captioning, and Interactive Video Quizzing. Learn more and register for a session using the link above.
Harper has partnered with Google to help us build skills that will keep our organization on the leading edge of technology and business change. Harper has been awarded the opportunity to participate in Google’s Professional Certificates learning initiative, which consists of free self-study online learning. Learn more using the link above.
Use the following links to learn more about and register for upcoming programs from the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:
Harper has partnered with Northern Illinois University to develop a Curriculum Leadership, Equity and Social Inquiry doctoral program. The application is due March 3. Learn more using the link above.
Black Student Union is sponsoring this networking event to meet with local business owners who will be on campus to present their stories and discuss their achievements.
Information to consider sharing with your students in a Blackboard announcement:
Harper College is among just three community colleges in the country to be named a Leader College of Distinction by Achieving the Dream (ATD), a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing community colleges as hubs of equity and mobility in their communities. Learn more using the link above.
Use the links below to view important deadline and due dates from the Registrar's Office:
|
|
How strong are Harper students' critical thinking skills?
Shared by the Learning Assessment Committee
Our General Education Learning Outcomes state that students should be able to “Use evidence to develop arguments, make decisions, and evaluate outcomes” at the time they graduate from Harper.
This spring, the Learning Assessment Committee and its Critical Thinking Work Group will lead an assessment of the Critical Thinking outcome. Those of you who teach a course that maps to this outcome may be asked to participate in the assessment. Courses are selected at random and faculty members will be notified by their Dean. Additional instructions will be provided by the Outcomes Assessment Office in the coming weeks.
|
|
Invite Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Ali, to Present in Your Classes this Semester
Shared by Nellie Khalil, Biology and Director, Office of International Education
As part of the College’s Global Region of Focus initiative, we are hosting a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Harper during the Spring 2023 semester. Our visiting scholar, Dr. Rabia Ali, is based in Pakistan and is a professor of sociology specializing in gender, globalization, and women’s leadership. We are excited to have her share her expertise on campus and look forward to ways in which she will, no doubt, enrich our campus community. Please consider inviting Dr. Ali to your classes this spring to give a guest lecture or presentation. She can present on a broad array of topics including gender-based violence, globalization and the changing Pakistani culture, and political violence and its intersection with racism and gender discrimination, among other things (her list of academic interests is quite substantial).
If interested in having her present to your classes, please complete this form to let us know of your interest and to help us plan her schedule.
|
|
Kathryn Powell Named 2023 Elliot Judd Award Recipient
Professor Kathryn Powell has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Elliott Judd Award for TESOL (previously known as Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). Established by the Illinois Teachers of Bilingual Education (ITBE), this award honors a member who demonstrates the qualities exemplified by late educator and TESOL advocate Elliot Judd: outstanding teaching, dedication to the professional field of TESOL, and a commitment to the professional development of colleagues. Powell, who has been bringing her enthusiasm for teaching ESL to the Chicago-area immigrant community for more than 30 years, will be recognized February 24 during the ITBE Annual Convention. Congratulations, Kathryn!
|
|
Join the OSCQR Rubric - Distance Course Design Review Workshop Running this March
We are aiming to grow our group of trained peer reviewers who are essential to the OSCQR rubric-based distance course design review process we implement here at Harper. If you are an experienced full-time or adjunct faculty member of a distance course (having taught online or blended at Harper within the past 3 semesters) and would like to become a peer reviewer of Harper distance courses - offering both possible ideas for modification as well as notes on sound course design to faculty colleagues - then we invite you to join this workshop.
The workshop will run asynchronously, in Blackboard, for 2 weeks during which time you will gain hands-on experience with the review process and rubric. Upon successful completion you will be eligible to participate in Harper distance course design reviews. (Note: faculty are eligible to receive a stipend for each review that they complete based on review assignments.)
|
|
Upcoming Professional Development Credit Opportunities |
|
February 27 - March 12 (GECs: 1) registration now closed
March 2, 12:30 p.m. (CEUs: 0.25)
March 6 - March 19 (CEUs: 1.0) register by: March 3
March 16 - April 27 (GECs: 3) register by: March 2
|
|
What's Happening @ Harper? |
|
Academy for Teaching Excellence | 847.925.6174 | Building F, Room F317
Monday - Thursday, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. and Friday, 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
|
|
The mission of the Academy for Teaching Excellence is to create a vibrant teaching and learning culture for full-time and adjunct faculty that cultivates professional development in support of student success. |
|
Accessibility: Individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation or who have questions about physical access may contact the event host or Access and Disability Services at ads@harpercollege.edu, 847.925.6266, at least two weeks in advance of the event date.
|
|
Harper College enriches its diverse communities by providing quality, affordable, and accessible education. Harper College, in collaboration with its partners, inspires the transformation of individual lives, the workforce, and society. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
