Blog posts are my commentaries about a topic in higher education. Subscribe to the blog to have new posts delivered directly to your email.
-
The new semester at my college begins with an “all-staff” meeting and a professional development day for faculty. The day begins with a general address by the college president, information about each area of the college (enrollment, student affairs, facilities and operations, budgeting, fundraising) provided by each vice president, information by the vice president for
-
My college has something called “Administrator on Duty.” This is where a college administrator serves as the point of contact for anything that may happen on campus between 4:00 and 7:00 pm. Most of the time, nothing happens – thankfully – but college guidelines say not to sit in the office during this time, so
-
On Feb. 10, 2022, I presented at the Growing Online Learning virtual conference, which is hosted by the Illinois Community College Online Consortium (ILCCO). The presentation was about an Orientation to Online Teaching I developed. The orientation was a five-week online course that informed prospective online instructors about the college’s standards for instructional design, best practices for
-
I recently started a new job as the Dean of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Social Sciences at a small community college in central Illinois. I was hesitant to apply at first because there has been so much writing about the enrollment decline and “crisis” in the Humanities (see examples in The Atlantic, The American Academic
-
In January 2022, I started a new job as the dean of an academic division. The division includes several departments in the General Education transfer area (English, Literature, Speech, History, Psychology, Sociology, Music, Art, Theater, and more), and it has over 20 full-time, tenured faculty. As a new employee, and as the supervisor of such
-
Prepare for a new semester of online teaching with this new semester checklist.
-
At the end of the semester, when a student is not able to complete all assignments or exams, or the student has extenuating circumstances such as an illness, the instructor has the option to extend the student’s assignment due date and assign an “Incomplete” grade for the course. Reasons for an Incomplete Reasons for assigning
-
I am writing a series of blog posts about the effects of Covid-19 on higher education. In this post, I explore the effects of Covid-19 on Instructional Technology departments, on instructional design practices, and on perceptions of online learning more broadly. Overall, the pandemic has created a great boom for instructional technology like video conferencing
-
I am writing a series of blog posts about the effects of Covid-19 on higher education. In this post, I explore the effects of Covid-19 on experiential learning. Experiential learning is experience-based learning where students engage in active, hands-on learning. Examples include science labs, clinical skills labs and simulation centers, clinical courses, internships, service-learning, student
-
I am writing a series of blog posts about the effects of Covid-19 on higher education. In this post, I explore the effects of Covid-19 on academic assessment, both on student assessment within individual courses and on program assessment for academic programs. This article is based on a presentation I delivered at the Illinois Community
Lirim Neziroski 