A weekly e-newsletter from CNM's Organizational Learning Division with training and development ideas and opportunities for all employees

"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of man--the balance-wheel of the social machinery."
-Henry B. Adams
 

April 2 Issue: Table of Contents

• 4 Student Success:  share your brightest ideas and best practices with your CNM peers on this website
• Do you blog? Looking for a few--okay, many--good blogs among CNM faculty and staff...
• Student Success Initiative, Part 3, brings CNM faculty and staff together to share best practices on March 30
• Blackboard tutorial: Use online tools that match the way people learn
• At-your-desk learning: Top tips for Outlook
• Productivity primer: Goal-planning tips  
• Preview Apr. 3-7 training events and learnshops
• Preview Apr. 9-14 training events and learnshops
• This week's joke

4 4 Student Success:  share your brightest ideas and best practices with your CNM peers on this website

Do you have a classroom activity or assignment that succeeds in helping students learn and enjoy the process? Consider sharing such ideas with your fellow educators at CNM on the 4 Student Success website.  This site is an ongoing project of the ECA Student Success Task Team and had as its original purpose to bring together and share the best student-retention and success ideas among faculty and instructional staff in CNM's Educational & Career Advancement Division.  The site has recently been expanded to accept and publish ideas from all CNM faculty and instructional staff.

Help build this library of web resources for educators by sharing your brightest ideas and best practices.  You can submit them on this online form:

http://planet.cnm.edu/ecaresources/4studentsuccess/share_your_ideas_form.htm

4 Do you blog?  Looking for a few--okay, many--good blogs among CNM faculty and staff...

• Roy Turner, ECA Introductory English instructor and ECA director on the UNM campus
  Roy uses his blog as a "place for discussions related to assignments and topics from my English 100 classes at UNM."
  http://royturner.blogspot.com/
• Jennifer Herrin, ECA instructor of English as a Second Language (ESL) maintains a blog as "a record of my experience getting a fellowship as an English Language Teacher Trainer in Ukraine.
  http://jenfx.blogspot.com/

4Student Success Initiative, Part 3, brings CNM faculty and staff together to share best practices on March 30
About 160 CNM faculty and staff participated in the Student Success Initiative, Part 3, event at Smith-Brasher Hall, Main Campus last Friday.  Sally Pearson kicked off the event at 8:20am, explaining the why's and how's of it.  Then 30 workshops related to student success and retention were presented during three consecutive 45-minute sessions, ending with ending remarks from Sally and a short film on "Celebrating What's Right with the World."

View photos of this event taken by Suzanne Harris-Smith, ECA director of instruction, and Rhoda Strode, Achievement Coach.

4Blackboard tutorial:  Use online tools that match the way people learn
CNM's online course-management software, WebCT, has morphed into Blackboard. Blackboard isn't just for distance learning and hybrid (a blend of online and in-the-classroom) courses.  It can be used for any course where an "anytime online learning space" is desirable.

The first to make the move to the new Blackboard Campus Edition (CE) 6 will be instructors who are teaching new and existing online courses.  They will migrate these courses to the new Blackboard platform in time for the Summer 2007 term. CNM instructors who have been using WebCT to teach hybrid courses--or to "web-enhance" their face-to-face courses--will begin using the new Blackboard Campus Edition (CE) 6 edition in the Fall term.

Here's an excellent Blackboard tutorial that can help instructors design or redesign their online classrooms in order to better accommodate the way people learn.  As the tutorial points out, "Anyone can place content into their Blackboard course, but every faculty member should ask themselves this important question: 'Does the content I place into my course enhance teaching and learning?'" The tutorial addresses the following questions:

• How do people learn?
• How can I use technology when implementing the Seven Principles?
• What should be learned?
• How should online courses be designed?
• How will we know if learning occurs?

Then view this short but informative video created by Tonia Malone of CalPoly that shows how "Technology can enhance teaching and learning," gives a view of an online course in Blackboard, and illustrates some of the possibilities for using Blackboard's tools for any kind of course.

4At-your-desk learning:  Top tips for Outlook

Here's a page of tips for using MS Outlook's various tools and capabilities, including the calendar, contacts, notes, and tasks.  Learn to use them all, and they'll help make your work easier and better organized.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010970221033.aspx

4Productivity Primer:  Goal-planning tips
Achieving goals starts with identifying them. "New to goal-setting? Or perhaps you've been writing goals down for years. Either way, here are some tips and answers to frequently asked questions related to getting the best results possible from your goal-setting."
http://www.mygoals.com/helpGoalsettingTips.html

4Preview Apr. 2-7 training events and learnshops
The following events are scheduled for the week of April 2-7. View complete details and register for these events on this webpage: http://planet.cnm.edu/orglearn/Institute/2007Spring/calendar_registration.htm

 Wednesday, Apr. 4 

• Digital Visual Resources for Instruction 2: Digitization (Main)

 Thursday, Apr. 5 

• Access Intro (Main)

 Friday, Apr. 6 

• Passport for Faculty (Main)

4Preview April 9-14 training events and learnshops
The following events are scheduled for the week of April 9-14. View complete details and register for these events on this webpage: http://planet.cnm.edu/orglearn/Institute/2007Spring/calendar_registration.htm

 Tuesday, Arp. 10 

• Outlook, Part 2 (Workforce Training Center)

 Thursday, Apr. 12

• Access: Intermediate (Main)
• Student Employee Supervisor Training  (Main)

 Friday, Apr. 13 

• Defensive Driving  (Main)

4Joke of the week
Failure is not an Option. (It comes bundled with the software.)

If you need help to register or find out more about Organizational Learning events, contact Jean Montaño at 224-4400 or by email: jmontano@cnm.edu.