News & previews

New time for Employee Assistance Workshops
by Greg Casaus, Organizational Learning Director

We in Organizational Learning have been looking for ways to make training more accessible to all CNM employees.  One step we are taking is to move our one-hour Employee Assistance workshops to a new time. 

Effective this week, five workshops have been rescheduled to their new 11:00 start time.  Hopefully, this will allow staff to more easily coordinate lunches and office coverage. 

In addition, we are offering more classes at our extended campus locations.

Please join us for the following classes:

►Conflict Resolution Skills for Managers
June 20 (Workforce Training Center)

►Stress Management
July 20  (Montoya Campus)

►Coping with Difficult People
July 25 (Main campus)

►Homework Without Tears
July 30 (Main Campus)

Register here for these workshops.

You can contact Greg at gcasaus6@cnm.edu or call him at 224-4244.

LAST MINUTE NOTICE with apologies: The Collaborative Learning workshop scheduled for Tuesday,  June 12, has been postponed and will be rescheduled at a later date.

Preview of events for the week of June 18-23
The following events are taking place at CNM during the week of June 18-23.  Register on this webpage.

►PowerPoint III
Monday, June 18	1:00- 4:00 pm	Main, TEC S-21
►Ergonomic Training
Tuesday, June 19	10:00-11:00am	Main, S-17
►Conflict Resolution Skills for Managers
Wednesday, June 20	11:00am-12:00noon	WTC, Room 111
►Excel I
Wednesday, June 20	1:00- 4:00pm	Main, TEC S-21
►Camtasia II
Thursday, June 21	12:30- 2:30pm	Main, TEC S-21
►Defensive Driving: Recertification
Friday, June 22	9:00am- 12:00noon	Main, S-20

About Organizational Learning The Organizational Learning Division's mission is to create professional development pathways for college employees that support the strategic mission of CNM and contribute in meaningful ways to college personnel’s lifelong learning and job enrichment. For more information about Organizational Learning or any of its events, contact
	Jean Montaño Admin. Coordinator	224-4400 jmontano@ cnm.edu
	Greg Casaus Director	224-4244 gcasaus6@ cnm.edu
	Timothy Ligon Tech Support	224-4243 tligon@ cnm.edu
	Kayleigh Carabajal Executive Director	224-4401 kcarabajal@ cnm.edu

  Teaching Excellence

On Course I Workshop
by Susan V. Richards, CHSS History and Online Instructor Course instructor

Organizational Learning brought the nationally recognized program On Course to Albuquerque last week.  For three days, CNM faculty from ECA, HWPS, and CHSS participated in the learner-centered workshop designed to give faculty some tools to improve academic success in students. 

Skip Downing, founder of the On Course program and an educator for 40+ years, led the workshop Wednesday through Friday.  Downing created On Course based on two principles: 1) that students learn better in a learner-centered environment, and 2) that faculty can assist students in becoming active, responsible learners.

Downing immersed workshop participants in these principles from the start, using a case study to engage faculty in an examination of personal responsibility.  Called “The Late Paper,” [view it by scrolling down near the bottom of the page] the case study described a scenario familiar to teachers across the country. 

Kim, a promising student in a psychology class, is faced with a series of choices that prevent her from turning in her paper on time – a firm requirement of the professor as stated on the course syllabus.  The penalty for missing the deadline is failing the course, a dire consequence for Kim, who is about to graduate.  

Kim is married to an unsupportive, jealous man who sabotages her use of the family car the day Kim plans to turn in the paper.  A classmate distracts Kim with the party option as Kim waits for a bus to deliver her paper to the campus.  The choices Kim makes over the next several hours determine that the paper will be late, and the professor holds to the policy written on the syllabus, failing Kim for the course. Who is responsible for Kim’s F? 

Through directed discussion of the case study, faculty examined all the possible culprits and listened to defenses and indictments of each character.  The variety of opinions offered gave us a deep understanding of how students might see themselves and their lives in such a situation.  Although we did not agree on the culprit, we did concur that Kim needs some assistance in making wise choices to reduce her chances of failing to meet her goals.

“The Late Paper” case study was only one of several learner-centered activities of the workshop, and it set the standard for all that followed.  CNM faculty who attended On Course last week made new friends, found new energy, and left with new tools and strategies for dealing with the complexities of students in the 2000s!

You can email Susan at srichards@cnm.edu.

Online On Course resources for teachers and students
As those who attended the On Course Workshop learned, Skip Downing maintains a website with extensive resources for both faculty and students.  Here are a few:

►Students' Self-Assessment  Students can "Take the self-assessment online to identify behaviors and beliefs you may wish to change to achieve more of your potential in college and in life."

►Follow-up activity after students complete the self-assessment
Skip recommends this activity as a great way to use the On Course Self-Assessment," above.

►Self-Management Tools
On this website, you'll find forms for student and personal use, including these:

• Tracking Form: "Effective for scheduling actions that need to be done repeatedly to reach a short term goal."
• 32-Day Commitment: "Behavioral psychologists suggest that breaking an old habit or starting a new one requires about thirty-two days. This form will help you track specific actions over the thirty-two day time frame."
• Monthly Calendar: "The monthly calendar will help provide you with an overview of upcoming events, appointments and assignments."
• Daily Actions List:  "Daily Actions Lists records everything you want to accomplish in any given day."
• My Financial Plan:  "Your financial plan will help you keep track of all of your monthly expenses throughout the semester.

►Student Success Strategies
This webpage contains more than a hundred links to activities and strategies to help students succeed in your courses.

At-your-desk learning
Learn

Learning In Hand
"The three common types of handheld  computers being used in schools are Pocket PCs, Palm Handhelds, and iPods. These diminutive computers have plenty of memory to hold software applications, electronic texts, various documents, audio, and video."

"In fact, all three of these kinds of devices can play podcasts. Podcasts are audio or video on the web that can be automatically downloaded, ready to sync to a mobile device. There are thousands of podcasts freely available and they are organized in several different directories on the Web."

Read more and find lots of related resources at http://learninginhand.com/index2.html

One of those resources is a page of lesson plans using hand-held computers developed by students in a University of Nebraska at Omaha graduate class on Handhelds in Teaching and Learning.

This site is geared toward K-12 instructors but has information that will be useful to college-level instructors as well.

Productivity Primer  
Problem Solving Skills is a module on the Mind Tools website that explains twelve different tools to "help you understand complicated, difficult situations. Without them, problems might seem huge, overwhelming and excessively complex."

"These techniques help you conduct a rigorous analysis of the problems you face, helping you look at as many factors as possible in a structured and methodical way. They give you a starting point in business problem solving (and other problem solving situations) where other people would just feel helpless and intimidated by the situation."

Quotation 

"The [woman or] man who can make hard things easy is the educator."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jokes of the Week

Q:: How do you get down from an elephant? 

A: You don't get down from an elephant; you get it from a goose.

A man encounters a pirate in a bar.  They strike up a conversation, and the man asks the pirate how he suffered his various injuries. 

"Arrgh, I lost me leg fighting over buried treasure in the tropics.  I lost me ear in a barroom fight with another pirate--he bit me ear right off." 

The other man points to the pirate's arm and asks, "How'd you get the hook for an arm?" 

The pirate replies, "Arrgh, I lost me arm when a winch tore it off in a terrible storm at sea." 

"And how did you lose your eye?" 

The pirate says, "Arrgh, I had a terrible itch in me eye." 

"You lost your sight because of an itch?" 

The pirate explains: "Aye, it was me first day with the hook."

7-Second Survey Last week, seven instructors replied to the 7-Second Survey, answering this question--If you could have anyone who is alive today come to your classroom to speak to the students, who would you invite?  And why? View the results of this survey. This week's anonymous survey of CNM faculty asks, "What is your greatest challenge as a teacher?"  How do you meet this challenge? What is your greatest challenge as a teacher? How do you meet this challenge?

This newsletter is produced by Nancy King, for the Organizational Learning Division.