“This is really cool. Where do you find the time to do all of this?” –email from Jimmy Dawson, NMC criminal justice adjunct and friend
The answer’s easy~it’s part of my instructional designer role. In fact, it is one of the most fun things I get to do! As a part of my normal routine, I have a number of readers and feeders that I screen for articles of interest related to strategic directions, discipline areas, general student learning, and technology. As well, I also search specifically by instructor request for relevant curricular materials and pedagogical supports. For example, if you’d like to use the jigsaw approach Gary Klotzbaugh described, but aren’t sure where it fits, I can work with you to select something from your existing collection or locate some additional resources such as case studies for you to use. Searching for assessment examples or ways to use active and blended techniques in your classroom setting are other types of support my role is designed to do so that your time can be focused on your students and your content expertise.
Think personal shopper for all things teaching and learning.
Content sharing, curation, reviewing, and creation can take an enormous amount of time. Teaching.nmc.edu is one place for faculty to find content created and curated content by NMC faculty and staff. The search box in the top corner makes finding things easy, such as items on competency, Moodle or curriculum mapping. The blog posts allow for you to add your comments, and there is also a spot on the teaching vocabulary page to add new words. As we develop collections with other tools as well such as paper.li, Diigo and Evernote, we’ll add links for all to use. Suggestions welcome! You may also want to connect with your library liaison as they have additional ways to assist you (and your students) with content curation.
Want to do some of your own teaching and learning window shopping? You may want to play with hashtag* searches in Twitter or group discussions in LinkedIn. Don’t forget to have some fun by checking out what’s current with things like #lastminutegifts!
*Putting the hashtag symbol (#) before a word filters results for that term in Facebook and Twitter as well as other social media sites.