Variants. Vaccine mandates. Guided Pathways. ctcLink. 2021-22 is shaping up to be another (overly) interesting academic year. As usual, RISE’s offerings for faculty take high-level, aspirational goals, like closing equity gaps and boosting student engagement, and make them approachable. Our events give faculty a chance to learn from colleagues, plan collaboratively, and try out tools and approaches they can use right away.
Pre-Fall Dialogues | Tools for Transformative Learning | Practioner Roundtables
Pre-Fall Dialogues
Our pre-fall offerings were a big hit last year, so we have a pair of encores this year.
Faculty Conversation: Group Work & Social Distance in the In-Person Classroom
Tuesday, September 21, 12:30-2:00pm
Nearly 3,000 students will return to the BC campus this Fall Quarter. But it won’t feel much like 2019. Everyone will be wearing masks and COVID protocols will be top-of-mind. Approaches that worked well in the in-person classroom of the past may need to be modified to work in this “new normal.”
This event will be a conversation rather than a workshop. It will give faculty who are just now returning to on-ground teaching a chance to ask questions to faculty who taught on campus in Spring Quarter. It will also give all faculty a chance to share strategies and approaches they intend to use in their hybrid or on-ground courses. We don’t have all the answers, but together we can ask some good questions and learn from one another.
This event will be held on Zoom.
Facilitated by Jackie Miller, Michael Reese, and Miranda Kato | 2 PD hours | $30 stipend
Deepening Learning through Course-Based Reflections
Tuesday, September 21, 2:30-3:00pm
Reflections often have a bad reputation; they are seen either as overly touchy-feely or as objective observations, neither of which create opportunities for meaningful student learning.
And yet, reflection can help students build connections between the course content, the broader world, and themselves. Put simply, reflections deepen learning. They can be in any format, not just writing, and can find a place in any field or course.
This half-hour micro-workshop will introduce participants to the basics of structured class-based reflection. There will be a fuller, six-session micro-workshop series in Winter quarter.
This event will be held on Zoom.
Facilitated by Sapan Parekh | 1 PD hour
Tools for Transformative Learning
Our workshops and panels feature faculty from all across campus. Presenters share approaches that can be used to supercharge teaching and learning in multiple ways.
Zines! A Show-and-Tell
Tuesday, October 12, 12:30-1:30 in D106
Thursday, October 14, 3:00-4:00 on Zoom
Zines are informal magazines, often homemade and regarding unconventional topics–and they are also a great way to engage students. The BC Library has an extensive collection of zines. Librarians Heath Hayden and Elena Maans-Lorincz will show off some of the most interesting examples and discuss how students and faculty can borrow these zines. In addition, faculty from across campus will share about how they have been using zines in their courses.
This event is not a workshop; it’s more of an interactive “show-and-tell” session with lots of opportunities for participants to ask questions. The socially distant in-person session in D106 on October 12 will give participants a chance to peruse and flip through the zines. (It’s also our only on-campus event for faculty this quarter. Heck, it’s probably one of the only on-campus events for faculty in Fall Quarter. Period.) We will also have a session on Zoom too.
Session facilitated by Heath Hayden, Elena Maans-Lorincz, and Michael Reese | 1 PD hour
Project-Based Learning in Asynchronous Courses
Two Thursdays, October 14 and 21, 1:30-3:00pm
Project-based learning (PBL) requires students to work in small teams to address open-ended, authentic issues. This requires coordination among students, which is inherently challenging in asynchronous classes. But challenging is definitely not impossible. Several BC faculty in multiple departments use PBL in online courses, and BC is actually something of a national leader among community colleges in this regard. In this two-part workshop, you’ll have time to revamp an assignment sequence and get feedback from colleagues across campus. You’ll also investigate approaches like:
- Creating synchronous “moments” vs. wholly asynchronous methods of coordinating teams
- Providing structure and scaffolding for projects in the online environment
- Strategies for creating team-based deliverables
Come explore PBL with Miranda Kato | 6 PD hours | $75 stipend
Civic Action in the Classroom Faculty Learning Community
Fridays, October 22, November 5, November 19, and December 3, 1:30-3:30pm
As we as a society and a nation engage with the repercussions of 2020 – The Pandemic, the Elections, the Protests, and the Census – there are plentiful reasons for Bellevue College students to see the connections between their coursework and the world around them. Though it is no longer 2020, the need for civic engagement and action continues, and the importance of building a civic voice in our students is ever pressing.
I appreciate having this space to engage with theories and tools of bringing in real-life civic issues into my English composition class projects, and to discuss ways of facilitating challenging conversations in the classroom with my colleagues.
– Dr. Zhenzhen He-Weatherford, English
Through four 2-hour virtual meetings, and with the help of others in your cohort, you will plan a civic action component in a Winter or Spring course. In these courses, your students will actively contribute to shaping their world, through which they will better understand course content, build lifelong skills, and connect more deeply with their classmates. “Civic” means anything that helps students act upon “a heightened sense of responsibility to one’s communities” (Jacoby 2009).
Participants will receive 30 PD hours and a stipend. Contact the facilitator, Sapan Parekh, for more information.
Facilitating Productive Struggle: A Faculty Panel on Building High-Rigor, High-Support Environments
Monday, November 8, 2:30-3:30
Scholar Zaretta Hammond argues that “productive struggle” is a key element of culturally responsive teaching. Creating a high-rigor, high-support environment is one of the common elements that happens across multiple high-impact practices that shrink equity gaps. . . and such environments can exist all sorts of different courses. But these environments definitely vary from discipline to discipline.
Join a panel of faculty who have built productive struggle into their courses in a variety of different ways. Learn what has worked for them, the challenges they faced along the way, and how they continue to challenge–and support–their students.
This faculty panel will be moderated by Jackie Miller and Sapan Parekh | 1 PD hour
Stepping Out & Stepping Into: Ethical Community Engagement for a More Equitable World
Tuesday, November 9, 1:30-3:30pm
So, you want to make a difference in the world around you? Perhaps you want to encourage your students to do the same? But maybe you feel uncomfortable, unprepared, and uncertain. Join us as we examine how to engage with, learn from, and contribute to the community in an ethical manner. We will examine how bias, anti-racism, privilege, storytelling, and more fit into how you step into new community situations, so you have more confidence to step out and make the world a better, more equitable place.
This interactive workshop has been designed with inputs from the community and from other academic institutions. It is open to anyone associated with Bellevue College, as well as to the broader community. Please consider sharing with students.
This workshop will be facilitated by Sapan Parekh | 2 PD hours
Unleash the Power of Mini-Projects
Thursday, November 18, 2:30-3:30pm
Looking to add some project-based learning to your course but don’t have space for a multi-week project? Mini-projects can help with that. Alexa Serrato, Associate Professor of Math, will provide a brief overview of three separate one-week mini-projects that she uses in different courses—and pull back the curtain on how she created them. She’ll also discuss how she uses mini-projects to help students master content, understand the real-world relevance of what they’re learning, and build teamwork skills. Mini-projects are a good fit for content-rich courses in many disciplines. Indeed, math is not a simple subject for contextualized, project-based learning, so if mini-projects can fit in math classes, they can work almost anywhere. If already you use mini-projects in your courses, please come prepared to say a few words about your approach in the discussion after the teaching talk.
Talk by Alexa Serrato; Facilitation by Michael Reese and Miranda Kato | 1 PD hour
Practitioners Roundtables
A space for faculty engaged in high-impact practices to share what they’re doing.
BUGR Group Roundtable
Friday, November 19, 1:30-3:00pm
Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice with a long track record of boosting student success and closing equity gaps, and the Bellevue UnderGraduate Research (BUGR) Group is a collective of faculty from multiple disciplines interested in such approaches. This roundtable will give participants a chance to (re)connect with one another. We’ll chat about
- How BC folks are adapting research-based approaches for the “Zoomiverse”
- What research might look like in the socially distant in-person classroom
- The work that some of our members did at the Council of Undergraduate Research to start creating an action plan to center DEI in Undergraduate Research.
The BUGR Group has been around since 2018, but we welcome new members from all parts of campus. And, yes, it is pronounced “booger.”
Discussion facilitated by Jackie Miller | 2 PD hours
Last Updated August 1, 2023
