Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 23, 2011)
2 The Clackamas Print Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011 newsed@clackamas.edu News Classroom clickers keeps students engaged By Joshua D illen The Clackamas Print. T he power o f education is grow ing and thriving at Clackamas C om m unity College. T hanks to the C o n tin u o u s Learning Collaborative (CLC), stu- , dents and faculty can be assured | that the quality o f education will , always improve at C C C . The CLC was established in the fall o f 2010. T he driving force behind it is the combined efforts o f Steve Beining, distance learning departm ent chair and Kate Cray, English instructor, co-coordinators o f CLC. “O ur [CLC] mission is to optimize the art and science o f teaching to cre ate the best possible learning experi ences for C C C students,” said Gray. “W hat we’re about is looking at best practices w ithin the classroom and online, to see hqw we can optimize what students are doing and now we can better serve them .” Faculty members at C C C can access a wealth o f new teaching techniques, the latest in educational technologies and optimize their students learning experience by attending the many ses sions available through CLC. Faculty familiar w ith Moodle and N O T E , C C C ’s Netw ork for O nline Teaching Txcdlbfiiier'titri lin k to CLC’s cur- kerif schedule on the N O T E website: h tt p ://n o te . o n lin e, clac k am as.ed u . CLC and N O T E work together to develop and enhance any teaching style w ith the tools they provide. N O T E focuses on Moodle and pro vides convenientlyj scheduled train in g sessions for teachers. ‘1 ’1,1 ** A recen t p resen tatio n on “Clickers” by Kurt Lewandowski, C C C m ath instructor and senior member o f the departm ent for 21 years, had several faculty members in attendance amazed and intrigued by the capabilities these devices have. “I love teaching. I’m a teacher first,” said Lewandowski. “I enjoy helping people overcome their obstacles to achieve their goals.” It was very obvious th at the use o f clicker technology helps him accom plish this in his classroom. CLC and Lewandowski w ant the entire faculty at ,CCC to continuously develop and grow their teaching m ethods by sharing this and other new advances’ in educational technologies. Clickers work he explained they are an “audience response system” that allows users to participate in whatever is being discussed. T here are several brands; clickers are just a generic term . This technology'helps instructors to track individual as benefits o f using clickers in the classroom. well as overall understanding o f the current lesson. “It keeps students feedback from the participants. This engaged. It’s easy to kind o f glaze allows im mediate adjustm ent o f a over and start day dream ing out the lesson. Students can be polled and quizzed w ith im m ediate access to window,” he said. By design, this system doesn’t understanding and comprehension. T he faculty attendees quickly allow that lack o f understanding that insttuctors can miss: It causes more experienced the advantage an instruct learning because the students are tor has when using clickers. This almost involuntarily com m itted and technology enabled them to answer questions and see the results directly involved in the lesson. The simplicity and convenience on the screen; the hands-on dem was obvious after a very informative onstration was expertly guided by and interactive PowerPoint presenta Lewandowski and included several tion. Interactive is the operative word. lesson style examples o f their versa T h e clickers w ork w ith Pow erPoint tility and convenience.. A ttendant^ /drid’,'l6C iTiib Instructor see’Teal ' tíme o f the presentation were engaged and had a positive impression o f the clickers. "I’m sure it’s going to be very helpful,” said Rodica G otur, part tim e m ath instructor at C C C . “I always encourage them [students] to participate.” G otur plans /to start using the clickers gradually through this term and will be im plem enting this tool in all o f her classes next term. O ther CLC sessions include team building exercises and group project developm ent for students. All mem- bers o f the C C C com m unity - will benefit from the CLC. WEBSITE: C C C site gets a face-lift Continued from Page 1 Although according to some students, such as Joel Stalcup, the current Clackamas website has “Nothing really too bad about it,” the new site is a vast improvement, with a much higher level of organization and ease o f access. According to Kim Carey, Chief Information Officer, to create the new web site, the college contacted Datatel, a com pany that the college has been working with for approximately 10 years for their campus wide integrated database, which contains student information, financial data and the college’s human resources system. In a state ment made by Carey, the college reportedly paid “$32,500 in services for them to do the redesign.” Although Datatel was the web developer of the upcoming website, there have been many members o f the college staff that worked on different aspects of the site, including Dean of College Advancement Shelly Parini; Janet Paulson, marketing project coordina tor; Steve Beining, department chair o f the distance learning program; Kim Carey, dean —Staff— The Clackamas Print aims to report the news in an honest, unbiased and professional manner. Content published in The Print is not screened or subject to censorship. Editors Editor-in-Chief: Brian Baldwin Copy Editor: Katherine Suydam News Editor: Patty Salazar Arts&Culture Editor: Mandie Gavitt Sports Editor: John William Howard Photo Editor: Hillary Cole Web Editor: Anna Axelson 19600 Molalla Ave. Oregon City, OR 97045 Design Editor: James Duncan Ad Manager: Brad Heineke Writers & Photographers Dachabre Dixon Robby Morrison Matt Senn Isaac Soper Chris Taylor Adviser: Melissa Jones 503-594-6266 of chief information office; Dean Walch, website coordinator; Shawn Swanner, from the IT department; Tamara Barry, of Public affairs; student Sara Anderson and Dean of curriculum planning and research, Steffen Moller. “One o f the biggest issues we have with the current site is navigation. In working with Datatel, we were able to harness best practice design standards in helping the user find the information they are needing more quickly and without the frustration we have heard in the past,” stated Walch. Not only has the site been revamped to make information retrieval easier but the search engine has been upgraded as well, so that “Results will be better tuned to what the user is looking for,” Walch stated. According to Paulson, there is still quite a bit o f work to be finished before the end o f this year, including developing policies for the site, training staff to become familiar with the site, identifying departments which need web redesign and integrating a form of online communication. “The public launch of the site is sched uled for January,” stated Paulson. Production Assistants Dan Bailey Mollie Berry Joshua Dillen Tyler Eheler Járonte Goldsby Telicia Juliano Hicham Kerkour Ellen Niles Fred Ramsey Emily Rask Mireille Soper Contact Information chiefed@clackamas.edu copyed@clackamas.edu newsed@clackamas.edu aced@clackamas.edu sportsed@clackamas.edu photoed@clackamas.edu admgr@clackamas.edu webeditor@clackamas.edu
