Brown Bag Lunch

Monday Feb. 20th and Tuesday Feb. 21, we began our "brown bag lunch" series. We covered some interesting topics, did some venting, even discussed the pros and cons of yoga and kickboxing for stress relief. It was interesting that both days faculty addressed classroom discipline issues, attendance policies and students' attitude and expectations. Apparently this issue is not unique to HCC. Sharon Stowers mentioned an article in the New York Times yesterday : To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me
Sharon also shared the "Have coffee with your instructor" idea: she has a weekly office hour in the student center for general discussions. Apparently it is very successful and quite a few students come. Maybe it's for the cookies she brings or the extra credit points.

Other topics covered:

• Blogging: how to use blogs in the classroom and how to create them. Rick Smith demonstrated "Bloglines" a "FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content".
  
• Making effective use in online conferences, specifically involving students to answer their peers' questions.
• Using midterm surveys to get a feel for how the class is going: what activities did the students like/dislike.
• Gerry Yeager reported on the ITC conference she attended in Savannah

Greg Priebe found an interesting web site that collects people's grocery lists. So far, there is a collection of 1000 lists. This could be an interesting topic for sociology classes. Take a look at The Grocery List Collection

The next brown bag lunches are scheduled for:

• Monday, March 27: 2:15pm-3:15pm
• Tuesday, March 28: 12:45pm - 1:45pm

Suggestions for topics are welcome.

Upcoming events in the IRC: See IRC calendar

• Feb. 23: Grant Writing clinic
• Feb. 24: Creating a faculty web page (please sign up at http://www.harford.edu/Department/HumanRes/training/training-new.asp?OID=61)

In March, we will also begin a 5 week online workshop in WebCT for instructors planning to develop an online or hybrid course

If you are planning to use WebCT in your Face-to-face classes, come to a "WebCT lite" session.

Hope to see many of you at the next brown bag lunch.

You may comment on any entries in this blog. Just click on "comments" and enter your thoughts.