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MCC Daily Tribune

Faculty and Staff participate in AAC&U General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment Conference; Borbee presents

From February 11 to 13, MCC faculty and professional staff attended the AAC&U Virtual Conference on General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment. This year’s conference focused on equity, integrative learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment.

Kathleen Borbee, Professor, Business Administration, presented at the conference. Along with Kimberly Blanchet of Packback, Inc., Professor Borbee’s session, titled “Evolving Discussion: How New Approaches to Online Discussion Can Improve Student Success,” focused on fostering intrinsic student motivation through inquiry and peer interaction.

Packback is an AI platform that helps instructors manage discussion in online forums, and SUNY is piloting this platform across campuses. The presentation discussed the role of a Community of Inquiry approach to discussion in fostering increased engagement and improved academic outcomes, and it explored the role of AI in providing efficient support on manual tasks for instructors, including automated grading and real-time feedback. This asynchronous discussion tool is a timely innovation that fosters consistent student engagement and improves the resiliency and remote-readiness of courses for an uncertain future.

Continuing with the theme of timely issues and innovations in higher education, each of the featured speakers provided insights on how to help students succeed even though they are facing so many challenges due to current events. The conference keynote featured Peter Felten of Elon University, who spoke on “Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Enhance Quality and Equity.” Felten presented the findings of his research, which demonstrate the importance of positive relationships between students, faculty and staff in fostering academic success for all students and in particular for new majority students. Other speakers included Bethany Miller of Macalester College who emphasized the value of varied methods of assessment as an element of inclusive pedagogy. Miller also encouraged us to understand equity not as the end goal but as a necessary step to justice. She pointed out that equity approaches tend to signal out groups of individuals and that such approaches can also be resource intensive whereas justice envisions solutions through a redesign of institutional structures in which there is less need for individual supports. Lastly, Flower Darby shared many strategies for engaging students in online learning formats, which are further elaborated in Small Teaching Online, which she co-authored with James Lang.

In addition to the ideas and practices shared by the featured speakers, conference presenters offered many specific takeaways that could be used here at MCC, so please reach out to attendees if you would like more information.

Kathleen Borbee [Business Administration]

Maria Brandt [English/Philosophy]

Amy Burtner [English/Philosophy & Teaching and Creativity Center]

William Dixon [Institutional Research]

Andy Freeman [Curriculum and Program Development]

Catharine Ganze-Smith [English/Philosophy]

Gary Graziano [Engineering Technologies]

Susan Hall [Curriculum and Program Development]

Dale Pearce [Economic Development, Workforce, and Career Technical Education]

Alexis Vogt [Engineering Technologies]

Bobby Wright [Mathematics]

 

Kimberley Collins
Academic Services
02/22/2021