Category: Facilitated Discussion

Jia Jiang adventures boldly into a territory so many of us fear: rejection. By seeking out rejection for 100 days — from asking a stranger to borrow $100 to requesting a “burger refill” at a restaurant — Jiang desensitized himself to the pain and shame that rejection often brings and, in the process, discovered that simply asking for what you want can open up possibilities where you expect to find dead ends.”

Learning Objectives:

• Identify 5 Lessons Learned From 100 Days of Rejection
• Discuss how to turn rejection into opportunity
• List additional resources to assist you on your overcoming rejection

Facilitated Discussion of Popular TED Talk

For teachers in any modality that are required to synchronously teach students in-person and virtually, this 20-Minute Mentor details how polysynchronous instruction can provide concrete tools for adapting teaching to both modalities to maximize through learning.”

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the flexibility required for a polysynchronous class
• Share and explain ideas for establishing student accountability
• Identify engagement strategies and ideas
• Identify ways to build rapport
• Discuss ideas for online assignments

Facilitated Discussion of Magna 20-Minute Mentor

Beginnings matter, whether you’re teaching students face-to-face or online. Find out how you can make the most of online course introductions. In this fast and focused session, you’ll discover how you can transform course introductions from ho-hum exercises in housekeeping into time-saving, inspirational new beginnings.

This seminar will give you the tools you need when you’re introducing online courses, particularly if you’re new to organizing online courses.

After participating in this seminar, you’ll:

• Understand the elements necessary to establish a Start Here area to support online student success
• Appreciate how establishing rapport and providing student resources when introducing online courses can save time later in the course
• Learn how to make students feel responsible for their own success

Everyone has the ability to build mental strength, but most people don’t know how. We spend a lot of time talking about physical strength and physical health, but much less time on mental strength and mental health.  We can choose to perform exercises that will help us learn to regulate our thoughts, manage our emotions, and behave productively despite our circumstances. No matter what your goals are, building mental strength is the key to reaching your greatest potential.

In this session we will watch Amy Morin’s TEDx Talk, and dive deeper into the presented concepts of:

• 3 Types of Self-Limiting Beliefs That Will Keep You Stuck in Life.
• 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.

This 20-Minute Mentor will cover the benefits of providing high quality professional development opportunities for faculty, what some of these opportunities (or programs) might look like, and ultimately how these opportunities can positively impact the overall quality of online programming.

Review current professional development opportunities and participate in an open discussion on the ideas presented during the video and how those ideas might be able to be implemented at WesternU.

•   Identify faculty barriers for online learning.
•   Examine common topics for professional development.
•   Discuss leading exploration questions to help guide future professional development.

How Can I Build Engagement in My Online Classes Through Student-created Video?  Discover how to incorporate student-created video to foster engagement in online classes. Learn how to avoid common obstacles and how best to structure assignments to leverage student videos.

Attrition rates are 10% to 20% higher in online courses than their face-to-face counterparts. While online course formats offer convenient methods of instruction, poor course development often leads to high attrition rates. This facilitated discussion explores how applying Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Social Presence Theory to online course design and instruction can aid overall program retention and student satisfaction.

In this TED Talk, Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

During this session we will view the popular TED Talk presented by Sal Khan, discuss the flipped learning model and how videos can be used to support student education.

How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies “originals”: thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure.

“The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most,” Grant says. “You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.”