Message From Dr. Carolyn Rogers, LEAD Faculty Chair

Message from the editor . . .

Hello again, and Happy New Year to all! Here's our January 2012 news. Our monthly newsletter includes our  faculty meeting minutes and other useful information and  resources. Please send me any news about yourself or your learners for upcoming issues.

Tell Me – What Are You Doing in Your Community?

I’d love to hear how you are making a difference in the lives of others. Do you shovel snow for the elderly? Volunteer at the Humane Society?  Feel free to email me and share your story.

Our newsletters are intended to provide:

•   Faculty Meeting Minutes

•   News About LEAD Faculty

•   News About LEAD Learners

•   Any Other Important News, Updates, Information

•   Just For Fun (Anything!)
   

Please be reminded to visit our LEAD Talking Points BLOG. http://capellalead.blogspot.com

We are hoping for 100% participation by all LEAD faculty--please take a few moments to join the conversations about important challenges and issues relevant to our work as we prepare educators to lead their schools. And, should you encounter any technical difficulties as you attempt to join the blog, please let me know, and I'll try to assist.

Ted Ray, Editor ● 910.988.1620 ● ted.ray@capella.edu

Capella Welcomes New President

On Thursday, January 5, 2012, our CEO, Kevin Gilligan announced that Scott Kinney has been named Capella University president. Previously, Kinney was president of West Education Group at Thomson Reuters Corporation. The P-12 Leadership team joins me in welcoming, Scott Kinney. Additionally, Capella University's interim president Deborah Bushway, PhD, will become vice president for Academic Innovation. Deb began her role as interim president of Capella University in March 2011 after a two-year appointment as the vice president academic affairs and provost. The hiring of Scott and the promotion of Deb further supports Capella's quest to become the #1 University in the nation.

P-12 LLP Faculty Meeting Minutes - January 3, 2012

Attended: Morning: Phil Corkill, Melissa McIntyre, Carolyn Rogers, Lisa Garcia, Alma Rodriguez, Patricia Guillory, Debbie Schreiner, Doug DeWitt, Steve Hinshaw, Jerry Horgen, Ted Ray, Linda Crawford, Bob Pohl, Linda Rodgers, Claire Boyce, Bill Wold, Steve O’Brien, Sue Slater, Phyllis Wilson, Ron Dougall, Michael Jazzar, Sharon Ordu, DeArmas Graham, Lynn Young, Adrienne Gibson, Scott Hollinger, Carol Burnworth, Bill Brown, Carol Pasanen, Amy Kuo-Newhouse, Mary Rice-Crenshaw, Carol Holzberg, Denis Flood, Donna Flood, and Ruthenia Jackson. Evening: Carolyn Rogers, Kasaundra Jenkins, Irene Singletary, Amy Williamson, Salha Jeizan, Candace Adams, Dave Ibarra, Deb Gilbert, Skot Beazley, Sam Song, and Melissa McIntyre.

Welcome: Dr. Rogers welcomed everyone to the meeting and the 2012 new year. She also spoke about Geoffrey Canada speaking at the December colloquia. He was featured in Waiting for Superman.

P-12 LLP Updates (Carolyn Rogers):

• University Initiatives Related to P-12: We will be working together in the teaching and the leadership components to determine how we can support each area. We’ve also shared ideas about incorporating a dropout initiative into our programs. Dr. Corkill discussed this concept and how it originated from an article that was selected to be used in the revised ED7542. Faculty were supportive of this initiative. It was even suggested that faculty could begin to incorporate these articles into their courses. There were also discussions about other areas that connect to the dropout rate from all areas of P-12 education.
   

• Lead Changes: There have been some changes in the P-12 LLP organization. Skot Beazley will now oversee the comps and mentoring process. Melissa McIntyre will oversee all courses excluding the dissertation courses. Carol Pasanen, Ted Ray, and Phil Corkill will continue to serve as clinical leads. If a faculty is only a mentor, then they will work with Skot Beazley. Carol Pasanen will also address licensure work for Minnesota.
   

• Meeting Schedule in 2012: Beginning in January 2012, there will be one faculty meeting for all P-12 LLP specializations each month and no individual specialization meetings. The first meeting of each quarter will be held on the first Tuesday of January, April, July, and October to discuss all pertinent points for course set-up prior to learners gaining access to courses. All other monthly meetings will be held on the second Tuesday of each month (February, March, May, June, August, September, November, and December). There will also be an evening meeting scheduled on the same day of each morning meeting at 6:30 pm to afford faculty with the opportunity to attend the meeting. As such, all faculty are requested to attend either the morning or evening faculty meeting.
   

• LEAD Blog: Ted has completed the Capella Lead Talking Points blog that is used to engage faculty in discussion about trends and topics related to P-12 education. To access the site got to: http://capellalead.blogspot.com. Dr. Rogers is strongly encouraging faculty to engage in discussions related to the articles posted in the blog. In addition if you have a good article to share, please do so.
   

• Conferences: Dr. Butts-Williams wants our faculty to be more visible at conferences.
   

• Courses: All courses will be reviewed every two years to ensure that our courses are current and reflect alignment with ELCC standards.
   

• Workload Assignments: Enrollment has declined over the last year. As such, it’s impacting the number of courses that faculty may have. Courses are loaded with full-time faculty first then part-time.
   

• Licensure: We have applied for state approval in Louisiana and we got it! We have applied to GAPSC and we will be having a site visit in March 3-5th. We will be calling on faculty to participate in the visit to share your insights and thoughts about our programs.

Quarter Start Update:

• Course Set-up:

  • Faculty should review the course and all links to be sure that everything is working. If there are problems with any of the links, assignments, and/or the scoring rubrics/checklist, please complete a Quick Fix form that is found on the home page for your course before the first day of your course. Changes that are not reported prior to the course starting may not be able to be fixed until during the course.

  • Post your faculty expectations and welcome by 8:00 am CST on Thursday, January 5, 2012. Do not forget to put the words “Faculty Expectation” in the Subject line. This date is important because Capella will be reviewing faculty courses to ensure compliance (remember these are two different links now, so post something in Faculty Expectations Message and Faculty Welcome links).

  • Post any additional information that you use to support student learning in the Updates and Handouts section.

  • Post any pertinent announcements.

  • Post a Faculty Welcome message; if you have a warm welcome audio message that is also great to post.

  • Send welcome email to learners’ personal email (optional). The personal email address can be found in the Roster section. In the email, you might consider listing the course textbooks and the unit 1 discussion questions and assignments to give learners a heads up about what is required in the first unit.

  • Click here to download/view a pdf version of the Quarterly Start Information PowerPoint presentation.

• Revised and New Course Rollout: We have several new courses and revised courses that will rollout this quarter: ED5320, ED7014, ED7901, ED7902, ED7542, ED7016, and ED8812. So, if you’ve taught these revised courses before, please be to review the entire course for changes. In addition, make sure that you have all of the course materials as some may have changed.
   

• Disability Policy (Revised): Any learner with an approved accommodation from Disability Services is given an accommodation letter and asked to share that letter directly with their instructor. If a learner is granted an accommodation for additional time on “unit learning activities,” the letter will state the following:

  • You will be allowed one additional week (seven calendar days) past the due date of the learning activity to post your initial discussion assignments (the main question posted by the instructor), study assignments and action assignments. Your goal is to keep up with coursework to the best of your ability, and to utilize the “additional time” accommodation when most needed.

  • Due to the interactive nature of Capella University’s courseroom environment, additional time cannot be extended to required postings/comments to other learners’ discussion question responses. It is important that you engage in courseroom discussions with other learners during each weekly unit.

• Academic Honesty Policy (Revised):

  • What has changed? (a) Academic Honesty policy violations are now referred to as “incidents”. The policy no longer delineates violation severity (formerly: informal & formal); each incident is viewed as a “teaching/learning experience” with a number of possible outcomes. (b) Each incident of a teaching/learning experience will be tracked on the learner’s record through a web form submitted by the instructor or mentor. This will communicate the incident to the University and notify the learner via email. (c) Violations of the Academic Honesty policy at any level will not automatically move to the school Faculty Review Panel for review. (d) School academic leadership will periodically review all incidents reported for each learner, as well as reviewing documentation of previous Academic Honesty policy incidents for each learner, in order to comprehensively view both individual incidents and patterns over the learner’s academic lifecycle (e) For each incident, School academic leadership will determine if further sanctions should be applied or further academic or administrative action should be taken. These actions could include applying remedial work such as the assignment of a topical paper or the requirement to take a Writing or Ethics course; suspension; dismissal from the program or from the University; or, referral to the school Faculty Review Panel for their review and academic determination.

  • What’s the same? (a) Instructors and mentors will still determine policy violations and any sanctions within the course, in consultation with academic leadership. (b) Learners may still appeal and be heard by the school Faculty Review Panel.

  • Questions: For questions about the academic processes supporting Capella University policy 3.01.01, Academic Honesty, please contact Learner Management Support at LearnerManagementSupport@capella.edu. For questions about appropriate academic application of Capella University policy 3.01.01, Academic Honesty, or regarding standard practices for your school related to this policy, please consult directly with your faculty chair.

• Faculty Workload Assignment Page: Capella launched a new faculty work assignment page, which will provide details about all of the work you are assigned to complete for a specific term. This new assignment notification page supplements the work assignment letters that go out from Academic Operations each quarter and is located in the Faculty Center. This new page offers faculty real-time visibility to work assignment information. This page went live on Tuesday, December 13th. Faculty should receive a link via email from facultyassignmentletters@capella.edu letting them know when assignments have been updated. Faculty will also receive supplementary information regarding your assignments in this email.
   

• New Courseroom Training: As you heard during the School of Education leadership meeting, the university is changing its courseroom platform to Courseroom 3.0 (aka Blackboard 9). All instructors will have to go through the training to teach a course. The first rollout in the SOE will be in Feb 2012. First course instructors will be in the first groups of instructors to teach in the new platform. As such, these instructors must go through training for Courseoom 3.0 in January 2012. The rest of the faculty will begin getting training information for February and March. Please remember that there will be no exceptions to the new courseroom training. If you do not successfully complete the training, you will not be offered a course until such time that you do complete it.

Persistence Discussion:

• Weeks 1 and 2: As the course begins, please communicate with learners that have not been participating in the course at their course email, Capella email, their alternate email, and the telephone number provided. Please encourage these learners to post to a quiz, assignment, or discussion in unit 1 or 2 prior to census on January 20, 2012.

• Weeks 3-10: Continue to keep track of learners that are not actively participating. Communicate with them often to encourage their participation. If you aren’t getting any results with your efforts, please contact Dr. Rogers, the leads and/or the academic advisors for support.

Mentoring Update

• New SOE Dissertation Handbook and Revised P-12 LEAD Dissertation Template: The university has published a new SOE Dissertation Handbook. Please review this document to make sure that you are aware of the changes. Ted and Skot have been working on revising the LEAD template to align with the changes in the new handbook. The new template should now be used with all learners who began the dissertation process in Q4’2011. Please post the template in the courses prior to the first day of the new quarter.

• Mentoring Meeting: The next mentoring meeting will be held on January 17, 2012 at 8:00 pm CST. It will be facilitated by Skot Beazley. All mentors are encouraged to attend. The call information is as follows:

  • Int'l Toll: 1-719-955-0562

  • US/CAN Toll Free: 1-888-205-5513

  • Participant Passcode: 348314

Colloquium: The next colloquium will be held on February 9-12 in Phoenix, Arizona. We would like to emphasize that learners who are attending colloquia need to have full attention given to the colloquia content they are learning. So, learners are asked to let their faculty know they are attending colloquia and to request extensions on their discussions and assignments while they are gone that week at Colloquia. This was something that was clearly encouraged by our Leadership.

For the Good of Group

• IRB Reviewer: Skot Beazley has been selected to serve as an IRB reviewer.

• Next Monthly P-12 LLP Faculty Meeting: The next P-12 LLP faculty meeting will be held on February 14, 2012 at 8:00 am CST and 6:30 pm CST. All faculty should plan to attend one of the meetings held each month.

• NCPEA Publication: Michael Jazzar, Carolyn Rogers, Doug DeWitt, and Melissa McIntyre will have articles published in the NCPEA journal specifically focused on virtual learning.

• NAESP: Bill Brown and Thomas Williams have written an article that will be published in an upcoming issue.

Valuable Dissertation Research Resources for Mentors and Mentees

Qualitative Research Resources - Software

Below are links to software programs that are very useful in coding and analyzing qualitative data:

ATLAS.ti

http://www.atlasti.com/

HyperResearch

http://www.researchware.com/products/hyperresearch.html

NVivo

http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx

Web Center for Social Research Methods

Excellent resources and links to other locations on the Web related to applied social research:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/

Khan Academy

Khan Academy provides clear, informative video tutorials on stats and statistical analysis:

Research Methods Workshops (from Marc Boston via Skot Beazley)

http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/workshops/resch_wrk.html

Helpful websites (from Carol Perez)

Writing Resources

Purdue University Owl Writing Lab:

·         http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Research Report Workshop

·         http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/reportW/index.html

Other Writing Labs on the Internet

• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/wordiness.html
• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/stylechecklist.html
• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/tobeverbs.html
• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/sentcombination.html
• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/generalchecklist.html
• http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/Draftworkshops/endofsentences.html

VERY GOOD WRITING HANDOUTS!!

• http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/index.html
• http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/dissertation.html

HOT WEB SITES:
 

Research Methodology:

http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/workshops/resch_wrk.html

Web Center for Social Research Methods

Excellent resources and links to other locations on the Web related to applied social research:

·         http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/

Statistics Resources for SPSS

• http://www.utexas.edu/its/rc/tutorials/stat/spss/spss1/index.html
• http://www.ats.ucla.edu/STAT/mult_pkg/whatstat/default.htm
• http://www.stat.tamu.edu/spss.php
• http://www.spsstools.net/spss.htm
• http://cs.furman.edu/rushing/mellonj/spss1.htm
• http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/examples/default.htm
• http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/courses/c1/spss/toc.htm
• http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/modules/default.htm
• http://data.fas.harvard.edu/projects/SPSS_Tutorial/spsstut.shtml

Advice on Research and Writing:

Dissertation Advice Section

·         http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/mleone/web/how-to.html

This site contains links on writing, public speaking, dissertation management, burnout and more.

How to be a Good Graduate Student

By DesJardins, Marie:

·         http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html

This essay talks about several phases of the graduate experience, including the dissertation. She discusses some helpful hints for staying motivated and doing consistent work.

Dissertation Tips:

·         http://web.archive.org/web/20030203011257/www.citationonline.net/survdiss.htm

Kjell Erik Rudestam, Ph.D. and Rae Newton, Ph.D., authors of Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process.

The ABD Survival Guide Newsletter:

·         http://www.abdsurvivalguide.com/

Information about the ABD Survival Guide newsletter (which is free) and other services from E-Coach (many of which are not free).

NASBE: School Leadership: Improving State Systems for Leader Development

In an era of increased accountability in education, it is important to understand the role that school leadership plays in student achievement—since principals are largely held responsible if a school is not meeting its academic goals. As the Study’s research revealed, school leadership has a significant impact on student achievement, but in indirect ways. School leadership has the ability to motivate both teachers and students in the school, as well as develop positive work environments for teachers. These two factors have a strong impact on student achievement. Research shows that principals play a critical role in the recruitment, development, and retention of teachers. Teachers routinely note that school leadership, specifically the principal, is the number one factor in deciding on staying at a school or leaving.

Click here to download the full article.

Thanks to Carol Pasanen and Dennis Flood for sharing this report!

Microsoft Office 2010—Great Deal for Capella Employees!

To access the Microsoft Home Use Program Web site:

1. Go to http://hup.microsoft.com/
2. Select the country to which you want your order to be shipped and choose the language for viewing the order Web site.
3. Enter your "name@capella.edu" email address and insert the following program code. 390D4DE575
4. Place your order online, and you will be directed to a link to download the software.

* Please note that program is only available for Capella employees. The combination of this code and your email address entitles you to one copy of Microsoft Office.

A fulfillment fee will be charged to cover packaging, shipping, and handling costs. We trust you will enjoy this benefit and look forward to your participation. *Please note that order/install support issues should be directed to Microsoft. Capella Tech Support is not able to support software order/install questions.

SharePoint - Don't Forget This Convenient Document Depository

Sharepoint provides a "one-stop-shop" for all things faculty need to know—important documents, web links, templates . . . you name it! Dr. Sam Song manages our SharePoint website, and you can access the site here:  http://collaborate.capella.edu/teams/p12leadership_licensure