Thursday, May 5, 10:30 - Noon
Follow On to Opening Plenary - Awakening Our Individual and Collective Capabilities: Practicing Leadership Groups in Social
Learning Contexts
Room: Heritage E
During the opening plenary, Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner will invite each participant to pay attention to the conference through a specific leadership lens: Agenda Activist, Community Keeper, Critical Friend, Social Reporter, External Messenger, Value Detective, or Organizational
Broker. Members of thriving communities of practice pay attention to certain processes: the aim of this activity is to give you an experience of what this means—and not just to talk about it. This follow-up session, facilitated by Bev and Etienne, will give you time to prepare collaboratively by providing opportunity to ask follow-up questions, gather in role specific groups to establish a shared understanding of what your role entails, and provide more specific instructions.
Presenters:
Beverly and Etienne Wenger-Trayner, be@wenger-trayner.com
Reframing General Education as Opportunity (to Learn) to Participate in College
Room: Heritage F
Community college transfer degrees rest on a set of required courses that are enshrined in articulation agreements and mirror "Gen Ed" requirements at four-year colleges. Often framed as a point of entry to a transfer degree, general education (GE) courses are experienced as disparate, one-off classes. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of Seattle GE programs and a national study of first-year community college student experiences, this session provides faculty, administrators, and institutional researchers an opportunity to reflect on existing educational policies and practices and consider what policies and practices might reframe GE as opportunity (to learn) to participate in college.
Presenter:
Todd Lundberg, Cascadia College, tlundberg@cascadia.edu
Pathways Pilot: On the Route to Deep Learning
Room: Alder
In this session, presenters will summarize key elements of the faculty-driven, first year experience pathway program piloted this year at South
Puget Sound Community College. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the critical components, initial successes, and on-going challenges in our pathways model. Attendees will also gain perspective on how to successfully develop an integrative pathways model at their campuses. The session includes an interactive mini-workshop and a panel of faculty and administrators to discuss the development and implementation of our model.
Presenters:
James Schneider, South Puget Sound Community College, jschneider@spscc.edu
Erica Dixon, South Puget Sound Community College, edixon@spscc.edu
Kathleen Byrd, South Puget Sound Community College, kbyrd@spscc.edu
Sarah Tavis, South Puget Sound Community College stavis@spscc.edu

Allen Olson, South Puget Sound Community College, aholson@spscc.edu
100 Yard Dash: Jumping the Hurdle for Faculty Buy-In
Room: Hemlock
Faculty engagement is recognized as a central element in successful assessment of student learning outcomes/programs. In spite of the tremendous value of student learning outcomes assessment (SLOA), many faculty have not fully embraced the assessment movement and remain locked in disagreements on its benefits.
In this interactive session, we will share the ways that Bellevue College jumped the hurdles of faculty resistance to create buy-in and a culture of assessment across campus. Participants in this session will be able to apply the lessons learned at Bellevue College as they face their own campus hurdles.
Presenters:
Caroline Leffall, Bellevue College, caroline.leffall@bellevuecollege.edu
Rebecca Cory, Bellevue College, rebecca.cory@bellevuecollege.edu
Integrative Learning: Small Steps to Connect Big Ideas
Room: Oak
How can you tell if students learned anything from an activity? They can show you. Three students who participated in an integrated assignment between three different departments (Health, Statistics and English) will lead participants in the activities they completed to collectively build a research study on the waste habits of their county. The presentation will demonstrate the effectiveness of an integrated assignment, show how easy integration can be to implement, and help participants start to develop integrated assignments for their classes.
The instructors of the classes will also introduce the project's methodology, discuss challenges and outcomes, and answer questions.
Presenters:
Garrett Hoyt, Clark College, ghoyt@clark.edu
Lindsay Christopher, Clark College, lchristopher@clark.edu
Kate Cook, Clark College, kcook@clark.edu
Calling In Versus Calling Out: Finding Ways to Facilitate Cultural Competency among Faculty, Staff, and Students
Room: Pine
Cultural competency as a learning outcome has been an ongoing focus in higher education institutions, but recent national and local events have raised awareness and urgency around issues of race and equity, prompting colleges to identify and address their own systems of oppression to improve the experiences of people of color on their campuses. What are you doing on your campus or in your practice to address racism and advance cultural competency? In this session we hope to share practices, learn from others, and generate ideas about how to invite reluctant or resistant community members into the conversation.
Presenters:
Jennifer Rodriguez, The Evergreen State College, rodrigje@evergreen.edu
Laura Coghlan, The Evergreen State College, coghlanl@evergreen.edu
Integrating Formative Assessment into Online and Hybrid Learning Environments
Room: Spruce
This session explores one element of developing online learning spaces. Relative to face-to-face contexts, the asynchronous nature of interaction in online learning environment presents distinct characteristics for incorporating effective formative assessments that support

meaningful learning. During this session, course development strategies for designing and embedding formative assessment activities in online and hybrid learning environments will be discussed. Additionally, preliminary results of a study examining the impact of online formative assessments on student learning will be presented. Session attendees will be encouraged to share their experience with formative assessment while engaging in an activity related to designing online formative assessments.
Presenter:
Sarah Martin, Spokane Falls Community College, sarah.martin@sfcc.spokane.edu
Promoting Student Voice with Social Justice Letters, Memoirs, and News Articles Via Websites
Room: Cedar
Our goal is to promote student voice by discussing how belief systems are constructed. We discuss specific ways to address various social justice topics such as the Civil Rights Movement. We are committed to the creation of social justice through student voice. Specifically, we work together to present student projects that promote social activism. We work to promote intellectual discourse, leadership, and social justice among students to shape our classroom, families and communities. An interactive activity will be a part of the presentation. It will promote knowledge of current events that displays past student social justice projects.
Presenters:
Miranda Gardner, Green River College, mgardner@greenriver.edu
John Falconer, Green River College, jfalconer@greenriver.edu
Morna Golke Bahnsen, Green River College, mgolkebahnsen@greenriver.edu
Thursday, May 5, 1:30 - 3:00
Cultivating the ‘Framework for Success’: Integrating Multimodality and Creativity into College Composition Courses
Room: Heritage E
In this session, we will examine how composition instructors can incorporate elements of multimodality and creativity into their curriculum, in order to encourage students to cultivate the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” outlined by the Council of Writing Program
Administrators (CWPA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the National Writing Project (NWP). We will review the
“Framework for Success,” and will examine how multimodal and creative projects promote “the rhetorical and twenty-first-century skills as well as habits of mind and experiences that are critical for college success” (CWPA, NCTE, and NWP). We will also review a Creative Analytical
Project assignment; created and implemented by the presenter in her current English 101 courses.
Presenter:
Desirée Holter, Whatcom Community College, dholter@whatcom.ctc.edu
Effective Affective for College Readiness
Room: Heritage F
Along with the cognitive, the affective domain (emotions, feelings, attitudes, and mindsets) is acknowledged in adult learning theory, yet it is an often neglected predictor of student success. This session addresses the role of the affective domain in pre-college education (including adult basic education) and introduces a practical framework of self-regulation and empowerment that educators can use to assist pre-college students develop personal attributes necessary for college readiness. Participants will learn research-based quick techniques for emotional

resilience and persistence and will also be introduced to award-winning technology that can be used in transition/student support centers.
Presenter:
Mihaela Cosma, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, mihaela.cosma@lwtech.edu
Assessing a Community's Practice
Room: Alder
After year one, what should a continuing community of practice do to foster its members' needs and its mission or focus? Creating and adapting assessment cycles, recalibrating and reconnecting with the members is an important challenge. Tacoma Community College's
Blended Design COP has used a variety of self-assessments in order to meet this challenge and the needs of its mission and members. We will share our tools and experiences as we begin our look back over the last three academic years. Participants will take away shared tools and a consideration of options.
Presenters:
Kristina Young, Tacoma Community College, kyoung@tacomacc.edu
Jeff Calkins, Tacoma Community College, jcalkins@tacomacc.edu
Lee Sledd, Tacoma Community College, lsledd@tacomacc.edu
Joanne Munroe, Tacoma Community College, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu
Using Reflection to Develop Self-Regulated Learners
Room: Hemlock
Bellevue College has been participating in the CPREE grant, a grant focused on reflection in the classroom. Bellevue, University of Washington and Stanford are among 12 colleges that have collected data over the past year and a half about effective use of reflection. This presentation will share some of the findings and teach faculty how to use and create reflection activities that can be used to increase student retention and success as well as teach students how to overcome previous academic anxiety. Through discussion and hands-on activities, faculty will leave with tools that can be used immediately in their classroom.
Presenter:
Mandie Nash, Bellevue College, mandienash@gmail.com
Radical Inclusion: Disabled Faculty as Revolutionary Forces
Room: Oak
As faculty we discuss the importance of universal design for learning that impacts our students. We discuss the importance of diversity in the classroom. These presenters were told, like the students they now serve, that they could never succeed. Now they are mentoring and demonstrating the principles of universal design and learning in the classroom and the boardroom. These presenters will share the myths and realities of being a professional in an environment which mainly values the able bodied. Ideas for incorporating universal design in the classroom and modeling diversity for our students will be shared and experienced.
Presenters:
Polly McMahon, Spokane Falls Community College, polly.mcmahon@sfcc.spokane.edu
Andrea Goddard, Spokane Falls Community College, agoddard.lmhc@centurylink.net
Mary Nagel, Community Colleges of Spokane, mary.nagel@ccs.spokane.edu
Student Retention Roundtable
Room: Pine

This session will open with a group activity and discussion of the factors that lead students to leave college. In small groups, participants will discuss practices in their sphere of influence that contribute to students’ retention. As a whole group, we will explore the promising institutional practices which emerge to explore which student needs are being addressed and how such practices might be adapted to our own contexts. Note: This session is a revised version of the 2015 session; it is intended to allow more time for discussion of potential intervention practices.
Presenters:
Laura Coghlan, The Evergreen State College, coghlanl@evergreen.edu
Amadou Ba, The Evergreen State College, baa@evergreen.edu
SBCTC's Infrastructure of Support for Faculty Use of Open Education Resources
Room: Spruce
When creating or choosing digital open educational resources (OERs) such as video, course material, and open textbooks, why is it vital for educators to consider accessibility issues? During this session, participants will experiment with strategies to ensure digital education resources are accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities. While this session will cover the larger framework of the Washington
State Board for Community and Technical College’s infrastructure of support for faculty use of OER (open research, open policy, and open initiatives), attendees will leave with an awareness of critical moves they can apply to their design and teaching practices immediately.
Presenters:
Boyoung Chae, State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, bchae@sbctc.edu
Terrill Thompson, University of Washington, tft@uw.edu
Community Building through Student Leadership via Social Justice Projects
Room: Cedar
Our goal is to promote student leadership and promote social justice topics such as Gay Liberation, Black Lives Matter, and Women’s Rights to name a few. We are committed to the creation of a more welcoming and supportive environment based on knowledge, acceptance, and respect for all at Green River College and surrounding communities. We work to promote intellectual discourse, leadership, and social justice among students, staff, and faculty, and our surrounding communities. We will have an interactive activity that promotes knowledge of current events, ways instructors and students can become more involved in their communities, and lastly an activity that promotes unity and an open mind and heart to help a world that needs healing.
Presenters:
Miranda Gardner, Green River College, mgardner@greenriver.edu
Victoria Pacho, Green River College, vpacho@greenriver.edu
Redesigning the Math Placement Process
Room: Ash
Ensuring that students are accurately placed into their initial mathematics course is a priority given that placement into developmental mathematics reduces a student’s probability of completing a degree. Highline College has embarked on a 3-year College Spark grant to create a math placement process that is educational, participatory, and focuses on students' degree pathway, in order to achieve more accurate math placement. This presentation will describe the components of the research-based redesigned mathematics placement process and include lessons learned throughout the first year of implementation.
Presenter:

Shannon Waits, Highline College, swaits@highline.edu
Thursday, May 5, 3:30 - 5:00
Communities of Collaboration: Strategic Planning for Faculty Professional Learning
Room: Heritage E
Whether you're starting, rebuilding, re-branding, or re-visioning your own community of practice (CoP) with your colleagues at your institution, you need sensible approaches to this work, and no one approach is right for all contexts. The presenter of this session will draw on her own experiences and processes that may guide your efforts, whether you are starting from scratch or sustaining a CoP using technology.
The effective integration of educational technology requires collaborative professional learning opportunities. In short, teachers need a community as they learn about new technologies. Open education aligns with these goals, so let's create a community together.
Presenter:
Alyson Indrunas, Lumen Learning, alyson.indrunas@lumenlearning.com
Practicing the Communities of Practice: Equipping New Associate Faculty for the Classroom of the Future
Room: Heritage F
What happens when you bring 6 brilliant professional development leaders into a room and task them with creating a new kind of faculty orientation? The 5 Star Consortium Colleges have developed a model for building a community of practice with new associate faculty. While that happened, we developed a meta-community of practice that has been a significant growth experience. In this session, we will share our collaborative, multi-college approach to part-time faculty orientation and professional development; demonstrate the model we developed; reflect on becoming a community of practice; and lead participants in developing their own ideas for local implementation.
Presenters:
Lyn Eisenhour, Cascadia College, leisenhour@cascadia.edu
Kimberly Lothyan, Edmonds Community College, kimberly.lothyan@email.edcc.edu
Peg Balachowski, Everett Community College, mbalachowski@everettcc.edu
Sally Heilstedt, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, sally.heilstedt@lwtech.edu
Claire Murata, Shoreline Community College, cmurata@shoreline.edu
Engaging Students through the Use of Peer Reviews in Canvas
Room: Alder
A collaborative and engaging online learning environment requires more than just having students complete activities online. To really achieve active learning, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) calls for technology integration. In this session, participants will learn how to develop effective peer review assignments in Canvas. The examples that will be demonstrated are easy to implement and will work for both online and hybrid classes. When students are actively engaged with the content through peer reviews, they move from being passive recipients of the content to being active learners who take ownership and responsibility for their own learning.
Presenters:
Ekaterina Stoops, Bellevue College, ekaterina.stoops@bellevuecollege.edu
Jim Dicus, Bellevue College, jim.dicus@bellevuecollege.edu

Kick Ass-essment! Using an Online Tool to Help Your Institution Evolve
Room: Hemlock
This session will show how effective use of data from course outcomes assessments, using an in-house online assessment tool, can bring about change in outcomes, curriculum, and institutional practice. For department coordinators, quantitative data provides meaningful context for departmental or course level changes that need to be made after looking at assessment data. Qualitative data is a resource for best practices in the classroom and can initiate departmental conversations about evolving institutional practice. Attendees will benefit from seeing how documentation of classroom assessments can aggregate to data that can be used to determine direction of a course in a department.
Presenters:
Gayatri Sirohi, Highline College, gsirohi@highline.edu
Deborah Moore, Highline College, dmoore@highline.edu
Shana Friend, Highline College, sfriend@highline.edu
Christie Knighton, Highline College, cknighton@highline.edu
Moving Forward with Backward Course Design
Room: Oak
What should students know, understand and be able to do? How do you prioritize and narrow down the content you want to teach so it fits within the limited framework of the course? How will you know if they are “getting it”? What are the best exercises, problems or questions for developing your students’ ability to meet your learning goals? In this session, participants will become familiar with, and engage in, Backwards Course Design theory that aids in answering these questions. What’s different about this theory that most others? The textbook is the LAST decision you make, not the first!
Presenter:
Deena Godwin, Clark College, dgodwin@clark.edu
Communities of Emergent Practice: Situated Learning in Institutional Development and Instructional Innovation
Room: Pine
This session tackles challenges posed in Wenger, White and Smith's (2009) Digital Habitats about the mutual influence of community and technology. The presenters view faculty and staff as leaders in institutional development, institutional change and instructional innovation and they offer examples of hybrid CoPs that use grassroots commitments, community cultivation and technology stewardship to move from meetings and open-ended conversations to access to expertise, relationship-building and community cultivation. The session provides insight into the ways that CoPs, oriented to members’ learning experiences forward apprenticeship and mentoring, knowledge validation and direct access to delegated experts, shared problem-solving and community cultivation.
Presenter:
Jo Munroe, Tacoma Community College, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu
How We Assessed Every Outcome--This Year!
Room: Spruce
Like all Washington community colleges, Clark College developed a set of general education outcomes for the AA degree years ago. However, we've historically had a great deal of difficulty assessing these outcomes in a meaningful way. Does this sound familiar at your college? Come

find out how Clark faculty managed to assess 10 learning outcomes, using over 1500 student artifacts, in a single day. Session participants will reflect on how they might refine Clark's process, as well as how they might adopt this process at their own colleges.
Presenters:
Joe Pitkin, Clark College, jpitkin@clark.edu
Toby Peterson, Clark College, tpeterson@clark.edu
Making the Leap: What We Learned When Implementing First Year Experience
Room: Cedar
During this session, participants will learn from a panel of presenters including a grant coordinator, faculty, advisors, mentor coordinators, and tutor coordinators who were involved with implementing a First Year Experience program at Green River College. Faculty will share different methods of teaching this curriculum. Advisors will share how they collaborated with instructors to deepen educational and career planning for new students. Tutor and mentor coordinators will share their experiences about integrating peer mentors and writing tutors into First Year
Experience classes. Finally, we will discuss how a Gates Grant enabled this project as well as how we plan to continue First Year Experience following the end of the grant.
Presenters:
Julie Moore, Green River College, jmoore@greenriver.edu
Allison Warner, Green River College, awarner@greenriver.edu
Miranda Gardner, Green River College, mgardner@greenriver.edu
Kelsey Denton, Green River College, kdenton@greenriver.edu
Mary Butcher, Green River College, mbutcher@greenriver.edu
Josh Staffieri, Green River College, jstaffieri@greenriver.edu
Friday, May 6, 8:15 - 9:15
Converging Design Elements from Next Generation Science Standards, Mechatronics and Student Centered Learning
Room: Discovery D
Participants will engage in a student centered learning experience using Mechatronics models. Pre and post lab exercises discussion on how elements of many different domains can be blended together to enhance critical thinking skills.
Presenter:
Pat Pritchard, Green River College & Kent School District, ppritchard@greenriver.edu
What Does Your Syllabus Say about You?
Room: Discovery E
In this session, we will discuss syllabus history, content and its representation of you. Is it a marketing tool? Is it reflective of your teaching philosophy? Haven't really given it much thought? Bring a syllabus you have used in the past 12 months for reflective activities and analysis.
Presenter:
Elizabeth Adolphsen, Everett Community College, eadolphsen@everettcc.edu
Cross-Sector Communities of Practice: University, Community College, and High School English and Mathematics Collaborations

Room: Alder
English composition and mathematics faculty from Eastern Washington University and the Community Colleges of Spokane will detail the ongoing progress of a cross-sector multi-year regional collaboration. Communities of Practice comprised of high school, community college, and university faculty are developing and implementing interventions aimed at assisting students in successfully transitioning from high school to college English and math expectations. Attendees will learn our Community of Practice processes and preview the initial iterations of one of the project’s components— a toolkit of vetted and practiced materials to be publically available for teacher use in their own schools and classrooms.
Presenters:
Sean Agriss, Eastern Washington University, sagriss@ewu.edu
Barbara Alvin, Eastern Washington University, balvin@ewu.edu
Jackie Coomes, Eastern Washington University, jcoomes@ewu.edu
Andrea Reid, Spokane Community College, andrea.reid@scc.spokane.edu
Justin Young, Eastern Washington University, justinalyoung@gmail.com
Debra Olson, Spokane Falls Community College, debra.olson@sfcc.spokane.edu
YouTube and Podcast and Twitter - Oh My! Harnessing the Power of Social Media and "Serial" in the College Classroom
Room: Hemlock
This session will focus on using popular social media, current events, and technology in the classroom. We will discuss the use of the popular podcast "Serial," which reports on the real murder case of Hae Min Lee (and is the #1 podcast on iTunes). "Serial" was used as a theme in two different classes, linked together for students (Persuasion and Propaganda and Research in the Social Sciences). Both instructors used current events, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and popular websites (Reddit) that students are familiar with, to teach content and show the power of the Internet on society's perceptions.
Presenters:
Megan Reiser, Green River College, mreiser@greenriver.edu
Ariadne Rooney, Green River College, arooney@greenriver.edu
Powering Up the POP: Using Internal and External Partnerships to Strengthen the Pierce Open Pathways Degree Program
Room: Oak
This session will use Nutrition 101 as a demonstration of the collaboration both necessary and possible to build an entire degree program utilizing Open Educational Resources. We will look at the roles leadership, faculty, and OER publisher Lumen Learning all played in bringing this course together, as an illustration of the larger process. We will explore the impacts OER has had for our students, and how it might be implemented in small or large scale on your own campuses.
Presenters:
Quill West, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, qwest@pierce.ctc.edu
Alexis Clifton, Lumen Learning, alexis@lumenlearning.com
Dr. Oz and Natural Science: Program-Level Assessment at Clark College
Room: Pine
This presentation will focus on assessment of the two Natural Science program-level outcomes for the Associate in Arts-DTA at Clark College:
(1) Evaluate claims about the natural world using scientific methodology and (2) Apply fundamental principles and relationships from the

Natural Sciences to solve problems. A quasi-double-blind study was performed to assess the relationship between student demonstration of these outcomes and the number of science classes taken. Conference participants will work through the assessment from both student and faculty perspectives. Strengths and weaknesses of the assessment method and next steps for Clark College Natural Science departments will be discussed.
Presenters:
Travis Kibota, Clark College, tkibota@clark.edu
Joe Pitkin, Clark College, jpitkin@clark.edu
Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Writing Tutors and Career Advisors in Developmental English Classrooms
Room: Spruce
As part of a grant from College Spark Washington, support services from Green River College’s Writing Center and Career and Advising Center have been integrated into selected sections of developmental English. Creating an intervention model that partners academic and student support services with faculty teaching these classes improves student retention, and students earn their first college-level credits in English more quickly. Many developmental English classes are “gateway” courses, and the students who place in these courses are often underrepresented. Experienced learners, like Writing Center consultants, can help these students create new identities as learners who persist.
Presenter:
Jamie Fitzgerald, Green River College, jfitzgerald@greenriver.edu
Meet the eLC Leadership & Innovation in eLearning Award Recipient
Room Cedar
Kendra Birnley and Elizabeth Donley, English Faculty and Project Leads at Clark College, are the recipients of the eLearning Council’s 2015-
2016 Connie Broughton Leadership and Innovation in eLearning Award. Come to this session to learn about their year-long project to increase success and completion rates in online classes, provide a better online course experience for students, better training for online English faculty, and better support for online English faculty.
Friday, May 6, 9:45 - 10:45
Writing for Change: Students as Real Stakeholders
Room: Discovery D
We tell our students how audience awareness shapes our writing, but often their writing goes no further than the class. What happens when students use their voices to ask for change, using essays, reports, presentations, and e-mails? What happens when students write to stakeholders who can improve the lives in their community, including high schools, war-torn communities, Chinese education departments, and college administrations? What happens is that stakeholders quickly and eagerly invite students to speak as experts at key decision-making meetings; students receive letters from offices they write to, include the U.S. President. The writing works to improve lives.
Presenter:
Lisa Bernhagen, Highline College, lbernhagen@highline.edu
Promoting "The Virginia Model" of College Penetration at the Classroom Level and Beyond
Room: Discovery E

The "One Graduate Per Household" proposal put forth in the Virginia Community College System represents a radical, revolutionary approach to enhancing access and participation in two-year colleges in our country. This session explores concrete steps that instructors and administrators may take to implement the proposal at the classroom, campus, and system level. [Sources: http://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-opinion/guest-columnists/article_5ed48fdf-42f8-514f-819c-3edb78340d65.html and http://strategylabs.luminafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/State-Attainment-Goals.pdf.]
Presenters:
Phil Venditti, Clover Park Technical College, phil.venditti@cptc.edu
Reza Forough, Bellevue College, reza.forough@bellevuecollege.edu
Successes and Challenges: A Bridge to College English Community of Practice Panel
Room: Alder
The Bridge to College English (BTCE) course--a senior level course designed for students scoring a Level 2 on the Smarter Balanced high school assessment--is grounded in essential career and college readiness expectations as reflected in the Washington State K-12 Learning Standards for English Language Arts (the Common Core State Standards) to ensure that students passing the course are fully prepared for college-level coursework. This panel session, comprised of teachers from one of the BCTE communities of practice, will explore the successes and challenges of their 2015-16 academic year participation in a community of practice model of professional development.
Presenters:
Sean Agriss, Eastern Washington University, sagriss@ewu.edu
Matthew Lacy, Heritage High School, matthew.lacy@evergreenps.org
James Alan Castle, Mountain View High School, james.castle@evergreenps.org
Sandra Johnsen, Union High School, sandra.johnsen@evergreenps.org
David Johnson, Camas High School, david.johnson@camas.wednet.edu
Guided to What? The Promise and Perils of ‘Guided Pathways’
Room: Hemlock
How does the current focus on “guided pathways” and “meta-majors” connect to the age-old higher education questions about “general education” and “distribution requirements,” or our own work here in Washington around disciplinary “Big Ideas?” Does guiding students toward a “pathway” mean taking a narrow, short-term focus or a longer-term view of students preparing for the complex thinking and citizenship skills needed for their careers and lives? This session will consider these questions and explore how the “guided pathways” approach needs to serve as a framework for the critical discussions faculty need to address, and have been addressing for years, regarding the fundamental nature and purpose of the first two years of college.
Presenter:
Bill Moore, State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, bmoore@sbctc.edu
POP Goes the Textbook: Your Entire Associate of Arts Transfer Degree Using Open Resources!
Room: Oak
In 2014, Pierce College at Joint Base Lewis-McChord resolved to offer an entire Associate of Arts university transfer degree that uses open educational resources (OER) in place of traditional textbooks. One year later, we launched POP: The Pierce Open Pathway. This presentation describes the POP degree and its benefits, the considerations and challenges for faculty and administration when adopting OER, and explains how in a single year we were able to become the third US community college to offer a complete OER-based associate degree.

Presenters:
Quill West, Pierce College District, qwest@pierce.ctc.edu
Marty Heilstedt, Pierce College at Joint Base Lewis - McChord, mheilstedt@pierce.ctc.edu
Live Captioning in Blackboard Online Conferencing Tools Is a Game Changer
Room: Pine
Awareness is spreading that audio/video content must be captioned when presented online to students. But what happens when the faculty member presenting the material is the one with a speech disability? In this session we will present how we are using a live captioner to caption one professor's synchronous lectures using the Blackboard online conferencing tools. We will cover the “how to's” of the technology, the benefits available to both students and faculty, the costs of live captioning and the profound impact it is having on our faculty member and his students.
Presenter:
Amy Rovner, Shoreline Community College, arovner@shoreline.edu
Stephen McCloskey, Shoreline Community College, smccloskey@shoreline.edu
Cultural Thought Patterns and Language Interference
Room: Spruce
How does a student’s first language influence or "interfere" with their writing in English? Language is complex and deeply cultural, and communication (writing, reading, listening, speaking) varies greatly among groups. Many of the patterns of thinking, writing, and errors we see from our English Language Learners have a direct correlation with the standards of expression exhibited in their native languages. In this session, cultural thought patterns of five major language families (Germanic, Romance, Asian, Arabic, Russian) will be presented (visually) with student writing samples to exemplify what we often see in our classrooms. A discussion of teaching approaches concerning language interference will follow.
Presenter:
Ann Fillmore, Salt Lake Community College, ann.fillmore@slcc.edu
Innovate, Learn, and Connect with the Anna Sue McNeill Assessment, Teaching & Learning Award Honorees
Room: Cedar
This session will feature the creativity, versatility, and flexibility of the three recipients of the Anna Sue McNeil Assessment, Teaching &
Learning Award: Sarah Martin, Krissy Kim, and Mary Ann Keith . Come learn more about an inspiring or challenging best practice these innovative instructors use that has made them an instructional leader on their campus. Get inspired and soak up the “Oooh, I want to try that” factor as you experience a fun way to showcase what faculty are doing on your campus. There will be time for questions and conversation with the recipients and other participants after the presentations.
Presenters:
Mary Ann Keith, Bates Technical College, mkeith@bates.ctc.edu
Krissy Kim, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, kmkim@pierce.ctc.edu
Sarah Martin, Spokane Falls Community College, sarah.martin@sfcc.spokane.edu

Friday, May 6, 11:15 - 12:15
Strengths: Teaching and Learning at Your Best
Room: Discovery D
Explore a strengths-based approach to teaching and learning, grounded in positive psychology theory and practice. Teaching from a place of strength can lead to greater fulfillment and positive impact on those you serve. For learners, knowing your strengths and transferring them across contexts can increase self-esteem and resilience. This interactive session will include a brief presentation followed by personal interaction with one model for identifying and applying strengths and the opportunity to collaboratively explore how that model can be adapted to any classroom and subject area. Participants will discover their own strengths and develop techniques for helping students do the same.
Presenter:
Sally Heilstedt, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, sally.heilstedt@lwtech.edu
Integrating Culture, Integrating Thought: Moving Toward Integrative Learning at Clark College
Room: Discovery E
Like other two-year colleges, Clark is in the midst of a structural and psychological change to the guided pathways model of "learning facilitation" (Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins 87). As we undergo this shift, it's vital that the college creates not only the structure for pathways but also integrated learning within this new structure: to miss this opportunity would be to overlook the essence of and potential for pathways.
This session will explore one Faculty Learning Community's role in aiding in this cultural shift. Our purpose will be to share our methodology with others, and our hope is that faculty and staff from other institutions will join us in this conversation of how best to connect theory to practice in this moment of cultural change.
Presenters:
Jill Darley-Vanis, Clark College, jdarley-vanis@clark.edu
Janette Clay, Clark College, jclay@clark.edu
Korey Marquez, Clark College, kmarquez@clark.edu
Tess Yevka, Clark College, tyevka@clark.edu
Sam May-Varas, Clark College, smay-varas@clark.edu
Don Ludwig, Clark College, dludwig@clark.edu
Using a FitBit to Track Student Learning? How Formative Assessments Can Help You Move from Good Teaching to Masterful
Teaching!
Room: Alder
Most educators know that good feedback impacts learning. Are you looking for more ideas to enhance student learning and engagement? Formative assessments aren't just good strategies; when integrated systematically, they are transformative experiences for both students and instructors! In this session participants will learn how to use several specific formative assessment tools to engage students in their own learning. Reflection is embedded in these tools to provide the opportunity for students to explore and examine their own behaviors, recognize what works and what does not, and to use results to modify and adjust.
Presenter:

Margaret Balachowski, Everett Community College, mbalachowski@everettcc.edu
Awakening Our Individual and Collective Capabilities: Practicing Leadership Groups in Social Learning Contexts
Room: Hemlock
As the Wenger-Trayner’s define leadership as an act of service, with leadership groups acting as custodians of one part of the learning process on behalf of the community, your participation will move forward not just own your own learning, but the collective learning of the conference. This session is designed to gather feedback and record key insights on the experience of paying attention to the conference through one of six leadership lens: Agenda Activist, Community Keeper, Critical Friend, Social Reporter, External Messenger, Value Detective, or Organizational Broker. Participants will debrief in groups of six (one person from each role) to share observations of the learning of the conference from the vantage point of that leadership role.
Presenter:
Jennifer Whetham, State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, jwhetham@sbctc.edu
Professional Learning in the Digital Era
Room: Oak
We welcome all learners with our open door policy, and our jobs as community college educators present new challenges and responsibilities in the 21st century classroom. Teacher collaboration is more important than ever, yet studies show that faculty are increasingly isolated and carry greater responsibilities than their predecessors. Rather than turn the corner towards despair and teacher burnout, let’s take this moment to (re)envision pathways for flexible and open professional learning.
Presenter:
Alyson Indrunas, Lumen Learning, alyson.indrunas@lumenlearning.com
Accessibility 911
Room: Pine
You know it's important to make your class material "accessible" but what does that really mean and where should you start? Join us for a straight forward conversation about 5 steps that you can take to make your existing course syllabi and content more accessible. These changes are easy to learn, easy to apply and can be used whenever you create new online content and to make existing content more accessible. You are encouraged to bring a device so you may practice the skills as we teach them.
Presenter:
Amy Rovner, Shoreline Community College, arovner@shoreline.edu
Quality Matters: Improving Your Online Course (IYOC) Info Session
Room: Spruce
Discover the newest addition to the State Board’s (SBCTC) family of FREE online trainings: Improving Your Online Course (IYOC). Licensed through Quality Matters, the IYOC workshop focuses on the essential standards from the QM Rubric. IYOC participants will review their own course and develop a course improvement plan during the workshop. This hands-on information session will provide attendees with an opportunity to meet our fabulous team of IYOC facilitators, to explore workshop expectations, and to learn how to sign-up.
Presenters:
Alissa Sells, State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, asells@sbctc.edu
Liz Falconer, Renton Technical College, efalconer@rtc.edu
Kathy Bright, Olympic College, kbright@olympic.edu

Stephanie Delaney, Seattle Central College, stephanie.delaney@seattlecolleges.edu
Brandy Long, Cascadia College, blong@cascadia.edu
Tiny Habits, the Science, Practice and Power of Building Change
Room: Cedar
How can we help ourselves (and our students) move from our good intentions of “wishing” to “doing” for a long term change? Learn the 3 steps to building a new, tiny habit and the 6 sources of influence that make a habit stick. We will explore and practice two habit building frameworks based on the works of Stanford Professor, BJ Fogg, the Vital Smart’s Change Anything lab and Charles Duhigg’s New York Times best seller, The Power of Habit.
Presenter:
Penny Perka, Everett Community College, pperka@everettcc.edu