The Plantinga+Student Handbook Quiz

This poster is too cool not to share, obviously advertising another event earlier this year. It is is time this week to start encouraging students to attend the event on September 9 at 10:30 on the Oval. I know that's far from Kingsport, but the service mandate is a King College imperative no matter where we teach our classes.

I was pretty excited this past week to experience success with the process of exporting and emailing you the quiz. Matt Peltier helped me write the instructions about how to deploy it. Both Marsha and Annie reported that they were able to get the quiz up on their Bb sites.

As I worked with the Plantinga material, I was interested to notice his emphasis on education as preparation for service. That idea resonates nicely with the September 9th event where we will publicize service opportunities and to explain to students and others how the New Core treats the Cross-Cultural Experience.

There will be a brochure passed out about it at the Faculty Meeting on September 7 as well as the revised forms that all of us (students, faculty, liaisons) need to be familiar with. I won't say more; just wait until September 7. However, you need to pull that idea out of the reading when you do the class discussion, so students can see the connection and understand why they should attend the September 9th extravaganza, which will combine chapel, opportunities to discuss service and cross-cultural opportunities with community agencies as well as campus sponsors, and great prizes.

Marsha, I'll make sure you have a packet of brochures and handouts. Just let me know how many you need.

Katie

First Week is Done

I had my first real KING 2000 class today. By the end of it, I think the temperature was at least 95F in Sells 201. The air conditioner does little to cool the room.

My students did well with the Campus Resource Exercise even though few of the places they went appeared to know that they were coming, in spite of the fact that the times were supposedly arranged with the service providers. I saw the email trail on that. Did any of the rest of you find no one at the destinations your students visited? We went on to work on Appendix 1 in the textbook. To answer the question about "Your Academic Dean's Office" I talked about King's "small university" model and named all the school deans.

I have completed reading the Plantinga "Preface" (again) and the selections from the Student Handbook. I hope to have the quiz ready tomorrow by the end of the day. I will be the first one to try out the Export-Save-Email process for the quiz. I hope it works well. Fingers crossed.

I hope you are accessing the King Mentors' Blackboard Site. That is where I will post documents for you to use in classes and other information as I find it.

Tired,
Katie

Two distinct groups of transfer students

As I watched the last week play out, I realized we have two distinct groups of transfer students with very different needs. Many of them commute to campus in some pretty amazing vehicles. I haven't noticed a Corvette yet, but I did see a huge yellow Hummer in the commuter parking lot behind the FAB.

The first group is the traditional 19-25 year olds who have, for the most part, the same needs and concerns as the traditional students (both residential and commuters) who came to King as freshmen. They are looking for "the college experience" and should be encouraged by us to make friends, sign up for intramurals, attend sports events, and participate in S.L.A.C.K. activities. Transfer students in this group, at least the ones I met, are coming from local community colleges or have been recruited by a King College coach to play a sport here. These kids are resilient and will adjust quickly to our campus culture.

The second group is much more fragile. These students are older, very serious about their education, and very stressed about meeting the academic challenges that lie ahead. Many in this second group have heavy work obligations, family responsibilities to spouses and children, and their self-concepts on the line. This group is much the same as students enrolled in our G.P.S. programs. We need to get to know these students right away and make sure they have the support they need to survive.

One older student in my KING 2000 class, whom I met on Monday at the transfer meeting, is 45 and introduced himself by saying, "I always wanted to go to college, so I finally decided to do it. I will be a nursing major." Two others I can think of that I met later in the week are at King to become secondary teachers. Another, who is working full time by combining hours on MWF and weekends, wants to be an elementary teacher.

I know that Marsha and Martin both have had much experience with students like these in their GPS classes. Simeon, Annie, and I will need to learn how to serve these students as well as we can. They probably need different campus resources than traditional students, or at least a different emphasis: the A.C.E., the library, the Help Desk, and the Counseling Center will be important to them. Am I missing any?

Now, one week in, the "transfer students" are beginning to have faces for me, and I am acutely aware of these two distinct categories.

Katie

Campus Resource Day in KING 2000 & More...

This week, August 24-26, the focus of our class will be campus resources. Knowing where things are seems very simple to us; we forget how overwhelming it might be to people in our class.

We need to use this exercise to help students get to know each other (the groups they "travel" in to get the information on their resource will be a start for them to learn the people in their KING 2000 class). I have made a "notes" sheet that I will give to each student at the beginning of class. They will use this to record names and significant information about their teammates for the scavenger hunt for the campus resources. I will take up the Notes sheet at the end of class as a class participation exercise.

I have posted both the Campus Resources Report and the Campus Resources Notes page under "Resources" on the King Mentors Bb site. You may be wondering why I am posting things on a Bb site instead of sending everything to you by email. Well, because everything is there on Bb in a secure place. I get so many emails in a day that it's easy for me to miss important documents when I get them as email attachments. I get busy or check my mail in a hurry, and you can guess the rest of the story.

The second thing we need to do this week is implore students to attend chapel and convocation. Martin will get to tell his students on Monday morning to be sure to go to Opening Convocation. The rest of us should surely make some mental notes about Walter Fluker's talk and try to get a discussion started among students who went. I posted the time and day on my Bb site for the class and told students to go. I guess I'll find out if they took me seriously.

Presenting the Honor Code to Transfers

You may have noticed on the planning sheets I gave you that we will be talking about the Honor Code in class during the week of August 31-September 1-2. I included some material from the Student Handbook as part of the reading assignment along with the Plantinga selection.

I think the Honor Code fits well here--the idea of a Christian College and the Honor Code go together in my mind. Our transfer students were not required to go to the Honor Code Session run by SGA during Launch. A few transfers did show up for that (obviously they did not come to the morning session where I specifically told them the session was not required...), and they were not turned away.

At the end of the SGA session, students signed a banner indicating their agreement with the principles of the Code at King.

We, as the transfer year seminar mentors, need to decide what we want to do about some sort of "act of agreement" for transfers. We have options:

1. We can get the banner, take it to our classes individually, and have the students sign it.
2. We can use the cards that students used to sign and have each student sign a card (Heather thinks there are enough cards left in the SGA Office for us to use).
3. We can come up with a new strategy unique to us and our situation.
   

As I already mentioned to you at our planning session, I will be asking the students to work through the plagiarism site that Fred Foy Strang pointed out in his email to all faculty a couple of weeks ago. I will post that URL on our Bb site so you can grab it easily if you want your students to do that exercise.

In addition there is an essay assignment for freshmen. I'm not advocating that we have our students write an essay; I think we have already laid out enough for them to do. However, the assignment, slightly revised might make a good discussion exercise for our classes. I will post the assignment and the rubric that accompanies it on the "Resources" section of our Blackboard site.

Do we want to all do the same things? Or do we just trust each other to present the Honor Code and get something signed from each student? We may, at the very least, want to agree either to do the banner or to do the cards.

Katie

Reserve Readings Available in the Library*

*...almost...

As I write this at noon on Wednesday, August 19, the notebooks with the assigned readings are ready. The E.W.King Library in Bristol should have the notebooks on the reserve shelf today or tomorrow.

The notebook for Kingsport will be physically transported there tomorrow by Librarian Erica Brammer.

So, you will be able to direct your students next week to go to the libraries and photocopy their readings. Since there will be quizzes on the readings, I strongly suggest that you tell students to photocopy the readings so they can truly "interact" with the material by marking up the pages and hi-liting.

Exciting News about Making Buechner Work for Kingsport

I have talked and emailed with several people on campus this morning. We are hoping that we will be able to place the recordings of the Buechner Lectures done in the Chapel on our (fledgling, but existing) iTunes University site. We can supply all the KING 2000 students with links to that site where they can download at will.

Students could put the files on their iPods, iPhones, or a CD. All the Kingsport students commute, right? This use of technology available to us should make it possible for them to hear the Buechner Lectures while they drive around town...maximizing their time and making it possible for them to participate in the lecture series virtually.

This could also help students on the Bristol campus who have to miss required lectures for one reason or another.

I'll keep you posted on this initiative.

Katie

Getting the course together

It's been more than a week since our workshop day. I had little time to think about KING 2000 until yesterday, when I began working on the syllabus I promised to create.

I also talked to Matt Peltier about how one person can make a quiz that we all can use on our individual Blackboard sites. He said the creator of the quiz should be able to write the test on his/her individual Bb site and then export just that test. The export function will put the test in a zip file that can then be attached to email. Those of us receiving the test would then save the file to a known location (maybe Desktop) and browse for it as you would any file you are uploading into Bb. We'll need to work together to get comfortable with this technology feat!

James Wilcox made the Mentor's Blackboard site for us yesterday. I have worked on it some. All the weekly plans that you have in your notebook are posted so that you can copy and paste from them as you make your own weekly assignments. I have also posted links to information by or about the Buechner speakers we are highlighting in KING 2000.

I will get the syllabus "front matter" on the King template to you very soon. Note that the document is "landscape" rather than "portrait" because I like the wider space to do the type of schedules I create for my students. Of course you can re-format the document any way that suits you. Once you take it, make it your own.

Katie