Communication Strategies: Creating Safe Spaces

The academic world is buzzing about creating “safe spaces,” places where students can openly discuss their ideas without feeling like they are being treated poorly. How can we communicate effectively without “triggering” or hijacking our learning objectives? Starlink discusses these significant issues with Dr. Lynn Meade.

Employee Resource Groups

Dallas College ERGs are employee-led and self-directed voluntary employee engagement groups. ERGs are designed to encourage an array of thought, ideas and solutions that can benefit students, employees and the Dallas County community. Primarily focused on the career and professional development of its members and the entire Dallas College workforce, ERGs are open to all employees and are organized according to shared commonalities, cultures, heritages, traditions, etc.. Dallas College ERGs create opportunities for networking and mentoring, support, service, and career development.

First-Year Experience Strategies

First Year Experience (FYE) Strategies is designed to provide higher education professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to support students as they transition into their first year of college. This Starlink training covers a range of topics, including the challenges and opportunities that first-year students face and strategies for improving retention and building a strong FYE program. By the end of the training, you will be equipped to support first-year students in achieving their academic and personal goals and to create a welcoming and supportive campus environment for all students.

How Can I Get Students To Take Responsibility for Their Own Learning?

If you’ve always thought your key challenge as an educator was to help students achieve learning outcomes, try stepping back and thinking again.

What if your real goal is inspiring students to want to achieve these outcomes?

How Can I Manage the Disconnect Between Faculty and Student Perceptions of Rigor To Increase Learning?

Students and teachers don’t always define rigor in the same way. If you asked your students to define rigor, what would they say? Would their answers match yours? Would it matter if they didn’t? Students tend to view the quality of a class as a function of their own ability to meet reasonable faculty expectations rather than as a function of mastery of learning outcomes. This can ultimately lead to students who are disengaged from the course material and unmotivated to meet expectations. That’s why there’s tremendous value in initiating conversations with students about learning and how that relates to definitions of “hard” courses. In doing so, you’re better able to align your definitions of rigor with students’ definitions of rigor and develop students who are more willing to put in the work and take responsibility for their own learning.

How Can Understanding Group Dynamics Lead to Better Group Work?

For educators looking to maximize productivity and success in their student group work, this course explores free resources that benefit group dynamics and can be implemented into your classroom to improve successful group work.

How Does Grit Team With a Growth Mindset To Cultivate Lifelong Learning?

Discover both instructional and classroom strategies that promote a growth mindset. Help transform students’ fixed mindsets and boost their confidence in their abilities. Give students the tools they need to overcome setbacks in their education, and strengthen their persistence to learn.

Maximizing Meetings

Maximizing Meetings is designed for higher education professionals who want to enhance their skills in facilitating and managing effective meetings. Learn the skills and knowledge needed to lead impactful meetings that promote teamwork, innovation and maximized productivity.

The Magic of Leadership, With Summer Jelinek

Many academic professionals look around and see leaders who are getting results. From the outside looking in, it can appear that these leaders are performing magic. But like all good magic tricks, once you know how it is performed, it is easily replicated. This session will open you to the Magic of Leadership, an easy-to-implement model that shows how you and your organization can take very specific steps to create and maintain a high-performing culture.

What Are 10 Tips To Collaborate With Colleagues?

In this 20-minute session, learn how you can improve your collaboration with colleagues. Explore how and where collaboration is appropriate and how to get the most out of collaboration.

What the Best College Students Do, With Dr. Ken Bain

Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame or the admiration of people in their field, Dr. Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes distinguishing the best college students from their peers. These individuals started believing that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their ways of thinking and find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for correct answers. Intrinsically motivated by their sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems and taking risks to learn and grow.

What Tools Can I Use To Ensure I Have Effective Coaching Conversations With Faculty?

In this 20-minute session, you will learn how to have effective coaching conversations with your faculty.