Help for Low Income Millennial College Students

        Bill and Melinda Gates are focused on higher education! According to the November 21st edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Gates Foundation plans to allocate approximately three billion dollars over the next five years to increase the number of young college graduates who are from low-income families. The Chronicle predicts if the program is successful, an additional 250,000 young people will earn college degrees by age 26. At the beginning, this program will target community colleges because of their low tuition cost and open admission criteria.

Read more about this plan:

Gates Grants Aim to Help Low-Income Students Finish College

Bill Gates To Give Low-Income Students $70 Million In Grants

Busy, Yet Fulfilled...

Readers,

The past few weeks have been busy, yet very fulfilling. Here are some recent accomplishments that I am very proud of.


Accomplishment List (I have many updates!)


1. Finals started today!

2. Recently, I was awarded a faculty research grant from my university to extend my research on African American Undergraduate College Students and HBCUs.

3. I found out that my dissertation was selected as "Dissertation of the Year" by a state association.

4. Our conference proposal was accepted by the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement, which will be held in Baton Rouge.

5. I will present with an undergraduate student at the Southwestern Black Student Leadership Conference in January.

6. I attended the National Communication Conference in San Diego for the first time!

7. Distributed Christmas gifts to department colleagues and the wonderful women on the second floor of our office building.


I need to:

1. Update my vita and portfolio.

2. Submit another conference proposal that is due by Dec. 31st.

3. Contact participants in the grant-funded study.

4. Write a couple of papers in the next few weeks.

5. Administer three finals.

6. Contact colleagues from the National Communication Conference.

7. Send Christmas cards to mentors.

8. Wrap my family members' presents!

9. Update the TACUSPA blog.

Is there anything else that I should apply/submit a proposal for? Upcoming Grants? Fellowships? Conference Proposals? Let me know!

Sincerely,

Millennial Professor

*By the way, I absolutely LOVE the "Knock Knock"/"Ding Dong" chain (i.e. - to do list picture). Instead of using a legal pad (which I used for the past 15 years - former high school debater), I use items from the "Knock Knock"/"Ding Dong" chain. This chain is usually available at TJMaxx or Office Max.

How to Cheat on Blackboard!

This section is called, "How to Cheat on Blackboard", but it should be titled "How to Minimize Cheating on Blackboard". 

This summer, I started giving face-to-face tests on Blackboard.com (our university's content management system) using the assessment tool. This new tool has proven itself to be very effective in my classroom. This is the first time that many of my students have taken a blackboard test in one of their classes.

1. Walk around the classroom while students are taking the test.
2. Show the students' answers and the correct answers at the end of the test. This helps the students learn which test questions they answered correctly and which questions they answered incorrectly. My students enjoy this feature. 
3. Provide the students with a test time frame. This prevents the students from accessing the questions and answers later. 
4. Provide a test question database for each course test (i.e. - 50 questions). Then make blackboard randomly select questions (i.e. - 25 questions) from your test question database (i.e. - 50 questions). This feature serves as another anti-cheating mechanism.
   

I hope this helps!

-Millennial Professor

Benefits of Using Blackboard for Testing!

There are many benefits to using blackboard.com for giving classroom tests. Here are a few...

1. The assessment feature enables the professor to add extra credit points with ease and to correct an incorrect answer with little effort.
2. In the pre-blackboard/scantron era (i.e. - last semester), I agonized over entering the students' grades in my gradebook because it was time consuming. Blackboard.com enables me to export grades into an Excel spreadsheet, which I import into my gradebook. This is a definite plus for me!
3. Students get instant feedback on their test and they are also able to view their grades in the blackboard.com gradebook (i.e. - mygrades). This feature helps me tremendously, because the students always know their course grade at any given moment and I do not have to use paper to disperse their grades.

Millennial Professor