Tag: Essential Education Seminar

Michigan Tech Essential Education Seminars prepare students for Success

Starting college is a pivotal moment, and at Michigan Tech, we’ve designed a first-semester experience to help new students navigate it successfully. The Michigan Tech Seminar in Essential Education, offered through a wide variety of introductory courses, helps students not only get acclimated but also chart their academic journey, practice reflection, and build a sense of community. This isn’t just another class; it’s an integrated experience with core modules that are adapted by instructors to fit the unique needs of different majors.

The seminar is built on three key pillars:

Essential Education: these modules help students understand the “why” behind their education. By introducing Michigan Tech’s Essential Abilities, students are prompted to reflect on our key learning outcomes and their own strengths and areas for growth. This self-assessment is more than an exercise; it’s a tool for creating a unique academic plan. Students are encouraged to explore a wide range of opportunities early on, including Essential Ed minors, undergraduate research opportunities, study away programs, and student organizations, helping them set concrete goals and map out a pathway to achieve them.

Husky Folio: Michigan Tech’s pedagogical approach to helping students recognize, reflect on, and collect evidence of their learning, is a powerful tool for career readiness. The Husky Folio modules introduce students to the practice of documenting and reflecting on their learning. Through a series of assignments, students learn how to use our Husky Folio platform to tell the story of their academic and personal growth. This is valuable practice not only for future classes but also for preparing them to articulate their skills and experiences in a job interview.

Husky Life: The Husky Life modules focus on crucial aspects of student success: academics, community, and wellbeing. These modules connect students with vital campus resources and encourage them to build relationships with peers, faculty, and staff. Instructors can tailor assignments to fit specific professional development needs, with many sections focusing on resume building and departmental networking. The modules also address key life skills, with instructors able to choose topics like time management, stress reduction, and coping with loneliness, ensuring a holistic approach to student wellness.

Because we recognize that transfer students have unique needs, a seminar specifically designed for these students was also developed. Evidence suggests that a significant number of our transfer students may face academic challenges, with nearly half having a GPA of 2.5 or lower (about 33% of our total Michigan Tech undergraduate student population have a GPA below 2.5). We know that having a sense of belonging on campus contributes to academic success for students. (https://www.ihep.org/publication/student-experience-and-belonging-strong-outcomes/) Through the Michigan Transfer Seminar, we are working to build community among new transfer students while also helping them learn about campus resources and plan for their future, ensuring they have the support they need to succeed.

The success of the seminar is a testament to strong cross-unit collaboration. Developed by faculty from diverse academic disciplines as well as student affairs staff, this partnership has created a seamless introduction to campus life, beginning with summer orientation and continuing through the fall semester. This collaborative effort also resulted in a $650,000 State of Michigan MiLEAP College Success grant, which will support continued development of the modules and innovative teaching practices over the next three years.

The seminar also serves as an incubator for new ideas in curriculum design. The shared modules are designed to be both structured and flexible, allowing them to be effective in courses ranging from small seminars to large lectures and in subjects as varied as Engineering Analysis, First Year Arts Seminar, Explorations in Computing, and Natural Resource Professional. This adaptability ensures that students across all disciplines receive a high-quality, relevant experience.

You can learn more about the shared seminar modules and other seminar-related programming through the “Essential Education Resource Hub for Instructors” in Canvas <Essential Ed Resource Hub for Instructors> Courses that serve as seminar courses can be found on our Michigan Tech Essential Education website <Program Requirements | Essential Education | Michigan Tech>.




Essential Education Announces Office Hours for Fall Semester

The Essential Ed Leadership Team is setting up weekly “Office Hours” to support our campus community as we implement the new Essential Education curriculum. Individuals, department committees, and other working groups are welcome to attend for consultations, including (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • Revising degree audits and flowcharts to make the most of Essential Ed requirements
  • Tips for Building an Essential Ed Minor
  • How to Build an Essential Education Experience Course
  • What are in Essential Ed Seminar Modules
  • How is Essential Education Assessed
  • How have Wellbeing and Success Courses changed
  • What is Folio Thinking, and how do ePortfolios support Folio Thinking

The first two Essential Ed Office Hours will be in Library Conference Room 103 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm on Wednesday, September 4, and Thursday, September 12. The complete calendar of Office Hour Dates for the Fall Semester can be found below. Note the Special Guests and Topics noted on the calendar. For further information or questions, contact Steve Patchin – Project Manager for Essential Ed Implementation, at shpatchi@mtu.edu.

Library Conference Room 103 – Noon to 1 pm
Date Day Special Guest & Topic
September 4 Wednesday
September 12 Thursday
September 18 Wednesday
September 26 Thursday Nancy Barr – Folio Thinking & PebblePad
October 2 Wednesday Jeannie DeClerck – Assessment & Essentail Ed
October 10 Thursday
October 16 Wednesday
October 24 Thursday
October 30 Wednesday
November 7 Thursday
November 13 Wednesday Jeannie DeClerck – Assessment & Essential Ed
November 21 Thursday Nancy Barr – Folio Thinking & PebblePad
November 27 Wednesday
December 5 Thursday
December 11 Wednesday

Essential Education Soft Launches Seminar Courses – Fall 2024

Michigan Tech Essential Education will be soft-launching the Michigan Tech Seminar shared modules beginning this Fall, 2024. These modules are embedded in Intro to the Major seminars or included in existing large-format courses (ENG 1101). Several units are in the process of developing new courses that will use the shared modules and fulfill the seminar requirement. Those majors not offering their own seminar course will have their students take a university-wide seminar beginning in Fall 2025.

Required assignments are expected to require no more than ⅓ of a 1 credit course, with expectations of about 15 hours total of combined in and out of class work. Eight of the nine modules in the list below are now available in Canvas Commons for seminar instructors to access and use. We anticipate that the remaining module will be available in Commons by September 6. Anyone from Michigan Tech can view the modules, but we ask that only Michigan Tech Seminar courses use them with students (to avoid unnecessary repetition of materials).

Modules include:

  • Welcome to College — Reviews key policies and resources and helps students understand the differences between high school and college.
  • Husky Points — Students select activities to help them connect to the community, University, and resources.
  • Career Preparation — Students create an About Me page in the PebblePad ePortfolio platform and draft a resume (optional).
  • Time Management — Students track their time use and discuss strategies for time management.
  • Academic Planning — Students explore personal and academic goals and make a four-year plan.
  • Stress Management — Students learn how stress impacts them physically and mentally and explore strategies and resources for managing stress.
  • Loneliness — Students learn to recognize signs of loneliness (in themselves and others) and develop strategies for managing feelings of disconnection and accessing resources.
  • Reflection — Students learn more about how reflection supports learning and personal growth and receive instruction and feedback in effective reflective writing.
  • Introduction to the Essential Abilities — Students use a structured PebblePad workbook to reflect on the Essential Abilities and identify their own strengths and opportunities for growth.

A special thanks to those instructors who participated in the Seminar Training, which took place on Thursday, August 15. We appreciate the efforts of the summer team that constructed the content and Canvas Modules:

  • AJ Hamlin – Engineering Fundamentals
  • Maria Bergstrom – Humanities/CSA
  • Linda Wanless – Center for Teaching and Learning
  • Anna McClatchy – Wahtera Center for Student Success
  • Dawn Corwin – Wahtera Center for Student Success
  • Nancy Barr – Assessment and Writing Support Specialist/APUE
  • Heather Simpson – Exploring Majors/CSA
  • Susan Liebau – Chemistry
  • Jenn Sams – Library
  • Kailee Laplander – Electrical and Computer Engineering

Below is the list of courses that will be launching the Essential Education Seminar components, including new Canvas Modules and associated activities in the Fall of 2024

Participating in Soft Launch Fall 2024
(57 sections, 1125 students)

BL 1580 First Year Exp in Bio Sci
BL 1590 First year exp in pre-health
BL 1600 First Year Exp in Med Lab Sci
CH 1130 PDC1 (prof dev chem)
CS 1000 Explorations in Computing
ENG1101 Engineering Problem Solving and Analysis
HF 1999 Intro to the HF major
HU 1000 Intro to Humanities
KIP 1000 Intro to Exercise Sci
KIP 1010 Intro to Sports and Fit Mgmt
MA 1910 Exploring Symmetry Groups
PSY 1999 Intro to the Psych major
SA1000 – Exploring Majors
SS 1001 Orientation to Soc Sci

Courses in development for Fall of 2025
Nursing
Physics
VPA – Sound Design, Theatre
University-Wide Course
College of Computing
Forestry


Questions? Contact the Essential Education Implementation Leadership Team: essential-ed-l@mtu.edu or reach out to Steve Patchin: shpatchi@mtu.edu