Something's Got to Give - California can't improve college completions without rethinking developmental education at its community colleges

President Barack Obama has set a national goal that by 2020, “America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” On Oct. 5, 2010, the president and the U.S. Department of Education underscored the central role community colleges play in this effort by hosting a White House Summit on Community College.

California’s community colleges are the single largest postsecondary system in the country, serving nearly a quarter of all community college students. It is clear that this new national challenge cannot be met unless California’s community colleges ramp up their student completion rates.

In order for more students to reach that finish line of college completion, California has to get more of them to the starting gate, ready and able to do college-level work. As open-access institutions, California’s community colleges play a crucial role in that effort. They are the main source of postsecondary education for the state’s high school graduates, but particularly for first generation college goers, many of whom are low-income and students of color. California’s community colleges hold out hope for a better future for the more than 2 million individuals they enroll each year.

Because of their commitment to open access, the community colleges serve huge numbers of students who are unprepared for college-level academic studies. Local campuses have responded to this by creating a variety of developmental education programs to help students learn the basic skills they need for college success. Over time, California’s longstanding tradition of local autonomy has resulted in a myriad of approaches to this righteous but often daunting challenge, some of which are more successful than others.

Students get mixed signals about what they need to do to prepare for community college and – after they enroll – are too often left to their own devices to figure out how to get the skills they need for college success.

State and national leaders say that increasing the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and career is essential. But to meet the goal of more college completions, California’s community colleges must also strengthen developmental education.

That is particularly true if the state remains committed to maintaining the open-access mission it has assigned to the community colleges. But colleges are expected to improve their effectiveness at educating these unprepared students at a time when budget and enrollment pressures are constraining their capacity to respond.

Continuing to tackle the problems of readiness and remediation with the same strategies will simply not work. Something’s got to give.

This report draws from a recent EdSource Study that was commissioned by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) to provide a deeper understanding of the system’s challenges and opportunities related to developmental education. It provides some insights into how well the community colleges are currently positioned to respond to these pressures. It also details how students have moved through remedial course sequences in writing and mathematics, which students take these courses, and the extent to which their starting levels and course-taking behaviors appear to relate to their achievement of longterm academic goals.

Click Here for Complete Report and/or Free Download

– From October 2010 EdSource Reports – Researched and written by:
Mary Perry, Deputy Director of EdSource and Study Project Director,
Matthew Resin, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, EdSource, with
research support from: Kathryn Morgan Woodward, Research
Associate, EdSource, and Quantitative analysis by: Peter Bahr, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan.

My Students Won’t Read! Part Two: The Three Levels of Reading Comprehension

Before I was able to create any shift in my students’ attitude toward reading, I had to understand what they experienced when confronted with unfamiliar texts. It dawned on me that I had once been in a similar predicament.
After completing my undergraduate coursework in mathematics, I thought it would be cool to return to school and study “something fun” such as literature. I naively entered a graduate program in English and signed up for a couple of graduate seminars. The reading was heavy, but I enjoyed it. I’ll never forget coming to class all prepared (so I thought) to “talk about” Wieland, the first novel of the semester. I had rehearsed its complicated story line, itemized its characters, and carefully determined the book’s theme. However, the ensuing discussion left me in the dust. Only much later did I realize what had happened. My classmates were discussing the book from all three levels of comprehension whereas I was stuck at Level One.
The Three Levels
1. Literal comprehension: what does it say?
This is the skeletal starting point, consisting of a text’s main idea (or thesis or theme) and major supporting details. It answers the overt WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN questions. Yet even literal comprehension is challenging if the text contains difficult vocabulary or if the reader is unfamiliar with the subject matter. Most of our students are at (or still struggling with) this level of reading comprehension.
2. Interpretive comprehension: what does it mean?
Here we ask HOW and WHY the text is organized the way it is. We must consider the author’s tone, bias, inferences, audience, and purpose. Since these are usually implicit rather than explicit, they require a more sophisticated understanding.
3. Critical analysis: what is our evaluation?
Only after moving through the first two levels can we decide what the text means to us individually and as a community of readers. Do we agree with the author? Do we approve of the manner of presentation? Will it move us to action of any kind?
Decision Time for the Professor
Given these three levels of reading comprehension—and the fact that moving up the scale is no simple matter—instructors must make choices. First, what level of comprehension is necessary? Will literal comprehension be sufficient? This will vary from discipline to discipline. In a basic anatomy class, it is probably sufficient for students to learn the various body parts and their functions. Nurses don’t need to ponder very deeply whether or not the organs of the human body might be arranged in a more optimal manner. (Surgeons and bio-engineers, however, will certainly do so.) Wherever bias is possible, as in the social sciences, level one comprehension will not be sufficient.
Instructors must also have a clear understanding of the purpose of their reading assignments. It is not enough to ask students to read the textbook simply because this is customary. Here then are some questions for reflection: Will the textbook provide information that students will not receive in lecture? Is it intended to reinforce what students hear in lecture? Or is it intended to introduce lecture material? The answers to these questions will determine whether a textbook is really needed and, if so, how it ought to be used. If the textbook is one that students will want to keep as a lifelong reference book, there is very good reason for wanting them to develop extreme familiarity with it. How to do so will be the topic of Part Three, our final installment.

For the full Article, Click HERE

Source--Patrick Wall, English/Reading Instructor, San Joaquin Delta Community College

9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning

1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve. Educational values should drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.
2. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance beyond the classroom. Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students' educational experience.
3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations – those derived from the institution's mission, from faculty
intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful.
4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes. Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students "end up" matters greatly. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way -- about the curricula, teaching, and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.
5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic. Assessment is a process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, "one-shot" assessment can be better than none, improvement is best fostered when assessment entails a linked series of activities undertaken over time.

Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright.

This document was developed under the auspices of the AAHE Assessment Forum (Barbara Cambridge is Director) with support from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education with additional support for publication and dissemination from the Exxon Education Foundation. Copies may be made without restriction. AAHE site maintained by: Mary C. Schwarz mjoyce@aahe.org

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My Students Won't - Read Part 1: The Reason Why

“Do you think this class will be a lot of work?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve heard that the prof is really nice.”

“How much did you pay for the textbook?”

“Almost $100! I wonder if I’ll really need it.”

“I doubt it. My friend took this class last semester and got a C+ just from going to lecture.”

“So are you planning to buy the textbook?”

“No way! This teacher covers all the important stuff in lecture anyway.”

It’s hard to argue with such student logic. After all, many of our students have made it into college with only the most rudimentary of language skills. Every semester, they aim for that “barely passing” grade, and most of the time they achieve it. Certainly there are exceptions. For example, my office neighbor teaches a course that is prerequisite for entry to the nursing program. When he arrives for work in the morning, he has students lined up outside his office waiting to ask questions about the homework assignment. However, this is not the norm at Delta—or at most community colleges.

If we faculty are going to challenge the status quo, we have our work cut out for us. It is with embarrassment that I relate the following story.

Some years ago, while teaching college-level English, I concluded that weak reading skills were largely responsible for the educational lethargy of my students. So I went back to graduate school, received training in reading education, and returned, eager to tackle prevailing attitudes. I signed up to teach my first reading course and found a text, The Fight in the Fields, that was both interesting and culturally relevant to my students. This book chronicled the rise of Cesar Chavez and the farmworker movement right here in the San Joaquin Valley.

In Part Two, we'll examine the three levels of reading comprehension, appreciate why reading is such hard work for students, and make clear what we faculty must do to change this paradigm.

For the full - Part 1, Click HERE

Source--Patrick Wall, English/Reading Instructor, San Joaquin Delta Community College

Learning with Letters

Some 12-14 years ago I became disgusted with myself for falling asleep (or at least into a dull hypnotic trance) while reading yet another batch of essays from my upper-division Shakespeare students. It finally occurred to me, as a late-life epiphany, that my malaise was not the fault of the students, but rather my own. After all, they had simply delivered what I asked for: safe, careful, traditional essays on topics that the students knew that I understood better than they. And so I got the typical protective prose (passive voice everywhere and cautious thoughts at every turn: "as one can see," “it may be conjectured here that," "possibly Shakespeare meant," and so on, ad nauseam.) I therefore determined to strip the students of the double vulnerabilities OF HAVING TO PRETEND TO BE SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARS WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE EVEN MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE THAN THEY THEMSELVES WERE. If pretense was the rhetorical game, why not put them into positions, postures, angles closer to their "real" personae and language styles--or even into different characters (Shakespearean or not) that would free them to use a less artificial rhetoric to raise revealing--and readable!--arguments about the nature of the players and the plays. In other words (since life is short and I remembered virtually nothing of thousands of previous essays written in the "traditional" style that I had so dutifully called for), why not ask for responses that I actually would look forward to reading? Radical, right? And so I came up with the "letters" approach.

The students love these assignments because they can be so creative, and they can even be wrong-without-being-wrong. There is form, there is structure, and there is the logic of argument implicit in the "stance" described in each "letter" assignment. (And no one could ever hope to evade these by going to the Internet for responses, I assure you.) I know this approach has been used before, but the secret is to make the "letters" assignments genuinely your own by asking for responses that YOU want to hear. My students just love this somewhat whacky way of penetrating Shakespeare's complex world without their having to pretend to be "experts." It doesn't even seem like work to them, yet they pour twice as much effort into these assignments, with real enjoyment. We read some aloud in class, usually with a little dramatic flair and always with some appreciative applause. I call this win-win-win. And I believe this approach is as applicable to a History or Biology class as to an English class.

EXAMPLE ASSIGNMENT 1: As a character in Othello, you realize at some point in the play that, to avoid a tragic ending, what Othello needs most is an informative letter from you. Write that letter—and indicate when in the course of the play Othello needs to receive this letter in order to avoid a tragic end. (Try to write the letter “in character.”)

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Source: --John McDaniel, On Course Website

The Year Ahead in Higher Ed Technology

What happens when tough economic times combine with fatigue across the campus community hyping the latest “killer app,” and the growing intolerance of disruptions to services occasioned by security-related activities? I think the intersection of these three realities represent the most important challenges for campus information technology leaders in 2009.

We have not seen three years of negative economic growth since the birth of the Internet. We are one year into the global recession and the crystal-ball gazing under way on most campuses is not producing rosy scenarios. Chief information officers at most universities are closing in on “core” operations as they respond to cost cutting requirements after more than five years of marginal growth.

CIOs are portfolio managers. Like their counterparts, CIO portfolio management is really about meeting three goals: operating effectively, satisfying customers, and selectively engaging in innovation (R&D). In the sort of three-year downturn that most experts envision, tough decisions will be required to perform strongly in all three of those areas.

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Lev Gonick, Higher Ed Website

Lessons of a Summer Teaching Online

It was September of my first year as assistant professor at a liberal arts university when I read the announcement about teaching a summer online class. Summer seemed a long way off and the idea of the extra money I could earn was enticing. (My new baby, new mortgage, and the ever-lamented low pay of assistant professors weighed heavily on my mind.) As an avid user of Blackboard, I felt more than well-prepared for the task of teaching online and I thought it would be fun to challenge my teaching skills by depending entirely on the Internet to communicate class material to my students. Additionally, I was delighted to be able to teach students a seminar in my specialty area, cognitive neuroscience of memory. My university offered extensive course development and online training, including an assigned instructional designer for the entire process, so I fearlessly signed on for the adventure.

As I faithfully attended the monthly training meetings for Just in Time Technology (ex: how to use Skype) and for Course Design (ex: what is the conversion of 14 weeks pacing into a 30 day class), it began to dawn on me that I had underestimated the time and preparation required for my online course. I was one of a handful of new faculty who had added summer teaching to their first year obligations. As we sat in our classes and were shown the innovations of the online veterans, I doubt I was the only one who was feeling overwhelmed with bells and whistles. The online teaching veterans had planned every detail from music clips to the customized picture that would be shown behind the course title when students logged in. I learned that there are more than three ways to present a syllabus electronically, that I should probably post a video introduction of myself, and that the bar for creativity is set very high when an origami project can be successfully taught online. I had confidently thought I knew a lot about technology but I admit I had never considered such intricacies as whether presenting exam questions one-at-a-time or all on one page resulted in better student performance and ensured protection against cheating. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I know quite a bit about learning and memory but my mind was boggled by pedagogical concepts like “visual arguments” and “muddiest points,” and by the practice of making “concept maps” out of course material. As the summer crept closer and closer, I started to think that I had made a tremendous mistake.

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Source: --Amy Overman, Higher EdWebsite

Fixing Higher Ed

The press and the blogosphere have devoted significant coverage recently to a report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce that predicted that the United States is on "collision course with the future." The report estimated that within a mere eight years, the nation will suffer a shortfall of at least 3 million workers with college degrees and 4.7 million workers with postsecondary certificates. The authors of the report concluded that to meet the challenges of a global economy in which 59 to 63 percent of domestic jobs require education beyond the high-school level, America’s colleges and universities "need to increase the number of degrees they confer by 10 percent annually, a tall order."

Although numerous commentators have responded to the report by echoing its call for increased access to higher education, it seems to me that few have focused on a key term in the report’s call to "develop reforms that result in both cost-efficient and high quality postsecondary education." Producing millions more baccalaureate-educated workers will do nothing to address the competitiveness of the U.S. workforce if those degrees are not high quality ones. Sadly, it is pretty clear that far too many college degrees aren’t worth the paper on which they are printed.

In 2006, the Spellings Commission reported disturbing data that more than 60 percent of college graduates were not proficient in prose, document, and quantitative literacy. In other words, significantly more than half of college degree holders in the United States lack the “critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today’s workplaces.”

To read the full article click here:
Source: -- Henry F. Fradella, Higher Ed Website

10 Social Media Tools For Learning

Do you have a training or information need that could benefit from a social media strategy? Understanding the universe of options can help you match your need to the best approach. So here are descriptions of ten applications representing different social media technologies that promote learning. Many of these tools and services are free or have a free trial period, which can encourage experimentation.

Each tool fulfills at least one of these criteria: encourages collaboration; enables user-generated content or input; provides a way to share; and facilitates informal or formal learning. Be sure to do additional research and comparison with similar products prior to making a selection as this is just a small sampling. (Listing is alphabetical.)

Audacity

Category: Podcasts

Although podcasts are a one-way form of communication, they enable the creation of user-generated content. Podcasts are fairly easy for anyone to make and with the free downloadable software, Audacity, it becomes an inexpensive option. Podcasts are a great medium for distributing an organization’s content and expertise because they can be played on hand held devices and computers.

Users can record and edit audio with Audacity and it runs on most operating systems, including Mac OS X and Windows. Key features include recording through a microphone or mixer, digitizing recordings from tapes, audio editing, importing and exporting audio files, effects and quality adjustments. For details on how to create a podcast, see How to Create Your Own Podcast on About.com.

To read the full article click here:
Source: --The eLearning Coach Website

Re-Energizing Students' Motivation

INTRODUCTION: I teach transfer as well as developmental level English courses. I’ve been most disturbed by the attrition rate of both my under-prepared and bright students. Half way through one recent semester of my Developmental English class (pre-Comp I), I noticed the original energy of the students was slipping, absences were increasing, and more homework was coming in late. So I needed an activity that would give these students a chance to re-energize themselves for the “last lap.” I developed an assignment that would give my students an opportunity to delve deep into what could motivate them to continue working hard and achieve success. Although I used this activity in a composition course, variations of it (such as a letter or journal entry) could be used in any course where the instructor is seeing students’ motivation and efforts flagging. I suggest using it between the sixth week and mid-semester.

PURPOSE:

• To re-energize student motivation to achieve an academic goal
• To help students discover their own personal steps to achieve an academic goal
• To inspire more responsible student behavior and class participation

SUPPLIES/SET UP:

• Handout A: “Steps to Achieve a Goal” (appended below)
• Chalk and chalkboard to note rough outline or essay “plan” suggestions
• Pen and paper to begin the essay (or appropriate supplies if teaching in a computer lab)
• Colored paper half sheets for a “New Changes” Reminder/Bookmark (optional)
• Handout B: “Initial Feedback” (appended below)
• Handout C: “End-of-Semester Feedback” (appended below)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Explain that midterm is the time of the semester when many students lose sight of their academic goals, lose motivation, and stop taking actions necessary for college success. Offer specific examples from behaviors of past students. Suggest to students that now would be a good time for them to take a look at a key goal they have for college this semester, reminding themselves of their personal motivation for succeeding.

2. Distribute Handout A: “Steps to Achieve a Goal.” Have students fill in the blanks.

3. Distribute the colored half sheets and then, based on question # 7 of Handout A (Steps), have students complete a “New Changes Reminder/Bookmark” that they can keep in their textbook or post at home for frequent review.

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Source: --Regina Popper, On Course Website

The Research Log

INTRODUCTION:

I have taught college composition for almost 20 years. The second half of the composition sequence includes a major research project I call simply the Term Paper. Students receive the assignment in the opening weeks of the term and submit their finished papers immediately before final exams. In my earliest years of assigning the Term Paper, I collected final papers that were routinely poorly focused, poorly developed, and poorly organized. The more serious problem represented in these products was that student writers were not learning and adopting effective habits for research and writing. My regular weekly reminders seemed to have little effect. What I eventually decided on was a regular series of assessments that would motivate the students more directly than reminders and classroom activities. I called it the Research Log: a series of brief weekly research/writing assignments related to the Term Paper. This strategy can be adapted to nearly any class that includes a major research project, provided that the time for working on the project extends over a period of at least a few weeks.

PURPOSE:

• Show writers how to work steadily on an extended project.
• Encourage broad (many types of sources) and deep (sources with intense focus) research strategies.
• Reinforce critical thinking and writing.

SUPPLIES/SET UP:

This is a semester-long series of short assessments. The following documents are appended at the end of this article, but instructors may wish to adapt any of these to suit a specific learning goal or assessment:

• The Term Paper assignment handout
• Description of the Research Log
• Ten assignments for individual Research Log entries
• Rubric for assessing individual Research Log entries
• Research Log Survey (post-Term Paper deadline)

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Source: --Douglas Okey, On Course Website

10 Rules For Writing Multiple Choice Questions

This is a back-to-basics article about the undervalued and little-discussed multiple choice question. It’s not as exciting as discussing 3D virtual learning environments, but it might be just as important. If you need to use tests, then you want to reduce the errors that occur from poorly written items.

The rules covered here make tests more accurate, so the questions are interpreted as intended and the answer options are clear and without hints. Just in case you’re not familiar with multiple choice terminology, it’s explained in the visual below.

Here are the ten rules. If you have any others, please add them through the Comments form below.

Rule #1: Test knowledge comprehension, not just recall

Multiple choice questions are criticized for testing the superficial recall of knowledge. You can go beyond this by asking learners to interpret facts, evaluate situations, explain cause and effect, make inferences, and predict results.

Rule #2: Use simple sentence structure and precise wording

Write test questions in a simple structure that is easy to understand. And try to be as accurate as possible in your word choices. Words can have many meanings depending on colloquial usage and context.

Rule #3: Place most of the words in the question stem

If you’re using a question stem, rather than an entire question, ensure that most of the words are in the stem. This way, the answer options can be short, making them less confusing and more legible.

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Source: --The eLearing Coach

Taking Student Retention Seriously

Syracuse University’s Distinguished University Professor in the School of Education, Vincent Tinto, has conducted research and written widely about student retention issues and the role that faculty members can play. He gives five main conditions that support student retention: expectation, advice, support, involvement, and learning. That is, students are more likely to persist and graduate in settings that:

a. expect students to succeed

b. provide students with clear and consistent information about institutional requirements and give students effective advising about programs of study and career goals

c. provide academic, social, and personal support

d. involve students as valued members of the institution

e. foster learning

Fostering learning is ranked as the most important condition for student retention. The implications for what happens in the classroom and the importance of the faculty role are therefore evident.

What Faculty Members Can Do

• Set high standards in class. At the same time, provide the academic support that students need to succeed.
• Provide robust opportunities for students to be actively involved in the content.
• Teach explicitly the academic strategies that students need in order to learn the material and be successful in your course.
• Integrate learning and study strategies (note-taking, graphic organization, questioning techniques, vocabulary acquisition, and test prediction and preparation) into your course.

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Vincent Tinto, Syracuse University

Online Enrollment Up 17%

Fall 2008 online enrollments were up 17 percent from a year before, with about 4.6 million students taking at least one class online, according to the 2009 Sloan Survey of Online Learning.

With all higher education enrollments increasing only by 1.2 percent for the same time period, the share of students taking at least one course online reached 25.3 percent. As recently as fall 2002, not even 10 percent of students were taking at least one course online. The data reflect nearly 4,500 colleges and universities, with information gathered by the Babson Survey Research Group and by the College Board, and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

While the trends outlined in the survey are clearly positive for advocates of online learning, they also point to lingering challenges. A survey of chief academic officers indicated the growth in online enrollments has not been matched by consistent training programs so faculty members can learn how to teach virtually, and that many of these officers doubt that their faculties truly respect online learning.

The doubts appear to be greatest at private nonprofit institutions and least in for-profit higher education. (While this survey relied on chief academic officers to evaluate faculty attitudes, other surveys -- that have asked professors directly -- have found faculty doubts about online education, especially about whether institutions are serious about providing support for those engaged in it.)

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

Measuring Student Learning, Globally

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two years after the Bush administration said it would not participate in an international experiment aimed at developing a global assessment of student learning, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on Wednesday formally announced the launch of the effort -- with the full participation of the United States and the Obama administration.

The Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) project aims to gauge whether it is possible to develop "reliable and useful comparisons of learning outcomes" that are valid across countries with different cultures and languages, said Richard Yelland, who heads the Education Management and Infrastructure Division at the OECD. The experiment will focus on producing three separate measures: one designed to measure general skills, and two in disciplines, economics and engineering.

The Australian Council for Educational Research will lead a consortium that will develop the discipline-specific tests. The general skills exam, meanwhile, will be developed by the Council for Aid to Education, to which OECD will pay $1.2 million to develop an international version of its Collegiate Learning Assessment, which has gained many institutional clients -- and its fair share of critics -- in the United States, where it has been framed as a tool for measuring the educational value that institutions add for their students.

OECD ultimately hopes to add a "value added strand" to its international assessments, but that will happen, Yelland told an audience at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's international forum here Wednesday, only if the organization's research study concludes that it is possible to develop a single assessment that can cross the major divides presented by language, culture and country.

If you can prove that you can develop a tool to measure learning across cultures, "you should be able to run the test at two different times" to calculate "value added," Yelland said. "That's why we’re concentrating on [the toughest task of] proving cross-country validity.... We do not prejudge the outcome."

Details about the roughly $12.5 million project are still being developed, but Yelland said the experiment would aim to test about 200 students at roughly 10 institutions of diverse types in each of six countries: Finland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico and the United States, with participation in the U.S. limited to four states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri and Pennsylvania. The students will be tested "near the end" of their either three- or four-year (depending on the country) bachelor's degree programs, and groups of experts will, by the early part of next year, decide whether the measures provide reliably comparable measures across the various countries.

If the "proof of concept" experiment is positive, and OECD decides to promulgate international learning outcomes measures that it believes are meaningful and reliable, "we will have a tool that will help us to help those who are responsible for higher education in the various countries," Yelland said. Given the vast sums of money that governments are investing in expanding the quantity of postsecondary education they provide -- roughly $1 trillion a year, about 1.5 percent of the global gross domestic product, Yelland estimated -- "it's probably worth spending a little bit of time and effort in supporting quality," he said.

How does testing support quality? "Diagnosis is the beginning of any improvement," Yelland said, and right now countries have no way other than international rankings -- which are based mostly on factors such as scholarly output and reputation, rather than educational factors -- to assess the quality of their institutions.

The U.S. Role

The United States' role in the project will go beyond having colleges in the four states participate; the governments in the AHELO initiative will also provide money for it, OECD officials said.

Education Department officials could not be reached for comment about the OECD announcement (it was a busy day, given President Obama's State of the Union speech last night), but an OECD news release included a statement from Under Secretary Martha J. Kanter that praised OECD for its leadership "to assess student performance on an international scale."

The U.S. participation represents a change of heart from 2008, when Bush administration officials more or less stunned higher education officials by saying they did not plan to join the OECD effort to develop an international higher education assessment. Education Department officials at the time said they "do not anticipate, as a U.S. government, funding ... a feasibility study" for such an assessment.

The decision was a shocker, as many in American higher education saw it, because the administration had pressed hard (too hard, in their eyes) to force colleges within the United States to use comparable measures of student learning. "There are certainly people who may have thought that the department is going to push for internationalization of the use of something like the CLA," Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, then director of the Education Department's Institute for Education Sciences and the U.S. representative on the OECD's education policy committee, said at the time.

Exactly what it means that the Obama administration is backing exactly such an approach, when the outcomes-obsessed Bush administration did not, probably depends on one's perspective. It could be seen as a sign that this administration is much more interested, on any range of matters, in international collaboration and partnership; it could also be evidence that this administration is just as interested in data-driven higher education accountability and testing as its predecessor -- if not more so.

Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/28/oecd

Why Do I Need This Class?

A common challenge that educators face from students is the question “Why do I need this class?” Though we want to believe that students intuitively understand the importance of our subjects, often they do not. Many struggle to relate our disciplines to their lives. Without a sense of relevance, students experience a disconnection between our enthusiasm for our subjects and their experiences with it in and outside of class. This disconnection can hamper self-motivation, engagement and meaningful learning. Because of this dynamic, many of us now work to teach the relevance of our content disciplines. After attending an On Course workshop last year, I now employ a number of new tools in my history classes.

With them, I have been enhancing what I call a “subject-value pedagogy” that encourages students to make meaningful connections between discipline-based skills/knowledge and other aspects of their lives. In every way possible, I encourage my students to find personal value in the content of my courses. My students know this approach as “Why History?” skills. This article discusses how subject-value pedagogy can be used in any content area to increase students’ intrinsic motivation to learn it.

BEGINNING THE PERSONAL CONNECTION

Beyond usual active-learning methods, I now ask students to own and be the creators of their “Why History?” experiences. Starting in week one, I employ activities that reveal history as a practical tool for self-empowerment in the present. To be discipline specific, I adapted the wording of the On Course principles to read: “People from the past can role model for us how to take personal responsibility for our lives, have self-motivation, use self-management skills to get things done, be interdependent by working with others to achieve results, be self-aware about the ways we impact ourselves and others, look at life as a learning process, be realistic about managing our emotions, and believe in ourselves and abilities!” Then via written assignments, surveys, and discussions students reflect upon the manner in which they already value and employ “Why History?” skills. Though initially some do not see cross-pollination with other aspects of their lives, this approach sets a tone that shifts students’ perceptions of history from the impersonal and disconnected to the personal and connected.

SUSTAINING THE PERSONAL CONNECTION

Here is a quartet of “Why History?” activities that I employ:

1. Quotations: As a means of further prompting student thinking, a “Why History?” bulletin board displays quotations from and images of historical figures. For example, Philosopher Herbert Spencer reminds them that “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”; while President Abraham Lincoln offers, “People are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.” At mid-term, my students then add their own group-created “advice to the future” along with their pictures. For example, one group metaphorically advised: “Today is homework for tomorrow’s exam.” Another group offered: “People who dwell too much on the past may come to realize that they are preventing their future.” During discussions, my students said this activity helped connect them to their role in shaping history.

2. Mission Statements: To encourage semester-long engagement, another classroom bulletin board, displays inspirational “Why History?” quotes. After reading and reflecting on words like Paul McElroy’s “We are the living link through which will be transmitted to the timeless future all that will be preserved of value from the ageless past,” students create personal “Why History?” mission statements. For example, one young man wrote: “I will use the information from the past, so I can apply what I learn to help better myself as well as other people who may need help in their own lives.” Another female student wrote: “I will strive to learn about the important events of history so I can relate past events with my choices, decisions, and ideas today.” Such statements are placed on the bulletin board, and at various times in the semester students share their “Why History?” thinking with the class. For fun, each person who shares places a star on his/her mission statement. From this activity, I have witnessed improved individual ownership of the class as well as an increased interdependence amongst students. This outcome has been anecdotally evidenced by their willingness to spontaneously offer “Why History?” thoughts and to ask others to share ideas. For example, one student shared that as a result of studying World War II, she was able to make a personal connection with a veteran at the nursing home where she worked. By asking questions and talking about what she knew, she felt she made a difference in the quality of his life.

To read the full article click here:
Source: --June Klees, Faculty, History, Bay College , MI
On Course Newsletter 2/2010

True Costs of Student Success

"Student success" programs of various types -- learning communities, first-year experience programs, and the like -- have proliferated on college campuses, driven by the reality that it's easier to keep current students than recruit new ones. The programs are popular, but as is true of just about all campus efforts these days, they are open to scrutiny about their effectiveness -- and their cost effectiveness.

Given that climate, many student affairs officials would probably be wary of looking too closely at what their programs cost and whether they provide a meaningful return on that "investment," for fear that the data, if they don't look good, might be used against them in the fight for resources. But putting those trepidations aside, 13 colleges -- as part of a project sponsored by Jobs for the Future and the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability -- agreed to examine both the full costs of first-year retention efforts focused on first-generation and low-income students, and the extent to which their success in keeping students enrolled produces revenue to help pay for themselves.

A report on the Investing in Student Success effort, published this week by the two organizations, suggested that a majority of the programs had produced gains in retention that went a long way toward offsetting their costs. Most of the others could not complete the analysis, using a "cost return calculator" that includes a wide range of data, because they didn't have all the necessary cost and retention statistics (for students in the programs and for a comparison group).

But by looking at their first-year programs through the prisms of cost and return on investment, all 13 of the participating colleges experienced what the sponsors of the initiative call a "change in conversation" about those programs -- with some saying that they planned to apply similar scrutiny to other academic programs on their campuses. Officials at several of the campuses said they believed it was important to take financial considerations into account in assessing these programs, as long as they didn't overwhelm other, more qualitative factors, such as the programs' quality and the beneficial impact on students.

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

Think Aloud Pair Problem Solving

As an instructor of English composition (mostly developmental), I have struggled to find ways to get students to engage themselves actively in their learning activities. Like many instructors, I get tired of seeing my students looking out the window, sending text messages, or doing some other equally non-productive activity during my class sessions. To diminish these behaviors, I have incorporated many active-learning strategies into my classroom, but I continue to see many non-engaged behaviors that suggest to me that students are still not actively engaging in the planned activities. I still often see students who refuse to speak or contribute in any way during small-group discussions, students who write one or two sentences and close their journals when I have asked them to write non-stop for five minutes, and students who are doing homework for some other subject during my class.

Because I know my students will be much more successful if they actively engage themselves in their learning experiences, I am constantly on the lookout for activities that will better facilitate active student engagement. In the activity I describe here, students work in pairs to solve a series of problems. Students have specific roles—problem solver and listener—that they alternate with each problem. The problem solver “thinks aloud,” verbalizing the steps he or she takes to solve the problem. The listener listens carefully, following the steps taken by the problem solver, attempting to understand the reasoning behind the steps, and offering suggestions if necessary.

Although I used the activity with grammar rules, it could easily be adapted to suit the needs of any instructor in any discipline. Approximate time needed: 30-45 minutes.

PURPOSE

• To have students actively engage in the learning process
• To have students learn to identify relevant information and apply it in the solution of a problem
• To have students learn and practice problem-solving strategies

SUPPLIES/SET UP

• A set of problems to solve (I used problems from the grammar workbook I use in my class
• Plenty of writing instruments for writing on the board (dry erase markers for whiteboards, chalk for blackboards, etc.)

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Adrienne Peek, Faculty, English, Modesto Junior College , CA
On Course Newsletter 2/2010

Why You Shouldn’t Use PowerPoints in (Most) Online Courses

Sigh. Where to begin? There are so many reasons why using PowerPoint for online courses is a Bad Idea. PowerPoint is just a tool, of course, but it’s so often the wrong tool for the job, especially in teaching online. A hammer is only a tool, but in the wrong hands, well, it makes a mess of things. So it is with PowerPoint.

It’s not that PowerPoint—henceforth referred to as PPT—can’t be used effectively for teaching online. It’s just that most people have developed deplorable PPT habits and now believe that textually dense PPT slides, cheesy animated transitions, and gaudy 3-D graphs are de rigueur for teaching in the classroom and therefore are the perfect choice for online courses, too. To that I say “Nuh-uh. Not. FAIL!” Who else says so? Well, these guys:

To read the full article (with videos) click here:
Source: http://nauelearning.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/nopptonline/

Witch's Broom

I teach general chemistry at a community college. Most science and engineering majors take the course in their first semester and need to earn a high grade to gain admittance to a four-year school in their major. Nonetheless, the success rate in this course remains very low, with an attrition rate between 30-50%.

One of the reasons that many of these students are unsuccessful is their beliefs about learning. Many believe that learning is a passive process, that learning is a solitary activity, and that if they are smart they won’t need help. They also greatly underestimate the time they need to devote to studying in order to be successful. Experience is a slow teacher, and by the time they realize these beliefs are inaccurate, most have gotten too far behind and drop out. In the past I have attempted to address these beliefs head on. I’ve spent a lot of the first class lecturing students on what it takes to be successful in chemistry. I even designed a handout that clearly explains how to be successful in the course. As you might guess, my lecture and handout were largely ignored.

Last semester, I decided to try a first-day activity that I hoped would catch students’ attention, foster interdependence, and make them aware of the active nature of learning.

This activity can be used in any course. It can be done in as few as 20 minutes, but can be extended depending on the depth of discussion you choose to facilitate.

PURPOSE

• To create an attention-getting first-day experience
• To help students become aware of the active nature of learning
• To foster interdependence between and among students

SUPPLIES

• Four-foot length of string or yarn, ends tied to create a loop, one per student
• Instructions for Witch’s Broom, one per student (appended below in Support Documents)
• Two questions for student reflection written on board (see directions below)

To read the full article click here:
Source: --Kirsten Casey, Faculty, Chemistry; Anne Arundel Community College, MD
On Course Newsletter 1/2010