Group items tagged

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, Carey (policy director of think tank Education Sector) argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education.

Published by Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2010. This report looks at the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE), launched fall 2006. From the report, "To date, more than 91,000 students from 197 colleges in 37 states have participated in SENSE, thereby helping to create a wealth of new and actionable data about the entering community college student experience."

by Jon Marcus on The Hechinger Report, December 26, 2011. Open University, a successful British online public university to be used as a model in the U.S. The goal is to help students who are intimidated by higher education adapt to and succeed in college. Next Generation Learning Challenges, a Gates funded initiative, will adapt two free Open University, at-your-own-pace online courses for use at about a dozen U.S. colleges and universities this academic year: one to help students be more comfortable with math so they do better on placement tests or move more quickly through remedial courses, and another to teach students skills to prepare them for college.

By Tom Bissonette in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Commentary, August 14, 2011. The author brings attention to the fact that many students enter college with a variety of developmental issues and that these are not properly addressed. Faculty members are often lacking pedagogical education and knowledge of human development. The author argues for assessment of incoming students in several areas, including academic ability, social skills, study skills, vocabulary, general knowledge, work history, and community involvement. Results of these assessments would be used to identify appropriate support. The author believes that the concept of retention is misguided. When faculty and administration partner with students on the front end, the odds decrease that students will be unable to persist.

J.E.C. mentioned article in Summer 2011 Coffee Klatch

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2011. Studies conducted by MDRC have found that, "while students [in learning communities] do make academic gains, such as progressing more quickly through developmental courses, the gains don't persist beyond the semester students are involved in the learning community." Authors acknowledge that these are early findings and that later findings may prove different results.

By Alison Byerly in Inside Higher Ed, October 29 2012. Essay compares MOOCs to traditional education exchanges, looking at the role of "teachers" and "students" in each; also considering the difference in how "course "is defined in a MOOC vs. a traditional class. Byerly's point is that traditional experiences provide an agreement between teacher and student that the teacher's reach goes beyond the classroom (or screen) and that teachers model pedagogic behaviors, as well as providing academic advice, writing references, providing access to support, etc. This holds true whether a f2f lecture or online. The MOOC model is more like a broadcast, where such supports *can* be included but, as a rule, are not.

By Josh Fischman, and part of The Chronicle (of Higher Education's) 2011 Special Report on Online Learning, published Nov 6 2011. Central Piedmont Community College developed an Online Student Portal learning system to improve retention among its students. They have had success with the system (in use 2004-2008). Now, with a Next Gen grant, they will roll the system out to 6 additional local schools to see if they can match the retention improvements. The system is based both on learning styles and on frequent intervention by students and counselors.

By Nadine Dolby, Commentary column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9 2012. In this commentary piece, Dolby describes a panel in which she invited her undergraduate education students to meet with a panel of "real" parents in the hopes of getting some new perspectives on K-12 education. As a matter of course, she required them to refrain from using cell phones, texting or tweeting. And she observed that these students then had a great deal of trouble just listening. She argues that, in a democracy, it's not enough just to share your own opinions, you must also listen to those of others. She concludes, "Teaching our students how to truly listen may be the most important multicultural lesson of all."

By Evan Weissman, Dan Cullinan, Oscar Cerna, Stephanie Safran and Phoebe Richman, with Amanda Grossman. National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) Teachers College Columbia University. February 2012. Link to full report at the bottom of the summary on this page. The colleges in this study are two of six in the NCPR Learning Communities Demonstration, in which random assignment evaluations are being used to determine the impacts of learning communities on student success. NCPR has presented finding from all six colleges. They show that when one-semester learning communities have impacts, they tend to be concentrated in the semester in which students are enrolled in the program. Another report, a final one will be released in 2012. That report synthesizes the findings across all colleges studied and includes an additional semester of student follow-up at each college.

Based at Indiana University, "NSSE annually collects information at hundreds of four-year colleges and universities about student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development." According to NSSE, student engagement represents both "the amount of time and effort students put into their studies" and "how the institution deploys its resources and organizes the curriculum."

By David Glenn in the Students column of The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11, 2011. A Q&A with Rosemary Capps, who studied 9 community college students for her dissertation, which won an award at AERA. In this Q&A, Capps discusses the importance of developmental education, and how these teachers often made a real difference to the students that she studied.

Patrick Bahls in The WAC Journal, Vol 20, Nov 2009. Bahls, a professor at UNC-Asheville, writes of the success he's had with a poetry assignment for his pre-calc and calculus students. He cites that much of one's success with math (especially advanced math) comes from confidence and finds the "language" of math to be both cumbersome and outdated for most students. The examples of student poetry (and their reactions to the assignment) are also provided as evidence.

This is a really interesting article, and the poetry is both thoughtful and creative. I wonder what both math and writing faculty think of this idea. Has anyone tried something similar in their classrooms? Great cites (and nice poem) on math anxiety. -- Stephanie

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students section, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February2 2012. The new project is being led by the Center for Community College Student Engagement and will analyze data from four different surveys: Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, and the newly created Community College Institutional Survey. Reports will be produced annually for the next three years. See CCCSE tag for first year's report.

Posted by the Writing Services division of the Student Success Center at St. Louis University. These "10 Myths" try to help students understand that re-writes, feedback, and "writer's block" are facts of life for all of us -- not just for "bad" writers. Other myths are explored as well, all in the interests of making students more comfortable with the process.

TM shared in the coffee klatch.

By Laurel Rosenhall in The Sacramento Bee, November 18 2010. A nonprofit association, the Community College League of California, calls for community colleges to educate 1 million more students by 2020, ensure that more students leave community college with a degree, and "do a better job educating Latino and African American students." Recommended changes include "evidence-based solutions," thinking differently and joining "Complete College America."

From the Department of Life Sciences, Santa Rosa Junior College. This page identifies strategies to help students be successful as students. Similar sites are also bookmarked, see success tag.

LC used this site as part of her unit on student success.

Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.

On Radio Times, WHYY Radio. Host Marty Moss-Coane talks withThomas Bailey of Columbia University's Teachers College and Joseph Merlino, president of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM. They discuss the question of whether colleges should offer remedial courses, why so many high school students need help and how high schools and colleges can work together to prepare students for the college work load.

Posted by Shelley Wright, on the website Powerful Learning Practice: Professional Development for 21st Century Educators, Oct 8 2012. In this post, Wright describes how she no longer adheres to the model of the "flipped"classroom because she has learned to fully use student-centered and project-based learning models. She carefully describes the differences between the two, as well as giving an overview of how -- at semester's end -- her chemistry students learned 10 new concepts in 8 weeks.

By Rebekah Nathan (pseudonym), published by Cornell University Press, 2005. In this book, an anthropology professor goes "under cover," enrolling in a local university as a student, in order to better understand the students in her class.

Amazon reviews were mixed, with many in the academic community (especially anthropologists) critical of Nathan's going "under cover," rather than more explicit observation, as an anthropologist might.