GlobalSkillsCC

An overview by Diana Laurillard. On ALT Open Access Repository. From OLWeekly, March 11

By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe/boston.com, March 23 2011. University of Massachusetts Amherst is announcing a "new effort to recruit community college graduates to the state university's flagship campus." According to the article, there is already a state policy in place guaranteeing admission to most community college graduates who earn a 2.5 GPA and waiving tuition to those with a 3.0. This new effort will also offer priority registration and housing, as well as scholarships and special advising.

When black students reflected on the idea that everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity, initially struggles to adjust to college, their academic performance and longer-term well-being benefited, according to a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science.

By Christopher Abani, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004. A novel set in the underworld of Nigeria.

JE's class read this book (second semester).

By Adam Bryant, Business Day section of The New York Times, March 12 2011. Outlines Google's Project Oxygen, where the company studied the patterns of their most effective managers, in an attempt to understand what works, and to bring under-performers up-to-speed.

Diana shared this article with the GSCC faculty and team, pointing out the many similarities between Google's process and that of GSCC.

By Isaac Sweeney for On Hiring column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10 2011. Sweeney outlines the challenges that adjunct instructors face in the community college system.

By Melissa E. Lee, from the Do Your Job Better column of The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 13 2011. Lee, an adjunct English instructor at the State University of New York at Canton, offers suggestions to support students who she describes as "at-risk." Her three over-arching ideas are: provide structure in the classroom, show the connection between classroom learning and the real world, and make your students accountable.

Lee's ideas call to mind such GSCC themes as scaffolding, contextualization, caring, college transition, structure, self-efficacy. There are interesting comments, as well.

The March 2011 webinar being presented by National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD). STATWAY is an accelerated program "designed to take developmental students to and through a college credit-bearing, transferable math course in one year." Follow the statway tag for more. Webinar will be held March 30, 2011.

A program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Statway focuses on helping community college students learn basic skills in statistics, data analysis, and quantitative reasoning as part of a one-year pathway. The ultimate goal of this pathway is preparation for college-level statistics. This home page to Statway also includes links to the project blog (called Pathways Connection) and to the project's mailing list. There are 19 community colleges affiliated with this project.

By Elyse Ashburn in The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 2011. A recently released national survey, commission by the Pearson Foundation, has revealed that one in five community college students had difficulty getting into at least one course they needed in fall 2010, and almost a third could not get into a class that they wanted.

J.E.C. shared this story. It offers some statistics. (Survey available on Pearson; will bookmark as soon as found.)

By Lisa W. Foderaro in the N.Y./Region section of The New York Times, March 3 2011. Dr. Gail Mellow is quoted in the article: "I embrace developmental education because it pivots lives." NOTE: The article contains some important current statistics about remedial and developmental ed needs in the CUNY system.

M.Z. posted this to the March 2011 Coffee Klatch.

By Elayn Martin-Gay 4th Edition Published by Pearson. 2009

E.N-S. shared information about book used at her school

By Thomas A. Angelo, DePaul University - School for New Learning. "This paper synthesizes theories, findings, and strategies from a variety of literatures into seven transformative ideas which, taken together, have the potential to make our mental models of and approaches to faculty development more effective."

Shared by Y.H. in January coffeeklatch

By Pam Belluck in the Science section of the New York Times. January 20, 2011. Research indicates that students who were tested on material retained more than those who repeatedly study the material and those who draw detailed diagrams documenting what they are learning.

Shared by K.P. in January coffeeklatch.

By Richard Evan Schwartz. Natick, Mass.: A.K. Peters, 2010. Children's book "presents the concepts of prime numbers and factoring in a novel and colorful way." -Richard Evan Schwartz

This is the book that the NPR piece, recommended by R.A., discusses.

By NPR staff on NPR, January 22, 2011

Shared by R.A. in January coffeeklatch.

From BBC Four on YouTube, posted November 26, 2010. Visualization to illustrate statistics.

Shared by K.P. in January coffeeklatch. She suggests that it could be used to introduce the idea of graphing in an algebra class.

Presented by NADE (National Association for Developmental Education), this resource page includes articles, books, and a listing of national centers and websites.