Procrastination... What if all students could overcome it?

Check out this Chronicle article recounting one university math professor's experience flipping the classroom. Sure -- he learned a great deal about screencasting, but what Robert Talbert found most noteworthy was students' need to manage their time -- to learn about scheduling, calendaring and to somehow not succumb to procrastination. Thanks to Alice Warner for sending the article!

photo by @Doug88888

"Class-sourcing" Assignments

In his article, "Class-sourcing as a Teaching Strategy," Gleb Tsipursky provides examples of rich multimedia assignments produced collaboratively by teams of his students. Tsipursky's students produced Pinerest boards on topics as wide-ranging as an analysis of Super Bowl ads to Art and Ideologies of the 19th and 20th Centuries through his "class-sourced pinterest project."  This assignment could be adapted for use in developmental education. I believe that such project work provides students with a rich opportunity to develop information literacy as well as digital literacy skills while focusing on specific content -- students would engage in the critical process of identifying, evaluating, and citing sources as they work to choose and cite resources to pin.

Imagine developmental writing students, for instance, working collaboratively to create Pinterest boards on compound sentences or on specific thematic content such as climate change or social inequity in higher education, all the while practicing the writing process skills of editing or revision as they succinctly analyze and summarize their "pins" within Pinterest's constraints of 500 characters or less. This approach is consistent with the ideal of a liberal approach to education, building students' skills to engage in a critical debate and analysis of ideas before they synthesize them for a broader audience -- a set of skills that could even facilitate students future work in the emerging field of digital humanities.

Image by mkhmarketing

Sharing

In the spirit of the Digital Co-Lab Faculty Fellowship, I have shared a shell for my WR080 course in our Moodle collaboration space for DIG. It contains all sorts of resources including quizzes, readings, writing assignments, instructional materials focused on paragraph writing and grammar -- all thematically organized. Unit themes include nutrition, communication, literature and descriptive writing, and information literacy. I have also created and compiled a set of online grammar modules for student use. Students can find these on the Academic Learning Skills website. While they serve multifarious purposes, any student can try the practice activities to brush up their skills before or after taking the placement test, and teachers can use them as instructional resources.

photo by Manuel Burgos

What's the status of dev math reform?

A new report by Pamela Burdman and released by Learning Works, a coalition sponsored by the California Community College Foundation and others, outlines the current state of developmental math redesign and initiatives being implemented nationwide. Burdman outlines three broad categories of reforms: instructional reforms such as modularized or accelerated courses, placement reforms, and pathways reforms such as the development of alternate routes to college-level math for non STEM students.

Read Changing Equations: How Community Colleges are Re-thinking College Readiness in Math

While the article offers a reasonably thorough review of nationwide initiatives, it leaves some questions unanswered, noting that preliminary data suggest that alternate pathways focused on statistics may be a viable alternative to the traditional algebra sequence for non-STEM majors.

Inequity in Higher Ed: Questions about Performance-Based funding

Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl of Georgetown have published, "Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege," clearly outlining the increasingly stratified system of higher education in the U.S. It's an exceptionally good read.

Read "Separate and Unequal"

At present, increasing numbers of states are moving quickly toward adopting performance-based funding for community colleges while significant questions remain about the impact of such funding models. Is it possible that such funding models could adversely impact the neediest students? Is it conceivable that colleges may begin to change their focus, or their mission even,  in order to maintain funding levels? Could "open entry" institutions begin to limit access?

How much more separate and unequal could our system of higher education become?

This is a propitious moment for advocacy and leadership at both the state and national level. It is a chance to reaffirm and reclaim the quintessential role of the community college in promoting social equity and the fundamental purpose of the community college in a vibrant democracy.

New Directions in Developmental Education in Oregon

The most recent statewide conversation on dev ed in Oregon took place at Lane's downtown campus in May and was facilitated by Katie Hern and Myra Snell, two faculty members who coordinate the California Acceleration Project. Acceleration is one of the principles behind the Academic Learning Skills reading and writing program redesign project. Here's a video of the entire presentation: