Grammar for everyone!

Lane's Academic Learning Skills Department now provides free, interactive grammar modules online. These are available to everyone! Students may wish to use the modules before taking a placement test or while taking more advanced writing courses to brush up on their skills. Come share in the fun! After all who doesn't need a little grammar review once in a while?

photo by Katie Krueger

Snowbound finals! Going online with exams...

After 2.5 snow days and many final exams delayed, instructors may wish to consider making exams available to students online. Here is a very brief video outlining the basic steps for adding a quiz or exam on Moodle, and the video may also be viewed on YouTube

Moving Forward with Innovation in Dev Ed at Lane!

Lane's Academic Learning Skills Department (ALS) has achieved some noteworthy success with students. For instance, of students in Lane's Achieving the Dream cohort who placed 1-3 levels below program level writing, 43% completed their program level writing whereas only 33% of students who placed directly into program level did indeed complete that program level writing within three years. Furthermore, 48% of students who placed 1-2 levels below completed program level writing -- 15% more than those who placed directly at program level. Students who placed into developmental writing were more likely to achieve success in program level writing, particularly if they needed only one or two dev writing classes!

Building on this current success with students, the department has developed a plan to redesign the developmental writing sequence, reducing coursework to a maximum of two quarters. On December 4, 2013, LCC's Curriculum Committee approved ALS' two new courses: WR087 and WR097 for this initiative. While Lane currently has a three term, 13-credit developmental writing sequence, the new sequence will allow students to accelerate through preparatory writing in two terms or less with 9 developmental writing credits and a co-requisite course providing 3 college transfer level credits. The new courses will integrate grammar, critical reading, writing, and basic information literacy skills to help prepare students for WR115 and beyond.

Faculty are moving forward with this exciting new project! Curriculum development is already underway with no less than sixteen faculty members collaboratively developing sample units and modules for the new courses. Undoubtedly, resources shared through the DIG Co-Lab faculty fellowship will prove invaluable to this innovation as well.

"Change,"  image by Wiertz Sebastién

Adaptive Learning... Some predictions for the future

Joshua Kim, Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Science Program at Dartmouth, has some interesting "intuitions" about the future of adaptive learning in higher education. One that seems most intruiguing is the idea that adaptive platforms and LMS (learning management systems) well merge and become both seamless and ubiquitous. We see, for instance, some features of Moodle that can be used to create a quasi-adaptive experience for students in tools such as the personalized learning designer, but what Moodle offers is still far from a truly adaptive platform. While we may not be there yet, it's a propitious moment to consider the possibilities. What do you see in the crystal ball?  Read Kim's blog for more.

Photo by Isobel T

Sometimes the headline does say it all

Inside Higher Ed published, "Performance Funding Underperforms" identifiying some challenges and shortfalls to performance-based funding for community colleges. Even the CCRC has published a report providing a critical analysis of performance funding as it is currently conceived.

The question remains, what are the implications for developmental education? How do we promote student success without undermining the fundamental purpose and mission of the community college? I believe that the challenge lies in finding a "both/and" solution -- it is not an "either/or" choice between access and success that we must make...  but rather a solution that both preserves access for marginalized populations and promotes success that we must endeavor to find. Grassroots, faculty led initiatives, like DIG Co-Lab have the potential to help us do just that.

A sea change begins with a few drops of water.

photo by Matt Dinnery

SoftChalk Workshop today!

Just a reminder for the techie-minded -- there will be a SoftChalk workshop today (Friday, November 15) at 1:00 p.m. in CEN 232! Come and learn how to build interactive web-based lessons and activities for your students.

Image by Giulia Forsythe

Moodle updates coming!

Wow -- there are some really cool updates coming to Moodle at Lane in December! The ones I'm looking forward to include an option for displaying word counts in forums as well as integrated badges. In my classes I provide guidelines for forum posts, including minimum length, so having a word count displayed will be a useful, convenient tool for my students. Badges are a cool concept, and I think it will be great fun to experiment with them -- I anticipate that students will be highly motivated by the prospect of earning badges, and the fact that they can be displayed in a Moodle profile as well as in an individual students Mozilla "backpack" provides for a great deal of flexibility.

Learn about other Moodle updates coming to Lane here.  Thanks to Kevin Steeves for making this information available and the updates possible!

photo by Mark Drechsler