The Last Week

Hi all,

Well, I'm finally home. The Kellogg experience was extremely informative, fun, and exhausting.

Here's some random tid-bits from Week 4:

Developmental Ed's guru, Dr. Hunter Boylan, lead the discussions this week. The main focus was outcomes assessment and program evaluation, and we were visited by Michael Collins of Jobs for the Future.

• National studies by the Dev. Educ. Initiative show that 33% of students are placed or referred to developmental reading (23% of those are placed in the highest level) and only 44% of students are successful. The numbers for math are worse. Dev. Ed. is not working as it does not appreciably increase student outcomes!

• National studies show that students who place just below the cut score do not benefit from dev. classes, but are successful if they are placed in transfer-level courses with supplemental instruction. So, Betty, this supports what you are investigating (placing students into EN 101S).

• We discussed the American Association of Higher Ed's 9 principles of assessment-I won't list them all here, but we can talk about them at some other time. We should look at intermediate metrics not only summative data to see how we are doing at certain times within a course.

By the way, I'll be doing a congruency comparison for my practicum. I'll attach my practicum prospectus to a future post.

And then Week 3 Ended

OK, so I have been slacking a bit in the blog department. Week 3 was a whirlwind. We covered learning support services and diversity issues.

I'll keep the info brief; I'll share more details when I return.

I read quite a bit about peer-assisted learning/tutoring. I know at my previous institution a colleague created a student group made up of students who excelled in Dev. Ed. coursework and wanted to share their experiences while helping other students in Dev. Ed. classes. The group had a social aspect (in fact, it was a student club!). Select peer mentors went through training and were used systematically in assisting students in and out of class.

I've been busting my rump trying to put together my practicum prospectus (examining the alignment between EN 50A and EN 101 and the efficacy of our final exit essay exam/process). At the core of it all I hope to answer the following: Is our final exit exam an assessment of the students' performance or a means of assessing their skills for placement into EN 101? Is it both? Can it be both?

Basically, I created a small firestorm on the FCC campus when I suggested we pilot the use of Accuplacer Sentence Skills with our EN 50A students at the end of the semester, in conjunction with adminstering the current final essay exam. We'll see what happens once the smoke clears.

Some things I hope to address in my practicum: 1) figure out what the entry competencies for EN 101 are by doing a survey of instructors, 2) investigate best practices for assessing writing, and 3) analyze data to see how well we are preparing students and if our standards are valid...

On a personal note: I got to see my wife and kids this weekend, so that was nice!!!

One more week of Kellogg then it's time to ramp up for the semester.