This blog focuses on my scholarship in my five research projects: learning assistance and equity programs, student peer study group programs, learning technologies, Universal Design for Learning, and history simulations. And occasional observations about life.
Reinventing learning assistance and developmental education
The recent announcement of $110 million by the Gates Foundation to reinvent remedial and developmental education at community colleges calls for dramatic change. Several years ago a group of past national presidents of two of the largest organizations in that field created a blueprint for not revising, but for reinventing the field. Following is an executive summary to the complete report which is available online [click here for report]. The major findings from this strategic review include the following:
1. Significant and systemic change is required. The external threats to the existing organizations for not engaging in dramatic change and renewal far outweigh the advantages of no change. The organizations have worked incredibly hard with a strong volunteer leadership structure to implement their strategic plans. Progress has been positive but slow and incremental due to limited resources and the volunteer leadership base available through the organizations. The organizations have been working at maximum capacity for a long time. The unmet needs of their association members require a dramatically different structure. An analogy illustrates the current state of the professional associations. A well-known parable cautions against placing “new wine in old wineskins.” When it was common practice to place wine in a leather pouch that was stitched together, fresh leather was always used since it would stretch when the new wine expanded during its fermentation process. Use of a previous old wineskin container that had already been stretched out would rupture if new wine was placed within it. This analogy describes why a new association “container” is necessary to achieve an expanded set of services for members and increased influence within both higher education and the wider society.
2. A strategic review of creating a new professional association identifies a long list of potential strengths for such a new structure. This review also identifies potential external threats and weaknesses. The Working Group identified potential solutions for dealing with each. One of the biggest challenges is the process of creating the new association. A basic law of physics is “where there is movement, there is always friction.” The final section in this report identifies a suggested calendar of events to engage more people in the conversation to encourage buy-in and support for change.
3. The Working Group identifies that in addition to the current profile of association members, there are other groups within postsecondary education that could find affiliation with a new organization desirable. A new association with an expanded mission, vision, and more inclusive language could encourage active membership by these groups. More than 60,000 professionals work in the field served by CRLA and NADE. However, less than10% are members of these associations. A new association would be more attractive to these nonmembers if they could access more services through venues in addition to conferences.
4. The reason for change is not rearranging organizational patterns. It is about increasing the quality and quantity of professional development venues for individual members. CRLA and NADE host excellent chapter and national conferences. However, a careful review of other postsecondary professional associations finds that they offer many more services for their members through rich web sites, multiple publications, on-line conferences, webinars, and research that identifies best practices for their members.
5. A new professional association serves as a catalyst for new language, expanded mission, and reinvented vision for serving a wider community. While the reason for change is about professional development and service to its members, the organizational language and structure have an impact upon the association’s capacity to serve its members. Some examples of these potential changes for conversation among a larger group inside of CRLA and NADE include: More inclusive association purpose statement such as: “The purpose of this organization is to advance the scholarship and practice of professionals dedicated to postsecondary student success through academic support and instruction”.
6. A wider conversation needs to occur concerning the ideas and possibilities presented in this report. The final section of this report identifies a possible scenario for this wider discussion. The inclusion of more voices and ideas will generate an even better vision for a new future.
The pace and scope of change needs to dramatically accelerate. Rather than incremental change, dramatic reinvention and transformation is needed. A new term used to describe this change is “leapfrogging” (Harbison & Pekar, 1998; Nonaka & Nichiguchi, 2001). Instead of “fixing” an old process, it is “leapfrogged” and a new process is introduced. The often-cited classic example is how emerging countries are designating cell phones as the primary communication channel and skipping the wiring of the countryside with traditional telephone wires. The cost of the new technology and ease of implementation is much less than the older technology. With this report, the Working Group strongly supports the creation of a new professional association rather than attempting to retool the older ones. The synergy of a larger organization with more assets and a fresh start presents many opportunities.
This Working Group completed the first draft of this report during its meeting in Austin, TX in June 2007. The conclusion was that a new professional association would be beneficial, but the change process would be difficult and significant. Our group recognizes that the easiest course is to continue to make incremental changes within the current structures. Perhaps the umbrella group for the existing associations, American Council for Developmental Education Associations (ACDEA), could provide more coordination and collaboration for the field to better meet the needs of the members. Those are two possible paths to the future. However, this Working Group recommends a third path: creating a new professional association with a more inclusive language, mission, and vision for the future for all the reasons stated in this report.
A reoccurring question examined by the Working Group has been “why change?” This long report has carefully explored the pros and cons of creating a new association and provided numerous suggestions for its services and organization structures. A better question than “why change?” is “what kind of change is demanded by postsecondary education and needed by these professionals?” Perhaps others can provide a paradigm for us when considering the future. When writing a dialogue among several of his characters in a play discussing the future, Shakespeare penned the expression “The Undiscovered Country” to describe this place. While everyone will visit the future, no one can come back and tell others exactly what it will be like. However, all of us will walk into The Undiscovered Country.
We have the choice regarding how we walk into the future. Change can be proactively managed or simply reacted to. The best of past traditions can be brought into the future and merged with new structures and traditions or all can be left to chance. The most important element that moves forward into the new association are members of the current organizations. They form the core of the new future and bring forward the history and traditions of the previous organizations. Let us encourage new members to join these veterans as we walk together into The Undiscovered Country as colleagues and friends. Let’s build a new future together.
August 2007. CRLA/NADE Working Group: David Arendale, Hilda Barrow, Kathy Carpenter, Russ Hodges, Jane McGrath, Pat Newell, and Jan Norton
References
- Harbison, J. R., & Pekar, P. (1998). Smart alliances: A practical guide to repeatable success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Nonaka, I., & Nishiguchi, T. (Eds.). (2001). Knowledge emergence: Social, technical, and evolutionary dimensions of knowledge creation. New York: Oxford University Press.
New Web Bookmarks for 2010-04-20
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Gates delivered the closing speech at the 90th Annual American Association of Community Colleges Convention in Seattle, and called traditional remedial programs “an afterthought” on most campuses. These low-quality programs that are supposed to help students catch up academically are actually the biggest obstacles students must overcome in their pursuit of a college degree, she said. “Community colleges led the way on college access, now they must lead the way on college completion,” said Gates. “Research shows that improving remediation is the single most important thing community colleges can do to increase the number of students who graduate with a certificate or a degree.”
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The former high school math teacher and Netflix Founder/CEO plans to use the company to teach math using computer games, simulations, and pedagogy more effectively. He believes that Netbooks and like technology will be so inexpensive that the hardware will be everywhere.
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Recently the preferred standard for evaluation design by USDOE has been randomized experimental design. The commentator of this article argues that other forms of evaluation should be considered to ensure that best practices are not missed due to a narrow definition of what counts for evidence.
Gates Foundations Commits $110M to Reform Traditional Remedial and Developmental Education
(Gates Foundation Press Release) To aid community colleges in developmental education reform, the foundation announced a commitment of up to $110 million to help research and scale innovative programs. These strategies will help under-prepared students spend less time and money catching up, and will lead to improved retention and completion. About half of the foundation’s commitment has already been given to colleges and programs. The remaining $57 million will be given as grants over the next two years and will be guided by lessons learned through the earlier investments, which are showing that good remedial education contains several key elements:
- It starts early with effective collaboration between middle schools, high schools and colleges that can prevent the need for remediation in the first place. For example, El Paso Community College partners with local school districts and the University of Texas at El Paso, which has dramatically improved graduation rates in just a few short years.
- It is tightly structured blending credit-bearing classes with enhanced academic supports. For example, Washington state’s I-BEST program blends basic academics and career training into a seamless accelerated program.
- It’s flexible and personalized to address specific skill gaps to ensure that students learn what they need. This can be accomplished through technology and other means to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of remedial education. Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, for example, will fund the development of remedial math courses that will be made available for free to colleges. The project aims to reduce the time and cost of remediation through interactive and adaptive multimedia and games.
New Web Bookmarks for 2010-04-16
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Create, deliver and monetize online courses with Odijoo
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Some students are deciding not to complete a college degree since the credential is not needed (nor the tuition debt) to obtain the job they want. Students are seeking other places to develop the skills they need for work.
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I’m Rey Junco, a college professor and researcher who studies how social media use affects college students. I’m particularly interested in using quantitative methods to assess the effects of social media on student development, engagement, and success. Social Media in Higher Education is a place where I’ll blog about the research I’m conducting and provide commentary on using technology in educationally-relevant ways.
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Recent research has shown that social media use is correlated with indices of student engagement. While a relationship exists, no research has been conducted to elucidate the causal connection, if any, between engagement in social media spaces and engagement in the real world. This talk will outline an experimental study, currently underway, that assesses whether first-year college students’ use of Twitter affects student engagement and success.
Reoccurring Themes for Historically-Underrepresented Students
- Institutions often admit students from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds but do not effectively deal with that reality. Most institutions do not report their academic success with the media.
- Many do not place sufficient resources in place to effectively deal with the oppressive and academically-deprived backgrounds of the students. Many institutions target academic resources for upper division students who have survived.
- College admission standards favor the dominant power culture. Standardized admission tests are culturally biased in a variety of ways to favor of the dominant culture. This has erected severe barriers for access of students to many institutions of choice.
- No significant attention is placed on widespread reporting of college outcomes. The dropout rate from college has remained at 50 percent for the past 100 years. There is no significant tie between institutional funding by the state and its rate of academic success.
- Educational leaders and faculty members have always complained about the academic preparation level of prospective students. Academic expectancy always rises mores quickly than the academic preparation level of students. The creation of admission standards guarantees that some students will be excluded and some will be admitted provisionally and need developmental education. The quickly growing database of knowledge in the academic disciplines doubles every five to fifteen years, yet the number of lecture periods to deliver the information has remained fixed for hundreds of years. Since employers expect more of college graduates, increased pressure is placed on college faculty to prepare students at higher levels of knowledge and skill mastery.
- While learning assistance activities and approaches permeate the history of higher education in the U.S., it is nearly universally ignored by education historians. There is little mention of learning assistance, students in general, or faculty members in histories.
- While the name for learning assistance may change over time, the need persists. Some institutions deal with the need by renaming courses. Harvard University renamed it “Remedial Reading” course to “The Reading Course.” Later they renamed “Basic Writing” to “Introduction to Expository Writing.” Enrollment soared. Other institutions simply renumber their courses to a higher level to make them more politically acceptable to campus or state officials.
- Students with learning assistance needs are recruited for economic gain by institutions during times of low student enrollment.
- Rising high school exit standards do not eliminate the need for learning assistance. The College Board was created in 1890 for such a purpose. The 1970's were dominated by A Nation At Risk Report. Two reasons explain why this has occurred. The first is that expectation levels by the college faculty have risen more quickly. The second is the number of students who enter or reenter college after a decade and have forgotten some of what they learned in high school. The third is that more students enter college from high school (nearly two-thirds) than those who enrolled in college preparation course in high school (approximately half). And of those students who enrolled in college prep courses, what proportion earned high marks?
- Academic enrichment activities, based upon best practices of learning assistance, have been offered at privilideged schools for hundreds of years. These institutions have used other language to describe their activities and have a campus value system and culture than support and nurture this orientation.
Past Efforts to Validate Best Practices by USDOE
A precedent for national validation of best education proactices for postsecondary education existed for several decades in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) now succeeded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Within OERI was the Program Effectiveness Panel (PEP). PEP reviewed educational practices submitted by educators. An example of one of these applications is provided through the following: https://www.casas.org/home/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.downloadFile&mapID=1362
Through a rigorous evaluation process some practices were "validated." These validated practices were disseminated to the education community. OERI's National Diffusion Network (NDN) provided grants to a selected number of PEP certified programs for national dissemination. Due to budget cuts, both PEP and NDN were eliminated in the 1990s.