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.
New WWC Quick Review on Daily Online Testing in Large Classes: Boosting College Performance While Reducing Achievement Gaps
This study investigated the effect of daily quizzes on the performance of college students. Students in an introductory psychology course used their own wireless-enabled devices to take short, Internet-based quizzes at the beginning of every class. The quiz items were drawn approximately equally from material covered in the readings and the lectures. The study authors examined impacts of the daily quizzes on student performance in the psychology course, in addition to other classes taken during the same semester and during the semester following the introductory psychology class.
The intervention took place during the fall 2011 semester, and the performance of intervention students was compared to students from the fall 2008 semester. About 50% of the students in the sample were racial/ethnic minorities, and about 60% were female. About 20% of students were first generation college students, and most students were in their first or second year of college. The study authors reported that there was a nearly statistically significant effect (p = 0.06) of the daily quizzes on student performance in introductory psychology. Specifically, the daily quizzes incorporated 17 items that were also used on tests given during the comparison semester. Students in the daily quiz condition scored higher on these 17 items (77%) than the comparison students (71%). In addition, students in the intervention condition earned higher grades in their other courses during both the fall (3.07 vs. 2.96) and the subsequent spring (3.10 vs. 2.98) semesters. However, it is unknown whether these differences are statistically significant. Finally, the authors reported a statistically significant interaction suggesting that these effects were strongest among lower-middle SES students. This study is a cohort-based quasi-experiment, and as such could meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. However, more information is needed from the study authors regarding the comparability of the intervention and comparison students at baseline before a rating can be given. A more thorough review (forthcoming) will determine the final study rating and report more fully on the study’s results.
Citation: Pennebaker, J., Gosling, S. D., & Ferrell, J. D. (2013). Daily online testing in large classes: Boosting college performance while reducing achievement gaps. PLoS One 8(11): e79774
2014 Apple iPad App Directory
Just in time for the holidays, I am reissuing David Arendale's Guide to iPad Apps. <Click on this link to download the free PDF document.> This is my hand-picked favorite iPad apps. The 31-page directory lists approximately 330 of them. With more than one million to select from, it was difficult to identity the ones that I find the most useful for my personal and professional life. Enjoy.
Higher education officials tout the need for developmental education
LJWorld.com, November 28, 2013 Sometimes state leaders complain about providing remedial education to college students, but a recent report says that basic instruction is crucial to the progress of thousands of Kansans and the state in general. For many, remedial or developmental education provides a path to higher education and out of poverty, said Brian Inbody, president of Neosho County Community College. "It is at the heart of the community college mission," Inbody recently told the Kansas Board of Regents. "If you are ready to make a change in your life, we are going to meet where you are in your life. And if you can prove yourself, you can move on," he said.
Developmental education refers to coursework offered at a post-secondary institution that usually involves intermediate algebra, fundamentals of English or reading. Students usually enroll in the classes to prepare for more rigorous college-level courses. In academic year 2010-2011, the most recent for which statistics are available, 38 percent of first-time, degree-seeking students attending Kansas community colleges enrolled in developmental courses during their first year at college. Seventeen percent of university students enrolled in developmental courses during their first year. The most common remedial course taken is math.
Developmental education is crucial for student success, Inbody said. A typical community college class may include a mixture of recent high school graduates, older adults who haven't been in a classroom in more than 15 years, and students who scored low on the ACT. Inbody said many students in community colleges are struggling to overcome poverty and haven't had the family supports that other college students have had. "The idea of setting a goal of five years down the road to get into college is a foreign concept to a lot of families," he said.
Regents agreed with the need of developmental education to help increase the number of Kansans who have a post-secondary credential or degree. "Too many people think developmental education is a dirty word. It's not," said Regents Chairman Fred Logan Community college officials are planning a more in-depth study of developmental education needs to be completed by June. "If there are policy issues that need to be changed, please bring them forward," Regent Kenny Wilk told Inbody. Regents President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Tompkins said developmental education is key to helping people succeed. It would be easy to write off some of these students, but he said that wouldn't be right. "We have set this system up where we do have a place where you can get into post-secondary education," he said.
Originally published at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/nov/28/higher-education-officials-tout-need-developmental/
Opportunity Makers: Influencing Opportunity for Low-Income Students
OPPORTUNITY MAKERS: Caroline M. Hoxby & Sarah E. Turner. Two of the people identified by the Chronicle of Higher Education as making a difference during 2013.
Caroline M. Hoxby and Sarah E. Turner have devised an inexpensive way to get high-achieving, low-income students to consider selective colleges, an idea that has received widespread attention this year. They're opening doors for low-income students
In a phenomenon called "undermatching," such students usually end up at places with fewer resources, less-prepared classmates, and lower graduation rates. Ms. Hoxby, a professor of economics at Stanford University, and Ms. Turner, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia, devised an experiment in which they mailed college information to high-school students whose family incomes were in the bottom 25 percent and whose test scores were in the top 10 percent.
In the randomized trial, the professors sent one group of students general college-search information, another group information on college costs after financial aid, a third group application-fee waivers, and a fourth group all of those. A control group got nothing. The mailings cost only $6 per student.
And they worked. Students who received the combined information—and remembered getting it—submitted 48 percent more applications than did those in the control group. They applied to colleges that had a 17-percent higher graduation rate and an 86-point higher median SAT score. And the students enrolled in colleges that were 46 percent more likely to be places where their classmates were equally prepared. Getting students to go to certain colleges wasn't really the goal, Ms. Hoxby told The Chronicle this past spring. It was to help them choose. "To not make decisions well simply because you don't know what's out there," she said, "that's sad."
Now she and Ms. Turner, both 47, are collaborating with the College Board to expand their work. Already packets based on the economists' experiment have been sent to 28,000 high-school seniors, and the College Board plans to email them, too. It also expects to expand the outreach to younger students. About 35,000 high-achieving, low-income students graduate from high school each year, and very few apply to any of the country's 230 or so most selective colleges, according to a previous study by Ms. Hoxby and another researcher.
At least one state, Delaware, is also joining the effort, announcing this fall that it would collaborate with the College Board and send information to an additional 2,000 students. While the researchers have found that families are wary of information from colleges themselves, Harvard University has said it will conduct similar outreach, encouraging students to consider it and other selective institutions. It's been a big year for the idea of undermatching: White House officials met with college presidents to discuss it, and it underpins Michelle Obama's recent focus on expanding college access.
Still, not everyone is sold on the solution. Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College and an economist, argued in a letter to The New York Times that as long as many selective colleges "reject talented low-income applicants because of students' financial need," then without extra aid, "getting more low-income students to apply to top colleges will just result in more rejections. Of course, students could be rejected from selective colleges for any number of reasons. But nobody goes to one without applying first.
Big Problems with MOOCs
And perhaps the most publicized MOOC experiment, at San Jose State University, has turned into a flop. It was a partnership announced with great fanfare at a January news conference featuring Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a strong backer of online education. San Jose State and Udacity, a Silicon Valley company co-founded by a Stanford artificial-intelligence professor, Sebastian Thrun, would work together to offer three low-cost online introductory courses for college credit.
Mr. Thrun, who had been unhappy with the low completion rates in free MOOCs, hoped to increase them by hiring online mentors to help students stick with the classes. And the university, in the heart of Silicon Valley, hoped to show its leadership in online learning, and to reach more students.
But the pilot classes, of about 100 people each, failed. Despite access to the Udacity mentors, the online students last spring — including many from a charter high school in Oakland — did worse than those who took the classes on campus. In the algebra class, fewer than a quarter of the students — and only 12 percent of the high school students — earned a passing grade.
The program was suspended in July, and it is unclear when, if or how the program will resume. Neither the provost nor the president of San Jose State returned calls, and spokesmen said the university had no comment.
Whatever happens at San Jose, even the loudest critics of MOOCs do not expect them to fade away. More likely, they will morph into many different shapes: Already, San Jose State is getting good results using videos from edX, a nonprofit MOOC venture, to supplement some classroom sessions, and edX is producing videos to use in some high school Advanced Placement classes. And Coursera, the largest MOOC company, is experimenting with using its courses, along with a facilitator, in small discussion classes at some United States consulates.
Accelerated Curriculum and Pedagogy in California
Toward a Vision of Accelerated Curriculum & Pedagogy: High challenges, high support classrooms for underprepared students (December 2013). <Click on this link to download the complete report.>
Addressing an important gap in the dialogue about college completion, Toward a Vision of Accelerated Curriculum and Pedagogy goes beyond discussions of curricular structure to focus on how faculty teach. This LearningWorks brief articulates a set of core principles and practices for teaching accelerated English and math. The report illustrates how teachers can support students with widely varying backgrounds and skill levels to be successful in an accelerated environment.
Developmental education is under an uncomfortable microscope these days. President Obama has called for dramatic increases in completion of post- secondary credentials, and legislators and policy makers have zeroed in on reform of remedial education as essential to meeting this goal. Four national organizations have called for an overhaul of English and math remediation that includes placing most students directly into credit-bearing college courses; tailoring math remediation to students’ chosen academic pathways; eliminating multi-level remedial sequences; and offering less prepared students redesigned accelerated classes or enrollment in a college level course with additional concurrent support.
The movement to reform remedial education is spurred by three important trends in the national research on community colleges: 1) studies showing that huge numbers of students drop out before making meaningful progress in college, and that the more layers of remedial coursework students must take, the lower their completion of college-level English and math, 2) studies questioning the accuracy of the standardized tests that sort students into different levels of remediation, and 3) studies showing significantly better outcomes among students enrolled in accelerated models of remediation.
While the research has clarified key problems in developmental education, and pointed toward promising directions for change, an important question is often missing from the conversation: What does instruction look like in an accelerated class? And how is it different from more traditional approaches to remediation? Drawing on their work with community colleges who have participated in the California Acceleration Project (CAP), a project of the California Community College Support Network (3CSN), community college teachers Katie Hern and Myra Snell advocate a significant break from traditional models of remediation.