STUDENT RETENTION STRATEGIES THAT WE CAN USE
Dr. Patrick O'Keefee's research focuses on student retention issues. His article A Sense of Belonging: Improving Student Retention provides a number of strategies that are easily implementable. He notes, "With student attrition rates reaching between 30 and 50 per cent in the United States,the inability of higher education institutions to retain their students is a significant issue. This paper cites key risk factors which place students at risk of non-completion, which include mental health issues, disability, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Furthermore, first year students and higher degree by research students are susceptible to attrition. The capacity of a student to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution is recognized by this paper as a being a critical factor determining student retention. The creation of a caring, supportive and welcoming environment within the university is critical in creating a sense of belonging. This can be achieved by the development of positive student/faculty relationships, the presence of a well resourced counseling center and the encouragement of diversity and difference."
ADAPTIVE LEARNING MAY BE FOR YOU
As the adoption of adaptive learning strategies has spread, the uses have become more common to address issues like under-prepared students and developmental education. The Online Learning Consortium, of which we are a member, has some good information about how continuous adaptive learning can help solve college readiness problems. As the research emerges about adaptive learning, some interesting strategies have surfaced. Dr. Tseng and colleagues suggest an innovative adaptive learning approach that is based upon two main sources of personalization information, that is, learning behavior and personal learning style. Campus Technology interviewed several administrators and faculty members who have worked on adaptive projects about their experience. If you are interested in trying this strategy in your classes, please know that I am here to help.
FREE TEXTBOOKS FOR STUDENTS
Students have indicated that the high cost of textbooks in some subjects prevent them from purchasing this important resource. Did you know that in some instances there are free textbooks available online? The books are part of the Open Educational Resources or OER. In fact, some faculty members are creating their own textbooks to use in their classes. You can browse for available resources at the OER Commons website. Additional help is available from the BRCC Library faculty, with Peter Klubek leading the initiative.
Showing posts with label textbooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label textbooks. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
WEB PLATFORM SEEKS TO GIVE STUDENTS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WALL OF TEXT
It’s difficult to keep students engaged — and awake — when assigning them readings from long and often dull textbooks. Two researchers wanted to change that. Their creation is zyBooks, a web-based platform that mixes learning activities such as question sets and animations with some written content, largely as a replacement for text. The idea is that professors can use zyBooks instead of traditional textbooks in order to help students engage with the material and perform better. zyBooks was founded in 2012 by Frank Vahid, a computer-science professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Smita Bakshi, a former assistant professor at the University of California at Davis who is the company’s chief executive. They say the platform is being used by professors at around 250 universities, primarily in courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Read more here.
WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
Through explicit instruction and modeling, students can come to recognize the importance of taking brain. By wielding these skills and abilities, students decide where to focus their attention and which tasks to undertake. As a general
charge of their executive functioning
in their academic endeavors and later in their careers. Executive functions can be defined as the awareness
and directive capacities of the rule of thumb, when students of any age
have difficulty completing developmentally appropriate academic tasks
on their own, executive functioning may be at the root of the problem. In the human brain, executive functions are primarily regulated by
the prefrontal regions (just behind the forehead) of the frontal lobes.
Neuroscientists and psychologists have made significant gains in
understanding the brain's executive functioning over the past several
decades.An appropriate metaphor that often helps students and educators alike
understand the role of executive functioning in thinking and behavior
is to imagine an orchestra conductor. The conductor chooses what work
the orchestra will perform, decides how to interpret that work, sets the
tempo for the performance, and directs each section of musicians to
contribute at the appropriate time. Read more here.
IS THAT GOING TO BE ON THE TEST?
At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from the book be on the exam?” “How long should the paper be?” “Can we use Google to find references?” “Would you repeat what you just said? I didn’t get it all down in my notes.” Rarely do they ask thoughtful questions that probe the content and stir the interest of the teacher and other students. So, how do we get them to ask better questions? What if we start by asking them the kinds of questions we hope they will ask us? Here are some suggestions that might help us model what good questions are and demonstrate how instrumental they can be in promoting thinking, understanding, and learning. Read more here.
It’s difficult to keep students engaged — and awake — when assigning them readings from long and often dull textbooks. Two researchers wanted to change that. Their creation is zyBooks, a web-based platform that mixes learning activities such as question sets and animations with some written content, largely as a replacement for text. The idea is that professors can use zyBooks instead of traditional textbooks in order to help students engage with the material and perform better. zyBooks was founded in 2012 by Frank Vahid, a computer-science professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Smita Bakshi, a former assistant professor at the University of California at Davis who is the company’s chief executive. They say the platform is being used by professors at around 250 universities, primarily in courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Read more here.
WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
Through explicit instruction and modeling, students can come to recognize the importance of taking brain. By wielding these skills and abilities, students decide where to focus their attention and which tasks to undertake. As a general
IS THAT GOING TO BE ON THE TEST?
At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from the book be on the exam?” “How long should the paper be?” “Can we use Google to find references?” “Would you repeat what you just said? I didn’t get it all down in my notes.” Rarely do they ask thoughtful questions that probe the content and stir the interest of the teacher and other students. So, how do we get them to ask better questions? What if we start by asking them the kinds of questions we hope they will ask us? Here are some suggestions that might help us model what good questions are and demonstrate how instrumental they can be in promoting thinking, understanding, and learning. Read more here.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
UNDERSTANDING LEARNER-CENTERED APPROACHES
Catharine F. Bishop, Michael I. Caston, and Cheryl A. King have a recently published article that is helpful in understanding the term learner-centered and how to create an environment conducive to learning. They wrote, "Learner-Centered Teaching (LCT)has been an effective approach for enhancing the learning experience for students in higher education. A LCT approach means subjecting multiple teaching actions (method, assignment, or assessment) to the test of a single question: Given the context of my students, course and classroom, will this teaching action optimize my students’ opportunity to learn?. To be specific, the classroom for a learner-centered environment is quite different from traditional classrooms. Students are required to take on new learning roles and responsibilities beyond taking notes, listening to teachers teach, and passing exams. It is an environment that allows students to take some real control over their educational experience and encourages them to make important choices about what and how they will learn." They go on to list a number of interventions and approaches that can move a classroom from a coverage-model to learner-centered. The article appears in the latest version of the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Access is free but you do have to register.
USE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TO CHECK FOR REAL-TIME LEARNING
We all know that formative assessment tools are important to our ability to determine if learning is occurring during a lesson. We usually use it to determine if we are ready to move to a more advanced or new topic. Here are a few examples of formative assessment tools you can use in your classes everyday. Having your students write a brief summary of the learning experience (or reading if you gave them an assignment before class) is always a great way to measure learning but you can also get creative and ask them to write a poem using a set number of key terms or have them create it from the information they highlighted in the reading. This tells you immediately if they learned how to differentiate between what is important from all of the other material. They can also do this using a class journal, which is a great way for them to measure their growth throughout the semester. You can also ask them to write a quiz based on the new material, have them select one of the short-answer type questions and reply to it. This gives you some idea of what their expectations are related to assessment and the short answers will give you a good indication if learning occurred. You can ask them to create a public service announcement using the new information which requires them to not only understand the new material but to be able to apply it and explain it to others. They can also write a letter to someone explaining the new information or write to the author of the textbook outlining what they learned and what is still confusing. You could have them prepare to be a guest on a television show where they will be the expert on the new material. Ask them to prepare notes or pair them up and have one ask questions while the other answers them (having them alternate lets everyone play both parts). Finally, see if they can answer the question of what they learned by putting it into a Twitter format. Remind them that they are limited to 140 characters. This requires them to be focused and concise. If you have some favorite formative assessment tools, please share them with me and I will be sure to post them here.
STUDENT PREFERENCES FOR READING ASSIGNMENTS
Many of us struggle with having our students complete the assigned reading. Lola Aagaard, Timothy W. Conner II, and Ronald L. Skidmore provide us with a number of suggestions to make this task more likely to be completed in their new research article College Textbook Reading Assignments and Class Time Activity. They note, "Strategies reported to most likely prompt reading the textbook included in-class quizzes over text material, assigning graded study-guides to complete while reading; testing over material found in the textbook but not covered in class; and assigning shorter reading assignments. Preferences for use of class time varied by experience in college, but the majority of students preferred group discussion and application of material to real life rather than just lecture over the textbook content." The article can be found in the latest version of the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Catharine F. Bishop, Michael I. Caston, and Cheryl A. King have a recently published article that is helpful in understanding the term learner-centered and how to create an environment conducive to learning. They wrote, "Learner-Centered Teaching (LCT)has been an effective approach for enhancing the learning experience for students in higher education. A LCT approach means subjecting multiple teaching actions (method, assignment, or assessment) to the test of a single question: Given the context of my students, course and classroom, will this teaching action optimize my students’ opportunity to learn?. To be specific, the classroom for a learner-centered environment is quite different from traditional classrooms. Students are required to take on new learning roles and responsibilities beyond taking notes, listening to teachers teach, and passing exams. It is an environment that allows students to take some real control over their educational experience and encourages them to make important choices about what and how they will learn." They go on to list a number of interventions and approaches that can move a classroom from a coverage-model to learner-centered. The article appears in the latest version of the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Access is free but you do have to register.
USE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TO CHECK FOR REAL-TIME LEARNING
We all know that formative assessment tools are important to our ability to determine if learning is occurring during a lesson. We usually use it to determine if we are ready to move to a more advanced or new topic. Here are a few examples of formative assessment tools you can use in your classes everyday. Having your students write a brief summary of the learning experience (or reading if you gave them an assignment before class) is always a great way to measure learning but you can also get creative and ask them to write a poem using a set number of key terms or have them create it from the information they highlighted in the reading. This tells you immediately if they learned how to differentiate between what is important from all of the other material. They can also do this using a class journal, which is a great way for them to measure their growth throughout the semester. You can also ask them to write a quiz based on the new material, have them select one of the short-answer type questions and reply to it. This gives you some idea of what their expectations are related to assessment and the short answers will give you a good indication if learning occurred. You can ask them to create a public service announcement using the new information which requires them to not only understand the new material but to be able to apply it and explain it to others. They can also write a letter to someone explaining the new information or write to the author of the textbook outlining what they learned and what is still confusing. You could have them prepare to be a guest on a television show where they will be the expert on the new material. Ask them to prepare notes or pair them up and have one ask questions while the other answers them (having them alternate lets everyone play both parts). Finally, see if they can answer the question of what they learned by putting it into a Twitter format. Remind them that they are limited to 140 characters. This requires them to be focused and concise. If you have some favorite formative assessment tools, please share them with me and I will be sure to post them here.
STUDENT PREFERENCES FOR READING ASSIGNMENTS
Many of us struggle with having our students complete the assigned reading. Lola Aagaard, Timothy W. Conner II, and Ronald L. Skidmore provide us with a number of suggestions to make this task more likely to be completed in their new research article College Textbook Reading Assignments and Class Time Activity. They note, "Strategies reported to most likely prompt reading the textbook included in-class quizzes over text material, assigning graded study-guides to complete while reading; testing over material found in the textbook but not covered in class; and assigning shorter reading assignments. Preferences for use of class time varied by experience in college, but the majority of students preferred group discussion and application of material to real life rather than just lecture over the textbook content." The article can be found in the latest version of the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Friday, September 7, 2012
NO SUCKERS ALLOWED
As you transform your course using a student-centered approach, you should consider using group work learning experiences. W. Martin Davies has a good research article that outlines the benefits of group work while acknowledging the problems that may arise like free-riding and the sucker effect. The article provides solutions as well as providing a good background for this type of active learning method. Davies notes, "Groupwork is one of the most expedient ways—along with work placements—of ensuring that students develop transferable skills for life-long learning (teamwork, leadership, project management skills, communication skills). This has largely been in response to industry demands for more flexible workers."
DID YOU DO THE READING
Are you assigning reading material but finding that your students never even crack the book open? Using some type of formative assessment will usually solve that problem. One of the more popular methods is to give a reading quiz on the material you assigned. Here is an option suggested by Paulson and Faust at Cal State-L.A. Active learning depends upon students coming to class prepared. The reading quiz can also be used as an effective measure of student comprehension of the readings (so that you may gauge their level of sophistication as readers). Further, by asking the same sorts of questions on several reading quizzes, you will give students guidance as to what to look for when reading assigned text. If you ask questions like "What color were Esmerelda's eyes?" you are telling the student that it is the details that count, whereas questions like "What reason did Esmerelda give, for murdering Sebastian?" highlight issues of justification. If your goal is to instruct (and not merely to coerce), carefully choose questions which will both identify who has read the material (for your sake) and identify what is important in the reading (for their sake).
MODELS OF EXCELENCE
The Aspen Institute holds an annual competition to recognize the best community colleges. In fact, they award $1,000,000 in prizes in addition to the publicity and honor of being chosen. The Institute changed its criteria for evaluating community college performance, and this year's list includes 40 different institutions, meaning one-third of last year's eligible colleges were bumped. The process is based on graduation rates, degrees awarded, student retention rates and equity in student outcomes. Out of the 120 institutions that submitted nomination packets, they have narrowed the competition to ten and that list includes: Brazosport College (TX), Broward College (FL), College of the Ouachitas (AR), Kingborough Community College-CUNY (NY), Lake Area Technical Institute (SD), Santa Barbara City College (CA), Santa Fe College (FL), Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (KY), Walla Walla Community College (WA), and West Kentucky Community and Technical College (KY). This is definitely a list that BRCC would like to be on next year.
As you transform your course using a student-centered approach, you should consider using group work learning experiences. W. Martin Davies has a good research article that outlines the benefits of group work while acknowledging the problems that may arise like free-riding and the sucker effect. The article provides solutions as well as providing a good background for this type of active learning method. Davies notes, "Groupwork is one of the most expedient ways—along with work placements—of ensuring that students develop transferable skills for life-long learning (teamwork, leadership, project management skills, communication skills). This has largely been in response to industry demands for more flexible workers."
DID YOU DO THE READING
Are you assigning reading material but finding that your students never even crack the book open? Using some type of formative assessment will usually solve that problem. One of the more popular methods is to give a reading quiz on the material you assigned. Here is an option suggested by Paulson and Faust at Cal State-L.A. Active learning depends upon students coming to class prepared. The reading quiz can also be used as an effective measure of student comprehension of the readings (so that you may gauge their level of sophistication as readers). Further, by asking the same sorts of questions on several reading quizzes, you will give students guidance as to what to look for when reading assigned text. If you ask questions like "What color were Esmerelda's eyes?" you are telling the student that it is the details that count, whereas questions like "What reason did Esmerelda give, for murdering Sebastian?" highlight issues of justification. If your goal is to instruct (and not merely to coerce), carefully choose questions which will both identify who has read the material (for your sake) and identify what is important in the reading (for their sake).
MODELS OF EXCELENCE
The Aspen Institute holds an annual competition to recognize the best community colleges. In fact, they award $1,000,000 in prizes in addition to the publicity and honor of being chosen. The Institute changed its criteria for evaluating community college performance, and this year's list includes 40 different institutions, meaning one-third of last year's eligible colleges were bumped. The process is based on graduation rates, degrees awarded, student retention rates and equity in student outcomes. Out of the 120 institutions that submitted nomination packets, they have narrowed the competition to ten and that list includes: Brazosport College (TX), Broward College (FL), College of the Ouachitas (AR), Kingborough Community College-CUNY (NY), Lake Area Technical Institute (SD), Santa Barbara City College (CA), Santa Fe College (FL), Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (KY), Walla Walla Community College (WA), and West Kentucky Community and Technical College (KY). This is definitely a list that BRCC would like to be on next year.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
WAITING FOR THE CALM
Things seem to be settling in rather nicely for our Fall semester. I am intentionally not bombarding you with emails because I realize the start of any semester is trying. Expect to begin seeing things from me in the next few weeks.
TEACHING NAKED
There is a very interesting story that appeared in the Chronicle a few years ago entitled Teachers Without Technology Strike Back. I usually enjoy the material in the Chronicle but the comments in the discussion section usually validate the use of my time in this way much more. This article certainly created an interesting debate.
GRAPHIC NOVELS ENCOURAGE READING
I also wanted to encourage you to read the piece about Jeremy Short, who is a professor of management at Texas Tech University. He uses a graphic novel in his class instead of a regular textbook. The kicker is he also co-wrote the novel with two co-authors. Having taken a similar management course as an undergrad pursuing a degree in economics, I anxiously took a look at the "new" textbook and found it fascinating and a great example of engaged teaching. Let me know what you think. DEBATE THIS There is also a research article by Ruth Kennedy that reports results from an experiment using in-class debate as a teaching tool. The students in the course believed that participating in and observing in-class debate greatly enhanced their knowledge of the issues surrounding the debate topics covered. Debate is a fantastic active and collaborative learning method and is highly effective for helping students enhance their critical thinking skills.
By the way, if you need to contact me, my office (213 Magnolia) phone number is 216.8534.
Things seem to be settling in rather nicely for our Fall semester. I am intentionally not bombarding you with emails because I realize the start of any semester is trying. Expect to begin seeing things from me in the next few weeks.
TEACHING NAKED
There is a very interesting story that appeared in the Chronicle a few years ago entitled Teachers Without Technology Strike Back. I usually enjoy the material in the Chronicle but the comments in the discussion section usually validate the use of my time in this way much more. This article certainly created an interesting debate.
GRAPHIC NOVELS ENCOURAGE READING
I also wanted to encourage you to read the piece about Jeremy Short, who is a professor of management at Texas Tech University. He uses a graphic novel in his class instead of a regular textbook. The kicker is he also co-wrote the novel with two co-authors. Having taken a similar management course as an undergrad pursuing a degree in economics, I anxiously took a look at the "new" textbook and found it fascinating and a great example of engaged teaching. Let me know what you think. DEBATE THIS There is also a research article by Ruth Kennedy that reports results from an experiment using in-class debate as a teaching tool. The students in the course believed that participating in and observing in-class debate greatly enhanced their knowledge of the issues surrounding the debate topics covered. Debate is a fantastic active and collaborative learning method and is highly effective for helping students enhance their critical thinking skills.
By the way, if you need to contact me, my office (213 Magnolia) phone number is 216.8534.
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