First Day Of Spring Semester Is Great Time to Revisit Goals

When setting personal goals for yourself, we teach in the College Success Skills 1023 course to use the SMART method. It is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Each year at BRCC, we are asked to set personal goals and January is always a good time to review the selections we made since it is basically the mid-point of the academic year. So I encourage you to take a look at what you indicated you were going to focus on to help you improve your teaching and your student's learning. I also want to remind you to check out the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's blog from time to time for new ideas you might want to implement in your classes. In addition, take a look at the upcoming events for faculty development opportunities. We also tweet daily and try to focus on issues that are relative to BRCC and our student population. Here is to a great spring 2020 semester. As always, I am here to help you in all things teaching and learning so do not hesitate to contact me (pourciaut@mybrcc.edu). I am located in 120 Magnolia Building on the Mid City Campus.

Aren't We All Math People?

Working in higher education for the last 36 years (how did that happen?) has given me a lot of opportunity to hear lots of opinions about developmental education (formerly remedial education, etc.). Nothing causes a life-long educator more pain than to see a student come to you underprepared. How can this happen when they have been duly approved to graduate from an accredited high school? But I am not here to argue that point, I would rather talk about this nonsense of math versus non-math people. We often say things like "Everyone should be able to read; how are you going to function in life without learning how to read." Shouldn't we be saying the same thing about math? How would you function without understanding math? That is why I was excited to read Sarah D. Sparks' piece on the matter. She writes, "My 2nd grader finishes his math enrichment, then gleefully creates blank versions for his dad and me to try: a subtraction-based, number-placement logic puzzle, intended to be challenging. My husband withdraws for 10 minutes or so, returns and hands over the completed puzzle. I stare at my blank triangle. Mom, aren’t you done yet? my son asks. Are you struggling? A dull pressure starts to thud behind my eyes. I’m thinking, I say, a little too sharply." Did reading that make you feel a little uncomfortable? It certainly made me remember when I sat in Ms. Sparks place with my children. I encourage you to read the brief, concise article and join us who say we are all math people.

Student Success Starts With Communication

If you were able to make the faculty development session yesterday delivered by Dr. Jennifer Waldeck, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. This event occurred because of the support of VCASA Laura Younger, who provided the funding. Speaking of VC Younger, she mentioned that not only did several people stop her on the way out to indicate their pleasure at the quality of the speaker but several of you called her as well. What a great way to kick off the 2020 spring semester. One of the resources referenced by Dr. Waldeck during her talk was an article that appeared in Inside Higher Ed written by Jane E. Dmochowsk. I had posted the link on the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's events calendar but the link was broken and has been repaired. Looking back on the tweets that I sent during yesterday's event, I wanted to share three that stood out in my mind. The first is "inclusion and celebrating diversity builds credibility and promotes engagement." The second is "the fear of communication is very real for some of our students" (this goes to class participation and meeting with you privately). The third is "student to student interaction is critical to their learning experience." I hope you have a terrific semester. If you are looking for ways to get started on the first day of class, here are some things you can try.

Intrusive In A Good Way

Intrusive advising is a term that has been making the rounds in higher education for a while now. It seems to appear whenever someone asks how the college where they are working can improve the student retention and completion numbers. While most of us can probably come up with a description of what we think intrusive advising is, it is always good to look to current research to help determine what is really working in the important areas of retention and completion. A research study by Paul Donaldson, Lyle McKinney, Mimi Lee, and Diana Pino does just that. They report that a key factor in successful intrusive advising is making it mandatory for students. They note that the motivation to seek help is often lower in students who may most need it. They also noted that students indicated other positive aspects of the intrusive model included degree planning activities, which included reviewing required courses, developing a plan for future course registration, completing an electronic course planner tool, learning transfer requirements, and participating in major and career exploration. You can read the entire research article here.

Are We Really All In?

Student attrition has been a primary focus among higher education institutions for nearly 50 years, yet overall retention and graduation rates continue to be of significant concern. Despite increased attention, ongoing struggles of colleges and universities to effectively address potential barriers to student progress are well-documented. Part of the challenge lies in garnering widespread organizational commitment that establishes student progress as an institutional priority. Along with leadership commitment, broad institutional involvement and adherence to a systematic approach to testing new, innovative solutions are necessary to better position the institution to make clear, evidence-based decisions that improve the student experience. Jobe, Spencer, Hinkle, and Kaplan explain how one institution did it in their research study The First Year: A Cultural Shift Towards Improving Student Progress.

How To Do College 101

Despite a great increase in the numbers of students enrolling in higher education, specifically at community colleges, the successful completion rates for these students has remained static since the 1970’s. When reviewing strategies to increase student retention and successful completion, the Student Success Course (SSC) has emerged as a promising and prominent strategy for community colleges. Given that, the purpose of the sequential mixed methods study by Kimbark, Peters, and Richardson (Effectiveness of the Student Success Course on Persistence, Retention, Academic Achievement, and Student Engagement) was to determine if participation in a SSC influences persistence, retention, academic achievement, and student engagement on a community college campus. Results of this study indicate that a relationship exists between participation in the SSC and persistence, retention, academic achievement in English and mathematics, and student engagement. Additionally, participants claim that taking the SSC not only altered their perceptions of the importance of the course, but their social and study skills as well.

First-Gen Does Not Mean One Size Fits All

Undergraduate retention and graduation are issues requiring critical attention from public universities across the nation. Degree attainment for first-generation college students (FGCS) in the United States is especially important to meeting future workforce demands, goals for national economic prosperity, and global competitiveness. Cynthia Demetriou, Judith Meece, Deborah Eaker-Rich, and Candice Powell in their research study The Activities, Roles, and Relationships of Successful First-Generation College Students examined the lived experience of students to explore how developmental situations in college are experienced by the people who participate in them. Their report supports previous research that indicates that students who are engaged in various opportunities, especially if they are first-generation, are highly likely to be successful. The report also suggests a number of opportunities that should be offered by colleges.

Group Work Helps Students Solve Real World Problems

We often talk about the differences between high school and college, We even have a section about the differences in our (Open Educational Resource) textbook for College Success Skills, but that argument may be obscuring the fact that teaching and learning is just that. Stating that premise, a recent article about high school mathematics teacher Sandra Cover really got me excited. She is using a very unique method in her classroom that acknowledges the real world. The first reality is that many of today's problems are solved by teams. The second reality is that it is rare that the first suggestion for a solution is adopted without back and forth from members of that team. Covers allows students in her trigonometry class to work in groups and allows them to revise their work (even assessments) when it is incorrect. Cover, who teaches at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, Michigan, developed this new approach after realizing her students were learning the “what” of math, but not the “how” or “why.” One of the reasons I am so excited about her pedagogical approach is that I feel we can use it in any course we are teaching. Take a look at the entire article here and let me know what you think.

Vibrant Middle Class Driven By Community Colleges

New research from Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine finds that greater income gaps between those at the bottom and middle of the income distribution lead low-income boys to drop out of high school more often than their counterparts in higher inequality areas, suggesting that there is an important link between income inequality and reduced rates of upward mobility. “Economic despair” may contribute if those at the bottom do not believe they have the ability to achieve middle class status. This research is really fascinating but not all that shocking to the thousands of us that work at community colleges. This tells the all-to-often tragic story of many, if not most, of our students. The upside to all of this is that the opportunities do exist to create a vibrant middle class and more community colleges are opening each year. Moving into the "classroom" (whether onsite or virtually) just how do we introduce this idea. I say early and often. I talk about upward mobility and the quality of life provided by a middle class career all the time. Making the subject relevant, experts say, is the best way to get your students to learn and retain new knowledge. What better way to tie this into everything about them than to talk about the life that can be had by using the fulcrum of higher education (or adult basic education for those seeking a high school equivalency)? You can read the entire report here and I would love to hear your feedback.

Teacher Empathy Key to Student Engagement

Photo from Smithsonian.com

There is a lot of discussion in the social media-stratosphere about anxiety, depression, and other stress-related issues being experienced by larger numbers of students than in the past. There has been research related to many of those topics but not so much on how we as faculty can respond. But there is a recent article by Sal Meyers, Katherine Rowell, Mary Wells, and Brian C. Smith, who teach and work at community colleges, about what they call 'teacher empathy." They note it is a term first used by Psychologist Carl Rogers in Freedom to Learn. Teacher empathy, according to Rogers, is the most potent factor in bringing about change and learning in the relationship between students and teachers. Leading with interpersonal empathy, which is described as the "processes whereby one person can come to know the internal state of another and can be motivated to respond with sensitive care, the research cites the theoretical work of Batson and Segal. Meyers, et. al. note that because we are dealing with groups in our courses, social empathy comes into play. They note "the ability to understand people by perceiving or experiencing their lived situations and as a result gain insight into structural inequalities and disparities" is equally important for teacher empathy to exist. The paper goes on to offer a number of suggestions on how to become a more empathetic teacher. Read the entire article here.