Tutor Training and Professional Development. Wichita State University (KS) (approved Promising Practice 9/25/13) Taken from the abstract: "Peer tutoring has become a familiar tool that many schools utilize to reinforce classroom teaching and increase student success. For this reason, the Student Support Services (SSS) Project at Wichita State University (WSU) has implemented a Tutor Training and professional development program to assist new and returning tutors to develop strategies to support learning and enhance academic performance and improve the tutoring process to establish, implement, and maintain a comprehensive and quality tutor-training program." [Click on this web link to download the education practice.]
Tactics That Engage Community-College Students Get Few Takers, Study Finds
"Most community colleges have begun using a suite of expert-approved strategies to get more students to graduation. But those programs are often just window dressing, as relatively few students participate in them. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/17/community-college-completion-strategies-lack-scale-report-finds#ixzz2hzE3Mnqe at Inside Higher Ed
That’s the central finding of a new report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement. And Kay McClenney, the center’s director, places blame for the shallow adoption of “high impact” completion practices squarely on colleges and their leaders, rather than on students. “Requiring students to take part in activities likely to enhance their success is a step community colleges can readily take,” McClenney said in a written statement. “They just need to decide to do it.” The study draws from three national surveys that seek to measure student engagement at community colleges that collectively account for 80 percent of the sector’s enrollment. One is the center’s flagship survey -- the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)....The 13 strategies include the use of academic goal-setting, student orientation, tutoring, accelerated remedial education tracks and student success courses (see box for full list). While experts and faculty members might not agree on whether all of the practices work well, there is an emerging body of evidence that they help boost completion rates.
For example, 84 percent of two-year colleges offer student success courses, which are designed to help new students navigate college and get off to a good start. The courses are particularly helpful to large numbers of lower-income, first-generation college students who attend community college, and who rarely get the support of family members who know the skinny on how college works. Yet only 20 percent of surveyed students took a success courses during their first term, according to the report. The other 12 practices showed similar gaps between being offered and being used. Take tutoring, which has obvious benefits to struggling students. Fully 99 percent of the surveyed colleges offer some form of tutoring, but the report found that only 27 percent of students had taken advantage of it during the current academic year."
Asking students to volunteer for service will not work. They don[t want to face stigma for doing so, they don[t have time for activities that conflict with their two or three part time jobs they have to pay for tuition, and for all the others commitments in their life. The solution is Universal Design for Learning where essential services and support are built directly into classes and required for all students.
Best Education Practice: McWrite Scholarly Writing Skill Seminar Series
McWrite: Developing Scholarly Writinig Skills. Wichita State University (KS) (approved Promising Practice 10/15/13) Taken from the abstract: "The McWrite model for developing scholarly writing skills was developed at Wichita State University to help students with difficulty mastering the mechanics of writing (punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development) and scholarly writing required for graduate studies. According to Schumacher and Gradwohl-Nash (1991), three purposes of writing are fostering understanding, changing conceptions. and developing thinking skills. This is consistent with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development (1958). All participants of the Wichita State University TRiO McNair Scholars Program participate in monthly, hour-long group sessions to develop increased competency in these three essential skills. McWrite benefits students in all areas of their academics, fostering increased confidence in their writing abilities, and success in graduate school. A unique feature of the McWrite program is the sustained and systematic approach to development of writing skills for all McNair Scholars, regardless of previous academic success. This program is part of the core of the TRiO McNair program rather than an optional activity with limited attention". [Click on this web link to download the education practice.]
TRiO Works: Who Has Been Served and Some of the Best Practices
Best Education Practice: Academic Advising Management System
Academic Advising Management System, Wichita State University (KS). (approved Promising Practice 10/11/13). From the abstract: "One service that the Wichita State University (WSU) Upward Bound Math Science (UBMS) Program provides in support of its mission is academic advising.A key practice with the WSU approach is the data collection and management of information essential for effective advising of the students. This information includes students’ progress towards completion of their required curriculum and enrollment pattern in math and science courses. It is also used for strategic planning purposes by the UBMS program personnel for whom the information helps inform study group formation, tutoring needs and summer course design. While Upward Bound programs commonly provide academic advising services to its students, the WSU approach is more comprehensive and includes additional stakeholders. [Click on this link to download the education practice.]
CHANGING EQUATIONS: How Community Colleges Are Re-thinking College Readiness in Math
Complete Report available to download, http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LWBrief_ChangingEquations_WEB.pdf
From the Executive Summary: Because of their high enrollment and generally low completion rates, community colleges have been identified as central to efforts to improve higher education outcomes. But that improvement won’t be realized unless more students succeed in math. Together, the high proportion of community college students requiring math remediation, and the relatively low proportion who succeed in required remedial sequences, make placement in developmental math one of the single greatest barriers to college completion. Only 20 percent of students who place into remedial (also known as developmental) math courses ultimately complete the remedial sequence and pass a college-level math course - such as college algebra or statistics - that is required to graduate or transfer.
An increasing number of colleges in California and nationally are involved in experiments aimed at improving, reforming, or even eliminating math remediation in community colleges. This includes a new movement to construct alternative pathways for the majority of community college students, those whose educational goals may not require a second year of algebra. Through LearningWorks’ efforts to strengthen student achievement in the California Community Colleges, it has become clear that practitioners involved in such experiments are eager to learn about parallel efforts, and those not yet involved are curious about the work underway, whether in California or elsewhere in the nation.
LearningWorks commissioned this report, Changing Equations, to address those needs. Critics argue that intermediate algebra unnecessarily hinders some students pursuing degrees in fields such as English, history, art, and political science from ever graduating. The new pathways for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students are course sequences including both remedial-level courses as well as credit-bearing gatekeeper math courses. Many of these new sequences stress skills in statistics or quantitative reasoning, which proponents say serve most students better in their lives and careers than does high-level algebra. While the de-emphasis on intermediate algebra remains controversial, the math pathways movement resonates with other initiatives to focus community college students’ education around structured pathways leading toward careers.
These experiments are informed by findings emerging from both research and practice that are starting to shift the understanding of math readiness. At the heart of that evolution are four key insights:
- Math is a hurdle for the majority of community college students. Roughly 60 percent of community college students are placed in developmental math courses.
- Most students deemed “unready” in math will never graduate. Only 20 percent of students who place into developmental math complete a required gatekeeper course in math.
- The tests used to determine readiness are not terribly accurate. Research has estimated that as many as a fifth of students placed into remedial math courses could have earned a B or better in a college-level course without first taking the remedial class.
- The math sequence required by most colleges is irrelevant for many students’ career aspirations. According to research, about 70 percent or more of people with bachelor’s degrees do not require intermediate algebra in their careers.
In sum, the reformers argue that, on the basis of a weakly predictive test, large numbers of students are being prevented from completing college unless they pass a challenging course that may be irrelevant to their futures. Nevertheless, until recently there have been very few experiments with alternatives, leaving intermediate algebra as an effective proxy for determining whether students are “college material.” Various national policy and disciplinary organizations, aware of the gravity of the remedial math dilemma, are urging colleges to re-think this approach and try out alternatives. These include the Developmental Math Committee of the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, Complete College America, and the National Center on Education and the Economy.
New Research Confirms Some TRiO Best Education Practices
Dr. Shawn Harper previews research findings he'll be releasing formally today about the black and Latino male students who succeed in New York City high schools (and he said there was no reason to believe similar qualities don't help similar students in other urban high schools). The study wasn't of elite charter schools or wealthier parts of the city, but of students who had achieved academic success in regular high schools. Harper found not only that such students exist (no surprise to him, but perhaps to those who lament the dearth of such students) but that many of them have no idea that they would be attractive candidates for admission to some of the most elite colleges in the United States.
Harper -- director of the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania -- attracted considerable attention last year for a study in which he identified successful black male college students and examined the factors that led to their success. This new study is in a way the flip side of that research -- as his focus was on students in New York City high schools who could succeed in college (although he also included a group of New York City high school graduates who were in college for comparison purposes).
But what were the common characteristics that seemed to propel these students to succeed?
- Parental value of education. Many spoke of parents who related their own lack of education to their lack of money, and told their children they wanted better options for them.
- High expectations. The report says that "almost all" of the students in the study "remember being thought of as smart and capable when they were young boys."
- Learning to avoid neighborhood danger. Those who lived in unsafe neighborhoods reported parents who kept them inside whenever possible. Likewise, many of the students reported spending after-school hours in school buildings, in settings where they could study and also socialize in safer environments than were available to them near their homes.
- Avoiding gang recruitment. Many said that by becoming known as smart, and by having parents who didn't let them spend time outdoors, they weren't recruited into gangs.
- Teachers who cared and inspired. Harper asked the students to name and describe favorite high school teachers, and he noted that none of them had difficulty doing so, describing challenging teachers who knew and cared about them. He said that the teachers of these students are working in ways counter to the image of out-of-control urban schools.
- Reinforcement of college-going culture. One student noted that, at his high school, every day that a student was accepted at a college, the entire school was told about this over the public address system. While college-going might not be the norm for his socioeconomic group, he came to think of college-going as the norm from hearing these messages over and over again.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/30/new-study-explores-qualities-help-black-and-latino-males-succeed-high-school#ixzz2gOH4XCrF
Inside Higher Ed