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.
D-Day As It Happens -- BBC Documentary (Part 1 of 3)
Most of the time the entries through my blog focus on academic issues related to academic access to college. I also have another part of me that focuses on history. As a formally-trained historian, I am curious about many things. A particular interest is World War Two. Sometimes people think that it was inevitable that the Allies would win and the Axis power would be defeated. A careful examination of history reveals the precarious nature of victory in World War Two. It is filled with turning points. If enough of those turning points had favored the Axis powers, history would have been different. If the U.S. aircraft carriers had been docked in Pearl Habour on the morning of December 7, 1941, the U.S. might have had to sue for peace. If the Germans had succeeded with developing the atomic bomb first, they could have been the ones to end the war in their favor. Another turning point was the invasion on June 6, 1944 which is called D-Day. The British have created a remarkable television program to celebrate the anniversay of the victory on D-Day.
D-Day: As It Happens was a real time 24-hour history event. Broadcast across TV, online and social media, we told the story of this pivotal event in a new way. You can still track the progress of seven people who were there on the day – each a real participant in the 1944 invasion. Check out the website for much more information about the seven people profiled and the larger scope of the battle, http://dday7.channel4.com/
New, unpublished research was used to gather film, photographs, radio reports and other records of D-Day, work out when and where each was shot, and assemble them on a 24-hour timeline. All the words in quotation marks have been taken from interviews with our D-Day 7 or accounts written by them – we simply converted them into the present tense, or shortened them to fit. Over the 24-hours, you could watch two programmes on Channel 4, follow all the action as it happened on the website, and follow the D-Day 7 on Twitter.
Free Interstate College Access Evaluation Project Teleconference
The College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium
Please join the free teleconference on Thursday, March 20th, 2014 at 10:00 am (Central) To register, subscribe to our group mailings here. You will receive an invitation for the event that includes the telephone number (not toll free) and your unique registration code. If you would like to receive automatic calendar invites to our group calls, please email us at CollegeAccessAffinityGroup@ed.gov with the address where you would like to receive the notifications.
NOTE: Due to the high volume of calls please dial in 10 minutes prior to the scheduled call time to ensure that you are on the line by 10:00 am (Central).
Join us to learn about an interstate college access evaluation project that is using multi-state data to effectively enhance our work. This effort grew out of project directors wanting to conduct a self-evaluation of the GEAR UP program nationally, partnerships with the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships, ACT, Inc., and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center that have proven invaluable to the project, and a desire to conduct the first large-scale longitudinal GEAR UP evaluation. The first deliverable that the Consortium has accomplished is common definitions for services in GEAR UP/college access programs. Ultimately, this research and evaluation will strengthen the GEAR UP project, as well as inform college access programming in local education agencies outside of GEAR UP—all while working to meet the President’s 2020 goal.
Please cut and paste the link below into your browser to down load the power point presentation for this Affinity Group Call. There you will also find updated information on news and events within the US Department of Education, White House, and much more. http://www2.ed.gov/news/av/audio/college-access/index.html
Study Links Responsive Teaching to Academic Gains
<Click on this link for the original article from EdWeek online.>
A social-emotional teaching approach that focuses on improving teacher effectiveness leads to student achievement gains, according to a study released today. The research-based Responsive Classroom approach emphasizes fostering student autonomy and developing the foundational social and emotional skills that they'll need as they continue into higher learning. It does so by raising teachers' abilities to promote academic engagement, create a positive community, and effectively manage the classroom.
The random-assignment study, conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia and published in the March 2014 American Educational Research Journal, followed 2,094 students and 350 teachers in 24 Virginia schools for three years, from 3rd to 5th grades. Compared with students in the control classrooms, students whose teachers fully implemented the Responsive Classroom program saw significant gains on their reading and math tests, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds. The association with achievement was especially strong for students who were initially low achievers.
It also positively impacted the classroom environment as a whole, which led to improved classroom organization and emotional support for students and, in mathematics, the Responsive Classroom approach led to increased depth and higher level discussions of the materials. A key detail of this approach is its holistic approach. The Responsive Classroom provides teachers with practices for teaching their students social and emotional skills such as cooperation, assertiveness, and empathy—traits that lend themselves to higher-level learning—in conjunction with their academic lessons.
Principal support was found to be important to teachers' full use of the approach. Teachers were more likely to use the approach if their principals were encouraging and if they received coaching while implementing their new practices. The Responsive Classroom approach was developed by the Northeast Foundation for Children, an educational nonprofit that looks to bring together academic and social learning. This study builds upon the researchers' earlier results, presented in 2012 and reported on by Education Week here, which also indicated student gains in statewide mathematics and reading assessments.
Tools to Help with Program Evaluation
Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific at McREL has recently released a set of tools for educators to use in designing and evaluating programs. These tools help educators frame discussions around using data, create logic models, and measure outcomes of programs.
Education Logic Model Tool: Logic models are an invaluable tool for education program planning, collaboration, and monitoring. They visually represent a program’s structure, process, and goals and help practitioners and evaluators better understand a program’s mechanics and structure and chart a course toward improved policy and practice. The Education Logic Model Tool guides you through a series of questions and providing opportunities to enter your program resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes. The end result is a printable logic model that functions as a map for you and your team, visually connecting your intended activities with your intended outcomes. For more information, please see the IES guides Logic Models: A Tool for Designing and Monitoring Program Evaluations and stay tuned for more information about a forthcoming guide, Logic Models: A Tool for Effective Program Planning.
Program Outcomes, Measures, and Targets Tool: Track your progress toward meeting program goals with this tool. It guides users through the process of naming indicators, measures, and targets for your program’s short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes. This information is then displayed in a color-coded interactive dashboard to illustrate progress that’s on-track, behind, or exceeding the specified target.
Interested in finding out more about program monitoring and its connection to effective leadership? Download the IES guide Understanding Program Monitoring: The Relationships Among Outcomes, Indicators, Measures, and Targets and stay tuned for more information about a forthcoming guide, Program Monitoring: The Role of Leadership in Planning, Assessment, and Communications
Guide and Webinar: Join REL Pacific on Wednesday, March 12 for a webinar on“Facilitating Data-Informed Conversations: 5 Steps Forward." This live, interactive webinar, designed for educators, administrators, and researchers, will feature an overview of REL Pacific's Five steps for structuring data-informed conversations and action in education guide. Learn about the five key steps in using data for informed decisionmaking and strategic action: setting the stage, examining the data, understanding the findings, developing an action plan, and monitoring progress and measuring success. Using guiding questions, suggested activities, and activity forms, the guide provides education data teams with a framework and the tools and vocabulary needed to support informed conversations around data.
Kentucky Model for College-Readiness of High School Students
<Click on this link to download the entire 62-page report.>
The purpose of this study was to examine Kentucky high school students’ participation and pass rates in college preparatory transition courses, which are voluntary remedial courses in math and reading offered to grade 12 students in the state. Three groups of students were compared using the population of grade 12 students in Kentucky public schools in school year 2011/12 (n=33,928): students meeting state benchmarks, students approaching state benchmarks (1 to 3 points below), and students performing below state benchmarks (4 or more points below). The courses targeted students who were approaching state benchmarks, but all students were eligible to take them. Results were examined for member school districts of the Southeast/South-Central Educational Cooperative (a research partner with Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia), a matched comparison group of districts with similar characteristics identified through propensity score matching, and the state as a whole. The study found that most students, even those targeted for the intervention, did not participate in the college preparatory transition courses. Among students who were approaching state benchmarks in math, fewer than one-third (28.1 percent) took transition courses, and among students approaching state benchmarks in reading, fewer than one-tenth (8.0 percent) enrolled in transition courses. Despite the intention of the policy, students from all three groups (meeting, approaching, and below state benchmarks) enrolled in the courses. Statewide pass rates for students who did enroll in transition courses in math or reading were more than 90 percent. Examining participation and pass rates can help schools and districts understand how college preparatory transition courses are used and may be adapted to meet the needs of students targeted for intervention.
Failure by Colleges and Government to Bridge Inequality
<Click here to download entire commentary from NY Times.>
Sobering commentary in NY Times on the initial promise of college as levelor of inequality through GI Bill and early years of federal financial aid programs and subsequent failure to keep up the financial commitment to the majority in society without the social capital of the priveledged classes. Following is a short excerpt from the commentary. Be sure to read some of the comments to the article (as of the moment, they number more than 250).
"When the G.I. Bill of Rights of 1944 made colleges accessible to veterans regardless of socioeconomic background, Robert Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, worried that it would transform elite institutions into “educational hobo jungles.” But the G.I. Bill was only the first of several federal student aid laws that, along with increasing state investment in public universities and colleges, transformed American higher education over the course of three decades from a bastion of privilege into a path toward the American dream.
Something else began to happen around 1980. College graduation rates kept soaring for the affluent, but for those in the bottom half, a four-year degree is scarcely more attainable today than it was in the 1970s. And because some colleges actually hinder social mobility, what increasingly matters is not just whether you go to college but where. The demise of opportunity through higher education is, fundamentally, a political failure. Our landmark higher education policies have ceased to function effectively, and lawmakers — consumed by partisan polarization and plutocracy — have neglected to maintain and update them. . . ." <Click here to continue reading.>
New Publication: Understanding the Peer Assisted Learning Model
Since 2006, the PAL program at the University of Minnesopta has contributed to improved academic performance of participating PAL students in rigorous introductory-level college courses.The program is built upon best practices from previous international peer learning models like Supplemental Instruction, Peer-led Team Learning, Emerging Scholars Program, and others. PAL is also guided by learning theories such as Universal Design for Learning to make the model more culturally-sensitive and embedded within the courses to increase its effectiveness for all students. Both quantitative and qualitative studies of PAL validate its effectiveness for increasing academic success of participating students and fostering development of personal and social skills. In addition to benefits for the participants, the PAL experience benefits PAL facilitators through deeper mastery of rigorous course material, increased confidence in public speaking and small group management skills, and encouragement to pursue a teaching career. While the PAL program was started to address the achievement gap in courses, it has bloomed into one that also enhances personal and professional skills for all that are involved.Built upon principles identified by other academic support programs and innovations of its own creation, PAL is an integral part of UMN’s overall academic support efforts.
Arendale, D. R. (2014). Understanding the Peer Assistance Learning model: Student study groups in challenging college courses. International Journal of Higher Education, 3(2), 1-12. doi:10.5430/ijhe.v3n2p Retrieved from http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/4151/2498