tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43683262046688358962024-02-18T22:16:33.471-08:00Buckets and Fires: The Blog"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler YeatsTeresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-29104901529066918342020-07-09T14:18:00.001-07:002020-07-09T14:19:53.960-07:00It's still not about you: A learner-centered approach in an online course<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At the end of spring semester, my dean asked us all what we thought we might need to teach our courses remotely in the fall. Our institution is moving all lectures to a distance learning format, which includes all of the courses I'm slated to teach. Thankfully, both of the courses I'm teaching in the fall are those I had to transition to distance learning in the spring. So, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I needed.<br />
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But I've done more thinking on this. Most of my department colleagues are sending shopping lists: a laptop stand, a tablet, a subscription to a program. Indeed, when my courses moved online, I was excited to need to use any of several excellent technology tools available for screen-casting and the like, some of which I'd used in face-to-face classes as a secondary tool. And although there were several excellent technology tools available, it seemed that most were marketed mostly toward <i>delivering </i>instruction.<br />
<br /><div>At first, it made sense. We faculty, from my home-office perspective, were doing a heckuva lot of work to transition fully face-to-face classes to online classes. Of course there should be tools available to help us do so! But once my courses switched to distance learning, these tools to deliver instruction felt misaligned with what my course needed. </div><div><br /></div><div>As a bonafide GIN (thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/GeekyPedagogy">@geekypedagogy</a>), I use regular feedback from my students to make adjustments throughout the course. The feedback after the first two weeks prompted a different kind of conversation. Instead of focusing on the material, my students were astounded by how much more energy and time they felt their classes needed. We talked almost every synchronous session about this being different--not better or worse, or easier or harder--work. We talked about how we perceive words on a screen versus on a physical page or a spoken phrase; about how the responsibilities shift in this kind of environment; about how to prioritize attention and energy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Most of all, we talked about how the level and nature of participation changes: showing up for class is more than a physical presence now. Some who were accustomed to sitting quietly in the back of the room were uncomfortable with speaking into the mic every session. Others shied away from the camera, and still others felt a heightened pressure from having to type or record responses quicker than they wanted or with less polish than they liked. I recognize that all of these are hidden-curriculum type discoveries that still relate to the communication skills in the course description; however, we know that experts see their fields relate almost infinitesimally, and novices see discrete boxes of information. And #MaslowsBeforeBlooms. </div><div><br /></div><div>It occurred to me that we (the higher ed collective) need tools for <i>receiving </i>that instruction, and that help create a solid learning experience from our <i>students</i>' perspectives. Yes, there is strong potential with, for example, collaboration tools, discussion tools, and tablet tools that allow for annotation. But these are still inherently very teacher-centered, content-oriented tools. In my courses, students tell me that initiating a team is rather foreign, beginning their own discussion board is somewhat awkward, and that most use their campus-issued laptop for schoolwork. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>Granted that most of us teaching courses specifically described as "communication" found the transition from on-ground to online learning (as opposed to teaching) easier because of their nature than those with applied labs or practicums. That's if these courses weren't already taught online. My students receive direct instruction and practice on how to form teams, communicate in collaborative projects, and conduct peer reviews, so I adjusted the load to account for the heavier learning on the structural side. However, again, the nature of my courses created a sort of happy coincidence.</div><div><br /></div><div>An online environment is particularly suited for teaching courses of this kind, and I was able to overlap their 'student survival skill' concerns with the topics of the course. I recognize, though, that this overlap is very likely more difficult for courses in a different category. So many tools for content delivery and an environment so well suited to the content diverts us from the learner-centered approach for which so many of us strive. </div><div><br /></div><div>To my mind, there are three types of tools we need to further encourage a learner-centered online course:</div><div><br /></div><div><ol style="line-height: 1.15;"><li style="line-height: 1.15;">A portal through which students can seamlessly access the technology tools we bring in without needing to create an account or sign in. There is a vast universe of tools available, which is helpful for those of us looking for different activity ideas, and many are connected to our LMS. However, a variety of activities means I use a lot of technology tools but each one is used just a few times, which makes an LTI acceptance process hardly worth it. Students burn out quickly when they need to constantly learn a new tool, and they don't need a long-term commitment. I'll argue that students don't even really need to know the name of the tool--just the action they need to make with it. </li>
<li style="line-height: 1.15;">Better tools for short, low-stakes, quick conversations in both asynchronous and synchronous situations. Students also burn out quickly on discussion boards; indeed, everything that we use for students to converse asynchronously requires some level of recording (writing a post, recording a video response), so it takes longer than we want, feels like it's high-stakes, and requires time on the front and back ends. Breakout rooms during synchronous meetings work well for these conversations; however, at least on my system, I still need to sort students into groups and set a time limit, which can tighten how open students feel about sharing, and the breakout room opens in a new window, which can lead to connectivity issues. Activities that use elbow partners and take 2-3 minutes give students a way to stay engaged without taxing their thinking energy.</li>
<li style="line-height: 1.15;">"Water cooler" spots for student-student and student-teacher (and students-teacher) interactions. Distance learning is really good at making the most of the time in front of the screen, but there's a lot lost when we cut out small talk. There are certainly opportunities to do this with Padlet or Flipgrid, but, as I say above, the formality we associate with anything that's recorded clashes with the casualness of small talk. Greetings in the hallway, jokes in the cafeteria, or stories on the way out to the parking lot all help build the social presence needed for students to trust us as people who care about their learning.</li>
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<div style="line-height: 1.15;">This is not to say that tools of these types don't exist, or exist yet. This is also not to say that my ignorance and minimal experience teaching online hasn't influenced this list. I've been absorbed by the theoretical frameworks and instructional design principles surrounding e-learning recently, but only recently. Perhaps, according to some other widely accepted guidelines that I'm unaware of today, tools of this kind aren't needed at all. </div><div style="line-height: 1.15;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.15;">This is also not to say that students should be excused from a more active role in their learning and return as they might in a face-to-face class--passively observing information pass by and silently doing the minimum needed to survive (in between engagement techniques, active learning strategies, and collaboration exercises). But for many of my students, the acts of signing up for a college class, taking out a notebook and pen, writing down notes, and putting energy into an assignment is an intimidating extension of a former student self. Going from hardly identifying as a student to full control of the learning is shocking and unfair. As many in the student success/learning center fields have taught us, students need to be taught how to learn, arguably more so in an online environment. The art of teaching includes conducting learner analyses to know what kinds of scaffolds to incorporate, when to include or remove them, and for whom. Especially as many students are forced to take courses like mine online when they would prefer face-to-face, tools such as these would be beneficial for building a social presence and focusing attention on learning the course material.</div><div style="line-height: 1.15;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.15;">A learner-centered approach needs to follow into the online learning environment, and it is ultimately up to the course instructor to make choices that will promote this approach. Otherwise, students drown in a whirl of content--a high risk in an environment that depends so much on self-regulation and can easily become exponentially isolationist. But in an online course, students get thrown in the lead role, and we need to provide tools and incorporate skills that will not only help them embrace that role, but also facilitate lifelong learning habits. </div>
</div></div>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-69200361200980456962015-06-25T07:16:00.006-07:002015-06-25T07:16:56.986-07:00<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/opinion/predatory-colleges-find-friends-in-congress.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><b>Predatory Colleges Find Friends in Congress (nytimes.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Assigning value to a college program based on its value in the economy is problematic for me in three ways: 1) it narrows the value of college down to economic value when in reality that value is much more complex and influenced by several other factors, 2) it takes a lot of the consumer-ish responsibility students need to have to make choices about where to go to college and what program to enroll in, and 3) colleges have very little control over how the economy values a set of skills. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This opinion piece refers to a Federal District Court judge in Washington who up held new Obama administration rules on Tuesday regarding the "gainful employment" rules, which "[<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">deny] federal aid to programs that have historically burdened students with loans well beyond their capacity to repay." </span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px;">According to the article, "The rules were inspired by data showing that </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">students in for-profit schools account for only about 12 percent of college enrollment, but nearly half of student loan defaults. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Other data has shown that graduates of for-profit institutions are more likely than graduates of other institutions to carry debt of more than $40,000 when they leave school." However, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/24/senate-spending-plan-college-programs-sets-likely-budget-fights" target="_blank">according to InsideHigherEd</a>, a U.S. Senate subcommittee passed a bill on Tuesday that would block most efforts to expand the federal government's role in higher education, including implementing a college rating system and defining gainful employment. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although this sort of element has a few kinks to be worked out, it does do one thing that is absolutely crucial for higher education to start doing more of if we are to regain relevance and credence: talk to the employers who want to hire these graduates. If the federal government will respect what higher education is asking--which is to hold control of accreditation, accountability, and regulation--and is willing to allow higher ed the tools it needs to do these important cleaning tasks effectively, then higher education needs to have someone else to hold them accountable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As in several other posts, concepts from Daniel Pink's <i>Drive</i> are useful to help us think about this matter. If the goal is measured objectively, as in numbers like tuition dollars or enrollment, the motivation to achieve the goal is extrinsic in nature, and we often suffer from tunnel vision about how to get to that goal. If the goal can't be measured so easily, such as improving one's quality of life or self-concept, the motivation is more intrinsic, and we have a much larger perspective from which to draw solutions. But the latter requires much more trust in the balance, which is why higher education and its accrediting bodies, whose goal is (usually) to educate, keeps running into conflict with numbers-oriented entities like for-profit colleges, whose goal is (usually) to make money. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If we want to attach a career to the value of a college education, then let's first expand the value of a career beyond the paycheck as well as the value of a college experience. Realizing that terms like "gainful" and "value" aren't so narrowly defined with help both sides with their respective causes. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-61844676068683204752015-06-24T09:02:00.001-07:002015-06-24T09:02:56.350-07:00Articles for June 24, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/adults-computers-and-problem-solving_9789264236844-en#page16" target="_blank"><b>Adults, Computers and Problem Solving (OECD)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This report is especially interesting because it looked at how well adults accomplished "problem-solving tasks that require the use of computer applications, such as e-mail, spreadsheets, word-processing applications and websites..." Specifically, the report found that "...literacy proficiency and age have the strongest independent relationships to proficiency in problem solving in technology-rich environments..." (p. 54). Of course, these skills apply to several career clusters, but the technical fields are especially susceptible to advances in technology and use a lot of specialized computer programs. Students who have trouble creating an e-mail or using Microsoft Word are not going to have an easy time working with image editing software, repair databases, or even just managing all the files that result from several drafts and separate pages typical of a technical field. This is not to mention those fields that need to create and/or repair technologies, like in a car, machine, or network, or the fact that many technical fields now conduct hiring processes electronically. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The report offers an interpretation about the relationship between literacy proficiency and problem solving proficiency: "the relationship between literacy proficiency and proficiency in problem solving reflects a relationship between general cognitive proficiency and problem solving using ICT, rather than a relationship specific to literacy proficiency," (p. 54). In doing my master's research, I found that many of the skills needed to be a successful machinist, electrician, designer, networker, or auto technician mirrored what is needed to be a successful reader. Why? Because they are similar skills, just set into a different context and specifically chosen for the task within that context. Being able to use context clues and syntax is incredibly important for successful reading, just as it is in writing computer code. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If we incorporate literacy skill instruction into our technical programs, we can equip technical students with a transferable set of tools that will make them better problem solvers in any situation. Teaching students to "think like an electrician" and emphasizing the thinking processes--reading, kinesthetic, or otherwise--allows teaching and learning to move toward a deeper, more critical level. This is vital if we are to give our students what they will need to compete in a global market, keep up with the increasing demands of the workplace, and take full advantage of technological advancements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://diverseeducation.com/article/73897/?utm_source=WhatCounts+Publicaster+Edition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Higher+Education+%26+National+Affairs%3a+Class+of+2014-15+ACE+Fellows+Gathers+for+Closing+Retreat&utm_content=Senate+Committee+Taking+Closer+Look+at+Education+Accreditation+Process" target="_blank"><b>Senate Committee Taking Closer Look at Education Accreditation Process (diverseeducation.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This discussion about accreditation is a little more objective than <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-watchdogs-of-college-education-rarely-bite-1434594602" target="_blank">the article from the <i>Washington Post</i></a> that covered the same topic earlier this week. As the article states, the reason for the attention on accreditation lately is that the hearing to reauthorize the Higher Education Act has led the HELP Committee to start talking about if accreditation should be about regulation or assessment. This article also refers to another contentious dimension surrounding this issue: "how difficult it can be for accrediting agencies to effect change at the institutions they monitor, due to 'contrary legal action.'" Specifically, it referred to the legal battle between the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges and the City College of San Francisco, and quotes hearing witness Dr. Albert C. Gray, who is president and CEO of the organization that gave accreditation to the recently collapsed Corinthian system of for-profit colleges. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The contrast between the two situations reflects what is so complicated about this issue. On the one hand, City College of San Francisco is suing ACCJC over, among other things, not giving the college due process and conflict of interest. Colleges need to have the ability to keep accrediting bodies in check in a legal sense to maintain a fair balance of power. On the other hand, accrediting bodies need to have enough teeth and recognition to keep college systems like Corinthian in check. Dr. Gray claims that "'Corinthian collapsed...because of financial pressure, not because of non-compliance with any regulation." This is perhaps even more important; without much power, it's easy for accrediting bodies to shift the blame. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If academics believe that accreditation should be done from within higher education, then we can't make the same assumptions about each other that we often, sadly, make about our students. We can't be so shortsighted to believe that everyone is involved for the same right reason, with the same right intention, and defines words like "fair" and "appropriate" similarly. The senators on the HELP Committee seem to have accepted the reality that neither Congress nor the Department of Education will be able to monitor quality as an alternative. We need a similar reality check in higher education, too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/24/author-new-book-purposeful-graduates-says-colleges-must-talk-students-about-making" target="_blank"><b>Why 'Vocation' Isn't a Dirty Word (insidehighered.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is an interview of the author of the new book <i>The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students About Vocation, </i>Tim Clydesdale. The book promotes the idea of talking to students about not just getting jobs, but making meaning lives for themselves. He builds his base off of his own research, and although the samples are from mostly 4-year, residential, religiously-affiliated universities, much of this applies to my 2-year technical private non-profit institution. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All of this is in the context of the conversation around the value of college. "We...seek to prepare leaders for tomorrow's professions, not applicants for this month's job openings." In my setting, many students begin their education with the sole purpose of getting a job or getting a better job. I see a lot of students who start out by dipping their toes into that student identity just enough to learn just enough to what they think will get them a job. What I also see, though, is a lot of students who change that vision, embrace themselves as professionals making meaningful work in society, and realize the true value of college is much more than an increased paycheck. It takes a couple of semesters before these students make that change, and, for some, that's too late. For some, that process has done too much damage to their GPA, too much debt has been incurred, too much trust has been lost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my view, we would be wise to treat and talk about the technical industries as the professions they are, instead of the jobs they used to be. there is a lot of calls for quick, specific training programs that get students in, out, and in a job. Those programs are great for students who might already have this kind of identity established. Viewing all technical education this way, though, cheapens their respective roles in our economy and the power of a college experience on building character. Clydesdale offers a first step: "...green-light this conversation...there are a goodly number of faculty and staff who would be happy to participate in this conversation, to share their own stories." The instructors in our classrooms hold their industries so close to their hearts that they want to help others experience it, and we should recognize and respect those fields the same as we do medicine, education, law, etc. We can start by incorporating this idea into the fabric of technical education. The technical fields are advancing at such a rate and in such a way that technical students need to view themselves as taking on a professional vocation, not simply receiving job training. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-26150534426649774722015-06-22T10:33:00.002-07:002015-06-22T10:33:28.667-07:00Articles for June 22, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/16/higher-ed-as-a-commodity-colleges-have-only-themselves-to-blame/" target="_blank"><b>Higher ed as a commodity? Colleges have only themselves to blame (washingtonpost.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a response to Hunter Rawling's post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/09/college-is-not-a-commodity-stop-treating-it-like-one/" target="_blank">College is not a commodity, stop treating it like one</a> (June 9), and it's pretty reflective of the other side of the balancing act colleges are facing. The hard reality is that colleges need tuition to operate, and not all would-be tuition-payers would be convinced by the message author Jeffrey Selingo feels higher education needs to promote. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Selingo offers three reasons why the commoditization of higher education is its own fault: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For decades, higher education has promoted the personal economic value of higher education. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Students are not solely responsible for their success. The college does matter. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Colleges have turned the four-year degree into an assembly line of getting in and getting out as quickly as possible. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In some ways, these points demonstrate a failed attempt to resonate with a larger part of the public with the least amount of change away from the traditional as possible. Most students want what every other consumer wants: the minimum he/she has to spend in dollars and time for the maximum value. We can wax poetic about how enlightened one becomes in college through the quality of discourse and delivery of expertise, but is that really what is most meaningful to our audience? Is this truly the reason why students go to college? (And why can't students have more than one reason for going to college?) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second point might speak about this the best of all. Selingo makes an excellent point: "It depends on...whether the student makes the college or the college makes the student." He refers to what he calls "undermatching" in which "smart students, usually low-income, could succeed at an elite college but never apply to one or go to one. When they go to a less-selective college they reduce their chances of earning a degree, according to the research." While I'm still a little uncomfortable with the research (and a little confused about exactly how it relates here), this reflects the culture of a college, which is kind of a chicken-and-egg argument. Colleges have some degree of control over what the culture of a college campus is, but colleges have also spent a lot of resources on #1 and #3 that there often isn't much of anything left for student organizations and student support departments that foster that culture, so it's left to the students. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, higher education needs to play a more active role in developing a culture that lends to student success; no, it won't be a magic silver bullet that gets college students to graduate. Choosing the right college entails some fairly deep, introspective, and mature processes that not all students looking to start a college career are ready to encounter, but colleges are under a lot of pressure to build enrollment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, higher education has engaged in some practices that has made it act like a commodity. We need to strike that delicate balance that will allow us to include both the economic and personal value of graduating from college. Higher education needs to become flexible enough to utilize both sides in order to reach the largest possible audience. Sacrificing one for the other devalues the latter.</span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-popular-compass-placement-test-acknowledging-its-predictive-limits" target="_blank"><b>Finding a New Compass (insidehighered.com)</b></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a soft spot for talk about developmental education. For all the researchers and administrators who seem to think eliminating developmental education will not eliminate academic unpreparedness, my experience has told a different story. As a developmental English instructor, I saw the true value of (at least) our developmental sequence as much more than content readiness. I felt the frustration of seeing the same comma, spelling, or structure error over and over no matter how much in-class practice, workshop, application, or times it was on a test. But I also saw students become comfortable with drafting, confident with stating an opinion, recognizing relationships between ideas, and seeing the meaning behind grammar. Our developmental classes worked because they gave students a chance to warm up to the way the college worked, figure out the quirks of their laptops, and find themselves as a student before getting slammed with Boolean and a group presentation on the first day of technical classes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Placement tests made me uneasy even before articles were writing like researchers had time machines, but higher education seemed anxious and desperate to place blame for the numbers of students who never made it out of the developmental sequence. There's a big difference between saying that "...up to a third of students who placed in remedial classes on the basis of the placement tests could have passed college-level classes with a grade of B or better," and "'We find that placement tests do not yield strong predictions of how students will perform in college," as given in <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/29/too-many-community-college-students-are-placing-remedial-classes-studies-find" target="_blank">this article back in 2012</a>. The first clearly implies that it's the developmental classes, the second implies it's the test. Which got more attention? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The non-cognitive limitation is mentioned in the article, as is a reference to the need for a more individualized assessment of readiness. For technical colleges, this is the way we need to move. We know from recent articles that we can't assume what we once did about high school grades and a diploma, and the value that connectedness and the social dimension of a college campus can have for retention and graduation. </span></div>
Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-52326285314608246322015-06-19T08:34:00.004-07:002015-06-19T08:34:46.379-07:00Articles for June 19, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-watchdogs-of-college-education-rarely-bite-1434594602" target="_blank"><b>The Watchdogs of College Education Rarely Bite (The Wall Street Journal)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The <i>Journal </i>uses plenty of data to talk about a dimension of the college graduation/loan default rate conversation that has seemed to have been left alone until now: accreditation. Although it lays blame without really laying blame, the article offers several statistics on how many colleges accreditors have closed, and what the graduation and loan default rates are at those colleges they haven't. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I still see a line between correlation and causation that is too blurry for my own comfort when we start talking about college performance and graduation or loan default rates. Accreditation is a healthy addition to that blur since it reveals some of the hard realities about higher education in a new context.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Accreditation should--should--be about the quality of the curricula, instruction, and assessment of learning. That's the extent, ultimately, that colleges can control and that's, ultimately, the essence of a college. The other pieces involved (enrollment, retention, institutional advancement, even efforts to improve academic success and graduation) should feed into that primary purpose, and more or less rely on someone else to make them work. Optimists like me have a tendency to hold that as truth and at the core of our very professional teaching selves. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In reality, the fundamental concern is about money. In reality, the quality of the education should correlate with, but not cause, graduation or a well-paying job to repay student loans. In reality, there are myriad other variables that we need to factor into if a student graduates and subsequently gets a well-paying job. It appears that the accreditation agencies at least attempt to make decisions holistically and recognize that numbers "don't tell the whole story" as the article quotes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But the accreditors' behaviors, as demonstrated in the article, exhibit some of the traditional ways of thinking that higher education needs to start moving away from to adapt to a changing reality. The accrediting agencies seem to promote a separation between higher education and everyone else and refuse the public's changing perception of the value of a college education. The Internet and the technologies we use to access it has given us the ability to both distribute and retrieve information (sometimes more than we want or should) whenever and wherever we want; the very act of making information unavailable in the face of these circumstances means perhaps even more than the data itself. The number of reports available on the high school-college-workforce gaps have made it clear that smoothing the transitions through collaboration and common goals is vital to progressing more students through that sequence successfully. Instead of working across lines, accrediting bodies appear to want to keep higher education apart from other institutions and agencies, specifically in terms of evaluation: "The accreditors say self-oversight is the best way to protect quality in higher education, because academics have the necessary expertise and frame of reference to judge quality." This suggests a level of mistrust, a fixed mindset, and a sort of elitist self-image. The kind of blind trust and rigid position in society reflected in these actions and that higher education has become comfortable with--if not dependent upon--continues to work against the institution and these goals of a better life for our students. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If we want to keep talking about how to graduate more students from college and avoid mountains of meaningless debt, we need to take a realistic look at higher education as a whole. We need to keep searching for variables instead of where to place blame; we need to find that balance between numbers and stories; and we need to let down those shields and sit together at the table. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/19/how-better-serve-returning-adult-students" target="_blank"><b>How to Better Serve Returning Adult Students (Inside Higher Ed)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Taking a good, long look at who the students in higher education are is Step #1 in that reality check. The link in this Quick Take from Insidehighered.com refers to a report suggestion some policy changes that would better serve returning adult students. The report focuses mostly on college students who had enrolled in college but left after at least one term without earning a credential. This is a great Step #1 since most reports only use first-time, full-time students in their data counts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recognizing that these students make up a significant portion of the student population--and a potentially larger one--is important in fulfilling this goal of educating and graduating students into a well-paying job and better life. We know that students need to identify with the college, to feel that they fit in, to know that someone was thinking about them when they set forth the support systems and processes to navigate. The suggestions in the report follow one common theme: flexibility. Breaking apart the rigidity and opening up our perspective is crucial to doing our part in delivering education, and will allow us to do so for more students as well. </span><br />
<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-60027531148643723392015-06-17T08:59:00.001-07:002015-06-17T08:59:49.168-07:00Articles for June 17, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/17/new-letters-us-and-accreditors-provide-framework-approval-competency-based-degrees" target="_blank"><b>Defining Competency (insidehighered.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some in higher ed who were hesitant at first to accept the concept of competency-based education (CBE) are now starting to warm up to the idea, myself included. My feeling is that a lot of the hesitancy was based on mistrust--particularly, the legislative bodies don't trust individual colleges, nor do colleges trust individual instructors. It's much easier to 'cover up' a trouble spot that might hold a student back inside the context of an 18-week course; CBE potentially exposes weaknesses--but also strengths--in students, instructors, curriculum maps and course content, and assessment methods. The major decision-makers in higher education seem to have been nervous about approving a structure that might make those potential soft spots public, and the effects thereafter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those in technical education and developmental education (I am proudly part of both families) will be able to address a lot of the problems we face in the specific contexts. Students in technical education need to master course competencies, but those competencies are often taken directly from or in addition to industry-set standards. An automotive course competency might mirror a requirement set up by NATEF (National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation) in order to pass the NATEF exam and become ASE certified. In that view, many technical education programs are essentially following one of the two approaches to CBE proposed already. A second approach, termed "direct assessment," would greatly benefit technical students and instructors because it offers students a chance to make what knowledge they bring with them meaningful. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAAahUKEwjD6-ms7JbGAhXKpYgKHYErBYE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnces.ed.gov%2Fpubsearch%2Fpubsinfo.asp%3Fpubid%3D2015144&ei=wXeBVYOHN8rLogSB15SICA&usg=AFQjCNGhKZXpIjTZ1lGupJVRNfmJd_1IQg&bvm=bv.96041959,d.cGU" target="_blank"><i>The Condition of Education 2015</i> (NCES)</a> reported that 39 percent of full-time undergraduates at private non-profit 2-year colleges (such as the one I work for) were ages 25 and older. What did those students do between high school graduation and college enrollment? While some may have wandered between an minimum-wage job and the couch in Mom and Dad's basement, many gain valuable skills as an entry level employee or in the military. As it is right now, prior-learning assessments (PLA), and transfer credits for that matter, aren't part of a direct assessment approach; however, the fact that all students aren't treated the same way, starting at zero, can still be beneficial. To be able to allow those students to count those skills toward a formal education would not only benefit the student financially and in terms of time, but it would likely benefit those students at a deeper, personal level as well. Identity, confidence, self-worth, and motivation would likely get a healthy boost because instructors could tap into those assumptions and suggestions from adult learning theorists. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Furthermore, a CBE structure would provide a great platform to revitalize technical education into the holistic, sophisticated curriculum stream it now needs to be to properly educate those going into these fields. The direct assessment approach proposed is not based on semesters or credits. The technical fields have become much more complex and complicated, as technology advances and workers are required to be able to do more at a faster rate and to a higher standard against growing competition. A CBE structure would allow technical programs to revisit their curricula at a deeper, more cognitive level and integrate the skills students must master as well as the products to make and tasks to perform. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Developmental education would benefit from a CBE approach as well, especially if developmental educators and technical instructors can work together to make the transition from one to the other seamless. If we can examine what technical programs require at a deeper level, we can better determine how best to prepare (not remediate--this implies that students once learned the skill and needs a reminder; for many students in developmental ed, this is not the case) students for a particular set of outcomes. We can individualize that developmental progression; the <a href="http://www.thencat.org/PlanRes/Math%20Lectures%20Editorial.htm" target="_blank">Emporium model </a>used in place of math developmental education is perfect for a CBE environment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are still plenty of questions surrounding the idea of awarding credits by demonstrating competencies instead of fulfilling credit hours, but this article reports a step in the right direction. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/11/who-is-teaching-your-kids-in-college-you-might-be-surprised/" target="_blank"><b>Who is teaching your kids in college? You might be surprised. (washingtonpost.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although there is some serious lack of perspective here (the first line is serious need of a reality check; we seem to only be talking about giant, 4-year liberal arts colleges; it teasingly dances around the debate about tenure as a fundamental part of teaching), there are some nuggets that reflect how much higher education needs to adapt to meet the changing role and perception of it in current society. The author's ultimate goal seems to be to advise parents to ask colleges about who on campus is full-time and who teaches first-year classes; this would imply that there's a difference in quality of full-time and adjunct instructors, and I don't think we can safely make that assumption based on that status alone. He also offers a lot of research that suggests full-time instructors can do a lot of things that students love and find valuable that adjuncts usually don't. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To me, what lies underneath is that question in the title: who is teaching your kids in college? Higher education has a bad habit of assuming certain things so we don't feel the need to investigate them and possibly find out problems we don't want to address. The quality of instruction and curriculum is definitely an area in need of some investigation, especially since college classrooms are often much more diverse and complex than those in primary or secondary schools. The classroom dynamics are complicated by differing ages, background knowledge, motivations, and matured personalities. While elementary and secondary students are still sculpting their identities, building prior knowledge, and preparing for a place in society, college students have some of those elements firmly established. Even more complicated, some college students need to work directly against some of those established elements in order to be successful students. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is the same on the instructor side, and perhaps even more so in a technical education setting. The credentials needed to be a worker in a particular industry are most often quite clear, but those needed to be an instructor in a post-secondary classroom teaching programs that feed into that industry are not usually well defined. Even the Bureau of Labor and Statistics speaks generally about the criteria for becoming a technical instructor. Since many instructors come from business and industry--44 percent according to some reports--it's safe to say that instructors are knowledgeable in their fields; however, we might be lumping more into that credential than we mean to. Having the evidence in front of us that an instructor is an expert in industry seems to lead to the assumption that he/she will be able to teach it. We would be wise to start building on the theory and philosophy viewing and treating teaching as a science and applied practice. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-36312672567293203552015-06-15T09:00:00.002-07:002015-06-17T09:03:12.789-07:00Articles for June 15, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/15/are-lazy-rivers-and-climbing-walls-driving-cost-college" target="_blank"><b>Lazy Rivers and Student Debt (insidehighered.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although there are some political undertones--especially in the comments section--about the recent attention brought to this issue by Chris Christie and Elizabeth Warren, this article does offer some hard data about how much amenities like aquatic centers and climbing walls actually cost in relation to other causes for rising tuition costs. The argument is usually that large, expensive amenities like these attract students; the counter is that college affordability and repairs to academic facilities should be the priority. To me, though, this seems like the end of a long breadcrumb trail. </span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Each of us calculates the value of something a bit differently. I'll spend quite a bit on a purse if I really love it and commit to using it for the next couple of years; I hesitate to pay the relatively low price of a paperback because I know I'll only read it once and then need to find a home for it thereafter. The fact that colleges need to resort to shiny objects and glossy instant gratification implies that potential students are having a tougher time seeing the value of going to college. Unfortunately, spending more on shiny objects is no silver bullet, and further cheapens the education part of going to college. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://thefinancialdiet.com/confessions-of-a-girl-who-was-too-smart-for-community-college/" target="_blank"><b>Confessions of a Girl Who Was "Too Smart for Community College" (thefinancialdiet.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It seems that the author's primary purpose in this post was to emphasize the value of a community college in contrast to the negative connotation it still carries, but she also brings to light a few other points in the process. For one, part of the author's story is that she took a couple of years and worked in BigKidWorld before enrolling. She does not, however, go into what exactly drove her to enroll; this is pretty important to consider if we're going to address retention and graduation. We can build those relationships, work through advising sessions, and be proactive about completion if we can tap into a student's motivation. Adult students need reasons to do things, and an intrinsic motivation lines up nicely with the growth mindset needed to overcome the obstacles that may otherwise cause a student to drop out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A second great point is how difficult--and freeing--it was to accept "do" college in a way other than "how you are 'supposed' to..." She talks about the stigma that community college carries, and what being accepted and attending a four-year implies instead. There seems to be this clash between wanting to say that one is a ____, but not wanting to do the things that make one a _____ for identity reasons. Take a musician, for example. In my mind, that line of logic goes something like this: <i>I'm a musician because I sing. I don't know how to read music or count beats or anything, but that's because I don't practice or study music. But I'm still a musician. </i>Someone might <i>say </i>she is a college student because she is enrolled, but never <i>be</i> a student because she does not identify as a student who does homework, studies for exams, practices good work habits, participates in class, etc. Simply enrolling in a 4-year is an easy way to say you are a college student, but actually moving through the motions of a successful student could easily be hidden away. Which is a great segue to the third article for today--</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colleges-are-using-big-data-to-identify-when-students-are-likely-to-flame-out/2015/06/14/b2cc68f8-03e4-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html" target="_blank"><b>Colleges are using big data to identify when students are likely to flame out (washingtonpost.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, an article emerges that talks about using data other than test scores to identify more than simply if students will pass another test or not. Education Advisory Board (EAB) is a consulting firm that teamed up with Virginia Commonwealth University to dig deeper into the "murky middle" to address retention and graduation rates. It would seem that more attention is paid to what would apply to the highest number of students, but traditionally, we concentrate efforts on the highest and the lowest achievers. Ignoring that middle population means that there are plenty of students for whom we assume no-news-is-good-news. This research is suggesting otherwise. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Researchers found that of the students who return for a second year with grade-point averages between 2.0 and 3.0, <b>two out of five will drop out</b>...</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The murky-middle students who don't graduate tend to have GPAs that stay flat and then fall off over time. <b>That suggests they are trucking along, doing their best, maybe they're more susceptible to something going wrong or maybe they're treading water,</b>" Venit [of EAB] said. "You talk to advisers and there are a lot of reasons, but the most common is these students are losing motivation." [emphasis mine]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Researchers have a big job in making it clear issues that our own perceptions might not pick up. I've argued over and over that it's difficult for college administrators to give credence to much of the talk about student skills because many were not struggling students themselves (how could you not bring a pencil to class? why is it so difficult to get out of bed in the morning??) Unfortunately, higher education has a bad habit of only researching the issues for which we're not afraid to talk about answers. This leaves out a lot of perspectives, and if we're going to commit to graduating more and better students, we need as many perspectives as we can get. </span><br />
<i><br /></i>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-31368297071156396192015-06-10T07:51:00.000-07:002015-06-10T07:51:46.939-07:00Articles for June 10, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/09/college-is-not-a-commodity-stop-treating-it-like-one/" target="_blank">College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. (washingtonpost.com)</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a fabulous, fabulous post written by Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities and former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa. His main point is that the public forms all perception about higher education as if it is a commodity by focusing on the economic dimension of it; he uses the example of a car. However, "unlike a car, college requires the 'buyer' to do most of the work to obtain its value" (para. 4). He goes on: "...most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television" (para. 5). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is what I call flash drive learning: the idea that students pay their money to get information downloaded for immediate application in a job and earn more money. The big picture error is that we're defining a "better life" as having more money. As Dan Pink writes in <i>Drive</i>, money is important to get off the table, but it severely narrows the focus if it is the only goal. On his TED Talk "<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en" target="_blank">The Puzzle of Motivation</a>," he uses the well-known <a href="http://icreate-project.eu/index.php?t=245" target="_blank">Candle Problem</a>, a test of problem solving developed by Karl Duncker in 1945, to show how limited our perspective can be when it's done so by our own cognitive biases. If students are extrinsically motivated--by the prospects of more money or a degree--instead of intrinsically motivated, they seek out that flash drive learning. When decision-makers are extrinsically motivated, they promote flash drive learning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so college is evaluated more by numbers--cost, time, enrollment--and becomes a commodity. Sadly, this view is only exacerbated by the perspectives of students coming out of high schools who have had some kind of accommodation to the regular rules. As NPR's recognized series of articles on the meaning behind the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/09/412939852/high-school-graduation-rates-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ambiguous" target="_blank">high school graduation rate</a> has exposed, we can't define "high school diploma" as we used to, but students carry that definition--and everything they used and did to claim it--with them when they enroll in college. The shock that follows the realization that one cannot just pay his/her bill and walk out with a degree is a struggle all too real, and colleges would do well to pay attention to those numbers as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It seems like passing the buck if teachers claim that it's the student's fault for failing or dropping out. What's more, many of the decision-makers "treat colleges as purveyors of goods, students as consumers and degrees as products" (para. 6). Teachers are supposed to be just the machine that places the product on the assembly line. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The saddest news is that the real value of education beyond high school--a student's confidence, independence, and enrichment--happens for most students whether they begin for that purpose or not, but this isn't recognized in either case. The purpose is not to get a job and make more money; the purpose is to get a job and make more money so that one is able to support oneself, to take pride in one's work, and to hold a place in society. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/10/aaup-committee-survey-data-raise-questions-effectiveness-student-teaching" target="_blank">Flawed Evaluations (insidehighered.com)</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Keeping on, this piece speaks perfectly to the problem with treating college as a commodity in how higher education evaluates faculty. Although student feedback is vital in informing classroom decisions, the survey reported in this article suggested that there is an increasingly over-reliance on them. Apart from being very narrow-viewed and that faculty often have no part in what is included, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/gender-bias-student-evaluations" target="_blank">recent research</a> suggests a strong gender bias in these evaluation. What's more, a white paper referenced in the article says that the rate of return suggests these surveys are likely not valid data sources. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Course evaluations have their place, but it is among other methods of gathering data. Unfortunately, those methods--observation, teaching portfolios, on-campus faculty development centers, mentor programs--get low priority on the budget totem pole. The fact that higher education often relies only on the "consumer" (the student) to provide an evaluation of it refers back to the commodity argument. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, consider a summary: most survey responses come from extreme ends of the spectrum; colleges are feeling the pressure to enroll and graduate more and more students; and "high school diploma" does not mean what we thought it meant. If colleges are enrolling more students, a percentage of them are in the three sets of high school graduates discussed by NPR. Those students likely will find the shift to college the most uncomfortable and frustrating, and will likely be on the unhappy end of the spectrum who fills out the surveys. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201411/why-we-love-bad-news-more-good-news" target="_blank">Studies</a> suggest that humans are more sensitive to bad news than good, so those negative comments get more attention than the others. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In other words, it seems that higher education is using primarily the negative feedback of students who probably came in to college expecting a flash drive education to evaluate its faculty. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-8140162834139050372015-06-08T10:16:00.000-07:002015-06-08T10:16:28.870-07:00Articles for Jun 8, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/08/two-year-transfers-are-finding-not-all-their-credits-go-them" target="_blank">2 + 2 Shouldn't = 5 (InsideHigherEd.com)</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Transfer credits appear to be yet another sticky spot that requires higher education to decide if it is a public- or private-good industry. The process of trying to transfer over a class from one college to another seems to pit one college against the other in much the same way the value of a new car plummets as soon as its driven off the dealer's lot: both happen because of a lack of knowledge, which leads to a lack of trust. This is tough, because competing interests should have a little something different that makes them stand out. But if higher education, as seems to be the case, emerges as an opportunity that everyone should have, those differences will have a hard time existing since we'll need everyone to know the same thing. It seems that the answer to this problem has been to make more classes transferable, which, in turn, makes them more similar among different colleges that have traditionally had to compete for students. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What if we're not asking the right question? The question, to me, is not how to make more classes transferable and thus sacrifice the uniqueness and individuality of each campus. Instead, let's look at why students seek to transfer credits in the first place; let's find out why, when 80 percent planned to when they enrolled, only 25 percent of the students at two-year institutions actually transfer to a four-year within five years as the article states; let's figure out why, as the article offers, "students who are allowed to transfer almost all of their credits are two and a half times more likely to completely [<i>sic</i>] a bachelor's degree than those who transfer fewer than half, according to the Community College Research Center"; let's consider why it's so difficult when students don't fit nicely into a process. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, let's talk about why are we still talking about community college as a stepping stone to a university. The final quote from Bruce Leslie, chancellor of Alamo Colleges, reflects this as he explains the "push-pull" model: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As high school push [students] to us, we need to pull them as we push students to universities, and they need to pull our students into the universities. The goal is not longer just send them to community college. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I suppose taken in context, this makes great sense, but talking about "just" sending a student to a community college seems a little narrow-viewed. A student who is going to a 2-year to get their generals taken care of and then enrolls in a 4-year for their core content classes is probably pretty concerned about credits transferring, but this seems to assume an awful lot about enough students to warrant this kind of attention. Some industries don't require a 4-year degree, and some students need all the courage they can muster just to step onto a community college campus. Let's ask some more questions before we come up with an answer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/04/412093161/the-truth-behind-your-states-high-school-grad-rate" target="_blank">The Truth Behind Your State's High School Grad Rate (NPR.org)</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Make sure you click the "it's a complicated number" link on the page; this is where Anya Kamenetz brings out the big guns. The improved graduation rate comes down to three reasons: schools are stepping in early by concentrating on pre-K, lowering the bar with alternative (and often easier) routes to graduation, and "gaming the system" by excluding likely dropouts from their numbers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The overall question is the value of a high school diploma. For higher education, this means we need to rethink what we use to admit students. Many, many colleges refer to the research on how predictive high school grades and overall GPA can be for college success. Like the problem with transfer credits, colleges struggle with a lack of knowledge; however, unlike the solution with transfer credits, colleges hesitate to make their own rules out of fear of a lost enrollee. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a really, really pertinent article since it ties very closely with another big education push: college completion. The effects are reflected in the number of students who score low on the ACT (check your state's average score), who test into remedial education, who leave college due to academic reasons, and even who are deemed 'unprepared' by employers. All of those answers we thought we had need to be reconsidered. </span><br />
<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-50977762753705239862015-06-05T06:22:00.000-07:002015-06-05T06:27:01.870-07:00Articles for June 5, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.ccdaily.com/Pages/Campus-Issues/Partnerships-promote-college-going-among-high-school-students-.aspx" target="_blank"><b>Working Together to Prepare Students for College Success (CCDaily.com)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is hope. A few great examples of partnerships between community colleges and high schools are discussed in this article. A program out of Maryland graduated 92 students from the <a href="http://www.pgcc.edu/about_pgcc/academy_of_health_sciences.aspx" target="_blank">Academy of Health Sciences Middle College</a>; these students earned their associate's degree the same day they earned a high school diploma. In California, a <a href="http://www.smc.edu/NewsRoom/Pages/LA-Hi-Tech.aspx" target="_blank">consortium</a> of eight colleges, 30 high schools, and more than 100 employers are organized into four hubs to offer support systems like dual-enrollment, bridge programs, mentorships, and tutoring to prepare students for ICT-related careers. Maricopa Colleges in Arizona implemented <a href="https://asa.maricopa.edu/departments/office-of-student-affairs/programs/american-indian-outreach/programs/maricopa-hoop-of-learning" target="_blank">Hoop of Learning</a>, a program that covers most of the financial costs of college and works with school districts to guide qualified participants into mainstreaming with regular college students. The <a href="http://studentsuccessinitiatives.org/initiatives/current/gulf-coast-partners-achieving-student-success/" target="_blank">GC PASS</a> initiative in Texas encourages its eight community colleges and 11 school districts to create transition teams, and tackles the ever-present blame game between high schools and colleges in the process. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Technical colleges would do even better to recognize the potential in partnering with high schools. <a href="http://www.nrccte.org/resources/publications/capitalizing-context-curriculum-integration-career-and-technical-education-0" target="_blank">Research out of the NRCCTE</a> found that many students who have trouble with traditional academic subjects choose technical fields. Furthermore, <a href="http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/educational-outcomes-occupational-postsecondary-students.html" target="_blank">research from the CCRC</a> found that students in technical programs are less likely than students in an academic field to achieve their degree. </span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Arguably the best benefit from partnership programs like these is how much they help students adopt an identity of learning, professionalism, and growth. What's more, using an occupational context to teach fundamental concepts can be traced back to Dewey's philosophy, and several published reports recommend it to improve student achievement. Technical colleges would doubly benefit from this, since vocational programs are still seen as second choice options, and, as an article <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Heal-the-Academic-Vocational/134214/" target="_blank"><i>The Chronicle of Higher Ed</i></a> points out, Western culture still sees vocational programs as only job-oriented or hands-on instead of academic. This is a problem since the technical fields continue to become more complex and require higher and higher levels of skill and knowledge, and <a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/ASkillsbeyondSchoolReviewoftheUnitedStates.pdf" target="_blank">workers in the vocational fields face increased demands</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These types of extensive efforts that involve several stakeholders imply a certain need in the general education landscape. The silos that exist are detrimental to all students, but they've been allowed to exist so far because enough students have been able to work around them. Now that we're facing a reported skills gap and a call from all sides to get more students to and through college, those silos have to come down. Coupled with the number of employers offering education as a job perk, higher education would do well to recognize this need for a fundamental change. </span><br />
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<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-42231428430750007482015-06-04T06:59:00.002-07:002015-06-04T07:35:36.480-07:00Articles for June 4, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.highereducationforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Servings-Americas-New-Traditional-Students.pdf" target="_blank"><b>Serving America's New Traditional Students (highereducationforall.com) [PDF]</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The focus of this short report is on the changing demographics of post-secondary institutions, and that education policy needs to allow access to account for those demographic changes. A key point given is a projection from the U.S. Census Bureau: by 2050, half of the population in the United States will belong to a minority group. Tied with the focus on the need for educational attainment to achieve better income equality, this has strong implications for what colleges are then tasked to do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While the education than an institution provides must be tailored to the needs of modern workforce, in terms of skills, it must also be tailored to the changing needs and demands of students. </span></blockquote>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This means that it is vital for colleges to find out what those needs and demands are. Colleges can no longer be passive about admission and retention; sacrificing rigorous standards cannot be an option either. Furthermore, meeting these needs and demands will require a significant--and risky-- investment, and colleges need to decide if they are willing to make that investment. In this regard, anything less than full commitment will not be successful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.educationdive.com/news/online-education-partnerships-increasingly-popular-among-employers/400174/" target="_blank"><b>Online Education Partnerships Increasingly Popular Among Employers (educationdive.come)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Starbucks first announced its plan to offer subsidized online degree programs, I was skeptical (see <a href="http://bucketsandfires.blogspot.com/2014/06/elephants-in-coffee-shop.html" target="_blank">Elephants in the Coffee Shop</a>) because doesn't really address the root issue. I'm not sure who benefits from the Starbucks plan, I'm not sure that a degree is always the answer, and I'm not entirely sure that access is truly the problem (it is A problem, but not THE problem). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This briefing lists two more employers of note who have implemented similar plans: Fiat Chrysler and insurance company Anthem Inc. I'm still a little hesitant to call this type of plan a silver bullet, but I realize its value. Just as there are potential students around who could turn into graduates with support and attention, there are potential students around who have the student skills needed and would thrive in an opportunity like this. We should not deny the second group a chance for the sake of the first group. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A few questions arise from this situation, though. Do these workers already have a college education? If so, why do they need classes? What is getting taught in these classes post-job that wasn't taught pre-job? Colleges would do well to tap into these programs and take a more proactive approach to addressing that gap, rather than forcing employers to retroactively remedy it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If these workers do not already have a college education, what do these employers expect to do once these employees are finished with classes? A promotion? Raise? Do they expect these employees to stay with company? </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-34188367621023191732015-06-01T07:41:00.000-07:002015-06-04T07:35:55.566-07:00Articles for June 1, 2015<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/31/407976419/adult-course-offers-learning-for-the-sake-of-learning" target="_blank"><b>Adult Course Offers Learning for the Sake of Learning (npr.org)</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine that: intrinsic motivation increases success and value in higher education. This kind of motivation makes going to college more meaningful than just getting a degree for the end goal of making more money at a better job--and I say "just" because it should be one reason, not the only reason. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The students at the program in this article are those students that we, in the learning center, see the most often. These are the students who traditionally need the most help, and are most likely to drop out before completion. Why? Just a handful of lines down the page, we find an answer: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"'I was so freaking nervous,' Mitchell says, 'because I felt so dumb. You know, I felt like I was too old.'" </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Identity. For those students who do not identify with being smart or with being a student, going to college has to be about making more money instead of learning for the sake of learning because that's what will make more sense with the not-smart identity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have seen many, many students travel this same road. They come to our institution to get a degree so they can qualify for a better-paying job, only to graduate just two years later completely changed into a competent, confident professional. One student started with us in developmental math and English, and got so frustrated just in learning how to use the technology to take the pre-test on the first day that he needed to leave the classroom to calm down. Two years later, he'd recognized his true ability, gained confidence in who he is, and developed the patience and restraint needed to work with people and machines he can't directly control. Going to college gave him the opportunity to practice those pieces, and learn some pretty valuable trade skills. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We can measure success in dollars, but that only tells part of the story. The true value of going to college lies in that identity building. In my case, I get to watch students who have not identified as the traditional student--and been beaten down, discarded, and demeaned because of it--gain the pride, work ethic, and sense of accomplishment from the skills and knowledge that will allow them to take their place in society, provide for their family, and make their life meaningful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/provost-prose/engagement-and-experiential-learning#at_pco=smlwn-1.0&at_si=556c60dcca403dac&at_ab=per-3&at_pos=0&at_tot=1" target="_blank"><b>Engagement and Experiential Learning (insidehighered.com) [Blog]</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Herman Berliner's blog post focuses on these two "of the most significant" changes in higher education of recent years. He focuses on internships as a way to provide experiential learning to students. The benefits of experiential learning that are listed are absolutely to be noted (a sharpened skill set, an enhanced chance of getting a job, a crucial bridge between college and career), and I would add more to the discussion with what such an experience can do for struggling students. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe it's because I teach general electives, but I've seen plenty of complete 180's in a student from before to after an internship. The reality that sets in once a student actually experiences a place of work in his/her prospective field can make all the classroom stuff more meaningful. I get significantly fewer "why do we have to learn THIS? I'm never going to need to use THIS when I'm a ___..." from students who have internship, or even entry-level, experience. I'd argue that internships, in perhaps a much lesser capacity than what they traditionally are, might be better suited for a student's first semester than his/her final semester. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He also speaks about engagement in terms of civic engagement, specifically protests. There is plenty of literature on the Millenials and interest in politics, social movements, and civic involvement. This seems like it would be easier done in a liberal arts setting, but the landscape of technical education is calling for a bit of a revolution to meet the coming needs of the workforce. No longer can technical education be thought of as button-pushing or grunt work; the skills and requirements needed to fulfill these jobs are becoming exponentially complex and sophisticated, and the education must either match it or prepare students for some intense OJT. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In higher education in general, I would also include the possible benefits to education policy and the potential to close the gaps between high school and college, and college and the workforce. We have a substantial student population yearning to make their voices heard, and we have a substantial need for communication. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/18/92/11892.pdf" target="_blank"><b>State Approaches to Funding Dual Enrollment (ECS.org) [PDF]</b></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Serendipitous to the discussions above, I find this policy analysis from Education Commission of the States on dual enrollment. The report focuses on different approaches for addressing tuition and other costs for students participating in a dual enrollment program, such as Minnesota's PSEO or Iowa's Senior Year Plus. The bottom line is that states recognize how successful these types of programs are, but have not made sufficient efforts to figure out how to pay for it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The underlying purpose of a dual enrollment program is to get underserved populations of students into college, the same population focused on in the recent conversation around free tuition to community colleges. The analysis provides some insight to fine-tune this discussion. The report offers measurable benefits (higher likeliness to be college ready, higher first-year GPA, higher completion rate), but my belief is that these are indicative of the qualitative benefits, among which the report lists two: student see themselves as college material, and the opportunity to experience different CTE majors before committing to a certain college or program. More money might help students, but it can't be the only thing we can offer to support them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In combination with the above two articles, the implication I see is that dual enrollment works because it allows students who may not have been able to develop a student identity in high school do so before jumping into a college setting. That shift from high school to college can be like diving into a pool of cold water for a student in such a situation, and it's sometimes enough to either completely deter or cause some hesitation in grasping the 100 percent dedication needed to be successful in college. Without that identity, those quantifiable statistics don't happen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wonder how many dual enrollees would not have attended college if they had not participated in such a program. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-24335100427602885132015-05-28T07:11:00.000-07:002015-06-04T07:36:25.367-07:00Articles for May 28, 2015<a href="http://www.edcentral.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FINAL-College-Decisions-Survey-528.pdf" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deciding to Go to College (New America Foundation) [PDF]</span></b></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first brief in the series on results from the College Decisions Survey, this article covers why students choose to go to college, the factors they use to apply to a specific college, and how financial concerns play into those decisions. Unlike other similar coverage, these data will include traditional and non-traditional students.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What's interesting is that the first figure shows the top reported reasons to go to college, with the top three--"to improve my employment opportunities," "to make more money," and "to get a good job"--centered around expanding financial horizons. Put that beside the second figure that show the top reported factors in deciding a specific college, and you won't find "how many graduates find full-time employment in the field within six months" until #5 on the list; others centered around graduation and ROI are in the same chunk of the ranking. Instead, the highest percentages go to those questions related to more immediate concerns: "the majors/programs that are offered," "availability of financial aid," "how much it costs," and "where it is located."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my view, that means the onus is not (solely) on the college to provide programs that will lead to a well-paying job. It seems that many soon-to-be students already have a pretty firm perspective about college ("Going to college will get me a better job, and I am interested in this subject, so I'm going to go to college and get a degree in it and be able to get a good job in that field."), but is it accurate? This, then, seems to imply that students--not industry, not colleges, not high schools, but students--are put in charge of making the degree-career connection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For further investigation, I have a hunch that a student's purpose for staying in college is not always the same as what drives them to enroll in the first place; I'm interested to see if subsequent briefs cover this. I'm also interested to see a comparison of the reasons for choosing a specific institution and the actual value a student feels he/she got out of that institution.</span><br />
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<b><a href="http://s2.epi.org/files/2015/the-class-of-2015-revised.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Class of 2015 (Economic Policy Institute) [PDF]</span></a></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This report looks at the role of young people in the economy, particularly in the context of the current economic recovery from the Great Recession. Specifically, the focus is on recent high school and college graduates not enrolled in further education, but trying to become established in the work world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For me, the takeaway from this report is personal: "Young workers who have the bad luck to enter the labor market during a downturn not only have worse outcomes in the short run than if they had entered in a healthy market; these negative effects can last a very long time" (p. 26). I graduated college in December of 2006, and spent the next two years bouncing between substitute teaching, a number of short-term teaching jobs, and a full-time job in a education-related private company. When I got my first full-time classroom teaching position, I had no prep hour, no textbooks, no curriculum, and four different subjects to prepare for. I spent every Sunday in my home office scrambling to get ready for the week ahead. And I made less than $2000 a month.</span><br />
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<b><a href="http://www.msdf.org/blog/2015/05/college-completion-taking-non-cognitive-side-equation/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">College Completion: Taking on the non-cognitive side of the equation (msdf.org)</span></a></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Todd Penner's blog highlights what may be the most important, and most often ignored, factor in increasing college success, and it's not academic readiness, nor the high cost of tuition, nor the inability to gain admission; it's the non-cognitives. If we want to encourage more students to go to college, and more colleges to open their doors, and remove 'barriers' to success, then we must be aware that this will not be adding more of the same to the student population mix. More students means more different stories, backgrounds, and needs, and colleges need to respond to this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From my perspective, these are the most difficult factors to give credence to, especially if you're a successful college president who loves learning, identifies as smart and managerial, and exudes confidence. Without perspective, it's difficult to see how simply walking onto a college campus, let alone sign up for a class, can take courage and guidance. It can be easy to take for granted those classroom survival skills that some learn through observation. It might be even a little painful to admit that some students do well because they have figured out the "how"--how to write a paper to get a good-enough grade, how to study just enough for the test, how to interact with the instructor. These might be important as part of a classroom experience, but they diminish the actual cognitive ability involved in the success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The most startling part of the blog comes about mid-page: "Up to 75 percent of all college drop-out decisions among historically underrepresented students are non-academic in nature..." Some graduates of the boot-strap school might dismiss that as "too bad" and throw up their hands. But we're in an economy and a time when, frankly, we can't afford to see that many students unable to process through an experience like college. Even if, as my colleague claims, we are becoming over-educated and the law of diminishing returns is starting to factor in, could we extrapolate this and potentially see those same drop-outs unable to maintain a steady job, or fulfill parental responsibilities, or stay current with a mortgage payment? </span><br />
<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-72347104834208847602015-05-27T08:46:00.000-07:002015-06-04T07:36:36.015-07:00Articles for May 27, 2015<b><a href="http://hechingerreport.org/can-we-really-prepare-kids-for-both-college-and-career/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Can we really prepare kids for both college and career? (hechingerreport.org)</span></a></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This article might say more about the state of industry than the state of education. California's linked-learning curriculum includes college-prep academic courses and on-the-job training; in my opinion, this should be the norm, not the exception, for a high school experience. To balance this idealism, Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, makes a more realistic point: preparing students for both is unrealistic because the requirements of college and the requirements of a career are vastly different. Perhaps it is not only education that we need to consider reforming. </span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://www.ced.org/pdf/Monthly_member_call_2015-05-20_postsecondary.pdf" target="_blank">The Current State of Postsecondary Education in the U.S. (Committee for Economic Development) [PDF]</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The value of this is the updated numbers for much of the data referenced for the same arguments across higher ed coverage: number of high school graduates, number of degrees, cost of tuition, average earnings of degree-holders. The interesting thing about these slides, though, is what's not covered between the two slides covering the workforce perspective--the first showing the employers' responses to the question "Are graduates prepared for the workforce?" and the second showing responses to "If you currently have unfilled jobs, what is the primary reason the jobs are unfilled?"--and the following slide that covers the cost of college. A colleague of mine brought up two points yesterday that would be appropriate to include here: 1) how much do these jobs pay? has that changed? how is that related to what a worker is expected to do on Day 1?; and 2) we tell students that we want critical thinkers and problem solvers, but is that the reality of the jobs we're referring to here? do employers really know what they expect workers to know? Again, perhaps education is not the only sector that could benefit from introspection. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/oecd-skills-outlook-2015_9789264234178-en" target="_blank">OECD Skills Outlook 2015: Youth, Skills, and Employability (OECD.org)</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As with the CED presentation, the newest edition of the Skills Outlook offers some updated numbers for much of what is already being discussed. Refreshingly, this report calls for more holistic approach and include the emotional and social side of workforce preparation, many strategies of which would be contested by graduates of the by-your-own-bootstraps school. It also strongly promotes the teaching of "a wide range of skills" that will be relevant in the workforce. Even if this is interpreted here as part of the holistic approach, I can imagine many would view these types of skills more narrowly. More often referred to are the relevant, job-related skills learned today in school that will likely be exponentially different by the time the student is in a position to use them, or at least soon thereafter. It is a fresh breath of air to see more malleable, enduring skills included. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Disappointingly, the report also tip-toes around the efforts industry could extend to match those by education and government. </span><br />
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<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-13386918308501866162015-05-26T08:08:00.000-07:002015-06-04T07:36:46.844-07:00Articles for May 26, 2015<br />
<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/26/rhode-island-approves-new-college-help-adults-finish-degrees" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A New College for Old Credits (insidehighered.com)</span></b></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">College Unbound, a degree-completion program turned private non-profit college in Rhode Island, will be allowed to award undergraduate degrees to students who fall into the "some college, no degree" category. The article reports that the program uses personalized curriculum, a form of competency-based education, and even a student's current job to form classes and earn credits. So, it appears, this single program includes just about everything that scares the current system of higher education. </span></div>
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<b><a href="http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2015/05/23/colleges-work-now-tennessee-promise-students-succeed-later/27782989/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Colleges Work Now so TN Promise Students Succeed Later (www.tennessean.com)</span></a></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Tennessee Promise program offers community college tuition-free to eligible students, and around 13 campuses have made some changes to help ensure its ultimate goal: degrees. Among changes in individual colleges are statewide efforts to "overhaul remedial education and a robust redesign of the traditional orientation process." I'm still torn about the co-requisite model that the "overhaul" switches to, especially in light of the ultimate purpose of this program. The article quotes Ronald Davis, VP of academic affairs and student services at Nashville State: "Education's not just about taking classes. It's about learning the dynamics of the college." All of these changes reflect that notion--except the co-req model. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2015/0522/Opinion-Why-Americans-need-to-reinvent-the-entire-education-system" target="_blank"><b>Opinion: Why Americans need to reinvent the entire education system (csmonitor.com)</b></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The discussion around "free" community college scares me a little bit. The law of supply and demand that makes an applicant with a B.A. more valuable seems like it would work against the same applicant. </span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">The argument for it also seems to come from people and groups whose common method of solving problems is to throw money at them. There are a couple of great paragraphs here, but we would do much better to stop making this a case of money. Although it's a reality, as soon as education is about a test score or a dollar or an enrollment number, the motivation changes. </span></span></div>
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Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-78407703020317554012015-02-10T08:41:00.000-08:002015-02-10T08:41:05.383-08:00Part I: Inclusion in Higher Ed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the past few months, consultant <a href="http://jamieutt.com/" target="_blank">Jaime Utt</a> has led my co-workers and me through a few rounds of discussion on inclusion and diversity. It feels really good to have a chance, and a reason, to talk about some of the changes a 100-year-old institution might face in the next 100 years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So far, the focus has been on sexual orientation and religion. The traditional structure and nature of the classes offered here has been that of a strict attendance policy and dress code, and learning done in groups or pairs through primarily projects and labs. With the changes in our student demographics, some of that traditional structure and nature has had to flex a bit. Granted, some of the flexibility was learned via baptism-by-fire, but it seems that, as a whole, we are all at the level of accepting that a change is needed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What I'd like to see next is discussion around a couple of areas that perhaps get passed over when we think of inclusion and diversity. My team and I have a unique perspective of the school since we work with the strugglers and see the gaps in the physical form of a student. Personally, the two areas that we'd do well to include in this discussion are age and education level. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First: Age</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For a number of different reasons, almost half of our student population is over the age of 25. The students who come into my office for help are almost always fall into one of three categories: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the student has been out of high school for more than 5 years; or</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the student has substantial previous experience in a college setting, the military, or a workplace; or</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the student is directly out of high school. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The difference is that in situation #1 or #2, the student usually comes in for help on his/her own accord; this is a rare occasion in #3. This in itself has several implications, but in my experience, the help that's needed in #1 and #2 might be about content and actually rooted in something else. If they're older and have never gone to college, something about the college experience seems to have scared them away and the Matthew Effect has likely kicked in full force. More importantly, the older a student is, the more complex his/her life story is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many - if not most - of the older students I've worked with struggle because they seem to have this preconceived image of who the traditional college student is, and age is a very easy way to point out that they don't match that image. As a result, it takes the student a little longer to adopt an identity as a student. Does it take just as long for faculty? Do we hold those same images to the detriment of our older students? What do we do as faculty to be responsive to their needs instead? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is an important issue to address for a number of reasons. I've seen many older students struggle because they have come to our doors bitter, upset by the fact that their lifetime of experience is somehow insufficient. The meshing of work habits brought by different generations in one classroom can compound this frustration. It can be very easy to turn negative and feel attacked, even silly, when one finds that the formal instruction found in an academic setting is vastly different from the more informal instruction done on site. Furthermore, this feeling can sink any motivation and attitude when the instructor happens to be younger than the student. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For these students, a growth mindset (as defined by <a href="http://mindsetonline.com/" target="_blank">Carol Dweck</a>) is essential. My experience with older students is that it has taken until this point in their lives to develop this mindset; it seems likely that this is why #1 and #2 will seek out help while #3 may not. But for those who may not yet be at that point, how can we foster that mindset in the classroom? How can we make sure these students feel that their experience is valued? What can we do when we offer feedback to make sure these students take it as an opportunity instead of a scolding? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As more and more statistics pop up about the number of college graduates needed by ___ in the face of dwindling numbers of high school graduating classes, older students will likely become more and more of the majority. If we pride ourselves on being able to meet every student at the door, then we must include those who come with the layers and complexities of a longer life story as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Next: Education Level</span></div>
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<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-701523836969178132015-01-14T11:32:00.001-08:002015-01-14T11:32:28.205-08:00The Repeat Grand Finale<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of my best friends is a corporate trainer, and a regular topic at our monthly lunch dates is teaching for different generations. We talk a lot about teaching the Millennial generation and how that generation gets dumped on quite a bit, and adjusting teaching for multiple generations in the same classroom. She's got some interesting views on this particular part of teaching, and I always come <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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away with a new book to read or a promise that she'll send me this article. It's a dimension of teaching not included in traditional teacher prep since most K-12 classrooms include students of the same(ish) age; this is not the case in higher ed or in corporate training classrooms. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My classes this semester just happened to be dominated by recent high school graduates. Most have a semester of college now behind them, but a residual green-ness is still evident. Naturally, the different approaches I need to take now have been the focus of my prep time, especially since these same characteristics are typically those of students who don't do so well in or fail my classes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Two pieces got me thinking further about this. The first is a YouTube video sent to me by my co-worker the other day, <a href="http://youtu.be/5rz2jRHA9fo" target="_blank">Branford Marsalis' Take On Students Today</a>, in which the speaker shares that his music students seem to be "only interested in how good they are, and how right they are." The most provocative part comes at about 0:43: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">"...</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">the idea of</span><i style="font-weight: bold;"> what </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">you are is more important than you</span><i style="font-weight: bold;"> actually being </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">it</span><i style="font-weight: bold;">..." </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just hold onto that for a second</span>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second is the buzz around Sec. Arne Duncan's <a href="http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/americas-educational-crossroads-making-right-choice-our-children%E2%80%99s-future" target="_blank">speech</a> on reauthorizing NCLB, (for background, <a href="http://www.edcentral.org/duncanesea/" target="_blank">read this EdCentral post</a>), particularly the changes to the testing mandates that are said to set limits and streamline the process. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, back to Marsalis. Marsalis was referring to the idea of being a musician instead of actually working to be a musician, but the same could be said for students in general. The idea of being a student is more important than actually working to be a student; the idea that you learned something is more important than actually learning it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And it seems that testing reinforces "the idea of" instead of the "actually being." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A great comment on the Marsalis YouTube post says this: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"...<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.0300006866455px;">some of my teachers were great, but <b><i>they let us know that we were just students in the process of learning</i></b>." [Emphasis mine]</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Assessments and tests imply that learning is finished. Try as we might to implement both formative and summative assessment or call it "progress monitoring," tests still trigger a sense of completion and stand for an end, a finished product in some manner. If we constantly test our students, we constantly tell our students that they are "finished" and the process of learning is cut short. The actual learning that occurred is less important than the idea that the student learned something. Taking a test is part of being a student, so it's more important to take the test and adhere to the idea of being a student than to actually be a student. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Assessment itself is absolutely essential, and we need to keep working to find a balance. But I came to this when I started comparing the standardized, high-stakes, all-encompassing tests we ask K-12 students to do relatively often to the local, low-pressure, subject-specific assessments my co-worker uses in his AUTO classroom. Why do his assessments seem to work so much better? Because the instructor considers the action involved in producing the answers? Because students are held to get 100% before moving on? Because the instructors then use the results to inform teaching? Because they are local? All of the above! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The nature of assessment in this classroom reflects progress, improvement, and opportunity. Students are well-aware that they are in the process of learning, not at the end; that the process requires certain actions and they won't be able to simply sit through the class and "get by"; and that the assessments are part of the process of learning, not the finale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my classroom in post-secondary, the students who struggle the most are recently graduated seniors students. They often struggle to find that new definition of what it means to be a student, to redefine what "good enough" now means or what "enough studying" now means, or to find the nuances that will guarantee them a good score. It takes a few weeks for most to figure out that the answers to the first two are outside their comfort zone, and that I'm looking for more than just regurgitation of my own brilliance. They can't just sit through the test and call themselves students. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-4580783013708240792015-01-06T11:28:00.000-08:002015-01-06T11:28:12.132-08:00Finding Balance in Re-Ignition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, here's what happens when a faculty member is assigned to teach four writing-intensive courses that she has never taught before: burnout for the teacher, and for the blog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I tried several new instructional approaches this past semester and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so some of the burnout was self-induced. I taught a regular section of English, as well as one that was a trial run of a more supportive version. I taught rhetoric in the context of a business plan during an evening class of students in their last year of the bachelor's program. And I taught a class that would be defined by most teachers as "dream students": smart, talented, motivated, funny, organized, and worked well together. This was almost the perfect storm of a semester for experimentation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The final weeks of last semester felt like the cool-down to the perfect trail run. The intellectual demands of these classes exhausted me and my students, and <i>it was good.</i> It was a semester in which I had found the sweet spot--challenging material held to high standards taught and learned in such a way that my students were pushed outside their comfort zones and found growth. An effective classroom is one in which both sides--teacher and student--walk together. This semester, my students kept pace and gave me a workout. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But it also opens up a discussion about how much I needed to give up in order for this to happen. Teachers like me know that the allotted prep time is almost always never enough, and teachers unlike me know that the allotted prep time is almost always too much. So, like so many other teachers, I brought my work home every night and every weekend, and had to pause most of the outlets that keep me from becoming a zombie. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I brought my laptop with to the toy room during playtime with my boys. I graded and prepped during movie night with my husband. I put my workout regimen completely on hold. I owe my poor German shepherd a countless number of walks. I squeaked dinner out with fast food and convenience meals. I didn't go to a single Civil War Roundtable lecture. I'm currently halfway through the October book club pick. I spent almost my entire 2-week Christmas break grading final papers. And, oh yeah...I didn't post a new blog entry for three months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even though this past semester was a "perfect storm," it should exist each semester in some capacity. Does this mean that successful teaching and learning happen at the expense of the instructor? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Professional-personal life balance is a conscious choice, and we would do well to recognize where the tipping point is for teachers. Teachers have a terrible habit of forgetting to keep the two separate, and it's all the more difficult since there are humans involved on both sides. After all, developing relationships with students is part of what makes a classroom tick. Defining that relationship becomes especially hard when very personal notes impact academic performance. We've all had students who become "my kids" or for whom teaching the hidden curriculum and guiding to success moves toward a mentor/coach level. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What's more, teachers are terribly unselfish. Making choices in terms of professional-personal life balance means deciding priorities, which also means somebody loses. It's hard to admit to the 15 pairs of eyes waiting for rough draft feedback that I still haven't finished reading them all because I chose to read the boys a second bedtime story instead. It's more comforting to feel extra prepared for tomorrow and deal with an hour or so less sleep than to scramble for an idea during the morning commute. It's much more satisfying to check some grading off the list than get through the next chapter or two in the latest book club pick. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This might be a tough topic because the actual art of teaching is still pretty misunderstood by those outside the classroom. Even school administrators and staff who were once teachers slip into the false idea that if a teacher isn't in front of a classroom, she isn't working. The issue of professional-personal life balance isn't by any means unique to education, but the way that it's defined is. And we can't begin to form that definition until we can redefine teaching according to the demands placed on today's teachers and instructors. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My issue with the well-known demonstration of Stephen Covey's "make the big thing the big thing" concept is that it implies we need to fit everything <i>in. </i>Teachers would benefit from finding ways to make everything fit <i>together</i>. There is no escaping that time is scarce or that schedules will become less hectic, so fitting pieces of the professional-personal life puzzle together allows for that balance in the current context. My last semester was invigorating and refreshing, and I'm determined to balance it with the outlets that keep me from burning out. </span>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-77920148064918261752014-09-18T16:01:00.001-07:002014-09-18T16:01:22.792-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Days 12-18: Frantic Catch-UpDespite how this might look, I'm actually challenging myself by forcing a one-word answer for each of these prompts I need to catch up on.<br />
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<b>Day 12: How do you envision your teaching changing in the next five years?</b><br />
Groundbreaking!<br />
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<b>Day 13: Name the top edtech tools that you use on a consistent basis.</b><br />
Google Sites<br />
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<b>Day 14: What is feedback for learning, and how well do you give it to students?</b><br />
Prompt<br />
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<b>Day 15: Name three strengths you have as an educator.</b><br />
Synthesis<br />
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<b>Day 16: If you could have one superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?</b><br />
Telekinesis<br />
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<b>Day 17: What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?</b><br />
Trust<br />
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<b>Day 18: Create a metaphor/simile/analogy that describes your teaching philosophy. For example, a "teacher is a ______."</b><br />
Match (as in lights a fire)<br />
<b><br /></b>Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-4568786555944199392014-09-12T20:33:00.000-07:002014-09-12T20:33:00.918-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 11: The Best Part of the Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are studies that review the best time to drink coffee, try for a baby, exercise, eat, sleep, and what hours during the day are typically the most productive.<br />
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Has there been any study on the best part of the day for a teacher?<br />
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I have a feeling the smart alecs would say something about the beginning moments of a Friday afternoon, when the entire weekend is in front of you and you can leave the stress and anxiety of the classroom for a couple of days. The mushy types might try with something about the early morning moments before any students have even arrived, the coffee is still hot, and you can close out the last-minute preparations in the stillness of an empty classroom.<br />
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My best part of the day? Smack dab in the middle of "the moment." Teachers know what that is. That moment in of a discussion when a really solid point has completely hit home, and you've just realized it. And you take it and run with it. The students are better than understanding what you're trying to tell them; they're buying it, allowing it to become part of their thinking, and using it to rethink about all the things they've learned before.<br />
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Depending on the students, this usually happens to me about once a class, once a week. This week, my 4th-year students - who are taking my class as part of their last three classes before they graduate from the program - gave me that moment. These are evening students, so I'm teaching them some brain-busting writing skills between 7:30 and 9:30 at night, after most of them have been at work all day. On the first session of this class, most - if not all - of these students came to me to express the stress and pressure they're feeling at this point in the sequence, and how this class ultimately is the bridge, the answer, the key to their graduation. We were talking about the beginning stages of research that they'll need to do to write their capstone paper, a business proposal. We talked about how research is often particularly difficult for technical education students because it's not linear. A few students gave me a skeptical look, so I elaborated more: the best research will propel, narrow, and direct more research. How ever I said that idea must've struck the magic chord. Each pair of eyes staring back at me in silent contemplation looked like a mix of dumbfoundedness and delight. They were almost angry that it had taken so long for someone to tell them these things.<br />
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That is the kind of moment that keeps a teacher teaching for a lifetime; the kind of moment that sends chills down your spine and back up the back of your neck. I felt my cheeks flush and my heart flutter, and all I could do was stare back at them and try and gauge what they needed to hear next. Even the recounting of these kinds of moments rekindles those chills and elicits a coy smile. It's also the hardest part to quantify and prove to policymakers and stakeholders when they start asking about value in education and teacher quality. There is no other way to describe that gut feeling that everything those students thought about research prior to that moment was now changed, moved, even obsolete.<br />
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For me, the best part of the day can't be pinned down to a particular hour. In fact, the spontaneity of moments like these is motivational. I strive for moments like these, so I push and push to see if I can make one happen. I look forward to those moments all day long, and that keeps me positive, engaged, focused, and on a constant lookout for opportunities to make my work better.<br />
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And if a moment doesn't appear, there's always 3:25pm on Friday afternoon.<br />
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<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-2414866751296014072014-09-10T18:58:00.000-07:002014-09-10T18:58:24.730-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 10: 5-4-3-2-1<iframe frameborder="0" height="1550" scrolling="no" src="https://magic.piktochart.com/embed/2722694-5-4-3-2-1" style="overflow-y: hidden;" width="550"></iframe> Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-46169885340090673372014-09-10T12:53:00.002-07:002014-09-10T12:53:55.082-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 9: A Big Accomplishment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The professional world is full of small, hidden, sometimes undiscovered corners. When we list out common jobs, it's often doctor, lawyer, teacher... But there are as many jobs out there as there are ways to describe them.<br />
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I've written before about my calling to be a teacher beginning when I was very young, and I was set on being a high school social studies teacher all the way through college. My first full-time position was teaching 11th and 12th grade social studies, and I scoured the job postings for another position when I lost that job. I tend toward the stubborn side of consistency and commitment, so anything other than middle school or high school social studies simply wouldn't fit. When I earned my K-12 reading certificate, I a few more titles became acceptable, including the one I was eventually hired for.<br />
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What I found was that teaching can be so much more than a classroom. While my primary focus remains teaching my classes, my biggest accomplishment has been finding the corners. I teach reading and writing in post-secondary technical education. Technical education itself is a corner, post-secondary technical education is even more hidden, and literacy in post-secondary technical education is almost non-existent. Part of my job also includes learning support, so not just teaching post-secondary technical students how to read and write, but filling in the gaps as well.<br />
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These are areas that need research and development badly, especially in the face of issues like college readiness, developmental education, the skills gap, unemployment, the rise of manufacturing, the exponentially growing role of technology and its increasing complexity, and the true value and role of college in our society. I've started my investigation - computer networking students need very strong vocabulary skills; the ability to use text features is essential for automotive students - and I'm excited to continue to bring light to these corners of the education world.<br />
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<br />Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-78345869720692085932014-09-10T12:02:00.002-07:002014-09-10T12:02:29.481-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 8: What's in Your Desk Drawer?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Desk Drawer</td></tr>
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This is my desk drawer: a representation of the major traits found in my work style. Primarily, my drawer is a haven for organizers. Small sticky notes and flags are used to direct me to the best stuff from the pages and pages and pages of material I hungrily consume in preparation for class, a meeting, or a support document. Staples, unstaplers, small paper clips, big paper clips, and paper clips with tags represent a unending struggle to organize the mountains of loose paper that shuffle across my desk, from assignments to meeting notes to resume drafts. Traditional pushpins and faker magnetic pushpins speak of the growing number of to-do lists, status lists, reference lists, phone lists, schedules, and contact information I have posted around me.<br />
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And there are items that representative the ironic conflict I struggle with: my cheap side and my hoarder side. My monster of a 32GB flash drive - purchased for me by my previous manager for a simple project, one that would never take up 32GB - holds the backup files to my backup file. The miscellaneous freebies I've acquired along the way - a manual pencil sharpener, a teeny bottle of hand sanitizer, a tape measure - that I rarely use in the classroom but like to have "just in case."<br />
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My favorite part of my desk is the collection of things that clearly took a very skilled wordsmith to come up with its name. So skilled, in fact, that I don't know what it's called at this moment. The unstaplers. The magnifying cards. The mysterious thingy still in the plastic wrap. The plastic strip badge snappy things.<br />
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There you have it. A complete mix of items to organize the chaos of a teacher's life down to color-coded perfection, items that have harmlessly satisfied my hoarder/frugal tendencies, and items that make me laugh at the intriguing, and pleasantly distracting, "what IS this?" quality every time I open the drawer.Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-68934710188176826032014-09-10T08:30:00.004-07:002014-09-10T08:30:51.923-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 7: Most Inspirational Colleague<div dir="ltr">
I was hired for my current teaching position by a manager who is almost a carbon copy of my mother-in-law. This might seem terrifying at first, but I have an excellent relationship with my mother-in-law, not least because I admire her ability to be direct and authoritative in the name of helping someone while remaining respectful and careful. I spent the first fifteen years of my life dealing with the occasional wrong order or forgotten extra at a restaurant; this was likely out of a combination of fear and my tendency to 'take a hit' in favor of neutrality and calm. My mother-in-law, however, effortlessly calls the waitress over, calmly explains this is the wrong dish or that she had asked for that, and thanks her pleasantly when the correction is made. This is painfully representative of how I spent my K-12 years as well. Horrified at raising my hand to ask a question, I spent many nights sobbing in frustration and pleading with my dad for a few more practice problems before dinner. </div>
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So when I became a teacher, I knew that classroom management would be the first area I needed to concentrate on. My first few teaching gigs provided a "baptism by fire" method of practice, and I felt pretty confident by the time I applied for my current position. Now, though, this professional confidence and assertiveness is applied outside my classroom. While my mother-in-law provided a personal example, my former manager taught me those lessons in a professional setting. As with any business, the specific lessons were tainted with some negative politics, many of which she was directly involved in. Nevertheless, the central theme that she wove throughout those lessons was this: <b>it's OK to use professional advancement as a means of developing as a teacher</b>. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they should complement each other. My former manager purposefully assigned each member of our team a project that would advance the mission of the learning center and develop us as educators, but also provide potential for advancement and recognition within the institution. </div>
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Teaching can be such a selfless calling, and teachers easily turn into martyrs ("I just got to your e-mail now - sorry, I've been leading a help session for the last three hours!") or burn out so quickly that there simply isn't any energy left for holding ground in a situation outside the classroom, let alone seek opportunities for advancement or leadership. Professionally, I keep an eye open for these kinds of opportunities, and I find marked improvement in my own teaching and in my own self-confidence. </div>
Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368326204668835896.post-1239460075199063612014-09-10T07:08:00.000-07:002014-09-10T07:08:51.534-07:00Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge Day 6: A Good Mentor <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As a teacher, I'm more comfortable in the role of the mentor, not the men-tee. Personally, mentorship is very much a professional growth area because it's difficult for me to admit what is implied by the need for a mentor. Mentorship means I need to admit that I don't know everything, which is terrifying since I take great pride in and prove my value by doing my own homework, figuring things out for myself, and then creating a product that meets my own high standards. </div>
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I don't think I'm alone either. Many of my fellow teachers - co-workers, community members, teacher peers - seem to take a similar approach. For some of those fellow teachers with more experience, there is another dimension: "I've been teaching this way for ___ years and it's seemed to work fine. I don't need a mentor." That stigma attached to the outward expression that a teacher would like a mentor is, for a lot of us, a stinging bruise to the ego. </div>
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But my definition of a good mentor fits within this developing acceptance of a need for mentorship. A good mentor is the best mentor when she doesn't even realize she's a mentor. That mentorship is almost invisible. This is important because the difference between a mentor and a teacher is this: a teacher is very plainly in front of the classroom for the purpose of guiding and inspiring, while a mentor's best lessons are those that are not explicitly taught. And for those of us still working to accept that part of our professional growth, seeing another teacher as a mentor without making it known can help scaffold that acceptance. </div>
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What's more, a good mentor relationship is be beneficial for both sides. Just as an essential part of teaching is continuing to learn, a mentoring relationship should be one in which both parties are able to feed off of the development of the other. Furthermore, just as good teaching means more than just duplication and repetition, a mentor is not one to be merely copied as a template, but rather inspired by each other. </div>
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This can be a rather tall order for a single mentor-mentee relationship. In <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shouldnt-Telling-You-This-Promotion/dp/006212210X" target="_blank">I Shouldn't Be Telling You This</a></i> by Kate White, I read about a suggestion particularly for female professionals: have a personal board of directors. This is a group of professional women in your life, each of whom can provide mentoring in an individual facet of one's professional development. I find this to be a relatively non-threatening way to spur my own growth since there's no need to notify these members of their status in any more specificity than "Hey, when I have a question about classroom discipline, would you feel comfortable talking about that with me?" My "board" includes an expert in the area of formal education credentials (Ph.D.? Ed.D.? another M.A.?), business relationships, leadership development, and, of course, instruction. </div>
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In fact, I imagine that mentor standing in the back of my room for every lesson I teach. I imagine her reaction as she reads each lesson plan, her feedback to assignment cover sheets, her body language as she sits in the back of my room during class discussion. She's one more way I keep myself accountable. </div>
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One of my best summer reads was <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Mindset" target="_blank">Mindset</a> </i>by Carol Dweck because it sparked the area of professional growth I need to work on next. Personally, I make a conscious effort to have a "growth mindset," especially in the hopes that this mindset will be acquired by my sons. But in teaching, I still have a hard time accepting "areas of improvement." The suggested "board of directors"ideas has proven to be fulfilling and invigorating, and I advise any young professional to try it out. </div>
Teresa Milliganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17533199615005252024noreply@blogger.com0