Another Paper for the Retention Conference

**Update - This has been approved at the first stage. Once we write the paper, we will know if it is to be published.

Once again, any help would be greatly appreciated :)

We’re Up 17% - What Now?

Abstract:

From 2010 to 2017, we have raised our developmental education success rates at Moraine Valley Community College by more than 17%, while lowering our withdrawal rates by 30%. More importantly, we have done so while we simultaneously increased the acceleration of some of our programs and created bridge courses, often skimming the stronger students off of our upper-level courses. Initially, we utilized global data (i.e. our success rates, the success rates of our students at the next levels, our attendance rates, our grade patterns, etc.) to suggest policies and curricular alignment. At this point in the process, we are attempting to turn to more local data, focusing on individual performance and the appropriate resources we can provide our faculty and staff. This paper will address the strategies we developed to address our low success rates, as well as the next steps we plan to take in our continuing improvement process.

Description and Learning Outcomes:

In the course of the past seven years, we have raised our developmental education success rates at Moraine Valley Community College by more than 17% (i.e. those students earning grades of A, B, or C, as opposed to D, F, or I) and have lowered our withdrawal rates by 30%. It has been a systematic, “soft data-informed” process. We began by confronting our general retention data and reviewing our policies and procedures. For instance, in order to introduce the possibility of adopting a departmental attendance policy, we first conducted a survey with our faculty asking them to code all their assigned F grades and to note which instances were due primarily to attendance. Our faculty reported that more than 70% of the F grades we had awarded were due to low attendance. This began a gradual implementation of data into our analysis, planning, and evaluation processes.

As we began to work on our retention plan, we were faced with an impending migration from COMPASS to ACCUPLACER as our primary placement test. We capitalized on this challenge by analyzing all of our available data in regards to student placement, matriculation rates, and future success. In doing so, we discovered large overlaps in curricula between academic levels, severe compression of grades in some courses, and the “over-success” of our “A and B” students moving to credited coursework. As a result, we have developed new metrics to track the efficacy of our placement instruments, how well we transition students from lower levels in the curricula, and how well they persevere into and through their credited sequence.

While evaluating our programming, we discovered that we suffered from some unusual side-effects of our efforts to be innovative: We began to develop so many interventions that we lacked the ability to assure that the right student entered the right intervention (RSRI- Right Student, Right Intervention). Subsequently, we began to work with advisors and other stakeholders on campus to help delineate our offerings and to ensure students would know if they were a right fit for a particular type of course or intervention.

As a result of the analyses we conducted, we collaboratively designed an attendance policy, reevaluated our curricular transitions, worked to ensure students had their textbooks and required materials, and involved other critical stakeholders on campus in order to create a more consistent and visible pathway for our developmental students. Our efforts have led, in small part, to the creation of enrollment and grade dashboards with our Institutional Research department, as well as an ongoing relationship that has led us to many other questions, challenges, and resources.

Finally, we are preparing to move from larger data sets to local indices to share with instructors at the classroom level. Doing so should provide our faculty with the appropriate feedback for course improvements that will ensure that we maintain and raise our improved success rates.

Learning Outcomes – Participants will review their own transitional and longitudinal data process; Participants will learn about new retention and perseverance metrics.

A New Conference Proposal

**Update - This has been approved and we will be doing it in November!

Here is a proposal Grant and I are submitting for a national conference in Salt Lake City later this year. This would be an all-day workshop for teachers and administrators. I would love to get feedback on it:

The Curriculum Congruence Model (A Reification Exercise)

Abstract:

In a world where teachers have literally millions of resources at their fingertips and less and less premium is placed on strictly “basal based” curricula, it is imperative that teachers have a stronger pedagogical foundation than ever before. This workshop will focus on two key components: The Four Responsibilities of a Teacher and The Three Responsibilities of a Student. Each model is a research-based continuum designed to produce consistent and congruent curricula and to operationalize many of the intuitive or instinctual processes to which not all teachers or students have direct access. The workshop is highly interactive with a great deal of resources, activities, and opportunities for engagement. In many ways, this workshop could be viewed as a more practical and condensed version of a compulsory Philosophy/Psychology of Education course many of us took before we had the requisite experience to truly appreciate the content.

Description:

This workshop contains the core elements the presenter(s) have utilized as the foundation for their Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTaL) trainings conducted domestically and internationally for the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. The development of these two models has unfolded over thirty years in U.S. universities and community colleges, spanning coursework ranging from developmental education to graduate studies. More than 1,000 students and teachers have participated in the development of these models.

There is a very old tenet in education that any curriculum applied consistently will produce academic gain; likewise, it could also be said that any well-designed curriculum applied inconsistently will produce diminished academic gain. In simple terms, it is the job of the teacher to create a consistent and congruent curriculum; to apply it appropriately; and finally, to help their students learn to navigate it successfully. This workshop consists of two sessions: the first session, The Four Responsibilities of a Teacher, deals with the creation, application, and evaluation of a curriculum. The second session, The Three Responsibilities of a Student, outlines the cognitive and behavioral processes students need to apply in order to be successful at any educational level.

The Four Responsibilities of a Teacher – The first component of this interactive session helps teachers examine their core philosophical beliefs about human nature, learning, and ethical responsibilities. The second component focuses on the nature of instruction that would logically follow. The third component examines the appropriate forms of assessment that would complement the two previous stages. Finally, the last component centers on the evaluation of the entire process (i.e. the “interpretive light”) where teachers work to examine their beliefs and attitudes throughout the whole continuum and to identify possible points of incongruence.

Learning Outcomes: 1) Participants will examine and articulate their core philosophic beliefs; 2) Participants will identify instructional techniques that are congruent with their philosophical beliefs; 3) Participants will identify appropriate assessment activities that are congruent with their instructional choices; and 4) Participants will evaluate the entire process, including instances where the continuum failed, possibly even challenging some of their original philosophic beliefs.

The Three Responsibilities of a Student – As simple as it seems, students have three basic cognitive tasks they must attend to when engaged in an academic setting: 1) Learn the material; 2) Manage the material in their memory; and 3) Prove that they have learned the material. This session leads teachers through the three areas in regards to the activities they do in the classroom. Once teachers understand the difference between learning, memory management, and proving, they are poised to help students develop a metacognitive awareness of the same dynamics! In essence, teachers (intuitive learners) learn to operationalize, or reify, their intuition.

Learning Outcomes: 1) Participants will distinguish between activities at various levels in the model; 2) Participants will develop the language and associated resources to guide their students through the model; and 3) Participants will draw comparisons between their activities as teachers and the activities of their students.

Bio (1): Michael Morsches

Michael has more than thirty years in higher education and international development. He has taught graduate courses in education and has led hundreds of workshops and presentations on teacher development in the U.S., Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Michael has facilitated SoTaL (the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) workshops for teachers in developing countries and has presented related concepts at national and international conferences. Currently, he serves as Dean of Learning Enrichment and College Readiness at Moraine Valley Community College, where he oversees ESL, ABE, Developmental Education, Tutoring, and Basic Literacy.

Bio (2): Grant Matthews

Grant has worked and taught at community colleges in Oregon and Illinois for over 16 years in both academic programs and student services. Much of his work focuses on student development inside and outside of the classroom and how programs can improve the connections between student services and classroom learning through shared learning outcomes and consistency. Currently, Grant serves as Dean of The Center for Learning Advancement and Interim Dean for Health Professions at Lane Community College, where he oversees ABSE, Developmental Education, Career Pathways, Nursing and Allied Health, and Physical Education.

Presentation Track: Theoretical Models of Student Retention and Success, Retention and Special Populations

Presentation Type: Full Day Presentation

Audience Level: Any

Targeted Audience: Teachers, Administrators