Welcome to Our Workshop: Improving Student Success and Retention through Curricular Design and Infusion Sept 15th and 16

1. Welcome to Our Workshop:Improving Student Success and Retention through Curricular Design and InfusionSept 15th and 16th 2010

2. Brought to you by…. • Title III Department of Education Engaging Students grant • Learning Communities • Language, Lit and Communication Unit Plan

3. Who am I? Anne McGrail English Faculty Learning Communities Coordinator Title III Engaging Students Grant Activity Director

4. What You Will Need • Syllabus and learning outcomes/objectives for the course you are developing (bring tomorrow if not today) • Articles emailed to you (also on moodle) • On Course textbook for reference (we are focusing on Chapters 2 and 4) • And patience….

5. Participation Structures • SOLO (often we begin by thinking and writing alone) • DISCIPLINE AND “NEIGHBOR-DISCIPLINE” GROUPS • INTERDISCIPLINARY GROUPS • WHOLE GROUP

6. Our Goal: Shared Curriculum • Two moodle sites: Resource and “Sandbox” • Log into classes.lanecc.edu • “Faculty Workshop Sandbox” • “Curriculum Development Resources for Student Successs”

7. Moodle sites • Share your ideas with colleagues and develop a “bank” of infusions • Consult Curriculum Devt. Resource site at any time • “Sandbox” site is for posting curriculum begun or developed during workshop • Each faculty member has a named course block—but groups should feel free to revise and post as “collectives”

8. $$$ How to Get Paid $$$ • Sign the log-in sheet each day and include your L# • Post your curriculum infusion(s) ideas to the sandbox to share with faculty colleagues • Post your hours onto your timesheet: • English faculty post to regular timesheet • ABSE faculty post to “Learning Communities timesheet” • All others will post to a “Title III/First Year Experience” timesheet

9. Framework for Workshop: Conley’s “Facets of College Readiness” and College Success Open access college Huge variation in student preparedness Students are in college but many not ready to be here Conley’s research offers an holistic view of the complex factors that “add up” to success

10. Infusion and Integration: Concrete, Incremental Changes to Your Curriculum Moving from implicit expectation to explicit discussion and in-class activity Moving from disappointment at student deficit to anticipating and planning for their level of “college knowledge,” offering opportunities for them to develop Emphasizing students’ responsibility

11. Our expectations of students: • they should be comfortable thinking abstractly, • they are able to form mutual peer relationships, • they are responsible for their own learning, • they can reflect readily on their own thoughts, and act on their guiding thoughts

12. The “Self-Authoring Mind” Robert Kegan’s work “Higher education is a bridge to the ‘self-authoring mind’” Helping students involves academic and social/psychological dimension We can anticipate and prepare for students’ bewilderment rather than be merely disappointed and frustrated by it

13. What are the Facets of College Readiness? We all recognize them David Conley’s outlines them in “Redefining College Readiness” and College Knowledge Key Cognitive Strategies Key Content Knowledge Academic Behaviors for College Success Contextual Skills and Awareness

14. 1. Key Cognitive Strategies Students likestability, are intellectually drawn to generalizations and may be content with ideals and values they have always held (Kegan) Students need to movefrom a preference and dependence on concrete thinking, limited points of view, and enduring dispositions, needs and preferences

15. 1. Key Cognitive Strategies (cont’d) Students need to move toward cognitive strategies that challenge and stretch these preferences and habits Higher tolerance for intellectual openness, inquisitiveness, analysis, reasoning, argumentation and proof Need to develop skills in interpretation (vs. “you’re reading too much into it”)

16. 1. Key Cognitive Strategies (cont’d) Students need to develop habits of precision and accuracy (rather than generalizations that bring them comfort) Problem-posing and problem-solving mind-set

17. 2. Key Content Knowledge Key structures, concepts and knowledge of academic life Readiness assumes preparation in writing, research, math, science, social science and world languages. Classes may have huge variations in preparedness, making course outcomes hard to achieve across all student groups.

18. 2. Key Content Knowledge • For many faculty, key content knowledge is their passion • Frustration comes when we can’t “get to” the best content because students are underprepared

19. 3. Academic Behaviors for College Success Developing our skills in recognizing and fostering the necessary academic behaviors for students’ success Under this heading lie the key components of the college success (CG100) curriculum Fast Lane to Success and other First Year Learning Communities embed this curriculum

20. College Success Curriculum Skip Downing’s On Course curriculum includes strategies and advice for students Helps students understand their own goals and take steps to achieve them; Take responsibility for their own learning; Learn how to make wise choices at each stage of their academic and life journey

21. Integration of Success Principles Across the Curriculum While we are not counselors, each of us can use engaging pedagogical strategies, classroom activities and homework assignments to support students’ developing self-awarenss and self-responsibility

22. 3. Academic Behaviors for College Success (cont’d) Self-monitoring and metacognitive abilities Understanding ones own blind spots (Knowledge Surveys) Tendency to persist when confronted with a difficult task Ability to identify and employ a number of learning activities Ability to transfer learning strategies from familiar to unfamiliar contexts

23. 3. Academic Behaviors for College Success (cont’d) Mastery of study skills beyond reading and answering questions Time management Using information resources Note taking Communication with advisors Balancing social and academic life

24. 4. Contextual Skills and Awareness Help students to understand how a college operates as a system and a culture Means WE need to make explicit to ourselves and our students the implicit cultural values and rules in our disciplines and in academic culture—it cannot be assumed! Downing’s “College Customs” pp. 24-26

25. 4. Contextual Skills and Awareness (cont’d) Norms, values and conventions of interactions in a college context Going beyond writing it in the syllabus—helping students to live these norms and values and internalize them as their own. Human relations skills to cope with and adapt to the college system (often radically different from the community in which they were raised [Conley 13]).

26. 4. Contextual Skills and Awareness “College Knowledge”—the stated and unstated processes necessary to navigate the system. How do these processes intersect with your sphere of influence? Pre-registration and advising, financial aid calendar, recommendations, mid-term schedules, grades, add/drop decisions, prerequisites, key courses/gateway courses, progression to degree, etc.

27. Fostering the “self-authoring mind”“As educators, our job is to disappoint students’ expectations at a rate they can stand.” Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self