Discussion Notes on Math Initiative

The Math Department is carrying out a pilot program (CEMEC) in developmental math courses (Math 016 and Math 017) to explore the use of new material focused on developing student understanding of core math concepts, and providing an extra hour of instruction. The pilot program began in Spring 2007 and continues Fall, 2007. A report will be prepared in Spring 2008. Overall goals of the pilot program are available in another document.)

Lessons developed for the pilot program are reviewed and revised by faculty using them, based on how successful they seem to be in the classroom. The film portrayed a woman who was unable to pass her developmental math class after four attempts, but she had no time to study.

There are some sections of math (and English) developmental courses that show a 100% pass rate, but just because students pass does not mean they are really prepared to move on.

Developmental students are in a transitional stage, for a wide variety of reasons. Many do not know how to study on their own. How can students be helped to learn to do this in the classroom setting? The extra hour in CEMEC sections hopefully addresses this question.

A classroom setting that engages students seems to have an impact on how involved students are in the class, but what is the impact on student success?

CEMEC sections agreed on a common syllabus and are using materials that lend themselves to group work. Also time is spent on teaching students how to use the text.

Typically students have learned math by rote without any real understanding. CEMEC is an attempt to break that pattern and help students learn through understanding.

Many students come to the College without having a clear idea of what it means to be a college student—they don’t know what their job is. In the movie, no student said “Why do I have to take this course?” which we often hear from our students.

For developmental courses, teachers need special training in math education in order to address the educational needs of the students. Thus the Math Department should hire math education specialists. Math education specialists are the same people who have failed our students for 12 years in public school. Let’s not inflict them on our students here also.

The book Winning at Math, by Paul Nolting, is being used effectively in a developmental English class. The book helps students understand the differences between high school and college and gives good hints for success. Students in developmental English and developmental Math are often the same students. Is there a way to provide collaboration between developmental English and Math faculty? Linked schedules are very difficult to arrange.

Writing across the curriculum would be a good way to incorporate writing into math classes. How about reading across the curriculum? Students often have trouble with word problems, and stronger reading skills would help. How about math across the curriculum? There are math and reading education specialists who focus on K-12. This would not be helpful for adult learners found at the College. But specialists in adult remediation could be beneficial.

Hold forums to teach current faculty new pedagogical approaches. One Math faculty member gives points back to students on tests if they both correctly solve a problem they didn’t correctly solve on the problem, and explain in writing what they had done wrong previously.

Maybe there should be a developmental education division that deals with both math and English together and where students could learn how to be successful college students. Let’s not “ghettoize” developmental students by isolating them from academic departments. We don’t have a comprehensive orientation program that would address the differences between high school and college, study skills, etc. Instead some faculty make an effort to include these ideas in developmental classes. It’s hard to run a comprehensive orientation course for all students because of CCP’s size.

Crystal Jenkins in the movie had the math specialist as her teacher, but still could not pass the course. She didn’t have any time to study. The problems students face are big and no one has a solution. Otherwise we would know about it.

Success is usually defined in terms of pass rates. But this is very narrow. We can deliver pass rates, but what does it mean? Does it help students to badger them to come to class? Is that part of our job discretion? One benefit of CEMEC is the discussion that occurs between faculty at the end of the semester when faculty members review what worked, or didn’t work, in the classroom, and consider revisions to the lessons for future semesters. Developmental students need more than just narrow content. They must be able to go to a math class anywhere and succeed.

CEMEC focused on understanding. No calculators are allowed. They are given easy numbers to work with. But some students haven’t learned the multiplication table and they struggle. In Chem 110 students are supposed to be Math 118 ready, but some students come in unable to multiply or divide a number by 1000.

The Math Department is also looking at the placement test that the college uses, and whether the test is an effective means to properly place students at the correct math level. Students need to be encouraged to attend the first day of class.

Group #3 Roundtable Discussion: Engagement and Discounted Dreams

October 8, 2007

Facilitator: Kerri Armstrong
Recorder: Huizhen Ren

Our discussion of “Engagement” was not only on Gatekeeper courses. It was kind of “Engagement” in general. However, most of the discussion were on the gatekeeper courses.

We started out from Question #1, but did not discuss the rest of the questions one by one by the order.

How do we define engagement?
Engagement involves both students and teachers. There should be active participation. Students should feel comfortable in class, want to participate and know the reality (What is expected, materials to be covered, etc.) There should be emotional connection.

Engagement involves all aspects of the College:
1. The College
Engagement should start before students begin their classes. They should receive respectful treatment from the services areas such as admissions and financial aid. The long lines and rude treatment from the services areas are disengaging.

Students should be taught how to navigate the system and receive adequate advising as how many courses to take and what to take.

The facilities of the College should also be engaging. Some buildings and facilities at the College need to be upgraded.

2. In the classroom
Teachers should let the students know that the class is a shared ownership between them by sharing information with students, letting students know the expectations and materials to be covered, and showing students the interrelationship of how what they are learning leads to the future.

Teacher should keep a balance of hand-holding and educating students to become independent thinkers.

Teachers can give students a survey in the first class to know factors which may affect students’ engagement or performance in class (such as, hours of working, family responsibilities, single parent,,) They can use their six hours to be mentors to help students instead of providing advising which they do not have a lot of knowledge about.


What do we do at CCP already to engage students in gatekeeper courses?

African American Men Book Club
CAP Literary Magazine
Student Clubs
ESL Magazine: New Visions
Teacher organized field trips

Suggestions:
Make the FOS (Freshmen Orientation Seminar) a mandatory course for every student.
Standardize the syllabus of gatekeeper courses.

Faculty teaching the Developmental courses should get training.

Custom services training should be provided to staff working at the services areas.

We can make a video of our students based on their experiences at the College to be shown to new students to get them prepared for the College.

Group #2 Roundtable Discussion: Engagement and Discounted Dreams

Professional Development Day – Monday, October 8th, 2007

Facilitator: Tom Ott, Director of Developmental English

Recorder: Dianne Perkins, Assistant Department Head for College Writing

Do instructors neglect to intervene in behavior that undermines students’ capacity for success?

Although a math instructor from the day’s featured film said that he never scolds students for text-messaging in the back of class because they are “adults” who can establish their own priorities, Tom Ott suggested that CCP students are better served when we intervene in such behavior.

Several agreed. Because many students come from public schools where such behaviors imposed no academic consequences, we are doing them a favor, said one, “when we remind them, early on, that such behaviors will impair their success in college courses.”

Another admitted that she herself would have failed that math class if she had been allowed to continue text-messaging in class.

Even group work—how to engage in it constructively—needs to be taught and modeled for students, said another.

Most agreed that the style in which an instructor intervenes—never by humiliating a student in front of peers--is crucial. “We need to explain to students, and establish for ourselves, clear distinctions between our own responsibilities and theirs.”

One instructor asked if an exit exam for each course, with clear criteria that students can see at the outset of the semester, would spur their engagement and performance, especially if they had to repeat that course, permitting them to build upon prior skills. Even “a limited number of texts,” departmentally approved for each gatekeeper course, she urged, would forge more consistency in the content of these courses, allow repeating students to build recognizable skills, and exempt them from the need to buy a new round of expensive texts each time they have to repeat such a course.

Students who must repeat a gatekeeper course, another lamented, are forced to go all the way back to the beginning of that course when sometimes all they need to return to are concepts introduced in the sixth or seventh week.

Could CCP create special sections of gatekeeper courses reserved exclusively for repeating students?

“Our registration process gets in the way of offering such sections,” one noted.

An instructor who had taught such a section years prior said that it hadn’t seemed very successful, for students had found it discouraging “to be surrounded by so many other failing students.”

Citing “Crystal,” a student in the featured film who was struggling, for the third time,to pass developmental math, one instructor said that Laurence Steinberg, in Beyond the Classroom, would invoke her as precisely the kind of student who needs to become more reflective about how to help herself—how, for example, to carve out an hour a day for study despite her busy schedule. To encourage such reflection, he added, he himself sometimes asks students, before he returns an assignment, to write down the grade they think they deserve for it. If he finds a discrepancy between their conjectured grade and the one they receive, he asks them to write, analytically, about the possible sources
of that discrepancy.

CCP, it was suggested, needs to come up with domain-specific study tips and to create specific interventions for students after their first failing grade in gatekeeper courses.

Why, another wondered, don’t instructors receive, for each repeating student on a new class list, a written report from the prior instructor, delineating the weaknesses in his or her work? Access to such reports, all agreed, would strengthen early intervention for repeating students.

One instructor wondered if we know what is working, these days, at other colleges. Do we, he asked, keep tabs on the best practices of similar institutions?

Ott responded that best practices at CCP likely replicate the best practices of other institutions. He cited trends at La Guardia, Maricopa, and University of Denver that encourage learning communities and sponsors. “I think the key is an institutional approach to best practices,” he stressed.

At one four-year school where she had taught, recalled another instructor, all students had to take a professional writing exam in order to graduate. The school’s Learning Lab offered regular refresher courses for students who had failed this exam.

Another reported that at Delaware County Community College, the Dean had approved a special course for students who had repeatedly failed an introductory course.

Another expressed hope “that there are systems in place at CCP which are effective in helping students who are enrolled in gatekeeper courses to move through them.”

At Cumberland Community College, a participant interjected, all lower-level courses would offer three-week intensive course reviews.

Another cited Baltimore and La Guardia, where there had been an exit exam for every introductory course and during the winter semester there had been “intensive workshops for students who needed to retake the exam,” designed for just ten students at a time.

Ott noted that last summer, forty CAP A students were offered a six-week workshop and that, after retesting, 67.7% of them passed into level B.

Is the College, he rhetorically asked, doing enough institutionally to support its students?

“Right now, no,” he conceded. He nonetheless noted his optimism about “Achieving the Dream” because “Hines is a serious funding agency.” Teaching, he further remonstrated, “can be a very isolating experience, but it shouldn’t be.”

One instructor observed that the same course, taught to two different groups of students, can yield markedly different results when each group dynamic is so different. Another agreed, adding that even the meeting time of the class often yields a particular dynamic, “and I’m not sure I have any answers.”

“Sometimes,” pondered another, “you have to ask students for the answers.” He noted that students are often more willing to participate in a class when their own input is sought and implemented.

Ott underscored that anything “that gets in my way in teaching has to be removed” and urged colleagues to issue “fair warning” to students whose behaviors are impeding the greater academic good.

One instructor noted that Math 016 and 017 are running four sections of a pilot program in which all instructors are using the same text, written by faculty, and all students are taking the same tests.

Has there been a sustained and focused discussion, asked one instructor, about only 0-level courses and the need for competency-based instruction in those courses?

“Not really,” conceded Ott. He suggested that another discussion needs to take place: how to change the culture of the institution, in which many instructors seem so devoted to their own proclivities that they won’t accede to departmentally approved practices or even recommended texts. “What we tend to do here,” he suggested, “is talk about consensus but more often, merely talk ourselves into exhaustion.”

Picking up the thread of an earlier suggestion, one instructor warned that “Crunch reviews offered by learning labs are great tools, but only for courses that offer universally administered exit exams.”

What is the pervasive fear, several wondered, of sanctioning exit exams in gatekeeper courses?

“Faculty fear,” suggested Ott, “that we will have to teach to a test. However, we always, in fact, teach to a test. The question is ‘Whose test do we teach to?’”

“Do we even know what works?” asked another. She cited a prominent brain researcher from Yale who is using functional MRIs to find out, finally, how dyslexic children’s brains differ from those of others. She cited an effective technique, used by a teacher of her own dyslexic son, demanding repeated reflection on the passage he had just read.

“One thing that the film showed,” another instructor observed, “is that training in developmental education increased the pass rates of students. How, then, do we get people who want to teach just Developmental English?”

“I’m not sure,” Ott responded, “that I’d want just Developmental Ed faculty, but those who teach in the program need to accept certain responsibilities.” He added that although the capacity for metacognition isn’t in full force until one’s early twenties, “it’s a very powerful thing to get students to think about what they’re doing.”

Several instructors returned to the character “Crystal,” the student who needed time to be self-reflective. “If she had possessed that time,” mused one, “she would have been able to figure out her problems.”

“But if young kids are neurologically quick to grasp certain things—syntax, vocabulary, idioms—how can we get adult students to learn them in one semester?” posed another. “How exactly does the brain learn when students are in their late teens and early twenties?”

If the answer isn’t clear, added one, what is patently unfair “is to pass English 098 students who aren’t ready for English 101.”

What is fair, added Ott, is “for students to see what minimum competencies have been established for each course and to know that these are accepted. They should be able to see essays written by English 098 students that show that they’re ready for English 101. I know I could do a holistic evaluation of such an essay and tell whether or not the student is ready for English 101.”

One instructor wondered if gender-separate sections of gatekeeper courses had ever been attempted. Although some wondered if the ACLA would protest such ventures, a few noted that several gender-separate charter schools had recently been approved in Philadelphia. ”If it’s a truism that empirical research in our field (basic writing) is so difficult to conduct,why, then,” asked another instructor, “do we seem to hold such firm assumptions about certain practices?” She cited the film’s tendency, for example, to depict the class conducted via group-work as inherently superior to the class dominated by lecture. “For that matter, what is the meaning of that ubiquitous term, ‘student-centered learning?’ Isn’t any successful learning student-centered’?”

“I wouldn’t rule out lecture as a potentially effective mode of teaching,” said Ott. That there is lecture and lecture—one style governed by detachment and little eye contact with students—another that is more animated and visceral, punctuated by questions—most agreed.

“There is some evidence in social science,” interjected another, “that students who are forced to play the role of teacher learn a great deal from that process.”

One instructor cited a paradigm for developmental writing that Temple, decades ago, had used for its Developmental Writing course, under the acronym “ELECT” (English Language Enrichment Center at Temple), which allowed students, while attending regular classes for the course, to pass it as soon as they had written, on site, in a well-proctored lab, four essays deemed passing by the student’s instructor as well as one other. Although that program, in her opinion, could have been better administered, she suggested that such a model might help CCP students who need to repeat English 098 or 101—allowing them, with motivation, to pass the course in six to seven weeks.

Ott reiterated his optimism about the strides CCP can make via “Achieving the Dream” and thanked instructors for their thoughts on its gatekeeper courses.

Group #1 Roundtable Discussion: Student Engagement and Discounted Dreams

Professional Development Day
October 8, 2007
Group Discussion of Student Engagement

Suzanne Felix’s Notes for the Group

How do we define student engagement?

Develop social environment:

• “Active participation. The students were not actively participating in the film. I would never allow anyone to listen to headphones, eat in my class, no hair combing, hand lotion, etc.”
• Make a list of successful habits and rules in the beginning of the class.
• Orientation, ground rules, college success activities should be in the beginning of the class.
• An atmosphere of college participation.
• Teach participation skills
• Have students give out each others email address
• Teacher should develop a personal relationship with student and students should know at least five other students in the class.

What can we as teachers do to foster the environment?

• Students’ immaturity can hamper student engagement.
• The student social politics can be fairly juvenile.
• Students stay in College when they are connected to at least one other person.
• The social environment is very important.
• In the social networks, a lot of learning can take place.
• It can reinforce what you cover in class.

Class structure:

• Review work everyday; put objectives on the board everyday
• Very structured class—“This is how you are a college student.”
• Having an interest in the course could help engagement.
• In English, you could choose topics that are more engaging.
• Engage students in group work.
• Lab courses are hands-on; Hands-on experience can be engaging.
• Also there should be student engagement outside of the classroom.
• There should be contact with other students outside of class.
• Make courses relevant in students’ lives.
• Problem-solving is a really good way to promote student engagement.
• Also, they are working as a team.
• Identify a role model in the class. That student could counteract negative behavior and promote student engagement.

Positive Habits:

• “Learn students’ names.” It makes a difference
• Pay attention to students.

Teacher Reflection:

• “I need to be more engaged as a (teacher), than I thought I needed to be. By engaged I mean going actively after students…Maybe I need to regroup. I am not as an interventionist as I use to be.”
• “Inside the classroom, are we addressing the needs of the lower level students?”
• How sure are we that that students are at the right academic level?
• In the film, the students with the teachers team-teaching, students were humorous, laughing, talking, supporting each other in English class.
• Build collaborative opportunities, not “information transfer.”
• It is an opportunity to create knowledge together. For example, labs re opportunities for student engagement because students have opportunities to communicate. Students pay attention.
• Teachers’ attitude for success is important. It can impact student success.
  

Understanding the System at CCP:

• “What is the sequence of these gatekeeper courses?”
• Students take more than one remedial course at a time. Look at this group as a cohort. The inability to be a college student shows up in all the courses they take.
• Students work full time. The system encourages students to take multiple courses.

Facilitator divided the attendees into pairs. He asked the group two questions: (I) List of things that individual teachers can do to improve student engagement. (2) What would orientation in the beginning of class look like?

There was only time enough for the pairs to answer question (1).


Chuck Herbert’s Notes

See praktikos

Outcomes identified for Achieving the Dream Initiative at CCP

• improve student support systems (early warning?)
• effective education practices
• Math initiative
• faculty professional development
  
  

Film

• Retention – community colleges are hemorrhaging students
• academic planning and advising are most important to students
• Student in the file received bad advice
• Student in the film had trouble getting her classes
  
  

Quotes from faculty in the film:

• “I’m always around.”
• “They have to become independent students.”
• “Their learning is not just up to them.”

Notes from our discussion

• Chuck gave a short intro to our topic, based on the notes provided.
• Larry started the conversation by asking:What about students who fail Engl 098 & Math 017 at the same time?
• How do we handle students who fail multiple courses?
• What does it mean if they have an Inability to do well in multiple courses?
• What does the faculty do to recognize such students?
• Chuck suggested we focus on active practices faculty can use to engage students.

The group discussion followed.

• The students need structure, but it cannot be overbearing; not rules from “on high” – conversation, discussions.
• let them know you expect them to participate
• students should talk to one another
• must include activities external to class; how this happens depends on the subject
• What the students do outside of class is relevant to what happens in class.
• New students are immature.
• They often act as if engaging with the teacher is not cool.
• Teachers need to be more engaged.
• Teachers need to create learning communities.
  *the Tinto retention model -- see: http://www.cscsr.org/article_retention_revisited.htm
  

Orientation

• What about an orientation within Gateway the course for new students? (perhaps it could be the first hour of class, then references to this throughout the semester.)
• Should this be extended to all courses that are on the waiver list? Don’t of these courses have first semester students? In a sense, aren’t they all “gateway” courses?
• Should we offer departmentally-based seminars to show teachers how to provide such a brief orientation at the beginning of the course?
• Should new faculty be required to attend student engagement workshops?
• We need a list of suggestions for an in-course orientation for new students.
• Larry Mackenzie is worried that orientations within the course will kill FOS 101.
• We agree that this idea is not intended to replace FOS 101.
• There are many reasons why FOS 101is not taken by more students – institutional politics, student financial issues, fitting it into various curricula, etc.
  

Our group should list suggestions for ways to improve student engagement. There are nine of us we will break into three groups of three for about 15 minutes; each group will develop a list, then we will compare the lists.


From Group A

• Introduce students to each other at the beginning.
• Use small groups
• Have students engage in collaborative problem solving in class and out of class (short-term and long-term)
• Structure the classroom layout (seating, etc.) to facilitate interaction
• Collaboratively define class rules in the beginning
• Teacher should have a welcoming attitude
• Individual teacher – student conferences must be built in, (even if regular class sessions are supplanted by these conferences)
• Show off and praise good student work (papers, reports, etc.)
  

From Group B

• Get to know students: (Use activities that allow for this.)
• Learn students’ names; students’ learn teachers’ names; students learn each others’ names
• Group work; give students projects to complete or problems to solve together.
• Require outside work
• Be available to students
• Learn about and address learning styles
• Tell students about your style as an instructor
• Provide a good syllabus (expectation, calendar, contact information, grading system)
• Tough love? Provide a structure, without being overbearing.
• Let students know what you expect from them.
• Provide students with a brief introduction to college within the course.
• Give students rapid, constructive feedback.
  

From Group C

• Put a directed list on the board: “Successful Participation in College”.
• The professor should have a positive attitude of success.
• Have students actively greet each other.
• Give a problem or project to solve in a small group.
• Create a title for each group.
• Arrange the classroom to accommodate both small group and large group; Faculty walk around to each group; faculty attention; active faculty
• Other student skills
  a. Behavioral
  b. Student study skills
• Students and faculty should be physically engaged in the group process.
• Positive acceptance of student questions is important.
• Learn student names.
• Support student success.
• Don’t assume skills are there.
• What about a workshop for faculty who teach gatekeeper courses?