Week 1
Kellogg Institute Reaction Paper-Karen Lemke
Brief Summary: The week began with a tour, orientation, and
Experiential Learning exercise facilitated by JP Davis, followed by a welcome
and history of Developmental Education from Dr Boylan followed by four days of
Basic Skills Assessment and Placement with Dr Ed Morante.
JP Davis’ exercise was a good way to get to know each other and to
explore decision-making, group dynamics and leadership as we worked through an
exercise meant to simulate escaping from a wildfire, making difficult decisions
about which way to proceed with consensus from the group. Dr Boylan presented some definitions and
principles of Developmental Education followed by a group activity to sort out
the timeline of Dev Ed History—from Harvard Latin courses in 1636 through the
White House Summit on Community Colleges in 2010. We then discussed the field of Dev Ed and the
profession.
Dr Morante began his seminar with a pre-test of Basic Skills
Assessment and Placement—also intending to create a bit of anxiety in the
learners as a means of introducing non-cognitive issues that can impact
assessment. In his sessions we learned
about Placement versus Achievement tests, norm referenced tests vs criterion referenced tests, reliability,
validity, correlation, standard error of measurement and some basics of
statistics and psychometrics. We also
spent an afternoon working through some Compass and Accuplacer tests to get a
sense of how they worked and to hear presenters describe features of both
testing systems.
Critique: I appreciated the
interactive activities in all of the sessions.
It was good for our first week here to have some opportunities to
interact with our classmates as we explored the material. These three presenters used best practices in
their presentations by giving handouts ahead of time so we could fill in
notes. I also appreciated the built-in
reviews—the Dev Ed timeline activity that reviewed material covered in lecture
as we constructed it, and Dr Morante’s post-test and item analysis after the
post-test, giving us an opportunity to ask questions about *why* we got
questions wrong to relearn missed material and debate fine distinctions between
closely related concepts. The time
working with the Accuplacer and the Compass software was a bit frustrating—the
tests, especially the diagnostic tests, are 40 questions long and take a lot of
patience. I could see how students might
become frustrated and begin choosing random answers just to get to the end of
the test—in fact, I did exactly the same thing.
I appreciated that we had an opportunity to discuss these frustrations
and brainstorm ways to lessen the impact on students. It was also helpful for me to develop some
empathy for my students’ experience of the assessment process. Of course, I didn’t have the added anxiety of
the test being high-stakes—determining how many semesters of math I’d need to
take, for example—but I can better imagine the feelings students may be experiencing
during the assessment process.
Description of the implications:
One implication from the
Experiential Learning Exercise was that we laid a good foundation for group
work, setting group norms with our classmates.
It was also an opportunity to acknowledge that sometimes we didn’t
listen to the lone voice in our group who was giving the best advice. For example, while trying to escape the
forest fire, at one point on the path we needed to choose to ascend a ridge to
escape smoke or to stay in place until we could descend safely. Seven people out of 8 voted to do the wrong
thing, and the lone voice was overridden. How many times does this sort of
thing happen in a faculty meeting? The
implication was that we should be careful to listen to all opinions, but also
if we have a strong conviction that our solution is superior, we should give a
bit more effort to explain it to others, to make ourselves understood.
Some implications from Dr Boylan’s
presentation: Dev Ed has always been about bridging the gap—from the very start
of higher education at Harvard Seminary.
It occurs to me however that it may be a Western education phenomenon:
Did Native American tribes create separate classes for children to get them up
to speed, to make it into the exclusive school? Dev Ed seems unnecessary in
cultures which teach their children individually, or who employ apprenticeships
or other kinds of one-on-one learning that is contextual, just-in-time, ordered
organically and holistically.
I plan to offer a lecture at Adams
State this fall as part of our faculty lecture series to explain the history of
Developmental Education, best practices, and the types of things that Adams
State is doing to support underprepared students. I will use much of Dr Boylan’s history timeline
to give that background.
Some implications from Dr Morante’s
presentation: We pay attention to what we measure and quantify, so it is
important to gather the data and tell the stories (some of this is echoed by Dr
Boylan’s week 4 presentations as well).
Placement into appropriate courses is extremely important for student
success, satisfaction, and for the best use of our limited resources. Getting
placement right, including assessing non-academic variables, will improve our
programs and student success in them.
I have requested some data from our
institutional reporting office about student placement scores and enrollment
into appropriate math courses based on those scores after Dr Morante’s
presentation. Another technique I will
implement this fall is to send rosters to faculty 6 weeks after courses have
begun to assess how well our placement scores are working, asking the faculty
about each student in the section and if they are appropriately placed, placed
too high or placed too low. I will keep the process simple so the instructors
can complete it quickly.
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Instructions for the instructor: please mark in the following roster
a quick assessment of whether or not each student was appropriately placed
into your section. This information
will be used to see if our Accuplacer score ranges are where they need to be.
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Student Name
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900#
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Placed too high (should have taken level below this one)
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Placed just right
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Placed too low (could have skipped this class and taken next level
higher than this one)
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Smith, Jane
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900123456
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X
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|
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Turner, Bob
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900123457
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X
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|
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Unger, Tracy
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900123458
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X
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Additionally, Dr Morante provided a
Testing and Placement Student Flowchart which maps the process from application
to college through to registration for courses for the most effective use of
assessment. I plan to compare our
process to this flowchart and make adjustments as needed.
Finally, another implication from
improved assessment is to combine assessment with advising pathways to make
coherent choices/referrals for students.
For example, in addition to assessing a students’ math abilities, we can
also ask about technology proficiency and ability to work independently to
determine if online, Emporium, or accelerated sections would be a good fit for
the students’ needs.
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