Hello all,

Just an FYI...NISOD will have a webinar on Nov. 17 titled, "Redesign and Modules and Change, Oh My: The Adventures of Integrating Technology into Developmental Curriculum."

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:1411288.7330389079/rid:262ab934c95d4bd0f7da31ba08fd7776

Linking Student Support Services with Developmental Ed.

I thought maybe this was a good place to share an infographic I made over the weekend for the SPC Writing Center. I wanted to focus on the connection between the challenges developmental education students face and their success when accessing services like the Writing Center.

(click here to see a full-sized image)

Rather than using a report or white paper format, I think an infographic is useful in that it can tell a story using images--which demonstrates relationships better and more universally than regression tables or summary statistics. Note that it was not really made for a general audience so it is pretty data-intensive, but you can get a good idea of the important role these kinds of services play in dev.ed. student's lives.

You can read more about the development of the infographic at my blog here.

The Alamo Colleges in the News!

In Inside Higher Ed today there was a reference to a study just released this month from the National Center for Postsecondary Research -- "Getting Ready for College: An Implementation and Early Impacts Study of Eight Texas Developmental Summer Bridge Programs."

When I accessed and read the executive summary I got pretty excited to learn that two of the Alamo Colleges, St. Philip's College and Palo Alto College, were two of the eight colleges!

Among the findings:
- "While students in the program and control groups attempted at least one math course at similar rates, students who participated in a developmental summer bridge program went on to attempt the first college-level math course at a significantly higher rate than students in the control group. A significantly higher percentage of program group students passes this first college-level math course."
- "Program group students were also significantly more likely to attempt a college-level reading course and significantly less likely to attempt the lowest level of developmental reading."
- "Significantly more program group students than control group students attempted at least one writing course and passed their first college-level writing course.
- "...during the 2009-2010 academic year, students in the program group attempted one more college-level credit than students in the control group."

It is a wonderful thing to see a national publication highlighting the great work in developmental education accomplished here at our colleges!

Clarification

Hello. I am so sorry I missed you all at the kickoff. It was my "once every 5 years get sick as all get out" week (knock on wood).

Someone asked a question about the attendance at the Showcase Sessions so I thought more of you might have the same question.

The Showcase Sessions are required, but not all of them. As long as half of your total sessions throughout the year are Showcase Sessions, you will be fine. You do not have to hit all of them - you can pick from what is available when you can attend. We will continue to add more sessions. As long as you end up at the end of our Academy with 5 Showcase sessions, you are in good shape.

I hope this makes sense. It is late and I am tired!!!

Denise

A Couple of Interesting Resources....

Everyone -- Two quick resources that I found this week that you might be interested in too.

Innovative Educators is putting out 2 minute videos on the web and I thought "Helping Students Manage Their Time" was definitely worth the two minutes! The faculty member talks about a website www.howtostudy.org and the usefulness of the "assignment calculator" on that website. I did a search on the site to find it -- here is the URL: http://www.howtostudy.org/resources_subject.php?id=4
At any rate, it sounds like a nice tool. I would have students write a reflection on their experiences with the tool after they used it. I would have students show what they learned from using it on a subsequent assignment by asking them to submit a timeline for getting the assignment done (maybe I am old fashioned here but I wouldn't want students to be dependent on a tool forever but to actually learn from using the tool so that they could map out their personal due dates for pieces of the assignment).

The second thing that caught my eye this week was an Academic Minute (put out by Inside Higher Ed) on Teaching Mathematics to Students With Learning Disabilities -- here is the URL http://www.insidehighered.com/audio/academic_pulse/mathematics_and_learning_disabilities
Landmark College Math Professor Michelle Bower talks about a concept called "Stereotype Threat" and how it can affect students' learning. Just the learning disability labels that students are attached with can have a negative effect on their learning! I had never thought about that. Landmark College specializes in helping students with learning disabilities. Here is the URL http://www.landmark.edu/. I would love to have some faculty from Landmark College come to the Alamo Colleges to talk to us about what they are doing to help students with challenges learn!

Reviewing the Literature

Hello Everyone:

It was a pleasure meeting you last week. I am looking forward to the upcoming events and learning more about you. Your capstone project ideas sounds great and I am eager to hear more about how those unfold in the coming months.

Here are a couple of links to get your thoughts flowing about annotated bibliographies for your Review of the Literature:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/01/

http://library.uwb.edu/guides/annotations.html

Please post any thoughts or questions that you have about this PD activity.

DrLR

Welcome!

Welcome to the Alamo Colleges Developmental Education Academy Blog!

This web forum will allow you to share insights about your training, your research, the latest news, and your classroom experiences and projects with your colleagues here at the Alamo Colleges as well as any others across the world that are involved in the vital work of helping developmental students learn.

We especially encourage you to share your classroom successes and challenges so that all of us can benefit from the “wins” to inspire each other and offer ideas for the “losses” to support each other.

So what are your thoughts – let us know so that we can learn from each other!

Sincerely,
The DE Development Plan Committee