Title V Projects, Faculty Featured in MCCCD 2011 Student Success Conference

The 23rd Annual MCCCD Student Success Conference, taking place October 7, will include opportunities for faculty, staff, and administrators to engage in meaningful and collaborative conversations about practices and strategies that positively impact student retention, persistence, and success.  Among the 24 select presentations, two have direct ties to the Phoenix College Title V grant; specifically, the development and use of online, supplementary resources for bioscience, information literacy, and mathematics.

In summer 2009, James Sousa created 18 short tutorial videos through a Title V mini-grant and developed some additional Open Educational Resources (OER) through his participation in the spring 2010 grant-funded professional learning community, Beta Boot Camp.  From these initial, grant-funded projects, James has continued, on his own time and at his own expense, to push the limits of this medium.  Two years have passed and James has published over 1,500 instructional videos which he hosts at a dedicated website, in addition to a dedicated YouTube channel with over 1,400 subscribers worldwide.  It is likely that his uploaded videos will reach 1 million views by the end of 2011.  Additionally, James continues to pioneer OER in the form of open platform courses, textbooks, and resources.

Do the math: Phoenix College's own James Sousa brings power to the people with 24/7, just-in-time support for mathematics students at every level, from arithmetic to calculus.  http://www.youtube.com/user/bullcleo1  

Robin Cotter led a team of colleagues in summer 2009 to develop a comprehensive series of online tutorials to promote student success and retention within the biological sciences.  The project, entitled "Biology Boot Camp," focused on helping students develop skills in the following areas: study and time management techniques, scientific writing, information literacy and critical thinking.  Modules were designed to contain clearly stated learning objectives, pre-assessment quizzes or surveys, presentation(s) of key concepts, and post-assessment quizzes or surveys.  The information literacy modules were developed by Kelly Lambert in Year 1 with additional development work in Year 3.  For additional information on this project see the following Title V blog page: http://pctitlev.blogspot.com/2011/06/fyi-literacy.html

Work on the information literacy modules will continue in Year 4, expanding work in bioscience and incorporating English (ENG101).

Select Breakout Sessions for the 2011 Student Success Conference

Form Follows Function: Building Information Literacy Skills One Click at a Time

Salon I: 10:45-11:45 a.m.
Track: Teaching Approaches and Strategies
Kelly Lambert and Robin Cotter, Phoenix College

In an attempt to increase student retention and success in gate- keeper Bioscience courses, a series of interactive ‘Biology Boot Camp’ tutorials were created to help students improve their infor- mation literacy, technical writing, and study skills. This presentation will focus on the information literacy portion of the Boot Camp. This portion of the project includes pre- and post-assessment as well as 8 mini-modules that provide content via audio, video, and interactive activities. Session presenters will share information on the successes and challenges of creating the modules including content covered, technologies utilized, student assessment, and user feedback. This project was funded through a Title V STEM grant at Phoenix College. 

http://mcli.maricopa.edu/success/2011/s15

Teaching Math with Free Textbooks and Online Resources

Salon I: 1:15-2:15 p.m.
Track: Teaching Approaches and Strategies
Paul Golisch, Paradise Valley Community College
James Sousa, Phoenix College

The session will provide the benefits and challenges of using Open Educational Resource (OER) materials. We will share what OER materials are currently being used to teach mathematics as well as where to find OER materials. OER materials are being used in a traditional classroom setting as well as a flipped model. Data will be provided on student perceptions and student progress.

http://mcli.maricopa.edu/success/2011/s07

FYI Literacy

Currently, everything I read is grant related. Well, almost everything… I just bought a Barnes & Noble Nook (e-reader) and I've begun re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is really taking me back to the 1980's. Some things never go out of style, such as this sage advice for intergalactic hitchhikers: don't panic. I'd have to say it has served me well, even in my current work assignment as Title V project director. Not to panic; that would be a "best practice." I also used to read quite a bit of philosophy in my undergraduate days. Epictetus (AD 55-135) has always been one of favorites, for his practicality, his notions on power and control, and also acceptance. This quote from him is particularly compelling: "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." In these terms, our colleagues, Kelly Lambert and Robin Cotter, have wrung additional value from their ongoing project developing information literacy modules; specifically in the manner in which they have responded to the challenges of assessing student learning outcomes.

Not to panic; that would be a "best practice."

As part of the interdisciplinary "Biology Bootcamp" series, the information literacy component aims to assist students in developing study skills that will enable them to successfully complete their course. In fact many of the Bioscience courses have substantive information literacy elements: BIO108 (research and presentation), BIO181 (report on infectious diseases), BIO182 (paper on evolution, including website evaluation; research on water quality and citing research), and BIO205 (researching and preparing a brochure on a genetic disorder). As a result, the information literacy tutorials have broad utility among most sections of bioscience classes. Furthermore, they can be adapted for other science and non-science courses. If you know of or are part of another academic department that would like to learn how this Title V-funded resource can be adapted to more specifically meet the needs of your students, please let me know. 

In the first phase of this project, undertaken and completed in fall 2010 with additional and significant contributions from Breanna Prinzhorn (bioscience faculty), content was created for the first three modules, including videos, transcripts and quizzes. Pre- and post-assessments were also created, tested and revised. Options for entering pre- and post-tests into Lesson Builder and Blackboard were also explored, but more about that shortly. Below is an embedded video from the tutorial (one of my favorites) and below that is a web link to the project as it appeared at the end of phase one. On behalf of her team, Kelly presented on phase one of the project to the full Title V Steering Council in November 2010 and received high praise.

http://www.pc.maricopa.edu/ctlt/titleV/Science/InformationLiteracy/index.html

Revised modules (phase two) can be viewed at Robin's BIO205 website, "MicroMania" (select from modules 1-8 in the column to the right).

Now about that assessment data… it turns out that one of the elements of this project -- a minor detail, really -- turned out to be quite a chore and continues to pose a challenge to implementation. One of the project tasks was to explore options for testing students and then harvesting that data to not only assess learning outcomes for the instructors but to also feed that information back to the students themselves. Due to interface issues between Soft Chalk (Lesson Builder) and the now-older version of Blackboard (Phoenix College is not using the latest version), pre- and post-test data cannot be easily uploaded, disambiguated, or otherwise used to take advantage of Blackboard features such as active release. Other options may allow more flexibility but then student authentication, controls on cheating, "time on task" authentication, and autoscoring must be sacrificed. To date, this component of the project has been constructed in Google docs, Survey Monkey, Lesson Builder, and Blackboard. Each solution provides an important piece but none of them offer a perfect solution. Kelly and Robin have navigated this challenge with aplomb. Their response to this challenge, and ongoing work with Jan Binder, has not only revealed a limitation in the assessment of resources such as these but is also moving us closer to potential solutions that will allow us to not only say that our work has made a positive impact on student learning outcomes; it will allow us to demonstrate it. Until then, don't panic.

By the way, for those of you who are looking for a little reading material, the pre- and post- test surveys can be viewed via the following URLs:

• Pre https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N56TDHZ 
• Post https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F8KJQ6G