A University Open Textbook Project

I have been an advocate for open textbooks. I think they are a good way to cut costs and put more textbooks in the hands of our students. But I'll admit that they are not widely used.

There are a number of possible reasons for that. They aren't easy to find, even though there are a number of sites that collect open and free titles. Instructors don't always trust that titles are "as good" as commercial textbooks. It also takes time to review titles for adoption.

The University of Minnesota has started its own online catalog of open books. In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development created the catalog to be reviewed by faculty members. The books are all released under a Creative Commons, or similar, license, and instructors can customize the books to fit their course needs.

Students can access free digital versions or purchase low-cost print copies of open textbooks. The university will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books, and professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500. (The money comes from donor funds.)

They hope to address faculty concerns about locating texts and having quality control over titles that have been peer-reviewed. They have almost a hundred books in the catalog.

Although it is encouraging that UM is working to get open textbooks used on campus, I find it discouraging that they need to duplicate the efforts of other repositories that are collecting textbooks and reviews on a larger scale.

What do you consider the most important criteria in choosing an open textbook for use in your teaching? Check my list and vote here.

Video Lectures for the Flipped Classroom

As a follow up to yesterday's post about the flipped classroom, here are "Lessons Worth Sharing" - TED-Ed’s idea of sharing presentations (lectures? sort of) on great ideas. Probably some of you already use a TED talk with your students. The example mentioned in the video promo below is "Just How Small is an Atom?" By Jon Bergmann. More videos that were flipped by teachers are being posted all the time.

I have used videos online as short, flipped lectures. One I like to use is from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson about "Changing Education Paradigms." Though I had education majors in my class this semester, the class was on critical thinking. Students watched, enjoyed and remembered the video throughout the semester and the discussion was lively.

One thing I liked about this particular version of his talk is that the video portion of Robinson actually speaking is replaced by an animated version of someone drawing (very well) on a white board to illustrate Robinson's points.

I asked them to answer some questions based on their viewing at home the 12 minute video.

1. Robinson assumes you know this - What is a paradigm?
2. Why does he believe that we need to change public education today?
3. What is his opinion about ADHD?
4. How would he group students in classes?
5. How would he compare divergent thinking versus creativity?
6. Explain his example of geniuses in kindergarten.
7. How would Robinson compare/contrast cheating versus collaboration?
8. Summarize what you feel are his 3 main arguments.
9. How does having the visualization of his talk change the way we hear/see his talk?  Is this visual thinking?

Can You Flip a College Classroom?

If you haven't heard, the "flipped classroom" is a big concept in education this year, especially in the upper grades of K-12.

It's the idea of using technology like online video instruction, laptops, DVDs of lessons etc. to flip/reverse what students have traditionally done in class and at home to learn. For example, listening to lectures becomes the homework assignment and teachers use the class time for more one-on-one attention in class and students can work at their own pace or with other students.

Though an article I read traced the flipped classroom to a 2008 experiment by two Colorado chemistry teachers, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, it's not so different from other concepts we have seen in educating with tech. Their idea that students need their teachers there to answer questions or to provide help if they get stuck on an assignment, but they might not need teachers present to listen to a lecture or review content.

When I was at NJIT and we launched our podcasting initiative and became one of the first schools on Apple's iTunes U, we were trying some of the same things. Have students watch and listen to a lecture before class and use the time in class to follow up with discussion and questions.

Of course, professors have been doing that for a long time with readings. And the two forms of content have the same problem. What if students don't do the reading or watch the lecture? I hear many professors complain that students 1) don't buy the book(s)   2) even if they do, they don't read them  3) if they do read them, they don't seem to retain or understand any of what they read.

You might assume that students are more likely to watch a lecture than read a chapter, but I don't think the evidence for that is clear.

Flipped classrooms allow students to work at their own pace and allow teachers to tailor their instruction to individual students.

Those two teachers have a book, Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day and there is a Flipped Learning Network, a nonprofit organization launched this spring to train teachers from schools across the socio-economic spectrum in the strategy.

A article I read this week about an attempt to flip a classroom in a Portland, Oregon elementary school, points out one major obstacle. "Flipped Classroom' Model's Promise Eludes Poorer School Districts" shows that the teacher discovered that none of her students had computers at home. She had just one in the classroom.

Sometimes we make the assumption that there is ubiquitous computing and (high-speed) Internet access amongst our students. That is particularly true with college students who we imagine all being plugged in via their smartphones 24/7. The article points out that anecdotal evidence suggests that flipping classrooms is a more popular practice in wealthier suburban communities where nearly all students have Internet access at home and schools are more likely to have computers in classrooms.

Another criticism of the flipped classroom is that it still relies on lectures by teachers. Remember that over-used mantra of "guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage?" What happened?

In higher ed, blended learning (AKA hybrid learning) is probably the closest thing in place now to the flipped classroom. It too attempts to move some of the learning online, or at least out of the classroom space, and using the face-to-face time for what works best in that setting.

When I was designing hybrid courses, I always told faculty right off that they should do in the classroom whatever worked best in the classroom. If that meant having their truly dynamic lectures live and moving the discussion online, then do that.

Are you doing anything like a flipped classroom?  How would the flipped writing class work? Would it be like the low-residency MFA writing program?

We would love to get your comments.

Access Versus Success

The open-door policy at community colleges is unique in American higher education. It's all about broad access and it has prepared hundreds of millions of people for entry into the work force or to transfer to four-year colleges. Community colleges serve about 30 percent of all students in higher education.

But now we have less state and local/county money available and that requires painful choices.

Add to that a nationwide effort that is supported by the Obama administration to boost education levels, speed up the time it takes to get through a program, and to use resources for degree programs rather than for basic and developmental (remedial) and ESL courses.

The focus has moved to getting students who are most likely to graduate in three years (the magic number of years for two-year schools - it's 6 years for 4-year schools).



Some stats: Community college three-year graduation rates average in the low 20 percent range and a good number, including PCCC, are below ten percent. In 2009, the last year for which the federal government has reported data, close to 400 community colleges had graduation rates less than 15 percent.

Many people see the future as as a time when access to all is not the mission of the community college.

Earlier this year, the American Association of Community Colleges reported that this national completion agenda is starting to affect community colleges.

"Community colleges are being hammered to increase graduation rates," says Gary D. Rhoades, a professor of higher education at the University of Arizona, who also works with the Center for the Future of Higher Education, a research group. "One way to do that is to change the sort of student you serve."

What happens to the millions of low-income and minority students who look to attend community colleges every year, many of whom need remedial education first?

Nationally, more than 60 percent of students at two-year colleges are put into developmental education. Those students will usually take a year or more to catch up before taking their first college-level course. Unfortunately, many of them fail, or do not progress, and just drop out.

Although we spend more than $2-billion a year helping these students in English and mathematics skills (according to the Community College Research Center at Teachers College) the results are not impressive and don't justify the expenditure to those who provide the funding.

At PCCC, we are looking to separate our ESL and developmental students (currently, about 75% of our student population) from the college-level prepared students. It makes sense if you are trying raise the rate of students who graduate in three years because the clock starts on a student as soon as they take classes. If they spend a year in ESL and another year in developmental studies, even if they shoot through their college classes in two years, it's a four year run.

PCCC and other schools are looking at approaches such as moving those non-college-level students to units such as Continuing Education. There they may get remediation in computer-based adaptive learning classes. 

There are also financial considerations. Students who take developmental and also college level courses several times without passing still pay tuition each time. We are getting five times a single tuition rate for that student to get through one class.

And the land of financial aid is changing too. Pell Grants, which many of our students obtain, are changing and it seems that if students use their aid for remediation, there will be nothing left for them when they reach college level.

Success is important. So is access. Can we have both, or do we need to choose?


Some other related thoughts:

Education for All? 2-Year Colleges Struggle to Preserve Their Mission
http://chronicle.com/article/2-Year-Colleges-Fight-to-Save/131608/


Is Privatization the Answer? http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/23/community-college-leaders-told-privatization-wave-future

Can An Exam Really Evaluate Student Writing?

I am pretty sure that teachers have been complaining about poor student writing since the earliest days of having places that we would call schools. And it's difficult to get teachers to agree on what constitutes good writing and especially on how you can evaluate student writing.

The portfolio is a popular approach that has gained some traction, but many schools from elementary to college level still use (or are required to use) a writing essay.

Doug Hesse, director of the writing program at the University of Denver, prefers grading student portfolios assembled over several semesters.“Within the writing community,” he said, “there’s a lot of wariness especially of single-measure, single-sitting exams.”

A recent article on InsideHigherEd.com looked at two colleges that differ on the role of exams in evaluating student writing. But before I comment on those examples, let me talk about Passaic County Community College's own writing exam.

The exam came about decades ago when today's employers and faculty members were themselves college students. In PCCC's case (so the story goes), an important local business man complained to the College President that he was getting job applicants who had graduated from PCCC and "couldn't write."

And so, the PCCC College Writing Exam (CWE) was implemented. It was seen as away to validate that a graduating student was an adequate writer. It is an important graduation requirement for all PCCC students because failing it means you don't graduate, no matter what you have as a grade average. As far as we know, we are the only college in NJ (2 or 4 year) that has this requirement. That is seen by some as admirable, and by others as foolish.

For the CWE, students are asked to write that most basic of forms - the  five paragraph essay. That is about 450 words about a general topic or a topic from their major that they have not seen before. Students will be given the general theme (such as "survival" or "personal health" or "elections") but not the actual question so that they may prepare some ideas for their essay.

Students use a computer to type their essay, but it does not allow spell check, grammar check or Internet access. The testing allows for two hours.

The essay will be read and holistically evaluated by at least two readers. Readers are faculty and staff members from PCCC who have been trained in scoring the exam using a standard rubric.

The article I read talks about Old Dominion University and Hampden-Sydney College who also decided that the best way to make sure their graduates could write was to require them to pass a writing test before graduation.

Students at Hampden-Sydney’s have a 33% failure rate for students taking the test for the first time. That's not very different from our failure rate. The article states that faculty work with those students to "make sure they improve their writing and graduate on time."
Old Dominion University (a much larger public university) had problems with the test results. More than 600 of 42,000 seniors in the past decade finished every other degree requirement but couldn’t pass the test and graduate. Big universities and smaller community colleges don't like students not graduating because of one item.


So this year Old Dominion announced it was phasing the test out and instead asking students to instead earn at least a C in three classes -- two English courses and a writing-intensive class in their major. Current students who prefer to take the assessment still can.

It might sound like an easy way out, but the university Provost, Carol Simpson, said the assessment did a poor job of gauging writing ability. She believes writing should be evaluated in the classroom, not on a test that students take on their way out the door.

Simpson's quote in the article has been echoed many times on the PCCC campus by faculty: “Many students waited until they had completed all other requirements and then go, ‘Oh gosh, I have to take this exam.’ They didn’t prepare for it. It was a timed, stressful exam. It just wasn’t really a good example of their ability to write.”

Students don’t seem to be mourning the exam’s death. “Does one test, like a five-paragraph essay, really determine your ability to write analytically?” asked Student Body President Luis Ferreira, who passed the exam last year. “It didn’t really serve a serious purpose for me. It was just kind of a formality.”

Those colleges give a reading on a topic which students thyen need to take a position on and respond with a well-reasoned paper of around 500 words. The essays are graded by multiple faculty members.

Smaller and all-male Hampden-Sydney has a different approach. Before the exam, students must pass two rhetoric classes (3 if they test poorly as incoming freshmen) which are capped at 14 students and focus on grammar and essay composition.

If a student fails the test, generally taken late in his sophomore year, he has two opportunities to pass it again as a junior and to seek help from writing instructors. The rare student who hasn’t passed by senior year is placed into a writing-intensive course in which he is tutored. The student is then given an alternative assessment. The student then writes three essays but isn’t held to a time limit. 

Can one essay taken under conditions that do not resemble the way students do the majority of their academic writing really be a fair evaluation of their ability to write?

Dissertation Dissing

The average humanities doctoral student takes nine years to earn a Ph.D.

At least that's what I read was said at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association held this year at Rutgers.

Students finishing dissertations now probably started them before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kindles, iPads and many other technologies existed.

In the article "Dissing the Dissertation," Scott Jaschik is writing about graduate students, so this may seem far off track for a blog about writing at a community college. But I have had my own discussions with colleagues and students here and at a university where I teach in a graduate program about dissertations. For undergrads, the idea of writing a book that almost no one will ever read sounds quite absurd.

The question in the article is really whether or not dissertations prepare students to work in this century in any place other than academia?

The discussion at the MLA conference seems to have centered around not only the time required to complete a dissertation but also the topics and format.

Is it possible that digital projects and publishing, and "public scholarship" may actually become alternatives? That stone wheel turns very slowly. The MLA actually issued a report back in 2006 about promotion and tenure practices that had also questioned this monograph (or "proto-book") production process.

At PCCC, we often question the writing exam we require students to pass in order to graduate. (We are the only college in NJ to require one.)  It's no dissertation, but might there also be better ways to measure writing ability at this level than the snapshot but "classic" five-paragraph essay written on the spot?

It's one thing to diss dissertations but it would be a whole other thing to actually see schools ditch dissertations. Still, the discussions in places like the MLA adds further fuel to the movement towards another kind of University 2.0 that I think institutions will be pushed towards harder by the workplace and by their students.