Survey says: Contextualization works!

We’ve covered a lot of territory this week, from South Texas to South Africa. As promised, we’re going to cap off the week by digging into the latest research on contextualization.

This month, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University’s Teachers College released a brief titled “Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization.” In the brief, CCRC reviews existing literature for evidence on the effectiveness of contextualized basic skills instruction, While there is promising evidence that contextualization improves students’ basic skills mastery , the results are mixed on whether these practices improve content learning outcomes. The authors also site several studies that tie contextualization with positive influence on developmental education course completion and college-level credit accumulation.

CCRC identifies some practical applications for their findings, including “considerable effort…needed to implement contextualization because instructors need to learn from each other and collaborate across disciplines, a practice that is not common in college settings.” We heard about the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration yesterday from Stevan Schiefelbein, who told us about faculty collaboration between South Texas College’s departments of History, Sociology, Developmental Reading, Developmental Math, and Developmental English.

For more CCRC analysis of contextualization models, check out their report on I-BEST. Developed in Washington state, Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) integrates basic skills instruction with college-level occupational classes. Guess what? Faculty collaboration is vital for I-BEST, too. Has your college taken the contextualization challenge? What approcaches ease the path to collaboration? What gets in the way?

Guest Post: South Texas in Context

Today’s post comes from Stevan Schiefelbein, DEI project director at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas. Part of the South Texas strategy is to contextualize a significant portion of the developmental education curriculum. They are working with faculty groups to complete the task. Stevan describes the process and early results below.

One of the Developmental Education Initiative strategies at South Texas College (STC) is Intentional Content Integration. The goal during the first year of STC’s DEI grant was to integrate 20 percent of the developmental English and reading curricula; sociology was the subject area chosen by the faculty as the academic subject around which to contextualize the curriculum changes. During the second year of the grant, the goal was to integrate an additional 20 percent of the curricula; history was chosen as the academic subject of contextualization.

From June to August of 2009, eight instructors from the Developmental Reading, Developmental English, and Developmental Math Departments worked together to integrate math, writing, and reading into all three departments’ curricula.  Additionally, they designed a sociology-related project for each of the three levels of developmental reading and writing.

The Process
From January to July of 2010, some of the same instructors, along with some who were not previously involved, designed history-related projects for each of the three levels of developmental reading and writing. Starting in January 2011, instructors have been involved writing new developmental English sociology-related as well as history-related essay prompts, to be used starting fall 2011 semester. The developmental reading projects are also being redesigned.

Some of the requirements on the developmental English essay prompts include one-page summary response journals from a chapter out of the history and sociology textbooks as well as internet sources,  creating and administering surveys, creating graphs, and using APA style for citing references. When working with students on the developmental reading projects, instructors teach the logical format of one chapter from the history and sociology textbooks to strengthen textbook usage skills that maximize the amount of information students retain from reading what many college freshmen consider to be challenging reading assignments.

Collaboration among faculty members has proven to be one of the biggest strengths of the contextualization work, but also one of the greatest challenges. Collaborating with and receiving feedback from faculty members of the STC Sociology and History Departments has also been rewarding.

Outside Support
Two consultants have provided information on contextualization and integration. Dr. Dolores Perin, senior research associate with Columbia University’s Community College Research Center, visited STC in October 2009.  Dr. Emily Lardner, a DEI technical assistance provider and co-director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education, visited STC in November 2010. Both consultants also observed some developmental education classrooms and discussed their reports on the curriculum writing efforts with faculty. 

Results
Pre- and post-surveys and focus groups have been used to assess changes in students’ levels of engagement and their growth in understanding of the nature of integration and contextualization of assignments in the different subject areas over the course of the semester. Statistically significant gains were seen in several measures of student engagement at the end of the first year. In addition, success rates (as measured by students who receive a grade of A, B, C, or P) in developmental English and developmental reading courses were compared to course success rates from previous semesters. The success rates from the first year are mixed. However, overall, faculty feel that the contextualized curriculum is very strong when compared to the previous curriculum, and that it teaches underprepared students how to write for academic classes.

You can learn more about the DEI Developmental English curriculum here; you can also check out the DEI Development Reading projects for history and sociology. 

Stevan Schiefelbein is Assistant Professor of Developmental English and DEI Project Director at South Texas College.

Guest Post: Extended Programmes – A South African Initiative

Well, this is exciting! It’s Accelerating Achievement’s first international guest blogger. Today’s post comes from Dr. Chrissie Boughey of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape province, South Africa. Dr. Boughey attended the 2011 Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute and after hearing some of her reflections on the event and, in particular, her perspective on colleges’ approaches to remediation and developmental education, we asked her to tell us—and you—more about the South African approach. The end of apartheid necessitated a different approach to higher education in South Africa and there are some striking similarities in the challenges we face in this country when it comes to serving underprepared students. The Extended Programme, described below, is an interesting approach to contextualizing and blending the entire remedial sequence into college-level study.

In South Africa, access to and success in higher education have long been critical issues because of the effects of apartheid on black students’ chances of gaining admittance to a university and succeeding once they are there. Early access initiatives tended to focus on stand-alone remedial courses in study skills, language, and numeracy. Analysis of the impact of this sort of work showed that students often felt marginalized and stigmatized and that learning did not often transfer to mainstream study.

In the early 2000s, thanks to “redress funding” from the South African Department of Education, “Extended Programmes with an Integrated Foundation Phase” began to be developed.  “Extended Programmes,” as they are now known, admit students who do not meet usual university entrance requirements to accredited programs of study leading to degree- or diploma-level qualifications. An Extended Programme prolongs the period of study needed for the completion of a qualification by up to one year. This additional year’s worth of instruction is used to provide learning opportunities that either lay a foundation for “mainstream” learning or support it in some way. Importantly, not all the additional instruction needs to be located in the first year of study since funding rules allow it to be provided throughout the curriculum.

In the years since the introduction of Extended Programmes, a number of different ways of providing the additional instruction have been identified. “Augmented” courses see students registered in normal courses but having the instructional time for those courses doubled with the additional instruction offered by specialists. A typical augmented course might thus offer eight classes per week instead of the four offered normally. “Extended” courses (not to be confused with Extended Programmes) offer a semester’s worth of learning over an entire year. This means that the pace of learning is slowed and more time is available for foundations to be built and for language and literacy to be developed in relation to authentic learning tasks. Funding for Extended Programmes allows a mix of different kinds of courses providing this additional instruction.

One of the advantages of Extended Programmes is that students begin earning credits towards a qualification immediately. The impact of this on motivation is enormous. In addition, the integration of developmental work with mainstream learning means that it can be authentic and support students as they engage with academic discourse communities.

While Extended Programmes benefit students enormously, the integration of support and development with mainstream teaching is challenging for faculty involved. At the core of these challenges is the need for academic teachers to adopt teaching approaches and assessment methods that are inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the diversity black working class students bring to learning.  Extended Programmes thus provide a rich site for research associated with the scholarship of teaching and with academic life in general.

Initially, only a small number of universities offered Extended Programmes. Now all public universities offer a number of these valuable learning opportunities to students who were previously excluded from or marginalized in South African higher education.

Dr. Chrissie Boughey is Dean of Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University.

In Context

As we’ve discussed here before, coming up with an appropriate moniker for developmental education is challenging. At some institutions, these courses are deemed “transitional” or “foundational” since students are acquiring skills that will form the basis of the rest of the postsecondary study. This week, we’ll be looking at a particular approach to integrating those necessary skills and content instruction. That’s right, it’s Contextualization Week!

These Peeps are studying culinary arts and the art of mathematics. And we’re still smitten with the Washington Post's Peeps dioramas.

As defined in a recent CCRC brief on the topic, contextualization is “the teaching of basic skills in the context of disciplinary topic areas.” This week, we’ll have posts from South Africa and South Texas detailing how different institutions employ these strategies on their campuses and how they shape student experience and outcomes. We’ll also dig a little deeper into current research on effective design and implementation of contextualized curricula. Stay with us!

Linky, Linky

• Today in Inside Higher Ed, Mike Rose writes powerfully about the challenges of our existing developmental education system:

  “But now we are at a watershed moment when not only are individuals and programs trying to do something fresh with remediation, but national attention -- public and philanthropic -- is focused on the issue as well. To make significant changes, we’ll need to understand all the interlocking pieces of the remediation puzzle, something we’re not oriented to do, for our disciplinary and methodological training and public policy toolkit work against a comprehensive view of the problem.”

  Rose raises a familiar lament about disciplinary and methodological silos, drawing particular attention to the lack of interaction between intellectuals focused on remediation and those focused on basic writing.
  
• In the spirit of breaking down silos (check out last week’s post about efforts in Ohio to align dev ed with adult basic ed), we want to draw your attention to an article published this morning by The Hechinger Report about basic skills education. Sarah Butrymowicz lifts up these programs: “Across the U.S., thousands of workers stuck in low-paying jobs are trying to get a leg up through free basic-skills classes that train them in everything from elementary math to basic literacy.”
• The U.S. Department of Education is hosting a Community College Virtual Symposium on April 27 from 2:00-5:00 PM EDT. There will be presentations on policies and practices that support bridge programs for low-skill adults, alignment of secondary and postsecondary education, improved developmental education, and college-employer partnerships that promote curricular change. Register here to participate.

Guest Post: Scaling Up Successful Practices, Drawing on Experience

This post is courtesy of Jim Knickerbocker, managing director of the Academy for College Excellence. ACE is an integrated, project-based program for developmental education students that accelerates student progress by focusing on both the students’ cognitive and affective experience. ACE began as a program at Cabrillo College and now exists at eight colleges across the country. In February, we shared some of what we learned at Jim’s great presentation on scaling at the 2011 Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute. Here, Jim talks about some of the deeper change—in organizations and individuals—that may be required to successfully expand an effective program. You’ll also note that we’ve chosen to illustrate today’s post with something a little more sugary than a JPG. That’s right, we’re shamelessly obsessed with the Washington Post’s annual Peeps Diorama Contest.

These peeps go to college in California and have created a strong peer support network because they participate in the Academy for College Excellence.

There is no shortage of inventiveness being put to work improving developmental education in America, but too many good ideas never grow beyond their first few classrooms at a college, let alone extend out to other colleges across the nation or persist over time.  Why is it so challenging to scale-up successful programs? 

And what do we mean by “scaling?”  The most common notion is reaching a wider number of people (more students enrolled in more cohorts at more institutions), but that is only part of the equation. For sustainability, greater depth is just as important, such as the magnitude of student transformation, degree of institutional change (structure, process, roles, policies, values), or attainment of a critical mass in a region or district.

Scaling necessarily entails a lot of change, which may send the message that what is new is more important than what has been.  Shifting priorities within institutions can induce rivalries as parties grasp for control over resource re-allocation. Beyond the changes in power and money, scaling usually requires changes in skills, habits, and ideas. There are a lot of factors that enable this kind of change, but the single most important ingredient to successful scaling is sponsorship—not just at the top, but with key participants (e.g., faculty senate, union, and community partners) who can provide leadership, resources, and support for teamwork. Another success factor is the use of evaluation data to promote buy-in.

The Academy of College Excellence (ACE) designed its model to promote scaling by moving high-intensity student support into the curriculum and creating peer-to-peer networks to reduce costs. ACE also developed a replicable methodology of workshops and tools to help colleges adopt and expand their ACE program. With these and other techniques, once the program is fully established at a college, the cost per cohort is not significantly greater than regular college courses.

Jim Knickerbocker, Ph.D., is managing director of the Academy for College Excellence.  To learn more about ACE’s scaling approach, you can check out the slides and handouts from Jim’s 2011 ATD Strategy Institute presentation in the Resources section under “Scaling Up.” You can learn more about ACE at www.my-ace.org.

Linky, Linky

Looking for a good Friday afternoon dev ed read? Here are a few options:

• Developmental Mathematics Revival is an exciting new blog from Jack Rotman, who leads the AMATYC “New Life Project” and is a liaison with Carnegie’s pathways work. 
• Does college still matter? According to the first ten minutes of today’s Freakonomics podcast, it really does! Steve Levitt says, “Of all the topics that economists have studied, I would say one we are most certain about are the returns to education.” Isn’t it comforting to know that economists are certain about some things?
• The Chronicle’s Jennifer Gonzalez reports on MDRC’s research on learning communities.
• Carnegie has posted the materials from their Statway and Quantway webinar, including an extensive Q&A.
• Can’t get enough dev ed content? Videos and presentations from last September’s National Center for Postsecondary Research Developmental Education Conference are available online.

Guest Post: Asking the Right Questions: Aligning Basic Literacy and Developmental Education Classes in Ohio

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: finding and implementing scalable solutions to the dev ed challenge requires integrated college and state policy strategies. Today’s post from Karen Scheid, Regional ABLE Consultant and Director of the Developmental Education Initiative for the Ohio Board of Regents, looks at the Buckeye State’s approach to widespread alignment of ABLE and developmental education instruction.

A key focus of the Ohio’s state-level Developmental Education Initiative plan has been the establishment of a pilot project to promote the alignment of remedial services between Ohio community colleges and local adult basic and literacy (ABLE) programs. Why did we select this as an approach for improving student success? Research has demonstrated that developmental education students in need of the most remediation seldom achieve a postsecondary certificate or degree. Those students who do succeed in advancing through traditionally delivered developmental education courses find that they have depleted much of their financial aid in doing so.

Could ABLE programs that are offered at no cost to students be more successful at helping those students starting at the lowest level of developmental education to acquire the skills needed to enroll in credit bearing classes or at least begin their college studies at a higher level of developmental education? Why might ABLE programs succeed in doing so? ABLE programs target instruction to specific learner needs as determined by required assessments administered to students at the program’s orientation. In addition, ABLE programs use information gleaned from learning style inventories and learning disability screenings to offer students insights into how they learn best. In recent years, more ABLE programs also are infusing both career awareness and postsecondary-related information into their day-to-day instruction and directly teaching students learning strategies to help them improve their abilities to obtain, retain, and recall information, as well as manage their learning experience.

Ohio ABLE programs have demonstrated their effectiveness at increasing students’ basic skills performance two or more grade levels per program year. But, can the way ABLE programs provide remediation be modified to accelerate the rate of progress for the students referred by the colleges? If so, what modifications lead to student success?

Since the launch of the pilot at the end of July 2010, 22 of Ohio’s 23 community colleges and their ABLE partners have submitted agreements for colleges to make ABLE referrals for students who score below an agreed level on a placement test. The agreements, most of which are in early implementation, reflect diverse approaches—some ABLE programs have established single-subject ABLE classes, while others are addressing multiple subjects within the same class; some have established  managed enrollment classes with definite beginning and end dates, while others are maintaining an open enrollment environment; most are offering the ABLE classes on the college campus; and most colleges are providing some college privileges to students referred to ABLE even if the student is not officially enrolled in college classes.

Through observing the partnerships and tracking students’ academic progress over time, we will:

• Determine  the instructional approaches and support services that are most successful in helping students transition from ABLE back to community colleges,
• Identify best practices for developing and sustaining ABLE-community college agreements for serving students who are not college ready,
• Recommend a  uniform developmental education placement policy,
• Determine state policies and decisions that could support ABLE-community college agreements.

There is no question that this project is a work in progress and that we and the college-ABLE partnerships are learning as we progress.  All of us, though, are keeping our eyes on the main reason for trying this approach—the chance that the ABLE-developmental education alignment will result in more students who are least prepared for college work ultimately succeeding at the postsecondary level.

Heads Up

Happy Friday, all! We wanted to alert you to a few good reads before the weekend.

Yesterday, our friends at Jobs for the Future released a revamped Achieving Success newsletter. The new version is going to be published bimonthly and will be chock full of updates about how the ATD/DEI State Policy Teams are advancing dev ed reform. In the latest edition, we learned about the Center for Student Success in Michigan, developmental math redesign in North Carolina, and ABLE/Dev Ed integration in Ohio. The newsletter is not available online, but you can subscribe to future editions.

Today, Dean Dad wrote about developmental education on his “Confessions of a Community College Dean” blog over at Inside Higher Ed. Based on research suggesting that students likelihood of success decreases as they spend more time in dev ed, he ponders ideas getting students through these courses more quickly or letting them bypass them altogether. Looks like he thinks we need to escape the weight of history, too.

Duly Noted: ATD Data on Developmental Education Time to Completion

Every two months, JBL Associates publishes Data Notes: Keeping Informed About Achieving the Dream Data. These briefs dive into the ATD database to examine patterns occurring across the entire ATD network. Since ATD colleges provide extensive student-level data on first-time, full- and part-time cohorts, there’s a lot of interesting discoveries to be made. The January/February 2011 edition, “Developmental Education: Time to Completion,” written by Amy Topper delves into how many attempts students make in order to complete all of the developmental education courses to which they are referred. They also look at persistence and subsequent gateway course completion. Based on three-year outcomes in English and math, the analysis finds that:  

• Students referred to developmental math were more likely to attempt the class than were students referred to developmental English
• The higher the number of course attempts, the less likely students were to have successfully completed a gateway course (Sadly, it will not surprise you to learn that the same was true of the student’s referral level: the more levels down in developmental math, the less likely to successful gateway course completion.)
• Students who completed their developmental education coursework were about twice as likely to persist than those who did not complete the referred sequence

Topper concludes that “students with the greatest developmental needs are at the greatest risk of leaving college; however, if the college can keep the developmental student enrolled, his or her chances of success improve.”

One great thing about the Data Notes briefs, aside from opening a window into ATD data, is that they always end with intriguing questions for colleges that are tackling these particular issues. Given these data regarding the outcome differences for students who make multiple attempts and those that complete their dev ed coursework on the first attempt, Topper suggests colleges consider the following:

• Why is there a substantial number of students who are still enrolled after three years, but have not even attempted to complete their developmental coursework?
• What distinguishes students who make multiple attempts at developmental education from those who do not?
• Why is it that some students who complete their developmental coursework successfully within three years, or even earlier, do not persist, complete, or transfer?
• Do unsuccessful developmental education attempts vary by subject area or referral level at your institution?
• What distinguishes students who experience higher first-time success in developmental education courses to which they were referred from students whose outcomes are not as successful?

Has your college taken on such questions? How would you begin to answer them and what might you change about your current practice in order to achieve different outcomes?


Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.

Take a Load Off

We need to sit back and not let the weight of history determine what we’re teaching. The weight of history plays too much of a role in these courses, more than our own best professional judgment, learning sciences, or the needs of the workforce.
--Uri Treisman

Last week, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning hosted a webinar about the foundation’s work on Statway and Quantway, two new pathways to help take developmental math students “to and through” transferrable college math in one year. Uri Treisman kicked off the webinar:


Uri Treisman - What's the Problem? from Statway on Vimeo.

The structure of the Carnegie design approach emphasizes the importance of networks that can lift up local innovation and expertise, expand thinking to the systems level, and allow for sharing and building on the ideas of others.

Treisman says, “For the first time in a long time faculty are being asked to innovate, they’re being asked to create new solutions for developmental education, but they’re being asked to do it with what they have in their desk drawers. It is time to actually start using modern improvement science, to give people tools respectfully, so they can learn from each other and work from each other and not everyone has to work in a fog of collective amnesia.”

If we are going to shake off the weight of history and emerge from our collective amnesia, building connections between efforts like Statway and Quantway, DEI, and the desk drawer innovators at other colleges is a must. So, here are a few questions to start the conversation:

• If your college is participating in both DEI and Statway or Quantway, how is your institution linking the initiatives?
• If you’re at a Statway or Quantway college, but not participating in DEI, what’s the most important thing you think the DEI network should know?
• If you’re reimagining developmental education with the tools in your desk drawer, Statway or DEI be damned, what are we missing that we need to know about? There’s a comment section below with plenty of room for your answers!

Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.

Hook ‘Em, Horns!

Last week, we had a guest post from Cynthia Ferrell, director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team, on integrating state policy and institutional change. Today, we got a dispatch from Cynthia that shows this work in action. This week, Cynthia was asked to testify before the Texas House Higher Education Committee about a couple of bills that involve developmental education. Here’s what went down at the statehouse:

• HB 1244: this bill proposes requiring colleges to offer developmental education online. Cynthia shared some of the findings from a recent Community College Research Center (CCRC) literature review that provides evidence of the ineffectiveness of online education for low-income and underprepared students. Cynthia says, “The committee was very interested in the findings that showed not only the lack of research support for this action, but also the research-based reasons these students are not likely to succeed in online courses.  I suggested that instead, we should support statewide scaling of promising hybrid innovations being piloted and scaled at ATD and DEI colleges.” Cynthia expects that the legislative language will be amended.
• HB 3468: this bill addresses assessment and placement policies. CCRC’s research on assessment (which we’ve posted about previously) was provided to a representative during bill development. According to Cynthia: “The bill, which was very well received by the committee, includes the report's recommendation for the rigorous evaluation of college readiness assessments and a placement model that targets alternative treatments.” And it looks like this bill will be passed!

Thank you, CCRC, for such timely research contributions. And kudos to Cynthia for helping the Texas House make informed decisions about developmental education policy.