New Workshop Helps Peer Leaders Keep Students On Course!

Today’s post comes from Ruth Silon, executive director of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges’ Student Success Center and former DEI director and English faculty member at Cuyahoga Community College (CCC). Ruth describes how CCC combined what they learned from two of their DEI initiatives to increase the impact of student leaders on their campuses.

As Cuyahoga Community College’s Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) grant came to an end, making good use of the remaining funds was not a challenge. The College’s grant used peer leaders in two of its major initiatives: Supplemental Instruction (SI) and Peer Mentoring. For another initiative, a redesign of Math 0850, Skip Downing’s On Course principles were a major part of the course. Most math faculty who taught the course attended On Course Level I and II workshops during the college’s involvement with Achieving the Dream and DEI. During DEI, the workshops were offered to all faculty.

Two occurrences led us to the decision to hold an On Course workshop for student peer leaders. First, during the second year of DEI, English professor Mary Ward, who used On Course in her class, asked if her SI leader, Tiffany, could be trained. Having Tiffany in the workshop with the faculty was a real benefit as her presence added a valuable perspective to the training. Instead of just talking about On Course in an abstract setting, we talked about its principles and their value for students with a student. Tiffany then went on to promote On Course as an SI Leader with students in her English class. Then, during the third year of DEI, Robin Middleton from Jamestown Community College (JCC) facilitated the Level II workshop. From her we learned about a new workshop “Creating a Culture of Success: On Course for Front Line Staff.” In order to promote culture change across the college, front-line staff who work in admissions and financial aid were trained in On Course principles and techniques. Although a workshop for front-line peer student leaders had not been tested, Skip and Robin agreed to put it together.

On September 7, 2012, over forty student leaders from multiple Cuyahoga Community College (CCC) campuses attended the one-day workshop. The students were supplemental instruction leaders, student ambassadors, peer advocates with the C2C program, student coaches with Cleveland Transfer Connection, and an AmeriCorps coach. The students dove deep into discussions about the following topics: “Eight Choices of Successful Students,” “On Course Core Beliefs,” “The Language of Responsibility,” “Victim versus Creator Language,” and “Staying On Course When at a Fork in the Road of Life.” They practiced working with each other on the wise choice process and the problem resolution process. One of the students told me that she worries about students who are very belligerent: “They don’t know how to react to anything except by getting angry and using their street behavior.”  Student leaders quickly saw that using the wise choice process would slow down students’ reaction process and get them to think more critically. Another student said, “I think On Course will help me save my marriage!” 

The group activity that impressed many attendees was “Creating a Mission Statement for Front Line Staff.”  The task was to create a statement of “purpose you would be proud to post in your work space for all to see…. a Mission Statement that will guide your important work with students.”  Below are a few statements from the student collaboration:

• To serve as a support system with students to help them get their Associate’s Degree and achieve a rewarding career
• To provide an environment where students feel that they are part of a community
• Help students to learn and achieve the tools to be successful students and citizens

Giving these leaders the opportunity to put into words what their goals are and recognize how important their position is was quite moving. They felt empowered and then would go off to empower students. Clearly, this is a workshop that other colleges should think about bringing to their institution.

It is also important to mention that staff who work with these student leaders attended the workshop and many have attended On Course Level I and II training. If this program for student leaders is to work, trained staff will have to continue the conversation with them and encourage the use of On Course principles and methods.

Often as a grant ends, you find yourself saying, “We wish we knew then what we know now; we could have done some things differently or sooner.”  Blending together two of our initiatives, using student leaders and On Course training, was a great example of the culmination of our learning. I am so pleased that we were able to make it happen.

Guest Post: A Closer Look at Accelerating Opportunity

Today, Rachel Pleasants, senior project manager at Jobs for the Future, shares the inside scoop on a national effort to restructure adult basic education, another part of the postsecondary pipeline that shares some characteristics—and students—with developmental education programs.

Accelerating Opportunity, an initiative managed by Jobs for the Future, has ambitious goals: to change the way adult basic education (ABE) is structured and delivered at the state and college levels so that substantially more low-skilled adults get the education and credentials they need to access family-supporting careers. Building on Washington’s Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program and the Breaking Through initiative, Accelerating Opportunity promotes the development of integrated pathway models that combine ABE with career and technical training.

It’s clear that postsecondary credentials are essential for accessing jobs that pay a living wage, but these credentials are out of reach for many adults without a high school diploma or GED. Low-skilled adults seeking to advance their education and career face numerous barriers to success, including a lack of career guidance and disconnected educational systems. Like developmental education students, ABE students often find themselves in long remedial sequences, with very few ultimately transitioning to postsecondary credit-bearing programs.

Through Accelerating Opportunity, JFF and our partners and funders aim to address the systemic barriers that prevent low-skilled adults from achieving their goals. We believe that in order for this to happen, states and their colleges have to focus on three areas: developing career pathways, shifting their culture to one that views ABE as an important part of the postsecondary pipeline, and building in plans for scale and sustainability. This is a major undertaking that includes changes in policy as well as practice. And not only are we asking states and colleges to engage in systems change, we are asking them to do it at scale: each implementation state in the initiative (five so far) has committed to awarding at least 3,600 credentials to students in the target population within three years.

The initiative began with a one-year design phase; in November 2011, the leadership team selected Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina to move into the implementation phase. In May 2012, we added Louisiana as a fifth state. Across these five states more than forty colleges are developing and implementing integrated pathways.

Far from being deterred from the ambitious goals set out by Jobs for the Future along with its funders and partners, the states have embraced the Accelerating Opportunity vision and are already producing results. Less than a year into the implementation work, nearly all the participating colleges have pathway programs in place, enrolling a total of more than 800 students. Students and faculty are beginning to see the benefits of an integrated pathway approach and the team teaching model. Partnerships between ABE, career and technical education, the workforce system, and TANF agencies are being developed and strengthened. Some states have even begun to move toward policy changes. In Illinois, for example, ABE outcomes, including transition to postsecondary, is now part of the state’s performance funding formula. In Kansas, the eligibility criteria of a state scholarship fund have been revamped to better target AO students.

There are still many challenges ahead for the five states, including funding (especially given the loss of Pell’s Ability to Benefit provision), recruitment, professional development, and stakeholder engagement.  But we see a remarkable commitment on the part of state and college leaders to developing the types of pathways and structures that will enable many more low skilled-adults to access and succeed in postsecondary training. For example, the governors in many of the implementation states have supported JFF and other national organizations in advocating for the inclusion of an exception to the Ability to Benefit change for students enrolled in career pathway programs.

There is a growing national emphasis on career pathway development and an increasing awareness of the importance of postsecondary education, and the goals of Accelerating Opportunity are aligned with these national trends. JFF and our partners and funders believe that Accelerating Opportunity has the potential to raise the profile of adult basic education, ensure its inclusion in the college completion agenda, and ultimately provide thousands of adults with access to economic opportunity. In all this work, there is shared commitment with other national initiatives like Achieving the Dream and DEI as well as collaboration and peer learning toward a shared goal: accelerating progress for all students toward postsecondary credentials.

Every birthday girl needs a network

We’re paging through our first year of Accelerating Achievement posts, pulling out some reader favorites and seeing what’s new. Today, we return to two posts from colleagues not directly associated with DEI, but from institutions that are committed to the same work. We’ve learned a lot this year from people throughout the community college sector and beyond.

Through In the News we’ve followed developmental education media coverage and spiced it up with conversation starters and a little analysis. In Take a Load Off, we recapped a great webinar from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning about the Foundation’s work on Statway and Quantway, two pathways to help take developmental math students “to and through” transferrable college math in one year. One big takeaway came from Uri Treisman:

“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.”

Both initiatives have made great strides in the last year; you can hear all about the progress during the Foundation’s upcoming January 24 webinar.


Innovation Highlight segments introduced colleges and states that are developing new strategies to get students through dev ed successfully. We’ve discussed learning communities, supplemental instruction, tutoring, acceleration and the data collection that undergirds any improvement.

One of the most popular posts came from Katie Hern at Chabot College. In Mobilizing Faculty toward Dramatic Curricular Change, Katie shared what she has learned about motivating individuals to take on the challenge of accelerated developmental education courses as an English instructor and lead of the California Acceleration Project. Hearing from faculty at different colleges, teaching in different disciplines and different modalities has been one of our favorite parts of this last year of blogging!

Guest Post: Modeling Accountability

When you’re expanding a new initiative, it can be difficult to build new responsibilities into the already complicated and busy lives of faculty. Below, Lisa Dresdner, director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at Norwalk Community College, shares her advice on how to encourage accountability.

Rarely does the dog eat homework anymore; instead, the printer is out of ink or the computer crashes. Sometimes it’s a court date or a car accident that prevents a student from handing in her homework, or a student has to take his little brother or mother to [fill in the blank] and missed class. We’ve all heard the excuses, and we all have sympathy for our students’ complex and challenging lives. However, we also insist on holding our students accountable: We have carefully laid out our expectations for assignments, participation, and attendance in our syllabi; we have offered extra help to accommodate their various needs; and we have continually emphasized the requirements for successful completion of our courses.

Interestingly, this same need for accountability occurs in adult behavior:  “I’m exhausted/overworked/overwhelmed with [fill in the project] and haven’t been able to get to [fill in your requirements].” Sound familiar? The truth is, everyone’s lives are complicated; as faculty, shouldn’t we model what we want our students to do? How then do we encourage accountability among faculty? Over the last two years of scaling up our learning communities with our DEI grant, we’ve found that three basic steps need to be taken.

Establish expectations early: Just as a syllabus establishes a contract at the beginning of a semester between the instructor and the students, a written outline of responsibilities and due dates at the beginning of a project or initiative serves as an agreement among faculty. The fulfillment of these requirements is often tied to an incentive of some type. Two elements of this agreement are key: First, the requirements should be presented both orally and in written form, allowing for discussions and questions about why the various tasks are necessary; and second, the participants should sign the sheet confirming their agreement to be responsible.

At Norwalk Community College, we have a Learning Community (LC) leadership team consisting of the dean of academic affairs, the DEI project director, and the chairs/directors of the departments pairing classes in the LCs. This team outlines the kinds of tasks we want LC faculty to complete:

• create three integrative learning assignments
• meet regularly to discuss the students and the course
• write two narratives reflecting on specific questions—an individual report mid-semester and a group report at the end of the semester.

In different semesters, we have asked faculty to attend professional development activities that connect to the type of work we are emphasizing in our LCs.

Because faculty know these tasks are requested by a team, rather than by “administration,” they are often more receptive to them. Additionally, we use the grant requirements to encourage individual responsibility; that is, we explain how grant funding requires accountability in both gathering and reporting data and other information. In a sense, the grant helps to create an accountability pathway that we are institutionalizing. We let potential instructors know their responsibilities prior to their agreeing to participate in an LC, and then we go over the “contract” again during an interactive workshop where they begin creating their assignments together. They all know that receiving their stipend is contingent on fulfilling their obligations.

Follow up and feedback: Since each responsibility comes with a due date, the project leader may need to prompt the faculty throughout the semester. A quick e-mail reminder to the whole group works well, and this can be followed – if necessary – by more personalized e-mails or phone calls to individuals who are excessively late. As requirements are met, feedback is crucial! Not only must we acknowledge fulfillment of a responsibility, but we should also comment to emphasize that the participants and their work are valued. Additionally, as the point person, you are in a position to respond to questions or challenges to help faculty navigate their role in the project and to highlight shared struggles and triumphs.

One of the advantages we’ve found is that by requiring faculty to submit their integrative learning assignments, we’ve built a bank of resources faculty can use in subsequent semesters. This shared resource generates further collaboration as instructors find ways to tweak and revise an assignment.

Celebrate: Faculty almost always like to celebrate with food and talk. The food and drink may cost a little money, but the opportunity to gather over refreshments and share their experiences is priceless. Reflecting as a group on the semester, especially with some focused questions, also provides feedback to you on the whole project. If this celebration occurs after the final reports or responsibilities are completed, you might share your analysis of the commonalities and differences you discovered. In past semesters, we have written a summary of what faculty have expressed and circulated it as a draft, asking for issues we may have missed. What faculty gain from this experience, besides camaraderie and an increased understanding of the project’s purpose and its value, is the knowledge that their voices are heard. Really, in the end, being heard and valued strengthens the accountability pathway for all of us.

Lisa Dresdner is director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at Norwalk Community College.

Guest Post: We're Getting the Band Back Together!

The Developmental Education Initiative is all about sharing good ideas and successful practices so that more states, colleges, and students can take advantage of what’s working. There are many ways to do this across a campus, a system, or the entire community college sector. One example comes from Houston Community College (HCC). Last month, HCC held a conference that brought together developmental educators and national experts to focus on accelerating progress across the state. Below, Maria Strauss, director of instructional initiatives at HCC, recaps the conference.

Houston Community College hosted our third statewide developmental education conference, “Texas takes Developmental Education by the Horns” on November 18, with almost 200 participants from 18 Texas community colleges. The focus and theme of the conference was “Accelerating Achievement” [Great name! --Eds.]. Participants were organized according to their teaching fields and areas of specialization as we listened to speakers and enjoyed guided “table talk” during a working lunch.
 
Our first speaker, Joe Cuseo addressed academic advising and first-time-in college students’ need for college knowledge. Cuseo compared colleges with hospitals to illustrate the necessity of continued commitment to developmental education: if hospitals only admitted healthy patients their success rates would be great, and if colleges only admitted college-ready students the need for developmental education would be extinct; but with over 60 percent of community college students in need of some form of remediation, we must find ways to remediate them and make them college ready.

Hunter Boylan was our second speaker; Boylan reviewed the research on the best and promising practices for developmental programs. He was a strong advocate for improving students’ knowledge of assessment tests and their consequences on placement. He recommended making refresher courses available before giving students placement tests. He also argued for the new model of reducing the number of developmental courses and combining developmental English with reading courses. He suggested that colleges develop more 5-to-8 week refresher courses, provide intensive short-term open-entry/open-exit courses, and pair college-level courses with study strategies courses focusing on content.

We also heard from Karen Graham and Linda Thompson who are the current review coordinators for the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE). They discussed the accreditation principles of NADE certification and encouraged all participating colleges at the conference to consider going through the process.

We concluded the conference with Cynthia Ferrell, the director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team. Ferrell brought information from Austin about what is ahead for our state. For example, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is considering adopting one assessment test for the entire state to determine college placement. She also announced several leadership groups across the state that will be looking at developmental education redesign and making recommendations for state-wide strategies.

Everyone had the opportunity to interact with likeminded colleagues and share promising practices. After every presentation we had a question and answer session so participants could pose questions to the presenters. We all learned and reflected on our work with developmental students. We are already planning our fourth statewide conference for the spring of 2012!

Guest Post: The Benefit Bank Helps Community College Students Claim Work Supports

We’ve looked before at different ways to help students build a safety net that enables them to meet school obligations as well as personal, family, and work obligations, including financial counseling and financial literacy instruction. Today’s post from Michael Schultz, MDC VISTA, details another MDC initiative that helps connect individuals to available financial supports that could make the difference between a completed semester or an early withdrawal.

Consider this: an estimated $70 billion in work supports goes unclaimed by eligible households in the United States each year. Unbelievable, right? Community college students are often eligible for federal work supports beyond financial aid, yet lack of knowledge and barriers to access result in federally apportioned dollars going unclaimed.

Most notably, many community college students may be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. In order to be eligible for SNAP, full-time college students between the ages of 18-49 must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• They work at least 20 hours a week
• They work any number of hours in a federal or state work study program
• They are a married parent with at least one dependent under the age of 6
• They are a single parent with at least one dependent under the age of 12

Students must also meet the program’s income and asset limits that vary from state to state in terms of definitions, exemptions, and deductions.

Another work support likely available to community college students is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Available to anyone who earns income during the year, the EITC is fully refundable, meaning even households that owe no taxes can still receive the EITC as part of their refund. The greatest benefit is to households with children. The maximum credit for a household with one child is $3,094, with two children it is $5,112; with three or more children, it is $5,751. Households without children are also eligible: a single person without children, over the age of 25, and earning roughly between $6,000 and $7,500 is estimated to receive the maximum $464 tax credit. The IRS estimates that as many as 1 in 5 eligible households fail to claim the EITC. This population almost certainly includes many community college students who don’t realize they are eligible. (Check out the EITC Carolinas website, an MDC initiative, for more information.)

MDC’s Works Supports Initiative seeks to connect eligible populations, like community college students, to the federal and state benefits for which they are eligible. This national initiative uses an online service called The Benefit Bank^® (TBB) in partnership with community and faith-based organizations to help clients fill out benefit applications, e-file taxes, and complete the FAFSA. The Benefit Bank allows individuals to complete multiple applications in a user-friendly format with simple prompts and gateway questions that determine when more information is required. With TBB, a client can receive help filling out benefit or tax forms at a familiar community organization with the trusted assistance of a counselor. With confidence, knowledge of the application process, and the proper forms in hand, TBB helps to make it easier to connect low- and middle-income households to work supports.

Benefit applications can currently be completed using The Benefit Bank in ten states: Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. Federal benefits are accessed through state agencies with states having flexibility to shape their state’s version of the program. Thus, to complete benefits applications, TBB requires partnerships with the appropriate state agencies. Affiliate partners in each state help to build the necessary partnerships with state agencies and with the community organizations whose trained counselors use TBB to serve their clients. To receive benefits, the completed applications must be accepted by the proper state agencies that then determine eligibility, including checking the paperwork and identification.

Of immediate use in all states is TBB’s Quick Check feature, a one-minute benefit screener that estimates the likelihood of eligibility for a range of benefits. Also available in all states is TBB Self Serve, a free e-File service for federal taxes paired with a FAFSA application. The key strength of TBB is its ability to take the proper information from one form and pre-populate another benefit form. For example, after completing taxes using TBB, a significant portion of the tax information on the FAFSA will already be filled in when a user completes the application. This “bundling” saves time and is kept secure within each client’s individual password-protected portal.

In a time when community college students are hard pressed to make ends meet, connecting students with financial aid and works supports can help students stay in school. The Benefit Bank makes connecting students to works supports like SNAP and the EITC that much easier.

Michael Schultz is an AmeriCorps VISTA at MDC.