FYC Assessment & Retention Remixed

Inviting students into education through writing

OBSTACLES"I only cared about writing a good paper":  Expectation hell-bent on

collision

OPPORTUNITIESThe pleasure of student voice in

creating a community space

Overview of the studies: Painting the Picture of the Community College

StudentSituated within CCSSE and SENSE

Bookends of assessment• 2007  Outcomes Assessment• Student Retention and Success: An Ethnographic Study of

English 1010 (2007-2008)o Student and instructor surveys AND focus groups 

• First-Year Composition Assessment and Retention Remixed: Inviting Students into Education through Writing (2009-2010)o Extended Student focus groups and interviews

Unpredictable path of writing assessment

Nancy Sommers, in her groundbreaking longitudinal work with undergraduate writers, insists that “to reduce four years of college to a series of outcomes…is to find ourselves, in the current culture of assessment, to be asked to measure something that we do not know how to interpret. We might be able to count the grammatical and stylistic errors students make when they arrange their alphabets, but we have not determined how to measure the unpredictable and uneven path of writing development.”

CCSSE Demographics

• Almost 50% of the undergraduate students in public colleges and universities in the U.S. are now enrolled in community colleges

• Typically older than the traditional 18 to 22-year-old college student: the average community college student is 29

• Jobs and families: 31% of survey respondents have children living at home, 57% work more than 20 hours a week. Most are financially independent of their parents

• 44% of surveyed students report that lack of finances would be a likely or very likely cause for them to drop out of college

CCSSE:  Varied and multiple goals

• 51% of survey respondents indicate that their primary goal is to transfer to a four-year college or university

• However, 58% say their primary goal is to obtain an associate degree 

• 12% are taking classes at more than one institution simultaneously, and 25% have already earned some kind of postsecondary credential – a vocational certificate or an associate, bachelor's, or graduate degree 

• Almost two-thirds (63%) attend college part-timeo 31% have children living at homeo 57% work more than 20 hours a weeko Most are financially independent of their parentso 44% of surveyed students report that lack of finances

would be a likely or very likely cause for them to drop out of college

CCSSE:  Despite the challenges, high degree of satisfaction

o Ninety-four percent would recommend their college to a friend or family member

o 86% rate their overall educational experience at the college as good or excellent

o 70% indicate that their college provides the support they need to succeed at the college either "quite a bit" or "very much."

o By contrast only 45% feel that they are able to get the financial support they need to afford their education 

SENSE: Survey of Entering Student Engagement

• Builds on CCSSE with a focus on the front door

• Survey in 4th and 5th weeks in courses most likely to enroll new students

• Collects and analyzes data about institutional practices and student behaviors

SENSE: A confluence of three positive developments

• Being diligent in using evidence to improve education

• Thinking about entering students as a distinct cohort

• Using new data to  be more intentional about organizing systems and practices to meet entering student needs

At a Glance: Student Survey52% of students were first year students17% of students have been at SLCC 5 or more semesters60% of students graduated from high school in 2004 or earlier18% of students graduated from high school in 200755% of students work 31 or more hours per week29% of students work between 11 and 30 hours per week58.7% of students were part-time students41.3% of students were full-time students35% of students spent 3 or fewer hours per week doing homework for English 101052% of students spent between 4 and 6 hours per week doing  

Misperceptions of Preparedness

Students

9-10 30.5%

7-8 42.7%

6 9.7%

5 or below 17.1%

Instructors

9-10 0%

7-8 19%

6 50%

5 or below 19%

Part 2: Access, Retention, and Introductory Courses

Retention and Writing Instruction

"I argue that composition faculty are especially well positioned to participate in the conversations about retention. The unique context of the writing classroom as the interface between students' past and future educational experiences, as the introduction to the discourse practices of higher education, and as one of the only universal requirements at most institutions makes a prime site for retention efforts.”

“Retention and Writing Instruction” by Pegeen Reichert PowellCCC June 2009

Closing the Front Door

"It is extremely significant that at the very schools where higher education is the most accessible, graduation rates are the most dismal...studies conducted... suggest that tacit, and in some cases, very subtle, exclusionary dynamics are at work inside even the most accessibile colleges."

The College Fear Factor: How students and professors misunderstand one another by

Rebecca D. Cox

"The dangers of using raw retention rates as an indicator of success: retention could then dictate access" (Astin qtd in Powell 672).

Default Gate-keeping

As Tom Fox argues in Defending Access: A critique of standards in higher education, "as writing teachers, we are institutionally positioned to gatekeep, to do harm. To create access we must go against the grain" (qtd in Powell 670).

As Jeffrey Klausman, a writing program administrator at Whatcom Community College, says “I like the phrase ‘invited into their education,’ as it is in keeping with both with the community college mission and with my view of the function of the first-year writing courses (gate-openers rather than gate-keepers). But who is it that we are inviting in? And by what means?”  (35)

“Mapping the Terrain:  the two-year Writing Program Administrator"  TETYC  2008.

Institutional pressure: How to do both

When teachers are pressured to increase access but uphold standards: "Not only did teachers speak of the tension between open access and standards; they also revealed the lack of organizational support for dealing with that dichotomy. The administration suggested that faculty should maintain high standards while at the same time retaining students, but teachers did not know how to do both." (Cox 150)

Access and Retention: Learning from those who “fail”

"Those of us who argue for improving access to higher education must...take seriously the research on who persists and who does not. Even those composition scholars who do not count access as a priority should consider their responsibilities to the students in their classroom who will not graduate. Students like Connor, George, and Carrie may never walk across the stage in a cap and gown, but they still have a lot to teach us about who we are and what it is we are trying to do." (679 Powell)

Part 3: Hell-bent on collision—Negotiating Dissonance

"It was not the classroom dynamics per se that mattered, as much as student's perceptions of the classroom dynamics." (Cox 117)

Disconnect in Expectations• Nine of ten students (90%) agree or strongly agree that they have the

motivation to do what it takes to succeed in college.• Most respondents (85%) believe (agree or strongly agree) that they

are prepared academically to succeed in college.• More than three-quarters of respondents (87%) agree or strongly

agree that the instructors at their colleges want them to succeed. YETo Almost one-quarter (24%) report that they did not turn in an

assignment at least onceo Many respondents (43%) report coming to class without

completing readings or assignments at least once.SENSE Report, 2009

Writing and Dissonance

Writing and engagement: Richard Light’s study, “Writing and Students’ Engagement,” surveyed 365 undergraduates about their time commitment, intellectual challenge, and personal engagement in all of their courses. The amount of writing correlated with higher student engagement; in fact, the correlation was stronger than any other characteristic in the course. (Peer Review, 2003)

CCSSE 2009 Report:"[M]ore time spent on interactive instructional approaches appears to increase student engagement. For example, colleges in which instructors use high percentages of classroom time for lecturing have lower benchmark scores than those in which instructors spend high percentages of classroom time on in-class writing or small group activities."

Writing and Dissonance

If writing correlates with engagement over any other factor, why isn’t retention 95% in English 1010?

Writing process as FY anomaly

Part of the problem is because, as one instructor put it, students believe that “if I fix what the teacher says I should get an A.” That is students are often well aware of how different writing classes are from other introductory classes, but they may believe they are unfair, subjective, and should ultimately be more like other introductory classes.

Who owns the learning?

Traditional construction"Well yeah I lacked the vocab to speak on the technical level therefore I feel like the teacher needs to come down to my level because I’m the one being taught you know because she already knows what she’s talking about. She needs to come down to my level to figure out what I’m talking about. And likewise I will learn the vocab over time but I can’t answer the questions using a complex syntax.“ (Frank, focus group)

Disruptions in the Traditional"In fact, English classrooms may be the site that best illuminates the pedagogical disconnects, because so often the goal is for students to take on authority." (Cox 90)

Peer Review: partial ownership?• Students are generally frustrated by the inability of peers to respond

to writing.

• Students are often uncertain why or how to engage in peer review.

• With notable exceptions, instructors are generally not providing thorough instruction on peer review.

• Disengaged or intimidated students often resist participation in peer response.

• Even students who received instruction, often struggled with peer response.

• Engaged students resolve problems with peer groups by identifying other students who are engaged and exchanged papers with them.

• Students don't often perceive peer response as "real work"

Avoiding cognitive dissonance: do what the teacher wants

"In composition courses...'the get it over' strategy seriously undermined that learning opportunity. For instance Linda's approach to revising her essays consisted of carefully making every change that her teacher recommended...when Linda admitted...that she tried to incorporate changes into her papers even when she didn't understand them, I asked whether she ever asked her teacher to explain those comments.

'I never [pause] no...I just correct them and I just get it over and get it accepted...I don't plan to be an English major.'" (Cox 76) 

Allison's experience (audio clip #1) 

Avoiding cognitive dissonance: dropping out

"I dropped an English 1010 class. The first one [I took] wasn't good…he would lecture about concepts about writing and I felt like the concept was always distant, and it was not connected to me at all. Where as in my current class on the first day we used the 'They say I say' book. She gave us a template and we started writing. She didn’t tell us the concepts but made us write, write every day. We are already participating in the concepts whereas in my first experience there was this distant concept and now I’m going to put it in some big five page paper?? Without practicing it??"  (Frank, focus group)

Engaging cognitive dissonance "I’ve come to understand that in a lot of my classes the teacher's personal point of view comes out. In my 2010 course he talked about the guidelines of the profile. He was talking about people who are more entertainers than political people…and he took a jab at Glenn Beck…that he doesn’t speak the truth. You know a lot of dems think that. I can just hear it , the tone. Teachers don’t divulge a lot. On the flip side of it in communications 1010…he is very conservative but he always uses Obama as an exp of a great public speaker. So you have these times when you can pick out what a teacher thinks and if you say something against that there is like this immediate rebuttal. Such as my philosophy class talking about the three concepts of god—all powerful, all knowing…omnipresent, omniscient…theoretically he was saying how can it be all three things? I rebuttled him [snaps fingers] and he immediately slammed that down, tarnished it." (Nick, focus group)  

Instead of thinking of our work as moving students from one community to another "it might prove more useful (and accurate) to view our task as adding to or complicating their uses of language...I would expect and hope for a kind of useful dissonance as students are confronted with ways of talking about the world with which they are not yet wholly familiar. What I am arguing against...is the notion that our students should necessarily be working towards a mastery of some particular well-defined sort of discourse...[instead] they might better be encouraged towards a kind of polyphony—an awareness of and pleasure in the various competing discourses that make up their own.”

A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966 by Joseph Harris

Useful dissonance through polyphony

Part 4: Painting the student lives—Hearing Student voices

"...too much research on retention focuses on predictors of student success or failure, rather than explanations" (Powell 673).

Student profilesThe unexpected community college student 

• Landon and Allison who both have parents working at a university and turned down reduced tuition for smaller class sizes at the community college

Older student as outsider • Ethan: Younger students have so much energy,

happy to see their friends. I don't have energy. I’m not excited…completely opposite. I don’t have the common interest. I do not  have the friend base.

• Ingrid: When I hear the word community I don't even think of school. I think of my neighborhood, my house.

Over-qualified yet nervous• Ingrid: overseas experience, life-long learner,

wants to write children's books--yet indicated a "9" for fear on both scales. Illiterate father.

The Consumer or Seeking a one night stand• Nick: I don’t’ want to. I’m not involved. I don’t

want to be involved with SLCC.  I don’t care, many student don’t care about the Bruin Bytes, a basketball game because it is a community college. 

• Nick: professors should recruit me to these clubs

Never been educated• Frank: I didn't really go to high school and part

of me is glad because I didn't want to be indoctrinated.

• Angie: I was raised overseas in a cult; didn’t go to high school. Then I left the cult. So I hadn’t been in schools...Got married. Moved around in the military. Then my grandparents decided it was time to do something.

Student profilesNaively innocent

• Allison: I didn’t know anything. I showed up here on the first day of classes. Then they were like "you have to actually register for classes" so I went back home. 

• Allison: they passed out a syllabus and I was like what in the hell is that. I needed someone to walk me through it. 

Religiously Conservative & Politically Affronted • Nick: We are told to think the opposite of what

we are taught [at home]. I get annoyed with that. People say that’s too conservative to think like that, [that we are] supposed to be more open ended, they believe everything in science. Global warming. I don’t want to write on that. Some teachers want to slap me across the face. But I’m sorry I believe it’s a hoax. 

• Nick: I found that I was a little more on the conservative background. I’m a Christian.  Many teachers seem to have the more liberal, the more scientific view. I'm not saying it’s wrong in any shape or form...Felt like I was in a battle at times.

Reluctant graduate or the careerist• Allison: I just took a bunch of diversity

courses because I didn't want to do the testing

• Frank: has made a career out of the CC--starting clubs, approaching school paper to write a series, several certificates

It's for ME• Ingrid (interview): I’m at a point in my life

where it would have been nice to please my parents because none of them went to college, but that’s not the issue anymore. I have nothing to prove. It’s for me. 

Amateur Writers• Nick: lots of writing on conservative blogs,

FB• Frank: satire, ideas for writing projects like

the info gap articles about SLCC

Student profiles20 something with experience

• Eddie: I have ambition. I'm tired of my job and working where I am. It's a great motivation to get through school. 

• Matt: I used to write to my own audience. It makes you feel good to be validated. Now I try to write from a different angle. Instead of this is how I grew up and this is what I think. We all think we are right...Most of my family is conservative, I'm conservative. [but] I lived up there [Washington] for awhile. It gave me a new perspective. Really opened my mind.

• Eddie:  My metaphor is climbing a long rope then cutting it to get free. Like a rope attached to a balloon or something. SLCC is like the balloon itself. It's my way out of Utah.

 "Colleges that successfully engage students do no merely set up classrooms on a campus and say, 'Come here.' They meet students where they are--literally, figuratively, and virtually--and help them get where they need to be."

 CCSSE 2009 

   

Fear Factor

"I think some people are intimidated by their professors because they control the grades. And they don't want to look like a fool...." (Cox)

"Countless times in my research, I spoke to students who were reluctant to seek professor's assistance, even after the professor explicitly invited them to do so. What was most confusing was that such hesitance did not reflect a disregaurd for the course or indifference to doing well. Instead, on one for or another of fear-induced logic--like Elisa's protest that her professor would know how far behind she was on her paper if she were to seek help" (Cox)

Fear

1st semester group   3rd+ semester group

1st  semester group

  Starting  college

 English  1010

Mary 10 8

Eddie 4 4

Allison Did not respond

Did not respond

Ingrid 9 9

Landon 8 8

3rd + semester group

  Starting  college

   English     1010

Nick  8   3

Ethan   Did not  respond

   Did not    respond

Frank   7   4

Matt   5   5

Angie   10   10

Relationship between teacher and student

Frank's experience the first day of English 1010

Matt: relaxed ambiance, whole class talking about movies 

Mary's bad relationship

Landon: initially freaked out, afraid of professors but later found they were pretty cool

Ingrid: "Let's be honest. You write for the teacher."

2009 CCSSE Report

“In this evaluation of connections, it is important to distinguish between communicating information and connecting. Communicating information is a one-way, self-contained event. The individual for whom the information is intended may or may not receive it,understand it, care about it, or act on it. Connecting is an interactive, iterative series of events that is personal and creates a sense of presence. No one ever asks ‘so what?’ in the wake of a genuine connection.”

Works cited

    Cox, Rebecca D. The College Fear Factor:  How Students and Professors Misunderstand Each Other.   Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009.  Print

    Harris, Joseph.  A Teacher Subject:  Composition Since 1966.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1997.  Print

    Klausman, Jeffrey.  "Mapping the Terrain:  the two-year Writing Program Administrator."  TETYC:  2008. Web.

    Powell, Pegeen Reichert.  "Retention and Writing Instruction:  Implications for Access and Pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 60: 4, June 2009. 664-682.  Print.  

    Sommers, Nancy. "The Call of Research: A Longitudinal View of Writing Development." College Composition and Communication 60 (2008): 155. Print.