TCCTA Blog

July "Leading from the Middle" Conference Slated

The TCCTA Leading from the Middle conference is designed for mid-level administrators at Texas two-year colleges. It is a kind of "boot camp" for deans, division chairs, IT directors, student services directors, and others, as we provide key information and insights to help you succeed in your respective positions. We address legal issues, educational technology, legislative and budget orientation, leadership skills, ethics, and other areas that directly affect performance.

This year's conference will be held on July 15-17, 2012, at the Marriott Sugar Land Town Square in Sugar Land, Texas.

The full program and a registration form is available here.

Coordinating Board Publishes Almanac

The second edition of the Texas Public Higher Education Almanac was released May 15 by the Coordinating Board. It's a handy and interactive source of data, with comparisons pertaining to all colleges and universities in Texas. The narrative accompanying the data is clear and well-presented.

Here's the official link from the Coordinating Board.

This year's edition includes some new features. As reported by Diane Smith in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

This year's almanac, which is available on Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board website, details a variety of data and aims to provide the public a snapshot of how the state is performing on the higher education front. State and national data about college tuition, access and completion is documented in the almanac.

"It's a living, breathing document," said Dominic Chavez, spokesman for the coordinating board.

Regular readers of the TCCTA Blog will find little information that is surprising or new in the Almanac. However, one developmental education program at Tarrant County College called SureStart may be worth a perusal, as we search for ways to improve the success of students who are not ready for college-level work. From the Coordinating Board narrative (which also includes contact information at TCC):

SureStart is a learning community for under-prepared, first-time-in-college students at Tarrant County College’s Southeast Campus. Through the program, students who require remediation in at least two areas (including reading) receive counseling, monitoring of academic progress, and course-embedded advising. Students also take three classes together, allowing them to bond and support one another. The college’s administration, faculty, and student services work together to provide integrated support targeted to individual student needs. As a result, SureStart students, on average, complete more semester hours and earn higher grades than do similar students not in the program. The SureStart program has earned the 2006 Star Award and the 2005-06 National Council of Instructional Administrators Exemplary Initiative Award. Contact: Frank Griffis, Director of Public Relations (817) 515-5212.

 

 

Texas Colleges Among Finalists

The Aspen Institute has named eight Texas community colleges as finalists for the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The Colleges will have an opportunity to compete for the $1 million fund for the 2013 Aspen Prize, according to a press release.

Highlighting the critical importance of improving student success in America’s community colleges, the program identified the 120 community colleges in all, using a quantitative formula that assesses performance and improvement in four areas: graduation rates, degrees awarded, student retention rates, and equity in student outcomes.

The colleges will now compete during a yearlong research process into how well their students learn, complete degrees, and get jobs with competitive wages after graduating, the announcement states.

The Texas Schools are:

• Alvin Community College
• Brazosport College
• Del Mar College
• El Paso Community College
• Lee College
• San Jacinto College
• Texas State Technical College–West Texas
• Trinity Valley Community College

Here's the official announcement from the Aspen Institute.

Early Voting Begins for Primaries

It's possible you just finished voting in various municipal and school elections, but the Democratic and Republican primaries will be conducted on May 29. Early voting has just begun, after confusing court challenges that resulted in postponement from the original March schedule.

These elections can be crucial in Texas Legislative races. Many districts have been drawn carefully to favor the party in power and, conversely, to pack those in the partisan minority into as few districts as possible.

In practical terms this means the primary becomes the "real" election in many instances.

The Texas Tribune has the best site to view the matchups. It's modeled after the bracket system in the NCAA basketball tournament. You can type in your zip code (on the right) to view the races that will be on the ballot in your area.

From the Trib:

Election Day is on the Tuesday after the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Because school ends in most of the state's districts that week and families will be turning their attention to their summer plans — and also because the attention-grabbing primary battle in the presidential race is over — most election experts are predicting low turnout.

They're also watching a slow trend in Texas politics: The size of the early vote in some elections exceeds the size of the vote on election day.

For campaigns, that means advertising and door-knocking and phone-calling is already well under way. Waiting until right before the election means missing half or more of the people who actually vote.

But it makes voting more convenient, and it gives voters a chance to tell those political people on the phone and at the door to move along — that they've already voted.

The weird timing and the expected low turnout has another odd effect, turning everyone who actually votes into a kind of super-voter.

"Blatant" Plagiarism Most Common

Turnitin, the company used by many colleges for plagiarism detection, recently announced the results of a new survey of nearly 900 instructors that classifies the most frequent and troubling forms of plagiarism. According to instructors, "blatant" plagiarism—submitting another’s writing word-for-word as one’s own—is the most prevalent and troublesome type seen in the classroom, according to a press release.

In other words, students sin boldly (with a footnote to Martin Luther), not messing around with itty bitty marginal acts of cheating.

The survey asked higher and secondary education instructors to rank the frequency and problematic nature of 10 distinct types of plagiarism as defined by the Turnitin Plagiarism Spectrum. The Spectrum uses digital terminology to identify the types of plagiarism and assigns a severity level for each form based on the degree of student intent.
 
The full study, entitled “The Plagiarism Spectrum: Instructor Insights into the 10 Types of Plagiarism,” is available here.
 
Key findings of the study include:

• One of the most frequent types of plagiarism noted by instructors is the mixing-and-matching of cited and plagiarized materials in students’ writing.
• Instructors say that paraphrasing from multiple sources to make content fit together seamlessly without attribution is among the least problematic for them—even though this type of plagiarism is high in severity and is encountered fairly frequently.
• Educators are challenged to deal with more blatant forms of plagiarism where student intent to plagiarize is clear.

Adjuncts on Food Stamps

Ideally, part-time instructors are—as one example—individuals with good jobs who like to teach and want to share their professional knowledge and experience with students. Or maybe they are retired or semi-retired instructors who taught full-time previously and still enjoy it.

Quite possibly these particular individuals are not interested in a full-time position (though adjunct instruction is an great way to gain teaching experience for recent graduates with advanced degrees).

These are excellent scenarios, and there are plenty of others. Most practitioners believe that part-time instruction is, generally speaking, a good thing for the school and the teachers.

Then there are the teachers profiled in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Stacey Patton. Welfare. Food Stamps. Poverty. Please read the article.

The piece reports that the situation is far worse for individuals in the liberal arts and humanities, which have not received the same financial support or policy commitment in core curricula as disciplines in the sciences and technology.

Some commentators, including Dead Dad, in Inside Higher Ed., think we should quit encouraging students to embrace fields offering no realistic hope for gainful employment. This is a tough call, because students often want to emulate their professors in subjects that interest them. Teachers are understandably pleased and often nudge promising students toward this goal.

Then, years later, according to the CHE piece, talented new Ph.D.s find themselves in the abyss, bagging groceries while teaching part-time, trying to pay off student loans.

Math Pathways Plan Announced

A "game-changing" approach to developmental mathematics was unveiled on May 9, in a partnership between the Texas Association of Community Colleges and the Charles A. Dana Center at UT–Austin. In an push to improve the success of students who need developmental math, the program will feature three pathways for students, instead of one devoted solely to algebra.

It's called the New Mathways Project.

The new approach will create choices that allow for fields in mathematics to better align with students’ desired degrees or careers. "By 2016, they hope to have fully developed and implemented three math tracks: statistics, quantitative literacy, and STEM—science, technology, engineering and math," as reported in the Texas Tribune by Reeve Hamilton.

From the Tribune piece:

“We view NMP as a game-changer with the potential to dramatically improve student success in college and in the workforce,” said Bill Holda, the president of Kilgore College and the current chairman of TACC.

Those involved hope the new math options result in a higher rate of degree completion and a better-prepared workforce. And [Steve] Johnson [of TACC] insisted that the new pathways would not sacrifice rigor.

Here's the Dana site for details. The site includes access to narrative descriptions of the three pathways. Mathematics instructors at community colleges could be affected significantly by this initiative. Reportedly math faculty members from around the state have been involved in its formulation.

Full implementation of the project will require legislative and Coordinating Board action.

Got Disposition?

Do today's college students have the right disposition for success? Never mind talent, I.Q. and all that. Do they care enough to do what it takes?

Many students come from backgrounds where the right (academically speaking) attitudes are not highly prized, and many have formidable personal responsibilities, such as small children, but, let's face it, many students don't even try. A recent article in Faculty Focus by Candice Dowd Barnes and Janet Filer at the University of Central Arkansas, addresses the issue of disposition:

Unfortunately, many students miss class, come in late, fail to read and study assignments, text message during lectures, and do not value the body of knowledge shared in class. Such behaviors are influenced by dispositions detrimental to not only their learning, but also to their profession. Faculty members must pay significant attention to those student behaviors critical to the pursuit of excellence and those behaviors that sabotage learning.

The authors are a little fuzzy on what, beyond assessment, we should do about it, but their overall point is worth pondering. It's not intellect but disposition, for lack of a better term, that matters most. If this observation is at least partially correct, our pedagogical system of rewards and penalties should probably reflect it. (Here's a previous post on habit formation somewhat related to this issue.)

The authors do suggest addressing students' dispositions openly with them, presumably at the beginning of class ("If they are even there!" say the little voices out there), but probably in all communications along the way.

This gets tricky. A biology teacher, for instance, wants to dive right into more biology, not engage in mushy monologues better suited for children. That gets old, fast. "Do we have to know this?" is a likely student response, with the obligatory eye-rolling and emergency consultation of Facebook under the desk.

On the other hand, frequent correction of poor performance (such as with daily assignments, rules of attendance, and participation in class) might be what many young people hunger for, whether they admit it or not. Also, summer bridge programs, designed to get students ready for college, should emphasize habits of behavior as well as academic content. The first piano lesson is about posture and practice, not Beethoven.

Not surprisingly, those with college educations often have children who are successful academically. While we may wish to believe it's because our kids inherited the Incredibly Awesome DNA of our Raging Genius, it may be due more to repeated inculcation of basic rules, expectations, and codes of behavior. This is the missing component in the training of young individuals today.

There was a time when society assumed that colleges played an in loco parentis role in student development. As a legal doctrine, the concept went out with freshman beanies, women's curfews, and Dean Wormer's Double Secret Probation (don't ask if you don't already know), but there may some educational value left in the idea.

 

Credits Without Classes

We should probably add Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) to our vocabularies, based on recent trends in higher education. The relentless emphasis on degree completion has prompted a push to grant college credits to some students based on previous learning, according to an article in Inside Higher Ed. by Paul Fain.

Historically such practices were rooted in military experience, when the G.I. Bill helped an entire generation apply specialized knowledge in certain instances toward a degree.

Here's a summary of how it's done currently, according to the article:

Loosely defined, there are four primary methods of assessing learning outside the classroom: through student portfolios; ACE [American Council on Education] credit recommendations based on corporate or military training programs; reviews conducted by individual colleges; and exams used to verify “learning achievements.” Those exams include the College Level Examination Program (CLEP), Excelsior College Exams and the DANTES Subject Standardized Tests.

College faculty members rarely object to accepting the CLEP exam, as the test is very rigorous. However, if PLA becomes more popular, the situation could change. The assessment of student "portfolios" will likely be a point of contention.

The federal government is reportedly behind the movement, too: "The Obama administration is on board, and included prior learning assessment as a requirement for community colleges that qualify for a pot of $2 billion in grant money from the Department of Labor," the article states.

The report goes into historic abuses and explores the various controversies. Of particular note is Hamburger University, the highly-touted management training program at McDonald's, which is now accepted by some schools for college credits.

Please read the whole piece.

Restrictions on Faculty E-Mail Upheld

A U.S. District Court decision in Idaho is raising eyebrows with professors around the country. The case involves a faculty organization at Idaho State University that wanted to use the institution's e-mail system to discuss a draft constitution.

The school said no, claiming it wanted more time to review the alternatives. The administration also reportedly disagreed with part of the draft, and did not want the faculty to conduct an online poll using the e-mail system during a busy time of the semester.

After the faculty association sued, the court ruled in favor of the institution.

Interestingly, restricting faculty e-mails was upheld because it involved "job-related" matters—a distinction the courts often cite in free speech cases. As public employees, the faculty does not have full First Amendment protection when discussing university policy, the court held.

Here's  a quote from the official opinion:  "…when faculty members speak concerning job-related matters—including communicating with other faculty members using a university-controlled listserv—they speak not as private citizens, but as public employees."

Because the messages the professors wanted to send could be viewed as reflecting the position of the university, the school had a right to make sure its message was “neither garbled nor distorted,” the court said, citing an earlier case in Virginia as precedent.

The new case is Idaho State University Faculty Association for the Preservation of the First Amendment v. Idaho State University.

At this point, the decision is not technically binding all over the country, but it is certainly noteworthy. The case will likely be cited in subsequent disputes when similar issues arise.

The takeaway should underscore the wisdom of exercising extreme caution when using institutional resources, and to follow school policies and established procedures with care.

This could get particularly problematic since some faculty organizations use the school's facilities to meet, but are supported with dues from individuals. Presumably, in light of this decision, it might be a good idea for these groups to use private means of communication when discussing school policies.