Brown Bag #4
April 5, 2004 @ 12 noon
Main Campus – Boardroom

In attendance: Jackie Addington, Lana S Barrett, Kevin Beardmore, Ann F Bennett, Stacey M Bertke, David W Bigger, Joy C Bowlds, Nick Brake, Matt Branham, Mary R Bruner, Shannon Collins, Linda S Conkright, Randy K Crowe, Susannah P Dickman, Thomas L Duke, Janet I Dukes, Mary Durr, Mildred J Frakes, Kitt Gallagher, Daniel R Hildenbrandt, Greg Labyak, Marc S Maltby, Donald W Mundell, Tammy M Rice, Deborah L Ruth, Ashley Thurman, Albert F Wallace, Libby Warren, Fred Wetzel, Scott Williams, William F Woitke

Kevin: Welcome and thank you.

Nick: IE transferred to Academic Affairs. An IE and planning team (Nick and Kevin) – Accreditation looming in 2005. Visit in Fall 2005. What is a little different this time? QEP—a new component. Required to submit a plan, engaging the academic as well as staff and students, create a plan to improve student learning. Find a topic broad enough but focused enough that will deal with all students in the institution. Starting with these articles, but the sky’s the limit as far as well this is can go.

Encourage all to speak—respect what everyone has to say—try to understand what others are saying. Will refer to them as the “vision” article, the “learning-centered” article, and the “only-connect” articles. Going around the table, identifying one idea or thought from the reading relevant to the kind of learning we value here at our institution.

Go round:
The way that we have always done business is going to have to change. Technology is changing what we need to do.
First article – services initiated and controlled by the student
Students want to do different things, they need access
Connected and life long learning – helping our students transfer learning
Problem solving skills – real world type of assessment
Orientation process – we only do a day, universities do a week
Redesigning curriculum
An entire semester of a college skills class – basic computer skills, library skills, etc.
Reallocating resources – changing class schedules to accommodate students, companies
Reading for understanding, creative solutions – kind of concerned that we gear ourselves to much to corporate needs, it undervalues what we need.
Connected and lifelong learning - first article – relates to last article. How to help students see that learning is a skill
Agree with others – last article most instructive, what we all strive for in one way or another, but how do we measure all that stuff?
Loved only connect, why I chose teaching in the first place, whole attitude of the community college, ended up with love at the end, seemed a little sappy but I love that sort of thing
New delivery for the orientation
Over the last several years, we have heard so much about employability, training, getting away from learning. Can still work with transfer classes as well as training for employability. Also, look for more interdisciplinary approaches.
Production processes changing so rapidly, hard to keep up with the technologies. What should I do, let students sink or swim, or hand feeding them. Let them sink or swim, then help them when they really need it. Need students who can learn how to learn it. Able to adapt in any type of workplace. Had students in past, can learn anything step by step, but tell them to cut a square hole in a piece and they take three hours.
Interdisciplinary programs and information technology. Tried to do this a few years ago, but wasn’t enough support coming down to help this work. Article said that some faculty wouldn’t support this, but we wanted to do this. Need for it to start from the top level and have the resources and then let faculty take the opportunities. All these ideas take extra money and time and support from the people on high.
Offering classes different ways.
Like second article, collaboration and working together. Students came up through KERA, have social intelligences developed, off putted by traditional approaches.
Learning centered article – think big, think broad, that is what people are doing in these meetings, need to extend the conversation beyond these meetings and involve students
Train the students on the technologies, but faculty need to know how to do these things as well.
More flexible delivery of classes.
Increasingly interdisciplinary approach – disciplines in the history of academia have become compartmentalized. Second article – how do you assess the students in ways other than grades and credit. What about transfer? If we measure it one way, what happens when another college measures it another way.
The concept – we do a lot of these things – but are we doing enough? Our students are clearly not always being responsible. As Lana said, we tried the interdisciplinary thing, but it was a problem with enrollment, getting students enrolled in a block of classes. Need to have students in a block of classes so that they will all get the shared experience
What was not said in any of the articles – the burden seems to be on us and not on the students. Learning centered institution, but we need students want to learn, not just come because of mom, dad, or someone else. Students need to take a responsible, viable attitude.

Dr. Addington: What G.G. said in the last meeting – might have to run the horse around the pond a few times before they are thirsty enough.

What happened to the Kentucky state initiative about doing more to motivate students?
Dr. A: Discover College was part of our answer to this. Helps make them “thirsty”
Nick: Discussion beginning to move toward barriers and challenges. Resources is a given barrier, we can all accept that it is. What obstructions can we remove? Open discussion.

One question I was thinking about – how will classes transfer, someone asked, but what about classes within KCTCS. Will this be a barrier since we are trying to act as a system?

Nick: And how will this be a problem for student aid?

We don’t offer all the same classes.
Scheduling – we can still do what KCTCS wants, while having flexible scheduling

Nick: This could be a part of a five year plan. That is how much time we have.

Need to decide how we are going to assess learning, lots of things that need to be done.

Nick: Other challenges, other issues.

Visited a small Catholic school, used a Harvard model, in a liberal education format, students not learning how to learn. They assigned courses that addressed learning deficiencies. These courses were tied to the modern world, engaging the student. Incorporating college skills in these courses (need to get other details from Scott Williams). Changing their attitude at the ground level. Modular classes. Brought in corporate America as they designed this model. Three or four colleges in the nation approached it that way, and Harvard what one of them. St. Joseph’s in Chicago was one of them.
How do we do things when we have commuter, working students, busy lives, not here the rest of the time like students are at a 4 year residential college.

Dr. A: Matt’s presentation last week a good example of a successful way of doing it. Got students involved. One small example of it. If others had a different reaction to it than I did, I would like to know. We were doing things we DO in a college.

In any of the types of things we are talking about, we need to have faculty buy in. Some really get into it, while others see it as punishment. You can move forward, but you need the cooperation of everyone for it to succeed.
Barrier: some people will be entrenched.
What about the students? We need to know what they need.

Nick: Plan to have this same discussion with students.

Barrier – single accreditation, and I am not saying that there are any intellectual abilities differences, but the students are different. Students that take computer classes in high school he is ready for computer classes at college. Machine tool student taking machine tool classes in HS isn’t necessarily ready for community college classes, may need to take a step back and teach them from the beginning, because some students don’t have the experiences.

Dr. A: Need to be careful that we don’t sell our technical college students short. Assess them on the front end and get them the help they need.

Nick: Stepping out of the facilitator role, all students are COMPASS tested and get the same report

Interdisciplinary – we need to take a look at this as a college, who needs my classes, getting departments together. Bridging the gap between departments.
Rethinking of GE 100 class – may bring students together
Do all students need to have this class? No, but thinking about it.

Dr. A: Want to revamp it and make it more engaging

You can learn a lot by looking at math and English. First we began offering one remedial course, now we offer more. Yet students say it is going to fast for them, even though they want to start higher and don’t want to take the classes.
Not so much taking math or English, but I don’t want to point any fingers, some of the things get left out that students need.

Nick: Let’s broaden the discussion – how do we measure this? You all have articulated pretty clearly what we want students to be able to know and do, lifelong, connected learning. Let’s talk about the assessment question. It isn’t easy, but it is something that SACS will want us to have evidence of.

Dr. A: I would like to react to it. Need to ask students, but students don’t always know what they want. Is it fair to put a students in college algebra when they need 060? Assess and place, so that they don’t get frustrated and dropout. Our responsibility to prepare them.

We have been wrestling with this over the past few years. Don’t have any answer to it.
What about an exit exam?

Nick: Are we talking paper and pencil, experiential?

Paper and pencil.
How do they know if they are advancing.
If we adopt what is listed in Cronon’s article, I don’t know how you measure those goals. Some are unmeasurable.

Dr. A: CCSSE is one way to measure some of these things. One way to get at measuring engagement.

Students tend to learn more if they are engaged, I can agree with that, but I don’t see the direct link between what that survey is measuring what we are trying to measure.

Dr. A: Study shows that it is the most valid measure of what students need to gain in the college experience. If you have the best students coming in, it is hard to tell if they gained much. But if the students are engaged, at least you know if you have connected with the students. Is it perfect? No. But we cannot not do something. We need to be addressing it. Do we look at what St. Joe’s is doing, what St. Clair’s is doing? I don’t know.

The problem you get with a paper and pencil test, you could identify some rock bottom things. Or we could really nail them with details.
But why retest what is already taught in a class.

Dr. A: Why isn’t that important enough to retest?

Critical analysis, but we need a factual base.
Given them the facts, have them analyze how it affects us today
Need some knowledge base.
Had chapter students always struggled with, instead of test, had them present the information. They were much more engaged. Much better than a textbook.
I went to ITT Tech. One thing they did, every midterm or final was open book. They would always throw in questions that the book didn’t answer.

Nick: Yes we need to measure, no we don’t need just the traditional methods. There are other ways to do it other than the traditional measures.

Dr. A: I would like to put Scott on the spot for a minute. You deal with two or three subject areas, you have a university perspective, you work with technical programs.

I guess for me, and I have wrestled with this a lot. One of the quickest ways to ruin education, if we get caught up with the technical information of a subject area, a problem kindergarten through college. Use traditional methods, but also include real-world. What do students’ want? The children don’t run the household, they don’t know what they want yet. We need to have a knowledge base (math, English) then each major adds in the details. Faculty and staff need to buy into this. Another pencil and paper test is redundant. They have passed the classes. Do they love to learn? Do they engage with others? I don’t know how to address this. I know that whatever you do, there are certain basic skills that are important. Read, write, and do math. If we sell them short on that, then there is a problem.