Innovation

Daley College’s Remediation Initiative

Did you see THIS article from Inside Higher Ed in July?

The program got a mention in the recent Reader article, but not much of a description. There’s a little more here:

While most two-year institutions struggle with the high costs and low passing rates of remedial courses, administrators in one Chicago community college believe they’ve found a way to double pass rates.

“This is the most exciting project, in all my years in higher education, that I’ve ever collaborated on,” said Daley College President Jose Aybar. “The results have been startling across disciplines.”

Aybar said Daley’s new supplemental remedial program, “Comprehensive Academic Support and Help to Return on Investment,” (CASH-to-ROI), led to dramatic improvement in student success. CASH-to-ROI isn’t meant to replace remedial courses but to supplement them with group study sessions, which some Daley students were required to attend during the spring 2011 semester.

Awful name, but (maybe) some impressive results?

Tuesday Teaching Question

Okay, so last week I asked you for your big failure. It’s only fair that this week I ask about your biggest success this semester. For example, this year I moved my pre-class survey onto Blackboard (instead of collecting a paper and pencil version) which collected the data much faster than I ever did it myself AND allowed me to make a word cloud out of their answers to various open ended questions (which is one of my favorite online toys ever). I’ve known about Blackboard’s survey capabilities for years, but never put them to use. Silly.

What is something NEW that you tried this semester that worked out really well?

Tuesday Teaching Question

I’ve been thinking a lot this past weekend, as the semester heads into the final stretch, about the changes I made and experiments I undertook this semester and their consequences. For example, for the first time in a couple of years I made some big revisions to the rubric that I use for short, formative papers, hoping to improve my turn around time on them by forcing myself to use less in-paper commentary and give more feedback via the rubric.

Total disaster.

A couple of other experiments didn’t work out so well either, but that was, easily, the worst of the lot. So, in that confessional spirit, my Tuesday teaching question is a sort of “Worst of” as in, what was the worst thing you did this semester for your classes? What did you try this semester that absolutely didn’t work?

(And if you didn’t try anything new this semester–that was your biggest failure!)