7.2.becker

dbeckerdroid@gmail.com

KILLING THE QUIT POINT:
SOLVING THE RESEARCH
PROBLEM IN A FRESHMAN
COMPOSITION COURSE
David Becker, Jr.
Frederick Community College, Session 7.2
AFACCT ’12 Conference, Montgomery College –
Rockville
January 6, 2012

Abstract:
 There are many things that might stop a freshman student in
their academic tracks, but one of the largest is research. In
short, this population of students is often weak when it comes
to research, and in fact, research is known as a "quit point":
something that makes students feel they have no choice but
to quit the class, and in some cases, college.
 Using process-based writing instruction and research-based
pedagogy, it's possible to not only help your students
research better, but also to permanently learn skills that they
will be able to use throughout their college career.
 We will address the research, cover some techniques that
have been effective for me over the years, and also address
how the new, nationwide Common Core is going to change
what your beginning composition students are going to know
about research when they walk through your door.


1
 Using what you know and what you can
find, please effectively write as much as you
can on the following topic:

 Treating sexual assault as a capital
crime, punishable by death

 You have two minutes to write as much as you
can.

Introduction!
 David Becker, Jr.
 College instructor since
1997
 Both face to face and
online
 7-12 English/ELA
instructor since 1996 in
New York State
 M.A. English, Rhetoric
and Composition
 M.S. Educational
Leadership


Writing Exercise 1

 Who had the most?
 Overachievers

 Underachievers

 Dear God, when does the weekend
start
 I just cashed my student loan check
^ Say good-bye to this one, soon!


Writing Exercise 1

 My philosophy:
 I want students to be better
prepared for the world around them
upon leaving my class.
I didn’t say a better writer.
 I didn’t say “good at English”


What is a Quit Point?



 Smoking
 What helps you start quitting? What
barriers exist?
 Pro Football
 The New York Jets this week
 The Redskins since Daniel Snyder

 Student Attrition/Retention



 What makes college students
dropout?
 “theconflict between school and work
and family commitments”
 Money, Time and Family
 “WithTheir Whole Lives Ahead of
Them,” Public Agenda, associated
with the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation



dropout?
 Became clinically depressed
 Lost financial aid

 Had roommate conflicts

 Received an unexpected bad grade

 Faced a large increase in tuition/living
costs
 “A Detection Model of College
Withdrawal”


dropout?
- 38% Financial pressure
 - 28% Academic disqualification

 - 13% Poor social fit

 - 4% Distance from home

 - 5% Health problem

 - 3% Mental / emotional issues

 - 9% Family support
The Duck9.com


dropout?
 Dr.Susan Hughes says: Three things
that students are weak in that
“significantly contribute to attrition”:
 Revising
 Documentation
 Research skills
 Research skills were the first item to be
tackled when it came to “suggestions” (71)
 By the way: they’re coming to us like this.

Connecting the Dots:
 “What Today’s College Students Say about
Conducting Research in the Digital Age”:
 Research seems to be far more difficult to
conduct in the digital age than it did in
previous times.
 “students reported being challenged, confused,
and frustrated by the research process, despite
the convenience, relative ease, or ubiquity of
the Internet.…frustrations included the effects
of information overload and being inundated
with resources, but more. Participants also
reported having particular difficulty traversing a
vast and ever-changing information landscape”
(13)

What makes the Quit Point
Matter?

Research is difficult, so
students often do
poorly on it for a variety
of reasons

Individual attention
for students is Poor Grades are
something lacking considered to be
in any one reason
college, even if (among many) why
only perceived to students drop out
be the case


2
 Using what you wrote from your first Start
Class, please take your writing and create a
complete, proper Thesis Statement to use for
discussion.

 Be sure to use the structure we have been
given in class

 You have less than two minutes to complete
this. dbeckerdroid@gmail.com

Writing Exercise 2

A=Topic A+B+C=
B=Your Thesis
opinion Statement
C=Your proof

Writing Exercise 2
We’ll work it out once more…
What about high gas prices?

A+B+C=
What are the benefits of a laptop vs. a desktop
A=Topic

Thesis
B=Your Should juveniles be prosecuted as
opinion adults?
C=Your proof
Statement
Should you be allowed to kill an intruder?


Class-Level Suggestions
What sort of things can you do in your class
to help students research better?



 No different than preventing
plagiarism:
 “Thebest way to prevent plagiarism is
to design better assignments.”
 Design assignments utilizing unique
topics
 Scaffold their work using…
 Work in class using the writing process
(items completed with instructor, in view
of instructor)
 Keep track of progress


Question:  Keeping Track of Progress, etc.
 Program determines what to keep track
How often of
will you do
 Or…with autonomy, you decide what’s
this? Can
you afford to important, and what needs to be
miss a week addressed.
to  Overall, students clearly feel that this sort
accommodat of individual attention works (Kaufka 26)
e this? Two
 Even better: 4/5ths of students report
weeks?
Early term
that the experience that “profoundly
and late changed them” was outside the
term? classroom (Light 8)
 One more: working on research together
with an instructor encourages “life-long
learning” (National Survey of Student
Engagement, 2008)


 Keeping Track of Progress, etc.
 Two more that really nail it:
 “freshmen succeed when they make
progress toward fulfilling educational and
personal goals” (Upcraft and Gardner 2)
 Student perceptions of faculty-student
interactions increase retention
(O’Gara et al 5)



 Kaufka’s Findings:
 Two conferences, made mandatory
 First:
early in semester
 Second: any time during the rest of the
semester
 “Part of our job as first-year
instructors is to put a real human
face on our institutions” (33).


Student Writing Folder Example



 Online Delivery Ideas:
 WizIQ

 Skype

 Blackboard
Collaborate
 Adobe Connect
 And, of course, any variety of IM
programs
 HINT: Find something recordable!



 Our friend, Process-Level Writing
Instruction
 Isthere a need (in other words: did
you?) to lecture?
 Something to be said for varied
instruction
 Face-to-face: everyone
participates, silently or verbally
 Online: Be active early and often
 Presence Matters…avoid lines!

 No different than preventing plagiarism:
 “The best way to prevent plagiarism is to design
better assignments”: Autobiographical Work
 One example from John Paddison
 Two semesters worth of work, sequential
 Incorporates a variety of writing assessments
 Created either informed positions on self-generated
topics or other personal connections (future
career, future/current major)
 “student retention, attendance, and course evaluations
were high, and participants found relevance in relating
their research to their own lives” (9)

 Paddison (6) also notes:
 “the assignment took longer than expected”
 “…required a good deal of individual
conferencing”
 “Yet these finished assignments provided a firm
foundation for subsequent assignments”


Program-Level Change
What can you do, as a department or
college, to make research a more positive
experience, with more positive outcomes?



 Keep track of progress:
 This is NOT a portfolio.
 It can and should track across
mandatory classes.
 Yes…it involves paperwork and
record-keeping.



 “The general curriculum of the first
year composition course and the
pedagogical
principles…address(es) the
retention problem in many ways.”
 Degree of student contact and peer
involvement correlate with the rate of
retention
 Conferences and instructor
facilitation, and not lectures
 Kevin Griffith: “The Neglected
dbeckerdroid@gmail.com Goal”


 Communication
 “We don’t talk with each other.”
 “We don’t plan with each other.”

 “We don’t have a goal as a
department/college”
 What is the preparation goal?



 Keep track.
 What gets written down?
 What gets passed from class to
class?
 What is the mechanism to get
material from one instructor to
another?



 Supplemental Instruction: The Big
One.
 Grounded in Constructivist Theory
 Study done at a school with open
enrollment and high attrition rate
 Supplemental Instruction helped
“improve writing skills, raise
grades, reduce failure and lower
attrition” (Osche)



 Supplemental Instruction: The Big
One.
 The research is clear on this: 400
different institutions have used this in
some fashion with success (Osche 2)
 Started with students that were in
remediation, but benefits were found
to students at all ability levels



 Supplemental Instruction: What
does this look like:
 IEPs?
 Individual Education Plan
 GIEPs?
 Gifted
IEP: 12 states use them, including
VA and DC…but not MD



 What about everyone else?
 Individualize instruction for every
student
 No tricks, no new technology needed

 How do you handle each student
individually?
 Now: put that in writing.


3
 Generate a list of important issues that are
associated with your chosen
career/major/something you are interested in/a
class you enjoyed.

 Write as many items as you can; the more you
come up with, the more choices you will have.

 You have four minutes to complete this.


Writing Exercise 3
IT Thesis Statements!
Some samples:
 How to write a process essay.
A=Topic  How to get the most out of MS
B=Your Word.
opinion  How to shop for the best
C=Your proof computer, at the best price.
 How to make a computer.
 How to create a website that
takes credit cards.


What the Common Core will mean for
you…


Common Core

 Who’s using it?
 Almost everyone…
 Theonly close state regionally that
has not is Virginia. Others are
Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and
Alaska

www.corestandards.org


Common Core

 What is it supposed to do:
 Prepare students for the workforce
and for college (no matter what that
means) better than they have been in
the past
 Writing is the key to everything


Common Core

 What is it supposed to do:
 Help all students be at an age-
appropriate place each year
 Or…understand why they are not, and
provide direction.


Common Core

 What it is NOT:
 No Child Left Behind!
 NCLB was a set of expectations for
students and their progress as they aged,
traveling through K-12 education


Common Core

 What it IS:
 Progress monitoring four times a year
 National curriculum with no more than
10% local (meaning state-level)
variance
 Recursive instruction:
 Identifyindividual weaknesses using test
data, assessments, and instruction
 Attack weaknesses
 Rinse, lather, repeat


Common Core

 What it means for K-12 teachers:
 Combined with other initiatives, tenure
is at least being “adjusted”
 There are no places to hide! No gaps.

 Significant curricular work to be sure
outcomes are planned for and met
 ONE BIG THING: if you know what
you’re doing, your life does not
change very much!


Common Core

 What it means for post-secondary
instructors and colleges:
 At some point, students should be
coming to you better prepared.
 If you become familiar with the Core
Standards, you will know what the
students have been expected to do
 It may mean NOTHING for
remediation students, and will do
nothing to change the non-traditional
student’s toolbox

Common Core

 I Believe…this is what’s next:
 Remember what for-profit schools
have had to do? I Believe we will need
to do some of the same things.
 Adjustment of tenure? I Believe the
same will hold true for us.
 Notethat the chosen method for
compliance is withholding
money, whether straight funding or
student loan disbursement


Common Core

 I Believe…this is what’s BIG:
 Will PK-12 Take the lead, then?
 Pedagogy will become your best
friend, at some point:
 No more will professors be around to
fund-raise and not know how to teach
 (Large University problem more than
CC’s…but don’t forget about us adjuncts!)


References:
 Griffith, Kevin. “First Year  O'Gara, Lauren, Melinda Mecher
Composition and Student Retention: Karp, and Katherine Hughes. (2009).
The Neglected Goal” An exploratory study of student
 Head, Alison and Michael Eisenberg. perspectives. Community College
“What Today’s College Students Say Review, 36 (3), 195-218.
about Conducting Research in the  Osche, Roger. Writing Partners:
Digital Age” Improving Writing and Learning
 Hughes, Susan. “A Mixed Method through Supplemental Instruction in
Study on Freshman Students’ Writing Freshman Writing Classrooms.
Performance as Addressed by  Paddison, John. “Autobiographical
Postsecondary Professors” Writing and the Building of a
 Kaufka, Beth. “Beyond the Freshman Composition Research
classroom: a case study of first-year Community”
student perceptions of required  Upcraft, M. Lee, John N. Gardner
student-faculty conferences.” Journal and Associates. (1989). The
of the Scholarship of Teaching and Freshman Year Experience. CA:
Learning, Vol. 10, No. 2, June Jossey-Bass.
2010, pp. 25 - 33.
 Light, Richard. Making the Most out
of College.


7.2.becker

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (11)

Destaque

Destaque (6)

Semelhante a 7.2.becker

Semelhante a 7.2.becker (20)

Mais de afacct

Mais de afacct (20)

Último

Último (20)

7.2.becker