Red Mosquito

this is mostly a question for the teachers on the board, I suppose. I am taking over the running of our FYE (First Year Experience) program this fall. I am planning a fairly large overhaul of the program, to reorient it a bit more towards basic reading/writing/time management/note taking skills acquisition. The current textbook we use is boring, pedantic, and condescending. Students hate it and faculty hate it. So we are going to try and create an on line wiki to replace the textbook (plus it'll be free for the students). I'm looking for the following:

Links to useful on line articles, exercises, handouts, etc. that address a lot of these basic skills. They can be geared towards students or teachers (since many of the professors have no formal training in any of these areas). Also, if there are things you've done in classrooms (or seen/heard about) that you've found to be effective I'd love to hear about those two. One of the other things we want to do is put together a database of exercises and activities professors can use in a classroom to incorporate skills acquisition into content lectures.

What are your desired outcomes?

I know you already stated them, in a sense, but if you had to 'will be able to' a few of these goals, how would you phrase them?

to have the time management skills necessary to manage college (most of our kids are commuters, some dorm, most work heavy part and even full time job hours on top of a full school load)
to have the ability to take notes/annotate texts
learn how to outline and structure arguments
learn how to revise and edit papers
understand the differences between different learning styles and how they can use that knowledge to facilitate their own education


stuff like that.

Again, we need material for professors who have no training in pedagogy and learning and are going to be asked to compensate for existing deficiencies in students, as well as stuff students can read to replace a textbook, as well as activities and exercises to integrate this stuff into a classroom with pre-existing content--so there is space for a wide range of material.

My college is in many ways like a one room schoolhouse. In the same class I have students who have gotten full scholarships to good law schools, are applying for fulbrights, get into top 10 grad schools, and are sitting next to students who are not even close to reading and writing at a college (or even upper high school) level. So this is a tricky balance

That's sort of why I asked...you specified time management, writing, etc, but it sounded like there was a pedagogical element as well.

Let me find my notebook.

stip wrote:to have the ability to take notes/annotate texts

Not a teacher but as someone who floats through school which means I specialize in time management and knowing how to study.

You really encourage taking notes? I always figured if it wasn't in the text book it wasn't important unless the professor specifically tells you it's important. Other than the odd fact highlighted in a text book, I didn't see much value in annotating texts. A properly written text book should have a good enough chapter synopsis to do for studying purposes.

Doesn't time mangement and school and work just come down to two things; the word 'No' and shooters. You use the word no to not go out and hang with friends because you have studying or a job to do. The shooters are to play catch up on a Friday night because you didn't head out until 10pm due to wokrking late or studying. I can't see you teaching shooters as a time management technique but it does work.

one practice that's seemed to help student's alot over the years has been providing examples/models to go by.

so, if you've got super high achieving students with a ton of natural skill in note-taking, taking time to show the class that "these are good notes" while "these are lacking" (without names attached, mind you), could be a decent strategy for staff.

another thing, though professors will likely protest against it, is to give credit for (require) office hour consults.

a student on the lower end of aptitude might not raise their hand to ask about something if johnny lawschool's in the room. this could also be another avenue to provide examples specific to that student's academic level for annotating, revising, and getting positive feedback, which goes a long way for students that may not feel as though they're being successful.

surfndestroy wrote:

stip wrote:to have the ability to take notes/annotate texts

Not a teacher but as someone who floats through school which means I specialize in time management and knowing how to study.

You really encourage taking notes? I always figured if it wasn't in the text book it wasn't important unless the professor specifically tells you it's important. Other than the odd fact highlighted in a text book, I didn't see much value in annotating texts. A properly written text book should have a good enough chapter synopsis to do for studying purposes.

Doesn't time mangement and school and work just come down to two things; the word 'No' and shooters. You use the word no to not go out and hang with friends because you have studying or a job to do. The shooters are to play catch up on a Friday night because you didn't head out until 10pm due to wokrking late or studying. I can't see you teaching shooters as a time management technique but it does work.

i rarely teach from textbooks, though. You're right in that textbooks come pretty well annotated.

Ugh, stip. Ugh.

I'm running into two problems: first, most of my collected materials are of the scholarly variety, and more related to understanding learning as an event than providing specific recipes...and second, I'm just not much for the quick fix "give me something I can use in my classroom" approach to teacher development.

I do have a lot of stuff I've created over the years that is aimed at taking learning and teaching and presenting it in the most uncomplicated terms...I was asked to put together a single day seminar for new professors that would prepare them for working in the classroom (I know, right?), so I took a bunch of that and tried to get the big picture in terms that were as engaging and analogous as possible. But even that was about understanding processes and influencers, not simply providing a toolbox.

Anyway, I did find two links to articles about college level writing. The second one is aimed at instructors, but I think that it would actually do students a great deal of good to be exposed to how the people who will grade their writing think about or analyze it. Neither of these is a particularly challenging read.

An Essential Question: What is “College-Level” Writing?
http://wac.colostate.edu/books/collegel ... apter1.pdf

Improving Student Writing Through Effective Feedback: Best Practices and Recommendations
http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/tea ... /1346/1295

These two links are 90% garbage, but it's the kind of garbage that can give you ideas about how you would have done it differently...analyzing and recognizing the cause of other people's failure being a great learning event, maybe you'll look at something here and it'll make you go "Oh! You know what we should do?"

http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/res ... gewriting/
http://www.wcu.edu/WebFiles/PDFs/Time_M ... pt2011.pdf

Hope that helped at least a little bit.

it does--thanks!

And I sympathize and agree with the shortcoming of the toolbox approach. But we don't have the budget for the PD, and to be fair, we probably don't have the interest. So I've got to do the best I can with what I have

stip wrote:and to be fair, we probably don't have the interest.

I believe this completely. College professors are just as excruciating in this regard as K-12 teachers.

I had it out with an economics professor a few weeks ago, because he took any and every suggestion as a personal affront. I finally had to say, "Look, would you be comfortable with a person who has no related background managing a hedge fund? No, because there are underlying understandings and skills involved that are important to success. It's the same here...and no matter how you may want to see this, 'economics professor' isn't an economics job. It's a teaching job. It's the implementation of cognitive science. So, just out of curiosity, tell me...what's your background there?"

goddamn it, I need a new job.

McParadigm wrote:

stip wrote:and to be fair, we probably don't have the interest.

I believe this completely. College professors are just as excruciating in this regard as K-12 teachers.

I had it out with an economics professor a few weeks ago, because he took any and every suggestion as a personal affront. I finally had to say, "Look, would you be comfortable with a person who has no related background managing a hedge fund? No, because there are underlying understandings and skills involved that are important to success. It's the same here...and no matter how you may want to see this, 'economics professor' isn't an economics job. It's a teaching job. It's the implementation of cognitive science. So, just out of curiosity, tell me...what's your background there?"

goddamn it, I need a new job.

if we're not careful, this might become the "RMers venting about working in education" thread.

what do you do these days, McP?

Officially I'm an instructional designer, but really I'm all over. I do some course and program mapping for the assessment people, some PD for the PD people, some course evaluations (I don't think anybody was doing this before?).

I sort of have my hands in every pot, in terms of the development and maintenance of courses, but I have no say in any of it whatsoever.

this might become the "RMers venting about working in education" thread.

Is there a thread for that? I want to go to there.

i've done a few pd gigs in the past. I really enjoy them.

McParadigm wrote:Officially I'm an instructional designer, but really I'm all over. I do some course and program mapping for the assessment people, some PD for the PD people, some course evaluations (I don't think anybody was doing this before?).

I sort of have my hands in every pot, in terms of the development and maintenance of courses, but I have no say in any of it whatsoever.

this might become the "RMers venting about working in education" thread.

Is there a thread for that? I want to go to there.

like i said, this might be the place.

start another thread! I'm hoping to get more mileage out of this

Hey Stip, try http://www.elsp.ie/ for worksheets, tutorials, quizzes etc. on study skills, learning styles and so on. It's based on the Irish High school equivalent, but there are some decent resources covering the basics. Might be useful.

We already sort of had this conversation but maybe one topic your class should have is an analysis of the value they can reliably expect from their degree versus tuition costs. Despite all the shit for profit schools get, I wouldn't be suprised if ITT tech had a better graduate placement rate (in the same field as their degree) than typical four year state schools.