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Literature Review Draft
Literature Review Draft
Cynthia J. Spence
CaliforniaStateUniversity, San Bernardino
EDUC 790 Research Seminar Spring
Dr. Marita L. Mahoney
April 17, 2010
I.Introduction
Long before they open the door and walk into their first community college class, students manage to complete the traditional academic obstacle course of assessment tests, application forms, financial aid questioners, student orientation, parking permits, course registration, registration fees, and mile long book lines. After enduring all this, why would a student feel compelled to drop the class they have just exerted so much effort to enter? According to one community college student, she just didn’t feel she could keep up with the academic game of “catch” her instructor threw at her. Sadly, after just a few days on campus, this student became a negative number on the college’s retention report.
College of the Desert was established in 1958 as a two-year college designed to meet the needs of CoachellaValley residents. Currently, COD’s student body is reported to be just over eleven thousand students. In 2008, a “Student Characteristics” report stated that student body consisted of 55.5% Hispanic, 28.8% white, 3.7% Asian/Pacific Islander, 3.2% African American, 2.0% Filipino, 1.0% American Indian, and 5.8% “other.”
In 2008, COD reported that over 70% of their approximately 2000 new enrollments tested into what COD had classified as remedial levels. While retention rates for all community college students are a matter of concern, retention rates for Basic Skills students are particularly alarming. Only 46% of College of the Desert’s Basic Skills students persist to spring semester and only 34% of College of the Desert’s Basic Skills students persist to their second fall semester (Based on MIS data 2004-2007). According to the California Community Colleges Research & Planning Group’s 2007 report, more than one in every three students in California community colleges must enroll in a basic skills class (Boroch et al, 2007). According to College of the Desert’s 2009-2010 catalog, the following are the remedial reading, math,and English classes that must be completed before the Basic Skills student can advance to college credit transferable courses:
RDG-050 BASIC READING
This course is designed to provide extensive study and practice of basic reading skills including vocabulary development, comprehension improvement, and oral reading ability.
RDG-051 ANALYTICAL READING
This course is for students who have a vocabulary base for college-level reading but need practice in analytical reading and critical thinking skills. The focus of this course is on improving comprehension. Students read college-level selections from different disciplines and content areas.
MATH-067 WHOLE NUMBERS
This course provides an understanding of and competency in the basic operations of elementary arithmetic. Topics include adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers, with an emphasis placed on memorizing basic number facts.
MATH-066 INTRODUCTION TO INTEGERS AND FRACTIONS
This course provides an understanding of and competency in the basic operations of elementary arithmetic. Topics include adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing integers and proper fractions.
MATH-057 COLLEGE ARITHMETIC
This course provides an understanding of and competency in the basic operations of elementary arithmetic. Topics include adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. Other topics include: arithmetic with signed numbers, percents, and its applications, rations and proportions, the metric and American system of measurement, including the conversion of units, and elementary geometry concepts such as perimeter, area, and volume.
MATH-054 BEGINNING ALGEBRA
This course is an introduction to the real number system and to the use of variable expressions and equations in problem solving. Topics include properties of the real numbers, square roots, arithmetic of variable expressions including polynomials and algebraic fractions, solving linear equations and inequalities in one variable, factoring, and an introduction to the Cartesian coordinate system and the equations and graphs of linear equations in two variables. Also, the proper use of math notations is emphasized along with an introduction to Pythagorean Theorem and basic geometric formulas, some dimensional analysis with modeling applications is included.
MATH-050 ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA
This course is an introduction to the real number system and to the use of variable expressions and equations in problem solving. Topics include properties of the real numbers, arithmetic of variable expressions including polynomials and algebraic fractions, solving linear equations and inequalities in one variable, factoring, and an introduction to the Cartesian coordinate system and the equations and graphs of linear equations in two variables.
ENG-050 BASIC WRITING SKILLS
This course provides extensive study of basic writing skills in preparation for higher level writing courses. Students write paragraphs and short essays and develop an awareness of correct grammar usage, and mechanical skills.
ENG-051 INTRODUCTION TO EXPOSITORY WRITING
This course helps students improve their skills in expository writing, including a review of grammar and sentence skills to prepare them for college level courses.
From the above course descriptions, these courses do not appear to be overwhelming. However, these are the classes that nearly 50% of Basic Skills students are dropping.
Thomas Bailey (2010), a professor at ColumbiaUniversity, discuses the financial and emotional costs of developmental education at the community college level. According to Bailey, the annual cost of community college remediation ranges from $1.9-2.3 billion dollars (p. 257). While the financial outlayfrom academic institutions is sizable, basic skills students are also paying a price. Bailey calculates these costs as accumulated debt due to additional course fees and books, the added loss of time and potential earnings, and the emotional disappointed associated with testing into high school level courses when the student has already graduated from high school (p. 257).
California currently has the largest community college enrollment in the nation and in 2004 “began a comprehensive strategic planning process for the purpose of improving student access and success” (Boroch, 2007, p. 3). In 2006 the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges unanimously adopted a strategic plan that includes the following five steps: “college awareness and access; student success and readiness; partnerships for economic and workforce development; system effectiveness; and resource development” (Boroch, 2007, p. 3). According to Kay Mills (2009), The state of California, in order to provide support for the strategic plan, allocated 33.1 million dollars “making it an annual program for research and for implementing changes” (p. 34). Fully funded, the Board of Governors of California Community Colleges is currently offering resources to select community colleges in order to “ensure that basic skills development is a major focus and an adequately funded activity of the community colleges” Boroch, 2007, p. 3).
College of the Desert was honored to be selected for inclusion into the state’s basic skills program and began receiving funding 2007.To date,COD has received funding in the amount of $1, 257, 039.00. A twelve member committee oversees the basic skills program and has set several objectives including requesting specific research focused on the retention and attrition rates of basic skills students. While the basic skills committee is interested in the quantitative data surrounding the subject matter, the committee has also requested a qualitative approach that includes gathering data directly from the students. In addition to researching retention and attrition, the committee also requests a current evaluation of the basic skills program already provided on campus and suggestions for implementing new programs currentlyfinding success on other community college campuses.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
a)The Introduction of Remediation to Community Colleges
(1)Clark, B.R. 1960 The OpenDoorCollege
(2)Brint, S. (1989) The diverted dream, the promise of education in America
(3)Casazza, M (1999) The GI Bill
(4)Boylan, H. (1999) Terminology: remedial, developmental, transitional, basic skills
(5)Jenkins, D. (2002)State policies on community college remedial education: Findings from a national survey
b)Past Programs and Practices
(1)Cohen, A. (1960) Defining and tracking transfer in community colleges
(2) McGrath, D & Spear, M (1991) The academic crisis of the community college
(3) Shaw, K (1997) Remedial Education as Ideological Battleground
c)Remediation Becomes Basic Skills
(1)Delisi, M. (2001) First use of term referring to new reading students
II.Today’s Community Colleges and the Basic Skills Student
a)Basic Skills Enrollment
(1)Boroch, D. (2007) Chancellor’s report - Recommendations for Community College
b)Basic Skills Funding
(1)Boroch, D. (2007) Chancellor’s report - Recommendations for Community College
c)Basic Skills Courses
(1)Boroch, D. (2007) Chancellor’s report - Recommendations for Community College
(2)Various community collegeremedial programs Northern Virginia, Colorado, New York, Pasadena, Santa Ana, Mount San Antonio
III.Basic Skills Programs
a)Lloyd Bond’s article on the Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges program which includes College of the Desert
b)AcademicSkillsCenter
c)Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS)
d)Learning Communities
(1)Engstrom, C. (2008) Learning communities significantly help under prepared students
One possible strategy in helping students feel less isolated or overwhelmed is the formation of academic learning communities. These communities are staffed by specific teachers who have received additional training on how to address the needs of Basic Skills students. The students advance from class to class as a cohort in order to help establish relationships between the students for study group purposes. Cathy Engstrom (2008), an associate professor at SyracuseUniversity, believes there is a direct coloration between economic status and the need for remedial education. Offering statistical information to validate her argument, Engstrom also supports creating specialized “learning communities” in order to support an already disadvantaged academic population. After receiving a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education and additional support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Engstrom carried out a systematic, multi-institutional, longitudinal four-year study of the impact of learning communities. Engstrom’s study concludes that academically under-prepared students were significantly more engaged in the educational process as members of a learning community. According to Engstrom, these “learning community” students reported high levels of support from their college, teachers, and peers which Engstrom feels directly impacted their success. Kay Mills, (2009) reports 60% of community colleges surveyed are using learning community programs (p. 34).
(2)Tai, E. (2007) Learning Communities lower the number of students who leave college
Emily Tai (2007), a professor at QueensboroughCommunity College in New York, also believes that constructing learning communities answers the academic needs of remedial level college students. Tai suggests that requiring basic skills students to complete a set of remedial courses before taking actual credit coursesor transferable courses fails to address the specific developmental learning needs of these students and is directly contributing to their high dropout rate. Instead of the usual step method of basic skills courses, Tai supports a learning center program that links basic skills courses, such as reading or writing, with a history class. By doing so, Tai suggests basic skills students can better understand the content of the courses and a learning environment of community and cooperation replaces the current system that lends itself to competition and isolation (p. 105). Tai reports that the reward for the collaboration between faculty and students is an increase in “retention, graduation rates, grades, and earned credit hours” (p. 106) with minimal financial support from the academic institution.
(3)Livingston, L. (2007) Collaboration is natural for students and will also help them develop “teamwork” attitudes in the workplace.
Larry Livingston (2010), a professor at the University of Southern California, is also a proponent of Learning Communities. According to Livingston, college students are already very familiar with social networking. Examples of youth oriented collaboration include text messaging, playing interactive games on the Internet, MySpace, YouTube, and blogging. Therefore, Livingston believes collaboration-based curricula should be a natural environment for students. Livingston suggests that by giving students a “team” experience educational institutions will also be preparing them for an increasingly collaborative employment environment (p. 61).
(4)Smith, Rachel (2010) Feeling supported: Curricular learning communities for basic skills courses and students who speak English as a second language
(5)Roselle, Anne collaborating with librarians.
“librarians who proactively integrate basic library skills into developmental education and academic success courses, collaborate with developmental educators in designing library sessions and class assignments, interact with learning assistance and tutoring centers, and help reduce library anxiety and build student confidence” (Roselle, 2008, p. 24)
e)New Horizons
f)Tutoring Center
(1)Wood, D. (1976)Why tutoring works
(2)Bradley, P. (2007) In class tutors help students.
Instead of asking students to visit a tutoring center outside of class, several community colleges are now providing “in class” tutors sometimes referred to as supplemental instructors. With an in class tutor, students have someone available to work with them one-on-one as the questions arise. Paul Bradley (2007) discusses a supplemental instruction program currently in place at TidewaterCommunity College. However, instead of using traditional tutors, the Tidewater program “places successful students who already have passed developmental courses in classrooms with incoming students” (p. 7) According to Bradley, this tutoring model has the added advantage of letting incoming students “rub shoulders with successful students” (p. 7) which can also lead to successful mentoring relationships. Bradley reports that introductory English courses on the Tidewater campus with the additional student supplemental instructors experienced a 70 percent rate of passing students compared to 60 percent campus-wide (p. 7).
(3)Mills, K (2009) holistic approach to guiding underprepared students through manth, English, and other challenges of college.
“Math Jam, a two-week noncredit summer program that introduces students to college math by making it fun” (Mills, 2009, p. 35).
“Statistics are one measuring stick, personal testimonies another” Mills, 2009, p. 35).
“‘taking six hours a week to go to a math class that isn’t getting graded is ridiculous,’ said Romo, who is attending the Metropolitan State College in Denver. The single mother added ‘It was a waste of my time’” (“In Colorado” article)
g)Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA)
IV.Summary
V.Statement of the problem and hypotheses
The Achieving the Dream program encourages colleges to “build a culture of evidence - to gather, analyze, and make better use of data to foster fundamental change in the educational practices” (Bailey, 2010, p. 257) This is also the goal of College of the Desert and is one of the reasons the Basic Skills program is supporting research into the colleges current support programs.
Even with substantial funding and support programs, a large number of Basic Skills students are still dropping out after their first semester. Are these students using the programs being offered (will use data supplied by College of the Desert to track student use)? What reasons do students Basic Skills Students give for leaving or staying after their first and second semesters?A qualitative approach of research, focused on listening to the personal accounts of these students, should also be considered. Currently, the academic discussion regarding these students is being conducted by administrators and educators in the field. While there is a great deal of discussion based on Basic Skills Student academic data, the actual voice of the Basic Skills student is not being heard.
References
Baily, T., Jeon, D.W. & Woo Choo, S. (2010). Referral, enrollment, and completion in developmental education sequences in community colleges. Economics of EducationReview 29, 255-270.
Bond, L. (2009). Toward informative assessment and a culture of evidence. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1-54.
Boylan, H., Bonham, B., & White, S. (1999). Developmental and remedial education in postsecondary education.
Bradley, P. (2007). Supplemental instruction programs showing results. Community College Week,
Engstrom,C.& Tinto,V.(2008). Access without support is not opportunity. Change,Vol. 4(1), 46-50.
Boroch, D., Fillpot, J., Hope, L., Johnstone, R., Mery, P., Serban, A., Smith, B., & Gabriner, R.S. (2007). Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges. The Research & Planning Group for California Community Colleges, 1-148,
Casazza, M. (1999. Who are we and where did we come from? JOuranl of Developmental Education, 23 (1).
Gabriel, G.E. (1999) Best practices: Strategies to improve student retention. Northern Virginia Office of Institutional Research.
Jenkins, D. & Boswell, K. (2002). State polices on community college remedial education: Findings from a national survey. StateCommunity College Remediation Policy, 1-13
Livingston, L. (2010). Teaching creativity in higher education. Arts Education Policy Review, 111, 59-62.
Mills, K. (2009). Basic skills education: PasadenaCityCollege’s teaching and learning center. The Education Digest, 33-38.
National Association for Developmental Education (2010). 2010 Fact sheet. Retrieved March 27, 2010.
Roselle, A. (2008). Community college library practices in developmental education. Journal of Developmental Education, 32(2), 24-32.
Smith, R.A. (2010) Feeling supported: Curricular learning communities for basic skills courses and students who speak English as a second language, Community College Review 37(3), 261-284.
Wood, D., Bruner, j., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89-100.
Tai, E. (2008). Getting down to basics in western civilization: It’s about time. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 31(2), 103-116.