Innovating, cutting costs and data

Innovations 2013, hosted by Dallas Community College District, explored everything from educating prison inmates to the “gamification” of learning.

Controlling costs was a major theme,  reports Matt Reed, who presented as Dean Dad,

 Richard Sebastian, of the Virginia Community College system, presented a “no textbook cost degree” that’s being piloted at Tidewater Community College.  . . . They’ve chosen the Business Administration degree, and through a series of grants and stipends, they’ve convinced enough full-time faculty in the program to use nothing but “Open Educational Resources” that students will be able to get through the entire degree without spending anything on books or other course materials.

Diana Oblinger, CEO of Educause, discussed how colleges are using analytics and other software. For example,  Austin Peay State University (Texas) gives students “top ten” course recommendations for the following semester, complete with projected grades.

If we don’t have the stomach to mandate decisions, but we don’t want students to just throw up their hands at seemingly infinite options, then we can use “nudging” to push students towards the choices we want them to make. Top ten lists are a way to do that. Students are still free to go off the top ten list, but most don’t.

Using data — to teach and to control costs — also was big.

In “The Walking Dean: Surviving the Budget Apocalypse,”  Paul Starer and Lareen Balducci, from Foothill College (CA), opened with images of zombies, carnage and a post-apocalyptic wasteland to introduce California’s budget cuts and the ways it handles community college budgeting.

Dave Szatmary, a vice provost at the University of Washington, discussed UW’s low-cost online bachelor’s degree completion program, developed in consultation with community colleges. “It’s starting with Early Childhood Ed, since the Federal mandate for 50% of Head Start teachers to have bachelor’s degrees kicks in this Fall, and many locations are behind,” writes Reed. “And yes, the program will draw heavily on data analytics.”

St. Clair County Community College in Michigan is using a “courageous conversations” model to engage the faculty and staff in major issues facing the college. No, not racism or homophobia. “It was about data.”  The college releases its internal data and invites comments and questions.

Students rent, share, steal or skip textbooks

Students are finding ways to save money on textbooks, or do without, reports the The Chronicle of Higher Education, which surveyed students at Foothill College in Silicon Valley (I live down the street) and Berkeley.

Ask Johnny Lazzarini whether he ever skips buying textbooks, and the Foothill College student laughs.

“When I look at a syllabus and it says, ‘required text,’ I think in my head, Oh, that’s adorable,” says Mr. Lazzarini, 21, a biology major at this Silicon Valley community college.

Mr. Lazzarini, who waits tables 35 hours a week, has a hard enough time paying for rent and groceries. Textbooks cost him about $500 each quarter. So before he buys one, he looks up the class on Rate My Professors. If previous students say the professor rarely uses a book, he skips it.

One out of every three seniors—and one in four freshmen—often don’t buy required materials because of their price, according to the National Survey of Student Engagement.

Twenty-one percent of students admitted using a pirate site to get textbooks in 2012, according the Book Industry Study Group.

Some students go online to buy cheap international editions. (My husband stopped writing engineering textbooks because the very low-cost Indian editions are resold illegally in the U.S., cutting his royalties. He can’t make enough money to justify his time.)

Most college book stores rent textbooks. So do Amazon and competitors like BookRenter and CampusBookRentals, reports the Chronicle.

 The result: When students enter the Foothill campus bookstore, they may be confronted by five different prices for a single book. Take Approaching Democracy. The political-science textbook sells for $62 (e-book), $154 (new print book), $115.50 (used print book), $107.80 (new print rental), and $59.30 (used rental).

Using Amazon for rentals and used books, Sarah Schueler spent only $80 for books last quarter at Foothill. New, they’d have cost about $400.

E-books usually are cheaper, but most college students prefer print textbooks.

Using an online book for one class, Eduardo C. Albano, 18, found he had to spend twice as much time to read it.

“For some reason, my brain could not get the information as clearly reading the electronic screen as it could marking up the pages and reading it firsthand,” he says.

Providing free e-books is turning out to be difficult because of “money pressures, slow adoption by professors, and quality concerns,” reports the Chronicle.

High textbook costs make it harder for Foothill students to complete their degrees.

The price of textbooks is more than double tuition at Foothill, says Marie Efira, 63, who studies anthropology. She’d take more classes if she could afford the books.

Beth Stolyarchuk, a Marine Corps veteran and radiology student, supports her family on the GI Bill. “I have to go and spend $400 for a couple of books—it’s absolutely outrageous. It’s unacceptable that I can’t buy groceries for two weeks because I had to pay for books.” She borrowed from her in-laws to pay for food.

College math starts in middle school

Five or six years in the future, more Foothill College (California) students will be ready for college math courses, if FAME (Faculty Academy for Mathematics Excellence) proves successful. The Silicon Valley community college’s Krause Center for Innovation is helping middle-school teachers improve their math knowledge and learn more effective instruction strategies. The Los Altos Town Crier reports:

The Silicon Valley continues to experience a shortage of engineers from its own backyard, because most students are not prepared for advanced math, according to Rebecca Salner, spokeswoman for the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which funds FAME. In fact, 70 percent of its students fail to master Algebra I by the end of eighth grade, she said.

“Many students get bored with math,” said KCI Executive Director Gay Krause, a former middle school principal.

“A lot of teachers in the middle-school level had limited math training, one course training,” said FAME Program Director Joe Chee. “They know how to do the math problems but don’t have conceptual understanding to explain why the answer is wrong and to diagnose (the problem) when students aren’t getting it.”

Most teachers adopt the rote methods they learned from their own teachers, concentrating on procedure instead of showing students how to apply the underlying concepts, Chee said. Teachers present students with a simple problem and show them how to solve it, leaving students to replicate the solution in answering similar questions without full comprehension of the fundamental theories.

FAME reviews pre-algebra and algebra concepts and educational strategies. Inspired by math lessons in Korea, instructors show teachers how to use math problems based on real-life situations to encourage critical thinking.

“We find the kids who do the creative ways first do better,” Chee said. “With schools forcing them toward test prep, that kills creativity.”

Middle-school students are more likely to understand and enjoy math if teaching is designed for differences in ability, the institute believes.

Foothill adapted its remedial math program for use in local middle schools.

Students work individually through 10 “modules,” starting at the beginning with whole number concepts. The math students must write out each problem, box their answers and correct every mistake on their work.

. . . After the students take their assessment tests, the teachers meet and re-shuffle the classes. Students are grouped by their progress, so they will always be amongst peers who are around the same level.

Foothill hopes students will get on track in middle school, succeed in high school math and show up in college ready for college-level math.

Duncan praises community colleges

“Community colleges are an unrecognized gem of education,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, after speaking Friday and Saturday at graduation exercises for Foothill College and DeAnza College in Silicon Valley.  (I live a few minutes from Foothill.) From the San Jose Mercury News:

In individual speeches at each school, the Harvard-educated Duncan asked graduates to raise their hands if they were the first in their families to graduate from college, had come to the United States from another country, or had worked or raised a family while in school.

At both events, he faced a sea of hands. At De Anza on Saturday, he said: “The class of 2010 has had to climb steps and overcome obstacles that younger students at four-year residential colleges typically don’t face. Please give yourself a round of applause.”

Martha Kanter, the former Foothill-De Anza Community College District chancellor, is now undersecretary of education, which explains why Duncan made the trip. “We’re trying to shine a huge spotlight on community colleges,” said Duncan.

President Barack Obama has called for an additional 5 million community college graduates by 2020.

To help, the administration raised the maximum Pell grant award to $5,550 from $4,860 and is providing $17.3 billion for the program in the stimulus package. In addition, $2 billion has been committed to summer and youth employment, expansion of on-the-job training and “skill refresher” courses at community colleges, he said.

“As America gets back on its feet, community colleges will play a huge, huge role, whether health care jobs, green energy or tech jobs. As families get back to work, community colleges will help them get there,” Duncan said.

The Foothill-De Anza Community College District campuses serve more than 45,000 students a year. About 2,400 earned associate degrees on Friday and Saturday.

CCs nab Duncan as graduation speaker

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will speak at commencement ceremonies at Foothill College on June 25  and De Anza College on June 26.

. . . the selection of the community college district may have been influenced “by the work the Obama administration is doing to call attention to the important role of community colleges,” said Becky Bartindale, spokeswoman for the two-year college system.

Martha Kantor, now an undersecretary of education, was chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza district.